The Accountant's Ethical Code of Conduct and Moral Reasoning from an Islamic Environment: Case in Yemen

An ethical code of conduct is developed to guide behaviors of members in or of organizations. Accountants, in this context, are not an exception. The availability of such ethical code of conduct is extremely important for both accountants and users of accounting information. However, currently in Yemen, there is no ethical code of conduct for Yemeni professional accountants. It is also equally important to know how Yemeni professional accountants perceive prescriptively and deliberatively on issues related to the ethical code of conduct. Hence, two phases of study were carried out to tap the issues. The first phase was sought to address the question of what constitutes the ethical code of conduct among Yemeni professional accountants. Data were collected from 386 users of accounting information in Yemen. The study employed interdependency analysis to reveal and confirm the domain of the accountants' ethical code of conduct. Results show that the ethical code of conduct consists of several ethical constructs. The second phase of the study was to know to what extent Yemeni professional accountants behave ethically at work. This is important because Islam emphasizes consistency between thought and action. Data were collected from 138 professional accountants in four main cities of Yemen i.e. Sana'a, Hadhramout, Taiz, and Aden. Results showed that Yemeni professional accountants exhibit higher level of moral reasoning beyond the conventional level. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge by providing an Islamic perspective to the ethical issues which has similarities and differences vis-a-vis the Western perspective

The Accountants Ethics in Yemen

Ethics is important in any job, but it is extremely important in the accounting job. Over the years, researchers have performed numerous studies in the field of ethics in relation to the accounting profession. However, specifically in Yemen, there has been no ethical code of conduct for Yemeni accountants. This study presents the domain of Yemeni accountants' ethics. Data collected by using the questionnaire from 74 Yemeni accountants in trade companies in Sana'a city. And, this study use Interdependency Analysis to reveal the Domain of Ethical Code of Conduct for Yemeni Accountants. Analysis of literature suggested 18 accountants' ethics. The research findings found the most important components of Yemeni accountant's ethics are four components, i.e, two for Deliberative Ethics and two for Prescriptive Ethics. The components of Deliberative Ethics are: Deliberative on Protection of Clients, and Deliberative On Conflict Of Interest. In addition, the components of Prescriptive Ethics are: Prescriptive on Independency, and Prescriptive on Duty

A Proposed Framework on the Relationship between Islamic Microfinance Related Factors and Women Entrepreneurs Business Performance in Nigeria

Microfinance plays a key role in poverty alleviation, employment generation, mitigating rural urban migration, utilization of local resources and raw materials and contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Nigeria. Women, majority of who are poor and engaged in informal micro, small and medium scale businesses are mostly the target of microfinance institutions. However, women entrepreneurs find it difficult to have access to the products and services of the conventional banks due to their stringent lending requirement. The presence of Islamic banking which promotes the profit and loss sharing (PLS) concept increases the awareness among women entrepreneurs to alternative funding sources. Despite availability of financing options, women entrepreneurs are constrained by their reluctance to use interest based microfinance services. This paper aims to provide a proposed framework that examines the impact of Islamic investment and financing contracts (Murabaha financing and Mudharabah savings) and other microfinance related factors (training, social capital and self-esteem) on women entrepreneurs business performance. Religiosity is a new moderating variable within the framework that is hypothesized to enhance business performance of women entrepreneurs. The proposed framework will fill the gap in Islamic banking and finance studies since the area of Islamic microfinance and the moderating effect of religiosity has not been empirically investigated

Islamic Entrepreneurship in the Light of Maqasid Al-Shari’ah: A Critical Review

The objectives of entrepreneurship in Islam are guided by the Maqasid Al-Shariah. However, there is a mismatch between Islamic entrepreneurship objectives and Maqasid Al-Shariah based on available literatures, which have not been critically investigated. This paper presents a critical review of the literature within the Islamic entrepreneurship objectives and Maqasid Al-Shariah framework. The exploratory study adopting content analysis to achieve its aim found that the existing literature covered both the Din and Mu’amalah based objectives of Islamic entrepreneurship. However, there is dearth of literature that integrates the connection between objectives of Islamic entrepreneurship and Maqasid Al-Shari’ah. It is therefore suggested that researchers should conduct more researches to examine the integration of Maqasid Al-Shariah in Islamic entrepreneurship, particularly in respect to decision making in handling entrepreneurship issues

Islamic entrepreneurship in the light of maqasid al-shari’ah: a critical review

The objectives of entrepreneurship in Islam are guided by the Maqasid Al-Shariah.However, there is a mismatch between Islamic entrepreneurship objectives and Maqasid Al-Shariah based on available literatures, which have not been critically investigated.This paper presents a critical review of the literature within the Islamic entrepreneurship objectives and Maqasid Al-Shariah framework.The exploratory study adopting content analysis to achieve its aim found that the existing literature covered both the Din and Mu’amalah based objectives of Islamic entrepreneurship.However, there is dearth of literature that integrates the connection between objectives of Islamic entrepreneurship and Maqasid Al-Shari’ah.It is therefore suggested that researchers should conduct more researches to examine the integration of Maqasid Al-Shariah in Islamic entrepreneurship, particularly in respect to decision making in handling entrepreneurship issues

A proposed framework on the relationship between Islamic microfinance related factors and women entrepreneurs business performance in Nigeria

Microfinance plays a key role in poverty alleviation, employment generation, mitigating rural urban migration, utilization of local resources and raw materials and contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Nigeria. Women, majority of who are poor and engaged in informal/micro, small and medium scale businesses are mostly the target of microfinance institutions.However, women entrepreneurs find it difficult to have access to the products and services of the conventional banks due to their stringent lending requirement.The presence of Islamic banking which promotes the profit and loss sharing (PLS) concept increases the awareness among women entrepreneurs to alternative funding sources. Despite availability of financing options, women entrepreneurs are constrained by their reluctance to use interest based microfinance services.This paper aims to provide a proposed framework that examines the impact of Islamic investment and financing contracts (Murabaha financing and Mudharabah savings) and other microfinance related factors (training, social capital and self-esteem) on women entrepreneurs business performance.Religiosity is a new moderating variable within the framework that is hypothesized to enhance business performance of women entrepreneurs.The proposed framework will fill the gap in Islamic banking and finance studies since the area of Islamic microfinance and the moderating effect of religiosity has not been empirically investigated

Interest based micro-credit is a problem for women entrepreneurs: considering murabaha financing as an alternative in the light of Maqasid Al-Shari'ah

Microfinance banks are established to cater for the needs of the economically active poor majority of whom are women. From its evolution, there have been controversies about its impact and growing concern, about its products and services from the Islamic perspective. The products and services of the microfinance banks are majorly based on Riba (interest) and Islam strongly condemns any form of dealings with Riba. The charging of interest by microfinance banks has resulted in an overall high cost of borrowing for the women entrepreneurs. The objective of this paper is to investigate, through literature review, whether interest based micro-credit is a problem to the business performance of women entrepreneurs. The exploratory study adopting content analysis, to achieve its aim, found that charging interest on borrowed money is a key obstacle for women entrepreneurs. As such, the paper proposed an alternative to interest based micro-credit (i.e., murabaha financing [cost-plus]) in the light of Maqasid Al-Shari’ah