The role of the personal and corporate ethics in the accountants' ethical decision making

The main subject of this study is to discuss and examine the concepts of morality, business ethics, personal ethics, corporate ethics and moral decision making. Morality is the rules that are generally accepted by the society and form the basis of people's relations with each other. We can say that business ethics have existed since the existence of businesses. Accordingly, the common beliefs and expectations created by the rules that the employees have to comply with the company interests are the business culture. Personal moral philosophies try to explain the differences in people's moral decision-making processes. Personal moral philosophies have two basic dimensions underlying moral thinking. These; idealism and relativity. According to the results of the research; When the legal situations, illegal situations, situations that cause physical harm and financial harm in the stories are analyzed, it has been determined that they positively affect idealism and corporate ethics. In this study, it is aimed to determine the effects of business culture and moral philosophies on the moral decision making processes of accountants. In this direction, data were obtained using a questionnaire method in order to examine the attitudes of accounting professionals in Osmaniye, Adana, Gaziantep and Kilis. According to the results of the study, it was found that accounting employees differ by gender when making moral decisions. Accordingly, female accounting employees were found to be more idealistic, while male accounting employees were found to be more relative. Corporate ethics; Legal , illegal , situations that cause physical harm, and situations that cause financial harm affect moral decision making. Keywords: Morality, Moral Decision Making, Personal Moral Philosophies, Corporate Ethics