The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Slow ultrafiltration for continuous in vivo sampling: application for glucose and lactate in man

Background: An ultrafiltration (UF) technique was developed for continuous subcutaneous (s.c.) sampling and on-line analysis of absolute glucose and lactate concentrations in tissue. The relation between subcutaneous and blood concentrations was studied in men, because a subcutaneous monitoring device would put patients on less risks than an intravascular device. Methods: Ultrafiltrates were withdrawn continuously at a flow rate of 50-100 nl/min from a hollow fibre probe to measure glucose in the abdominal subcutis. Six healthy volunteers underwent an oral glucose tolerance test. In order to detect glucose and lactate in the same sample, a splitter was placed between the on-line flow injection valve and the parallel enzymatic conversion and electrochemical detection cells. Findings: Subcutaneous glucose concentrations were in steady state on the average 1.06 mM lower. They rose delayed and blunted as compared to blood levels. We demonstrated the ability of simultaneous lactate and glucose measurements in vivo (n=2). Interpretation: UF makes continuous monitoring of absolute extracellular concentrations in tissue possible. We interpret the deviations of subcutaneous measurements from intravascular levels in this way that the subcutis is a kinetic compartment not directly and exclusively linked to blood. The observed differences with blood suggest that diabetes management may demand intravascular monitoring. UF combined with analysis of glucose and lactate in the same sample offers the opportunity to study pathophysiology inside tissues. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved