A survey dataset of ethical culture and financial reporting quality in Malaysian small and medium enterprises

This paper presents a dataset from a survey of the perception and experiences of owner-managers and accountants of SMEs concerning the ethical culture and financial reporting quality in their organisation. The dataset was collected from November 2022 to February 2023 using the convenience sampling method. A total of 181 valid responses from 218 responses were obtained during the data collection process. During instrument development, extensive pretesting was used to validate suitable questions for the respondents. The instrument was developed by adapting from prior studies and the inferences made from the qualitative survey prior to this study process. The survey was designed to elicit data from the owner-managers and accountants of SMEs concerning the relationship between the elements of ethical culture (i.e., formal systems, informal systems, leadership, and religiosity) and the financial reporting quality in SMEs. The dataset serves as an insightful reference for researchers, SME players, and policymakers to better understand the impending benefits of implementing ethical culture for improving the financial reporting quality among SMEs. In summary, the dataset, which was stored in a publicly available repository, can be conveniently used to quantify, and understand the organisational ethical culture in the context of SMEs.