Artificial intelligence and accounting task performance in public sector institutions through the mediating role of ethical issues in Palestine and Jordan

Abstract

This study examines the association between artificial intelligence (AI) technological devices, such as Big Data (BD), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Cloud Computing (CC), and the performance of accounting activities in the public sector in Palestine and Jordan. This study also examined the mediation of ethical issues in their integration. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 630 government accountants, auditors, and financial officers, and 500 valid participants responded after removing those who did not complete the questions. Constructs were measured using a multidimensional multi-item Likert scale (multi-item scales) and were then validated using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Cronbach’s alpha, and multicollinearity diagnostics. Regression analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap replications were used to test the hypotheses. All four AI technologies showed significant association in task performance (TP). Both ML and CC were the strongest association. An important mediator was ethical issues, with indirect effects through ethics nearly equal to or greater than the direct effects across technologies. This had a statistically significant independent effect of ethics on TP, showing that ethics play a prominent role in the transparency and accountability of performance. This study contributes to the literature by disaggregating AI into specific technological dimensions and by examining the association of four AI tools with accounting task performance mediated by ethical concerns in underexplored public sector contexts in Palestine and Jordan.