Desenvolvimento moral e valores culturais dos estudantes de graduação em ciências contábeis no Brasil

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze, considering the brazilian cultural diversity, if there is a statistically meaningful difference in the level of moral development of Accounting students from different universities. The study was based on Kohlberg's moral development Theory, which presents three stages of moral development: pre-conventional (stages 1 and 2), conventional (stages 3 and 4) and post-conventional (stages 5 and 6), and on Hofstede's Culture Theory, which presents the following dimensions: power distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation versus short term orientation. The results were obtained through a descriptive analysis, ANOVA test, equality of proportion test, Pearson's correlation, confidence interval for average and p-value. The variables related to moral development, age, gender, religion and professional experience did not present statistically meaningful difference in the regions surveyed, what did not occur with the variable education, which proved to be a strong and consistent variable when compared to moral development. This study also aimed to verify if Hofstede's cultural dimensions presented significance between the studied regions. Difference was found in the following dimensions: power distance, individualism and long-term orientation. It is also possible to observe that the p index of moral development presents a statistically meaningful relation with the regions. Another important find in this study is that there is no statistically meaningful relation between the p index of moral development and the cultural values among the students that participated in this research in the regions surveyed.