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Keywords

Accounting ethics education, Buddhist ethics

Abstract

Accounting educators such as Mintz and Mele have argued about the importance of virtues in moral behavior. Mele presented a conceptual model of moral behavior that integrated professional rules of conduct, moral values, and moral virtues. Moral virtues are defined as “permanent attitudes and interior strength for moral behavior.” A major shortcoming of the Mele’s model is that the model does not provide any discussion on the methodologies facilitating the cultivation of virtues. This paper describes the framework and process of Buddhist ethics education and compares the similarities and differences of the Buddhist ethics education framework with the mainstream accounting ethics education framework. Compared with the mainstream ethics education model, the Buddhist ethics education framework appears to be comprehensive and systematic. In addition, to delineate the constituent factors that contribute to moral behavior, it renders several methodological discussions on how to cultivate moral sentiment, practical wisdom, and transitive and self-mastering virtues. Its systematic nature is exhibited by the line-up or formulation of necessary steps leading to the final achievement of moral behavior. Taken as a whole, the framework provides practitioners with practical guidance for what they need to work on sequentially or simultaneously in the moral development process. We sincerely hope that our discussion and comparison of the framework benefit accounting educators who are concerned with instilling long-term values and virtues into the lives of their students.

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