The Impact of Moral Intelligence on Accountants' Job Performance

This study intends to introduce a new dimension of moral personality and the importance of presence of the morality in accounting profession and aims to examine the impact of moral intelligence on accountants' job performance. The statistical population in this study includes 175 accountants working in the limited partnership and limited liability partnership companies rendering agricultural and industrial services in Hamedan province in Iran. Using Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) table for determining sample size, the researcher randomly selected 120 accountants as the statistical sample who were asked to rate a 40-item questionnaire designed and distributed to study the level of accountants' moral intelligence involving integrity, responsibility, compassion and forgiveness introduced by Lennick & Kiel (2005) and job performance questionnaire designed by Paterson (1990). Cronbach's alpha coefficients of the questionnaires for moral intelligence and job performance were equal to 0/86 and 0/84 respectively. The results of the study show that the existence of moral intelligence characteristics in accounting can give rise and promotion to the accountants' integrity and responsibility and lead to the ethical thinking and decision making which, in turn, contributes to a better job performance. Our findings thus supported our hypothesis and confirmed the impact of moral intelligence on accountants' job performance. Therefore, this study emphasizes that it is critically important for accounting students to learn the moral and ethical principles and these issues must be repeated periodically and continuously in academic and working environments