Research Problem

This research project will taken an honest attempt to analyze and evaluate the impact of accounting ethics, education and professional legitimacy on the banking industry. In the recent years, many accounting ethical scandals can be seen in the banking industry all over the world. For this reason, it is necessary to take this research program to know the causes and solutions of these major banking problems. This research process is mainly based on the field of accounts and finance as all the problems are related to ethical issues in accounts and finance. This research will be helpful to develop a sight about the ethical accounting and professionalism related issues of the banking sector.

From the title of this research, it can be observed that the main problems of this research are the accenting ethical and professionalism issues in the banking sector. In the recent years, it can be seen that the number of scandals or frauds in the banking industry has been increasing in a fast pace. The investigation of majority of the cases suggests that the main reasons behind these issues are the absence of accounting ethics and the lack of professional standards. In many of the cases, it has been found that the top level management personnel are involved in these banking frauds. It implies that the top level management team members are not following the professional standards of banking. Apart from this, they are lacking ethics in the accounting and financial aspects of the banking operations. This research will be helpful to provide the clear pictures about the reasons of these issues so that possible solutions can be developed.

The main purpose of this research is to analyze and evaluate all the aspects accounting ethics, Education And Professionalism in the banking industry. Many others purposes are there for the research. This research program will take an honest attempt to discover the accounting ethics and professionalism issues in the banking operations. Based on the discovered issues, the researcher will develop some key solutions of those problems. Thus, it can be seen that there are three major goals or purposes of the research process. The first purpose of this research is to analyze and evaluate the importance of professionalism, accounting education and ethics in the banking operations. The second purpose is to identify and analyze the key issue behind the accounting ethical and professionalism failure in the banking operations. The third purpose is to develop some key solutions of these banking issues.  

Research objectives have utmost importance in order to achieve the ultimate goals of the research program. There are some specific objectives of this research. They are mentioned bellow:

• The first objective of this research is to analyze and evaluate the importance of professionalism, accounting education and ethics in the banking operations.
• The second objective of this research is to identify and analyze the key issue behind the accounting ethical and professionalism failure in the banking operations. For this reason, an effective research procedure will be followed so that the causes of these problems can be identified correctly.
• The third objective of this research is the development of key solutions of these major problems. This will be done by analyzing and evaluating the findings from the problems.

These are the main research objectives of this research programs. All these research objectives will be helpful to provide the necessary direction to the research program. 

In order to achieve the desired objectives of the research program, some key research questions have been developed. They are as follows:

1. To what extent Accounting Ethics, Education and Professional Legitimacy are important in banking industry.
2. What reasons does lead to the lack of Accounting Ethics, Education and Professional Legitimacy in banking industry?
3. What are the ways to improve Accounting Ethics, Education and Professional Legitimacy in banking sector?

There are some key variables in this research of utmost importance. They are accounting ethics, accounting education and professional legitimacy. These are being considered as key variables as the whole research program depends on these variables. The analysis and evaluation of these variables in relation to the banking industry is needed in order to achieve the desired goals of the research.

Research Purpose

Ethical accounting, education and professional legitimacy can be considered as the most important concepts in every business organizations and the same is applicable for the banking industry also. Ethics has many diminutions. Ethics can be considered as a well-structured set of rules that helps people distinguishing between the right and the wrong (Zadek, Evans & Pruzan, 2013). There are many components of ethical standards like honesty, loyalty, compassion and many others. In addition, ethics can also be considered study that helps to develop the ethical consideration among the humans. There are certain objectives behind the selection of ethical consideration by the banks like to main the quality, mission, vision, privacy and work environments in the banking operations (Ghillyer, 2012). Thus, it can be understood that there is a high concern about the values and principles of the banking operations. Various ethical issues like the accounting ethical issues have great importance for the bankers and the banking customers all over the world. It is paramount for the banks to pursue ethical considerations in the banking operations like integrity, reliability, transparency, impartiality, social responsibilities and diminishing money laundering in order to protect the rights and interest of the depositors or the customers (Trevino & Nelson, 2016). Ethics is also connected with the accounting and financial processes of the banks. Thus, as per the moral philosophies of banks, it is the responsibilities of the bankers to protect the interest of their customers. In this process, accounting ethics plays a very crucial role. Banking practices are considered as ethical in case they are successful to do well for the banking customers. Banking practices are considered as unethical and illegal in case there is friction and loss of the trusts of banking customers. Thus, it can be said that it is essential for the banks to operate ethically as there is a high demand of ethical considerations among the banking customers (Weiss, 2014).

Another major concept is professional legitimacy or professionalism. Professionalism refers to a specific set of skills, polite behavior, good judgment and others that can be expected from a professional person. In case of the banks, the must be professionalism among the bankers and they must follow all professional standards (Maister, Galford & Green, 2012). Professional legitimacy can be considered as moral standards, regulations and principles that provide directions to the professional behavior of the bankers. It can be said that there is a deep relation between professional legitimacy and professional ethics as both can be considered as two sides of the same coin. Two types of professional ethics can be seen; they are Individual professional ethics and Institutional professional ethics. There is a wide scope for the development of professionalism and professionalism can be learned with the help of professionalism educational courses. Professional ethics largely depends on one’s personal sense of moral behavior, individual choice and commitment. Thus, it is essential for the bankers to analyze and evaluate various kinds of ethical issues in the banking operations so that there is not any scope for unethical professionalism. There is a wide scope to achieve high level of ethical professionalism and this process vastly depends on the admittance and acceptance by the other people. The banking professionals must have an internal enthusiasm to acquire the professional characteristics and commitment towards their job responsibilities (Evetts, 2013). Hence, it can be said that professional legitimacy is not about the acquisition of professional certificates; it is also about the practice and various moral aspects of professionalism.

Research Objective

In the concept of ethical accounting and professionalism, professional code of ethics is another major factor that needs to be considered.  In the year of 1974, Thomas Percival from England first proposed the concept of code of ethics for physicians and surgeons. Now days, code of ethics can be seen in every type of works (Alliance, 2013). There is not any exception of this fact in case of the banking industry as the banking industry all over the world has its own code of ethics in banking profession. The main objective of most of the code of ethics in banking sector is to cover the important and fundamental factors of professionalism and principles. Based on this major concept, all the code of ethics in the banking sector has been developed. Thus, it can be seen that code of ethics is one of the major factors of banking industry. For this reason, it is just not enough to develop the code of ethics in banking unless they are properly implemented, followed and maintained. In many of the cases, it can be seen that the banking employees do not comply with the code of ethics of the bank. For the proper development and implementation of code of ethics in the banks, the effective communication of the code of ethics among bank’s employees is required (Commissioners, 2013). Thus, it is the responsibility of the management of the banks to ensure that all the bank’s employees are well aware of the code of ethics.

There are four major techniques that can be helpful for the successful implementation and maintenance of the code of ethics in the business organizations. First, it needs to be ensured that every employee of the bank receives the copy of code of ethics of the bank. Second, every employee of the bank needs to understand their responsibilities by complying with the code of ethics (Krier et al., 2014). Third, every employee needs to understand the commitment of the bank towards the code of ethics. Lastly, it is necessary for the management of the banks to show the employees many examples of code of ethics. It is expected for the banks to develop corporate code of ethics for their employees. The statement of code of ethics of the banks must be available to their employees from the time of their induction and it must be a part of their job responsibilities. The corporate culture of the banks must support the code of ethics. Code of ethics is considered as one of the major techniques for the achievement of moral behavior among the employees. However, it is not guaranteed that code of ethics will always be helpful for the development of ethical behavior and professionalism among the employees. The employees of the banks must have inner enthusiasm in order to follow the code of ethics of the banks (Worker, 2013).

In spite of the presence of ethical accounting, accounting education and code of ethics, different kinds of unethical practices can be been in the banking operations. These kinds of activities are highly unethical and immoral. Some of the major forms of unethical banking practices are the conflict of interest, abuse of trust, abuse of positions, taking illegal advantage of position and others (Wei et al., 2013). In most of the banking fraud cases, these aspects are founds as the prime reasons. However, there are others forms of unethical banking practices like non-disclosing the important banking information, unfair trading and others. All these illegal activities are affecting the banking operations and the banking customers too. For this, various laws and regulations have been implemented in order to protect the banking operations and customers from these illegal and unethical aspects. Thus, from the above-discussion, it can be understood that accenting ethics, accounting education and professional legitimacy have a crucial role to play for the success of the banks. Thus, it is important for the banks to maintain code of ethics and professionalism in their banking operations. For this reason, the banks need to adopt more effective strategies for the implementation of accounting ethics and professional legitimacy (Union, 2014). Apart from this, the banking personnel need to be more aware about the code of ethics. Only then, they will be to counter to unethical practices in the banking operations. In this regard, this research will be helpful to develop specific strategies so that unethical banking practices can be prevented.

Research Questions

It is essential for every researcher to develop or adopt certain research techniques and strategies for his/her research programs. There is not any exception of this concept in this research program. There are certain steps in the research design. All of them are discussed below:

Research Philosophy: Research philosophy is considered as an integrated pat of the research process. Four types of research philosophies are there; they are Positive research philosophy, Post Positive research philosophy, Interpretism research philosophy and Realism research philosophy (Vaihinger, 2014). For this particular research program, the Positivism research philosophy will be selected. This particular research philosophy is selected as this research process will help to develop effective strategies o ways to diminish the ethical and professionalism issues from banking industry (Tolman, 2012).

Research Approach: For every research program, there must be a particular research approach. Two types of research approaches are there; they are Inductive research approach and Deductive research approach. For this particular research, Deductive research approach will be selected as this research approach will help to analyze and evaluate the existing theories, research papers and articles  in the same filed to the solutions of the problems (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).

Research Strategies: At the time of carrying the research, the researcher needs to take certain aspects into consideration. The researcher needs to use the resources optimally as resources are not unlimited. Another important factor is time management. Time is the most valuable resource and it is not unlimited (Liamputtong, 2013). Thus, the researcher needs to develop an effective time management strategy to complete the research in limited time. In addition, the researcher needs to develop effective strategies to analyze and evaluate excising research papers, journal articles and theories in order to get the desired results of the research. For this research, the research strategy of In-Depth- Analysis will be adopted. Most importantly, the research needs to be free of biasness so that correct results can be got (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault, 2015).

Data Collection and Analysis Process: This is the most important part of the research program. Looking at the problems and objectives of this research, it can be understood that there is a need for secondary data analysis. This, secondary data will be collected for this research. There are certain sourced from where secondary data will be collected (Stage & Manning, 2015). They are research papers of renowned authors, various journal articles from reliable and authentic sources and renowned theories. All latest sources will be used that is from the year 2012 to onwards.  Apart from this, websites of various banks will be another source of secondary data. After the collection of secondary data, they will be analyzed and evaluated with the help of above-mentioned research strategies (Cope, 2014).

Ethical Consideration: The researcher needs to be ethical at the time of the research. The researcher needs to make it sure that all the data are collected from authentic sources and there in not any biasness in the data collection process. Apart from this, the researcher must adopt an effective strategy to protect the research data and to maintain the confidentiality of the whole research program.

Literature Review

Limitations: Certain limitation are there of this research process. The research process lacks practical life exposure. In this research process, secondary data will be analyzed based on existing theories, research papers and journal articles of other writers. No surveys or interviews are conducted. For this reason, the research may not be fully relevant with the present banking situations. These are the limitations of this research program.

Research Activities	1-2	2-4	4-6	6-8	8-10	10-12	12-14
Topic of the Research	ü
Identification of Problems
Setting up of Aims and Objectives
Development of Research Questions
Review of Literatures			ü
Development of Research Design
Collection of Secondary Data			ü
Analysis of Secondary Data
Findings
Conclusion

Conclusion

The main objective of this research is to analyze and evaluate the importance of accounting ethics, accounting education and professional legitimacy in the banking sector. This research program is highly relevant in the current banking industry as many ethical accounting and professional scandals have been happening in the banking sector all over the world. Apart from this, this topic is highly related with the field of accounting and finance. Positivism research philosophy will be adopted for this research along with deductive research approach. Secondary data will be collected for this research. The sources of secondary data are research papers of renowned authors, various journal articles from reliable and authentic sources and renowned theories. After the data collection process, they will be analyzed and evaluated to get the results. Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that the research will be able to get to a suitable result after the analysis process. This research will be helpful for any further research in this particular filed.

Based on the whole research proposal, some recommendations are provided below:

• It is recommended that the researcher need to adopt the research strategy that will help to provide the research process with more practical life exposure. It is a crucial step to make the research relevant with the present banking regulations and situations.
• It is recommended that the researcher needs to use the resources of the research program in a more appropriate way to avoid the scarcity of resources. This can be done with the help of proper resource planning strategies.
• It is recommended that the research program needs to be completed within the set timeline. This process will be helpful to increase the efficiency of the research.   

References

Alliance, R. S. S. (2013). Code of ethics. Wellington, RSSA.

COMMISSIONERS, C. O. (2013). CODE OF ETHICS.

Cope, D. G. (2014, January). Methods and meanings: credibility and trustworthiness of qualitative research. In Oncology nursing forum (Vol. 41, No. 1).

Evetts, J. (2013). Professionalism: Value and ideology. Current Sociology, 61(5-6), 778-796.

Ghillyer, A. (2012). Business ethics now. McGraw-Hill.

Krier, P., Parman, A., Piercy, D., Erlandson, J., Keele, R., Hill, S. L., & Erlandson, J. (2014). CODE OF ETHICS.

Liamputtong, P. (2013). Qualitative research methods.

Maister, D. H., Galford, R., & Green, C. (2012). True Professionalism: The Courage To Care About Your Clients & Career. Simon and Schuster.

Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Stage, F. K., & Manning, K. (Eds.). (2015). Research in the college context: Approaches and methods. Routledge.

Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Tolman, C. W. (Ed.). (2012). Positivism in psychology: Historical and contemporary problems. Springer Science & Business Media.

Trevino, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2016). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. John Wiley & Sons.

Union, N. S. T. (2014). Code of ethics. private copy supplied by Bruce Kelloway, assistant executive director, NSTU.

Vaihinger, H. (2014). The philosophy of as if. Routledge.

Wei, W., Li, J., Cao, L., Ou, Y., & Chen, J. (2013). Effective detection of sophisticated online banking fraud on extremely imbalanced data. World Wide Web, 16(4), 449-475.

Weiss, J. W. (2014). Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Worker, P. S. (2013). Code of ethics.

Zadek, S., Evans, R., & Pruzan, P. (2013). Building corporate accountability: Emerging practice in social and ethical accounting and auditing. Routledge.