The effect of the dark triad traits on the relationship between obedience pressure and budgetary slack <sup>,</sup>

Nottar, Daiane Inacio da Silva; Schiavo, Priscila dos Santos; Vesco, Delci Grapégia Dal; Santos, Cleston Alexandre dos

doi:10.1590/1808-057x20211455.en

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Revista Contabilidade & Finanças

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Original Article • Rev. contab. finanç. 33 (90) • 2022 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1808-057x20211455.en copy

The effect of the dark triad traits on the relationship between obedience pressure and budgetary slack^* * Paper presented at the ANPCONT conference, December of 2020. ^, ^ The authors are grateful to the Pro-Rectory of Research and Post-Graduation (PRPPG) of the State University of the West of Paraná (UNIOESTE) and to the Federal University Foundation of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS/MEC - Brazil) for their support in conducting this research

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the effect of personality traits on the relationship between obedience pressure and the creation of budgetary slack. Concatenating the dark triad personality traits and obedience pressure in a decision-making scenario relating to the creation of budgetary slack enables us to widen the investigation of factors associated with the practicing of budgetary slack. The relevance of this study lies in understanding how personality traits influence decision making under hierarchical obedience pressure in relation to the creation of budgetary slack, enabling us to measure and detect possible biases in managers’ decision making due to these factors, thus being able to predict or mitigate decisions in the organizational environment. It was verified that the practice of creating budgetary slack can be carried out independently of a hierarchical order and that personality traits influence decision making with relation to the execution and planning of budgets. The article makes theoretical contributions to the accounting area, enabling the advancement and deepening of the discussion of social aspects (obedience theory) and behavioral aspects (personality traits) associated with decision making relating to the creation of budgetary slack. The approach is quantitative and experimental (2 x 2 factorial design), using 82 accounting sciences students. The data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests and binary logistic regression. It was found that, independently of being under obedience pressure, individuals with high dark triad personality traits were more inclined toward the creation of budgetary slack, demonstrating that the intrinsic personality traits of each individual have an effect over decision making. However, regarding obedience pressure, it was verified that there was no significant effect on the creation of budgetary slack. These results offer contributions to organizations, as their managers and teams do not practice slack due to obedience pressure scenarios, but rather according to personality traits.

Keywords:
budgetary slack; Milgram’s obedience theory; dark triad; organizational structure; informational asymmetry

Variables		Metric	Authors
Independent	Personality traits	High dark triad score Low dark triad score	Jones and Paulhus (2014Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the short dark triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personality traits. Assessment, 21(1), 28-41.) and Paulhus and Jones (2011Paulhus, D. L., & Jones, D. N. (2011). Introducing a short measure of the dark triad. Poster session presented at the Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio.), translated and validated by D’Souza (2016D’Souza, M. F. (2016).Manobras financeiras e o dark triad: o despertar do lado sombrio na gestão ;[ Doctoral Thesis]. Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo.)
Independent	Obedience pressure	With obedience pressure Without obedience pressure	Adapted from Davis et al. (2006Davis, S., DeZoort, F. T., & Kopp, L. S. (2006). The effect of obedience pressure and perceived responsibility on management accountants' creation of budgetary slack. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 18(1), 19-35.)
Dependent	Creation of budgetary slack	Decision - Maintain the original budgetary estimate Decision - Alter the original budgetary estimate adding budgetary slack	Davis et al. (2006Davis, S., DeZoort, F. T., & Kopp, L. S. (2006). The effect of obedience pressure and perceived responsibility on management accountants' creation of budgetary slack. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 18(1), 19-35.) and Faria et al. (2012Faria, J. A., Silva Gomes, S. M., Sampaio, M. S., & Freires, F. G. M. (2012). A institucionalização da folga orçamentária como prática de gestão. In Anais do Congresso Brasileiro de Custos (p. 1-14).)

Threats	Control measures
Maturation	Experiment conducted in two in-person meetings in which the tasks could be quickly executed.
History	The research was applied over a short time period, with the two meetings being held in the same period in order to mitigate possible historical damage.
Testing	No pre-tests were conducted with the subjects of the experiment. For validation purposes, the pre-test was conducted with master’s students in accounting. Thus, there were no risks of perceptive instruction.
Subject mortality	In the first meeting, we emphasized the importance of committing to the research and sought to apply it on the same day, to mitigate possible dropouts.
Instrumentation	The instrument was randomly applied and the results were treated equally.
Selection	The research was limited to the influence of the personality traits on decision making. The subjects were distributed into two groups with high and low dark triad personality traits and randomly subdivided into with and without obedience pressure. Even through the two groups were not quantitatively equal, the samples can be analyzed so as not to impair the analysis of the results obtained.
Treatment imitation	The instrument was individually applied, without interaction between the subjects.
Resentful demoralization	The differential treatment employed (obedience pressure) is a factor pertaining to routine activities of society.

Threats	Control measures
Population validity	Generalization of the results extended to the context of the present study. The research was conducted with accounting students who in their professional careers are possibly already facing or will face similar situations.
Ecological validity	The instrument was built using fictitious data, but it aims to be as close as possible to reality, similarly to the case used by Davis et al. (2006Davis, S., DeZoort, F. T., & Kopp, L. S. (2006). The effect of obedience pressure and perceived responsibility on management accountants' creation of budgetary slack. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 18(1), 19-35.) and adapted to the local reality.
Temporal validity	The experiment is limited to a specific period.

Groups	Dark triad level	Obedience pressure	Total		Gender				Creation of budgetary slack
			Total		Male		Female		Alter		Maintain
			f	f(%)	f	f(%)	f	f(%)	f	f(%)	f	f(%)
A	High traits	With pressure	21	50.0	11	50.0	10	50.0	11	47.8	10	52.6
B	High traits	No pressure	21	50.0	11	50.0	10	50.0	12	52.2	9	47.4
	Subtotal - high traits		42	100.0	22	100.0	20	100.0	23	100.0	19	100.0
C	Low traits	With pressure	20	50.0	5	42.0	15	54.0	5	50.0	15	50.0
D	Low traits	No pressure	20	50.0	7	58.0	13	46.0	5	50.0	15	50.0
Subtotal - Low traits			40	100.0	12	100.0	28	100.0	10	100.0	30	100.0
General total			82		34	41.5	48	58.5	33	40.2	49	59.8

Dark triad traits	f	f(%)	Mean ranks	Mann-Whitney U	Z	p-value	Hypothesis
	High traits	42	51.2	47.45	590	-2.730	0.006	H₁ is not rejected
	Low traits	40	48.8	35.25	590	-2.730	0.006	H₁ is not rejected
Total	82	100.0

Scenario	F	f(%)	Mean ranks	Mann-Whitney U	Z	p-value	Hypothesis
	With pressure	41	50.0	42.54	798	-0.457	0.648	H₂ is rejected
	No pressure	41	50.0	40.46	798	-0.457	0.648	H₂ is rejected
Total	82	100.0

Obedience pressure	F	f(%)	Mean ranks	Mann-Whitney U	Z	p-value	Hypothesis
	With pressure	41	50.0	42.00	820	-0.224	0.823	H₃ is rejected
	No pressure	41	50.0	41.00				H₃ is rejected
Total	82	100.0

Creation of budgetary slack	B	S.E.	Wald	df	p-value	Exp(B)	95%CI for Exp(B)		Hypothesis
Creation of budgetary slack	B	S.E.	Wald	df	p-value	Exp(B)	Lower	Upper	Hypothesis
Traits	1.386	0.679	4.168	1	0.041	4.000	1.057	15.138	H₄ is rejected
Pressure	0.000	0.730	0.000	1	1.000	1.000	0.239	4.184
Pressure vs traits	-0.192	0.958	0.040	1	0.841	0.825	0.126	5.399
Constant	-1.099	0.516	4.526	1	0.033	0.333

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