The effect of accounting professionals' perceptions of accounting culture on attitudes to errors and fraud: A research in TRA1 region

Culture is one of the most important environmental factors affecting the social, economic and institutional arrangements of a country and constantly changing with its dynamic structure, affecting societies in many areas in this direction, as well as affecting the accounting systems of socieites and the accounting professionals and accounting practices within this system. Since accounting is an open system, it is inevitable that it vill be affected by the cultural values of the society it is in. Accounting provides information to stakeholders about businesses with its financial reporting function. It should not be forgotten that the human factor is as important as numerical data in presenting this information. During the reporting process, the compilation, classification and recording of the unprocessed data received by the accounting department are carried out by professional accountants. In this process, in which members of the profession whose accounting culture values may differ, mistakes and frauds can be made, and as a result, businesses, society, individuals and the economy are adversely affected by this situation. In this study, the effect of accounting culture perceptions of accounting professionals on their attitudes towards error and fraud was examined, based on Hofstade's cultural dimensions and the accounting culture values created by Gray. The research was carried out with Professional accountants working actively in the provinces of Erzurum, Erzincan and Bayburt in the TRA1 region and 140 questionnaires were applied within the scope of the research. Factor analysis was performed to Express the dimensions of accounting culture values. Based on the findings, correlation and regression analyzes were applied and t test and one-way anova test were performed to reveal the differences. As a result, relationships were found between accounting culture values and attitudes towards error and fraud. It has been determined that the dimension of optimism versus conservatism, which is one of the accounting culture values, has an effect on the attitude towards error and fraud, and the dimension of professionalism against the status quo has an effect on the attitude towards fraud. Finally, it has been determined that the proffessionals's perception differentiates according to taxpayer number variable, which is one of proffessionals's demographic characteristics, the dimension of transparency against confidentiality and according to the age variable the dimension of professionalism against the status quo. Also, it has been determined that the proffessionals's attitudes towards error differentiates according to education level and taxpayer number variables and their attitudes towards fraud differentiates according to taxpayer number and city variables.