Most cited business ethics publications: mapping the intellectual structure of business ethics studies in 2001–2008

This study explores the research paradigms of contemporary business ethics research in 2001–2008. With citation data from the top two business ethics journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index, this study conducts citation and co‐citation analysis to identify the most important publications, scholars, and research themes in the business ethics area and then maps the intellectual structure of business ethics studies between 2001 and 2008. The results show that current business ethics studies cluster around four major research themes, including morality and social contract theory, ethical decision making, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder theory. This study helps profile the invisible network of knowledge production in business ethics and provides important insights on current research paradigms of business ethics studies.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Modern Business Ethics Research: Concepts,Theories, and Relationships

The main purpose of this study is to explore and map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies during 1997–2006 by analyzing 85,000 cited references of 3,059 articles from three business ethics related journals in SSCI and SCI databases. In this article, co-citation analysis and social network analysis techniques are used to research intellectual structure of the business ethics literature. We are able to identify the important publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations among these publications by analyzing citation and co-citation. Three factors emerged in this study are: (1) ethical/unethical decision making, (2) corporate governance and firm performance, and (3) ethical principles and code of conduct.     

Business Ethics in the Greater China Region: Past,Present, and Future Research

While business ethics has generated a great deal of research internationally over the last few decades, academic reviews of the business ethics literature remain limited. Moreover, there has been little attempt to date to analyze this literature specifically in the Greater China region, which has been experiencing rapid socioeconomic growth and dynamic evolution of business ethics in recent decades. This paper addresses this research gap by undertaking a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the business ethics literature on Greater China. In particular, it maps out the existing research findings, identifies limitations in methodology, and suggests future directions for business ethics research in this region. The findings indicate that the scholarly interests cover 24 research themes, including corporate social responsibility and social performance; ethical beliefs, judgment, values, decision-making, and culture; workplace ethics and behavior; marketing ethics and consumer behavior; and sustainability. This review reveals a growing imbalance between empirical and conceptual/theoretical studies on business ethics. In addition, the published works covered in this review heavily rely on survey method and convenience sampling, with a predominant focus on a single individual level of analysis. Importantly, this study identifies four directions for future research: contextualized theoretical development, addressing multilevel research, developing research design tailored to the Chinese context, and ensuring more diversified and rigorous data collection.     

Professional Ethical Standards,Corporate Social Responsibility,and the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility

This study explored several proposed relationships among professional ethical standards, corporate social responsibility, and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. Data were collected from 313 business managers registered with a large professional research association with a mailed self-report questionnaire. Mediated regression analysis indicated that perceptions of corporate social responsibility partially mediated the positive relationship between perceived professional ethical standards and the believed importance of ethics and social responsibility. Perceptions of corporate social responsibility also fully mediated the negative relationship between perceived professional ethical standards and the subordination of ethics and social responsibility. The results suggested that professions should develop ethical standards to encourage social responsibility, since these actions are associated with enhanced employee ethical attitudes. Sean Valentine (D.B.A., Louisiana Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Wyoming. His research interests include ethical decision making, organizational culture, and job attitudes. His research has appeared in journals such as Human Relations, Behavioral Research in Accounting, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and Journal of Business Research. Gary Fleischman (Ph.D., Texas Tech University) is an Associate Professor of Accounting and the McGee Hearne and Paiz Faculty Scholar in Accounting at the University of Wyoming. His teaching expertise is in accounting and entrepreneurship, and his research interests are in business ethics and behavioral business research. He has published in journals such as Behavioral Research in Accounting, The International Journal of Accounting, and Journal of Business Ethics.     

Evolution and Implementation: A Study of Values, Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

There is growing recognition that good ethics can have a positive economic impact on the performance of firms. Many statistics support the premise that ethics, values, integrity and responsibility are required in the modern workplace. For consumer groups and society at large, research has shown that good ethics is good business. This study defines and traces the emergence and evolution within the business literature of the concepts of values, business ethics and corporate social responsibility to illustrate the increased emphasis that has been placed on these issues over time. Two organizations that have successfully dealt with these issues were analyzed to identify the links among values, ethics, and corporate social responsibility as they are incorporated into the culture and management of a firm. This study identified the presence and implementation of values, business ethics, and CSR actions within the two organizations studied.     

Corporate social responsibility research in international business journals: An author co-citation analysis

This paper aims to describe the development of research on corporate social responsibility in international business (IB) journals and to suggest future research directions. We conducted a bibliometric study of articles published in twelve leading international business journals over three decades in a longer time frame (1996–2015). Five research trends were found in IB journals: business ethics, integration of stakeholder management, the evolution of the CSR concept, the political and social demands of CSR, and the financial implications of CSR. Our results thus have several implications and suggest numerous opportunities for future research.     

Small-Business Owner-Managers’ Perceptions of Business Ethics and CSR-Related Concepts

Recent academic articles point to an increased vagueness and overlap in concepts related to business ethics and corporate responsibility. Further, the perception of these notions can differ in the small-business world from the original academic definitions. This article focuses on the cognition of small-business owner-managers. Given the impact of small-business owner–managers on their ventures, corporate responsibility and ethical issues can take a different route in SMEs. The small-business owner–manager is able to shape the corporate culture and to enact values other than profit. Adopting a cognitive perspective, we have identified how the small-business owner–manager makes sense of notions linked to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. The concept of sensemaking has recently been applied to CSR (Basu and Pallazzo, 2008; Cramer et al., 2006). Applying a cognitive perspective to small-business owners may help in explaining specific phenomena found within small-business ownership. For this research, the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) is used, a method that has not previously been widely applied in the business and society field.     

Corporate Identity of a Socially Responsible University – A Case from the Turkish Higher Education Sector

Facing increased competition, universities are driven to project a positive image to their internal and external stakeholders. Therefore some of these institutions have begun to develop and implement corporate identity programs as part of their corporate strategies. This study describes a Turkish higher education institution’s social responsibility initiatives. Along with this example, the study also analyzes a specific case using concepts from the Corporate Identity and Corporate Social Responsibility literature. The motives leading the university to manage its corporate identity, the social responsibility initiatives in the local and national communities, and the possible benefits of these initiatives for the parties involved are all identified. The major finding is that philanthropy is one of the main elements of Istanbul Bilgi University’s corporate identity program and that the university has altruistic motives for its social responsibility initiatives. M.G. Serap Atakan is an assistant professor at the Department of Business Administration of Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. She is teaching and conducting researches on business ethics, corporate social responsibility and retailing. She has a co-authored article published in the Journal of Business Ethics. Tutku Eker is a doctorate student at the Department of Management of Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests include business ethics, corporate social responsibility and branding. She is also a teaching assistant at the Department of Business Administration of Istanbul Bilgi University.     

Corporate Directors and Social Responsibility: Ethics versus Shareholder Value

This paper reports on the results of an experiment conducted with experienced corporate directors. The study findings indicate that directors employ prospective rationality cognition, and they sometimes make decisions that emphasize legal defensibility at the expense of personal ethics and social responsibility. Directors recognize the ethical and social implications of their decisions, but they believe that current corporate law requires them to pursue legal courses of action that maximize shareholder value. The results suggest that additional ethics education will have little influence on the decisions of many business leaders because their decisions are driven by corporate law, rather than personal ethics. Jacob Rose is Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His research emphasizes judgment and decision making in accounting and governance contexts.     

Is It Ethical to Use Ethics as Strategy?

Increasingly research in the field of business and society suggests that ethics and corporate social responsibility can be profitable. Yet this work raises a troubling question: Is it ethical to use ethics and social responsibility in a strategic way? Is it possible to be ethical or socially responsible for the wrong reason? In this article, we define a strategy concept in order to situate the different approaches to the strategic use of ethics and social responsibility found in the current literature. We then analyze the ethics of such approaches using both utilitarianism and deontology and end by defining limits to the strategic use of ethics.     

Mining, Corporate Social Responsibility and the "Community": The Case of Rio Tinto, Richards Bay Minerals and the Mbonambi

Mining companies have long had a questionable reputation for social responsibility, especially in developing countries. In recent years, mining companies operating in developing countries have come under increased pressure as opponents have placed them under greater public scrutiny. Mining companies have responded by developing global corporate social responsibility strategies as part of their larger global business strategies. In these strategies, a prominent place is given to their relationship with local communities. For business ethics, one basic issue is whether such an approach to corporate responsibility is likely to effectively address the development concerns of local communities in developing countries. This paper addresses this question by investigating how the corporate social responsibility agenda of a major minor company has been implemented by one of its subsidiaries in South Africa.     

Blockchain and business ethics

This paper provides, from a business ethics perspective, a basic clustering of the morally (a) favorable, (b) unfavorable, and (c) ambivalent dimensions of blockchain technology and its various emergent applications. Instead of proffering specific assessments on particular aspects of blockchain‐based business models, we aim to offer an initial overview that charters the territory so that future research can bring about such moral assessments in an informed and orderly fashion. The main contribution of this paper lies in identifying several morally ambivalent dimensions of blockchain technology, which we finally link to two strands of business ethics research: ethical and legal aspects of legislation as well as a link to Habermasian corporate social responsibility theory arguing for transparent data production and consumption on the blockchain. We conclude that future research is necessary for moral assessment of the ambivalent cases, since their ethical evaluation changes depending on whether one analyzes them through the lenses of utilitarianism, contractarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, respectively.     

Twenty Years of European Business Ethics – Past Developments and Future Concerns

Over the past 20 years business ethics in Europe witnessed a remarkable growth. Today business ethics is faced with two challenges. The first comes from the social sciences and consultants who have both reclaimed the topics of business ethics, regretfully often at the loss of the proper ethical perspective. The second comes from the remarkable rise of corporate social responsibility which has pushed aside the mainstream business ethics methodology with its emphasis on moral deliberation by the individual. These challenges can be tackled by an institutional transformation in business ethics that links up to the long-standing European tradition of institutional analysis of the market. The second remedy is an enlargement of the research agenda in business ethics by coming closer to other parts of applied ethics where the business ethics view is at this moment grossly neglected.     

Acceptability of operations as an indicator of corporate social performance

There has been much theoretical debate on issues of business ethics during the last decades, but there has been little research which could concretise the content of these issues in terms of practical business. Although business life must frequently deal with concepts such as corporate social performance, business ethics and the acceptability of operations, the content and meaning of these concepts has remained flexible. In addition, rapid internationalisation and globalisation have introduced a number of new phenomena related to corporate social performance. An attempt at defining the concepts more precisely and searching for a potential indicator was considered necessary in order to concretise the business environment facing corporations engaged in internationalisation and globalisation. The connection between corporate social performance and stakeholder theory provides a basis for the proposal put forward here that acceptability of operation could be employed as an indicator of corporate social performance. This approach was then applied to developing a model which could be used to assess corporate social performance.     

The Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility in Organizational Success: A Spanish Perspective

Ethics has assumed a dominant position in the current economic debate, and this study focuses on ethics as a legitimate underpinning to good business decision making. Using a self-response survey of marketing managers in Spain, the current theory on ethical decision making is extended. Results support the mediating influence of the PRESOR construct (an individual’s perception of the importance of ethics and social responsibility for the effectiveness of the organization) on relativistic and idealistic moral thinking when one is considering the moral intensity of a situation. In addition, the study found support for the relationship between relativism (negative), idealism (positive), corporate ethical values, and job satisfaction, thereby providing additional support for the prior theory. Finally, a thorough review of the extant literature and suggestions for future ethics research in the marketing field are included.     

Corporate Socially Responsible Initiatives and Their Effects on Consumption of Green Products

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has focused often on the business returns of corporate social initiatives but less on their possible social returns. We study an actual company–consumer partnership CSR initiative promoting ecologically correct and conscious consumption of bottled mineral water. We conduct a survey on adult consumers to test the hypotheses that consumer skepticism toward the company–consumer partnership CSR initiative and the moral emotion of elevation mediate the relationship between company CSR motives perceived by consumers and consumer behavioral responses following this CSR initiative. Favorable consumer behavioral responses, in turn, relate positively to consumer support of other green products. The results provide scholars and managers with means of improving their understanding and handling of company–consumer partnership CSR initiatives.     

Survey of Teaching,Training, and Research in the field of Economic and Business Ethics in Latin America

Theories of business ethics or corporate responsibility tend to focus on justifying obligations that go above and beyond what is required by law. This article examines the curious fact that most business ethics scholars use concepts, principles, and normative methods for identifying and justifying these beyond-compliance obligations that are very different from the ones that are used to set the levels of regulations themselves. Its modest proposal—a plea for a research agenda, really—is that we could reduce this normative asymmetry by borrowing from the normative framework of “regulation” to identify and justify an important range of beyond-compliance obligations. In short, we might think of “self-regulation” as a language and a normative framework with some distinct advantages over other frameworks like stakeholder theory, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and the like. These other frameworks have been under attack in the business ethics literature of late, primarily for their vagueness and their disappointing inability to distinguish clearly between genuine beyond-compliance moral obligations, on the one hand, and charitable acts that are laudable but not morally obligatory, on the other.     

How Important Are CEOs to CSR Practices? An Analysis of the Mediating Effect of the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility

Drawing on the Agency–Stewardship approach, which suggests that manager profile may range from the agent model to the steward model, this article aims to examine how important CEOs are to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, this exploratory study proposes the existence of a relationship between manager profile and CSR practices and that this relation is mediated by the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. After applying a mediated regression analysis using survey information collected from 149 CEOs in Spain, results show that those closer to the steward model are more inclined to attach great importance to ethics and social responsibility, and to implement CSR practices in their companies. Results also provide support for the suggested mediating effect. Thus, this article extends research in understanding top managers as drivers for CSR and suggests new ways to deal with this issue empirically.     

Confucian ethics,moral foundations,and shareholder value perspectives: An exploratory study

A survey study was conducted to look into the effect of Confucian ethics and the psychological foundations of morality on business managers' perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using responses from 393 Chinese managers, we first conducted confirmatory factor analysis to assess the reliability and validity of the measurement model and then employed hierarchical regression to explore the relationships among Confucian ethics, moral foundations, and managers' shareholder value perspectives. The results indicate that both Confucian ethics and managers' moral foundations had significant influence on shareholder value perspectives. In fact, moral foundations and Confucian ethics interacted and jointly affected managers' positions on the shareholder value model of corporate responsibility. This study demonstrates the importance of psychological foundations of morality to managers' CSR orientations and substantiates the persistent impact of Confucian ethics/cultural traditions on today' business practices.     

Individual Executive Characteristics: Explaining the Divergence Between Perceptual and Financial Measures in Nonprofit Organizations

Significant research has found that corporations have a social responsibility beyond maximizing shareholders' value. This study examines the effect of high-profile corporate bankruptcies on perception of corporate social responsibility. Undergraduate and graduate business students rated the importance of corporate social responsibility on profitability, long-term success and short-term success, before and after high-profile bankruptcies. The results indicated that students in general perceived corporate social responsibility to be more important to profitability and long-term success of the firm and less important to short-term success after media publicity of corporate scandals. Several demographic factors such as gender, age and college major played a role in this perception. These findings have important implications for business education, especially as it relates to corporate social responsibility.