Investigating the Impact of Conformity and Obedience Pressures on Financial Managers' Unethical Decision Making with Emphasis on the Moderating Role of Individual Characteristics.

Professions are defined and judged by the knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors and ethics of their members. The occurrence of numerous financial scandals in which accountants played an indispensable role, showed that the role of psychological, personality, and environmental factors in ethical decision-making needs to be given more attention. The present study investigates the role of conformity and obedience pressure in the ethical decision-making process as well as the moderating role of power distance orientation, professional commitment, and organizational commitment. The statistical population of the study includes financial managers of active companies in Lakan industrial Estate of Rasht city, with an estimated 140 company. Using the Cochranchr('39')s formula, the number of samples was determined to be 103. Required data were collected in 1398 with the scenario and questionnaire. The method of data analysis is one-way analysis of variance and mixed variance analysis via SPSS. Findings show the impact of conformity and obedience pressure on the likelihood of making unethical decisions. The moderating effect of professional commitment and power distance orientation on the relationship between obedience pressure and unethical decision making was also confirmed. However, there was no evidence of the moderating effect of organizational commitment. Given that the results confirm the role of ethical pressure in increasing the likelihhod of unethical decisions by accountants and reducing the quality of financial reporting, Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to this issue in formulating regulatory rules, such as corporate governance.