Do Internal Auditors Make Consistent Ethical Judgments in English and Chinese in Reporting Wrongdoing?

We contribute to the literature on intentions to report wrongdoing by examining whether Chinese internal auditors make consistent judgments when an ethical dilemma is presented in English and when the same dilemma is presented in Chinese. We invoke cultural frame switching theory, and our findings,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of business ethics Vol. 194; no. 2; pp. 433 - 453
Main Authors Pan, Peipei, Patel, Chris
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.10.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Audit committees
Audit quality
Auditing standards
Auditors
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Chinese languages
Cognitive bias
Corporate governance
Culture
Education
English language
Ethics
Fraud
Internal auditors
International standards
Linguistics
Management
Native languages
Original Paper
Philosophy
Quality of Life Research
Quality standards
Social psychology
Values
Wrongdoing
Chinese versus English
Cultural frame switching theory
Cognitive bias
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Summary:We contribute to the literature on intentions to report wrongdoing by examining whether Chinese internal auditors make consistent judgments when an ethical dilemma is presented in English and when the same dilemma is presented in Chinese. We invoke cultural frame switching theory, and our findings, which are based on a randomized experiment using between-subjects and within-subject mixed design, support the hypothesis that Chinese internal auditors are more likely to report wrongdoing when the ethical dilemma is presented in English than when it is presented in Chinese. Our results, which demonstrate that internal auditors make inconsistent ethical judgments in English and Chinese, point to language-triggered cognitive bias resulting from cultural mindsets. We suggest practical interventions and language strategies to improve audit quality.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-024-05629-8