A practical perspective on ethical behavior of the educator accountant: A case study at a private university in Indonesia

Abstract

Ethical behavior is the attitude and actions of a person who adheres to commonly accepted social norms regarding good, proper, beneficial, and non-harmful activities. This study aims to examine the influence of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intelligence on the ethical behavior of educator accountants at private universities in Indonesia, moderated by locus of control. This study’s population comprised all educator accountants who taught at nine private universities in Indonesia. At the same time, the sample size in this study was 196 accountant educators. The samples were educator accountants who had worked for at least one year. Data collection techniques used questionnaires and interviews (WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook), while the data analysis used was Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with data processing using PLS software. The findings revealed that accountant educators’ ethical behavior is influenced by their emotional (p = 0.016), intellectual (p = 0.030), and spiritual intelligence (p = 0.039). The locus of control can moderate the influence of emotional intelligence on ethical behavior. However, it cannot moderate the effect of intellectual and spiritual intelligence on educator accountants’ ethical behavior.