Perform research

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Perform research on an applied case related related to Research Ethics, then participate in the discussion by providing a short write-up introducing the case study, including a reflection or context about it, and stating why it’s relevant to the class.

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Ó Springer 2010
Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 90:255–265
DOI 10.1007/s10551-010-0420-6
The Status of Contemporary Business
Ethics Research: Present and Future
ABSTRACT. This study provides a general overview of
contemporary business ethics research of the last 10 years
(1997–2006) and discusses potential future research
directions in business ethics based on the overview. Using
citation and co-citation analysis, this study examined the
citation data of journal articles, books, and other publications collected in the Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI), wherein key research themes in business ethics
studies in 1997–2006 and correlations between these
themes were explored. The results show that major research themes in business ethics have shifted in the last
decade from research on ethical decision making and on
the relationship between corporate social responsibility
and corporate performance to research on stakeholder
theory in business ethics and on the relationship between
consumer behavior and corporate social responsibility.
The results of this study help map the invisible network of
knowledge production in business ethics research and
provide important insights on future business ethics
research.
KEY WORDS: business ethics, citation analysis, corporate social responsibility, ethical decision making, knowledge network
Business ethics grew out of religion’s interest in
ethics in business and management education’s
Zhenzhong Ma is an associate professor in management at the
Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, Canada.
He received his PhD in management from McGill University. Dr. Ma has published in Journal of Business Ethics,
Group Decision and Negotiation, International Journal of Conflict Management, and International Journal
of Cross Cultural Management. His research interests
include business negotiation, business ethics, cross-cultural
management, organizational behavior and human resource
management, and research methodology, with a focus on how
national cultures affect the dynamics of group process.
Zhenzhong Ma
concern with social issues (De George, 1987). The
history of ethics in business is a long one, going back
to the beginning of business; yet, the history of
business ethics is brief and some might even claim
business ethics is too recent a phenomenon to have a
history. In his review on the status of business ethics,
De George (1987) contended that business ethics
had gradually emerged as an interdisciplinary field
and that research on business ethics developed in five
stages, including the ethics in business stage (prior
1960), the rise of social issues in business (in the
1960s), the rise of business ethics as an emerging field
(in the 1970s), the initial consolidation period (the
first half of the 1980s), and the refinement and further development of business ethics (after 1985).
Current business ethics research has not examined
this issue ever since then and it is not very clear how
contemporary business ethics research has evolved
and what is the status of the contemporary business
ethics studies.
Even though business ethics has established itself
as an academic discipline, its establishment has been a
slow process probably because business ethics
researchers prefer to publish their best work in more
established journals (Robertson, 2008). Another
major obstacle to the development of business ethics
as an independent field lies in the subject’s unusually
high degree of interaction with other disciplines.
This overlapping blurs the boundaries of business
ethics and as a result its distinct theoretical model and
analytical tools are unjustly attributed to other
competing fields. With only limited resources contributing to business ethics research, the cross-fertilization of ideas between scholars of business ethics
will be very difficult to obtain.
Business ethics research deals with a set of interrelated questions of ethics and business to be
untangled and addressed within an overarching
256
Zhenzhong Ma
framework. It is the study of morality and immorality as well as possible justification of economic
systems (De George, 1987). The framework is not
supplied by any ethical theory but by the systematic
interdependence of the questions, which can be
approached from various philosophical, theological,
or other points of views. As a result, although there
is no doubt that there is an academic field of business
ethics, the question remains somehow unclear on
what it is, how good its research is, and what are its
prospects and needs for future development.
The objective of this study is to provide business
ethics researchers with a unique map to better
understand business ethics-related publications and
to provide a systematic and objective mapping of
different themes and concepts in the development of
business ethics. This study also attempts to help
identify the linkage among different publications and
confirm their status and positions in their contribution to the development of business ethics field,
based on which potential future research directions
are explored. The principal methods used are citation and co-citation analysis, social network analysis,
plus a factor analysis which is performed to identify
the invisible network of knowledge underlying
business ethics literature.
Studies of academic literature: citation
and co-citation analysis
A number of techniques can be used to study a body
of literature. Most frequent is the simple literature
review where a highly subjective approach is used to
structure early works. More objective and quantitative techniques have recently become popular with
online databases available for citations and co-citations analysis and systematic review (Ma et al., 2007;
Pilkington and Teichert, 2006) in order to examine
the invisible knowledge network in the communication process of a given field. These techniques are
attractive because they are objective and unobtrusive
(Garfield, 1979).
Among various methods developed in the last
three decades, citation analysis is the earliest and the
most widely used method to quantify academic
communication process. Merton (1979) claimed:
‘‘Citation indexing has been a standard of scientific
bibliography for more than a decade but its socio-
logical and historical research potentials have not yet
been fully realized.’’ Within all academic disciplines,
researchers typically cluster into informal networks
that focus on common questions in common ways
(Price, 1963), and within these networks, one
scholar’s ideas and results may be picked up by
another, extended, tested, and refined. Therefore,
the history of exchanges between members of these
networks, revealed in patterns of citations, describes
the intellectual structure of a field. When one scholar
cites prior work of another, citation analysis provides
a means of documenting this process. Citation
analysis is based on the premise that authors cite
papers they consider to be important to the development of their research. Consequently, heavily
cited articles are likely to have exerted a greater
influence than those less frequently cited.
Methodology
The data used in this study included articles, authors,
journals, publication dates, and citations. Based on
the objective of this study, the authors explored the
intellectual structure of business ethics between 1997
and 2006. This time period was chosen because
contemporary business ethics studies of the last
decade represent the most updated and probably also
the most important research in the field of business
ethics. Citation and co-citation analysis is the main
method for this study. With citation and co-citation
analysis, the knowledge network of business ethics
was mapped to describe the knowledge distribution
process in business ethics studies.
In this study, Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI) was used for analysis. SSCI is a widely used
database, which includes citations published in over
2000 leading social sciences scholarly journals covering more than 50 disciplines. Using SSCI provided
the most comprehensive and widely accepted
databases of business ethics publications.
Unlike prior studies, the data used in this study
were not drawn from journals chosen by peer
researchers (Holsapple et al., 1993; Walstrom and
Leonard, 2000). Instead, the entire database of SSCI
from 1997 to 2006 served as the universe for analysis.
In order to collect the data we need, we use ‘‘key
word’’ method to search an article’s title and
abstract. Using ‘‘business ethics,’’ ‘‘corporate ethics,’’
The Status of Business Ethics Research
‘‘social responsibility,’’ ‘‘social performance,’’ ‘‘corporate citizenship,’’ and ‘‘social responsiveness’’ as
key words, this study collected 643 journal articles
which further cited 21,952 publications as references. The cited references in these papers included
both books and journal articles.
Results
Citation analysis
To identify key publications and scholars who have
laid down the groundwork of business ethics research, citation data were tabulated for each of the
source documents using the Excel package. The
citation analysis produced interesting background
statistics, as shown in the following tables. Table I
lists the most cited journals in business ethics field in
the last decade, among which Journal of Business
Ethics, Academy of Management Review, and Academy
of Management Journal are the top three most cited
journals, followed by Business Ethics Quarterly and
Journal of Marketing. The ranking of Journal of Business
Ethics is higher than many prestigious management
journals, such as Academy of Management Review and
TABLE I
The most frequently cited journals
Journal
Journal of Business Ethics
Academy of Management Review
Academy of Management Journal
Business Ethics Quarterly
Journal of Marketing
Strategic Management Journal
California Management Review
Business and Society
Harvard Business Review
Journal of Marketing Research
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Business and Society Review
Journal of International Business Studies
Journal of Management Studies
Business Horizons
Journal of Management
Number of
citations
3013
548
289
253
231
167
162
160
140
96
96
81
80
76
60
59
257
Academy of Management Journal, and the actual citation counts from Journal of Business Ethics are a lot
larger than the rest of the journals in the list (its
citation counts are larger than the sum of the other
15 journals’ total citations). This result indicates
Journal of Business Ethics has proved itself the best and
the most influential journal in business ethics
research. This also indicates business ethics has
developed into a somehow fully fledged field that
can support its own knowledge generation and dissemination, wherein Journal of Business Ethics,
together with Business Ethics Quarterly, plays a leading role in supporting the communication process
among business ethics scholars. The general pattern
of the most cited journals shows that business ethics
research featured business ethics specific journals
prominently, as well as general management journals, while a cluster of business studies and marketing
specific journals is also evident.
The most influential documents and the most
influential scholars were then identified by their total
counts of citation within the selected journal articles.
The results show that the most cited business ethics
publication between 1997 and 2001 (the first 5
years) was Friedman’s paper (1970) The social
responsibility of business is to increase its profits, followed
by Ferrell and Gresham’s paper (1985) A contingency
framework for understanding ethical decision making in
marketing, De George’s paper (1987) The status of
business ethics: Past and future, and Freeman’s book
(1984) Strategic management: A stakeholder approach.
For the second 5 years (2002–2006), the most
cited business ethics publication was Carroll’s paper
(1979) A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate
performance, followed by McWilliams and Siegel’s
paper (2001) Corporate social responsibility: A theory of
the firm perspective, Freeman’s book (1984) Strategic
management: A stakeholder approach, and Wood’s paper
(1991) Corporate social performance revisited. Journal
articles and books combined, the top five most cited
scholars between 1997 and 2001 (the first 5 years)
were T. Donaldson, M. Friedman, R. T. De George,
T. M. Jones, and R. E. Freeman. For the second
5 years, the status of the most important scholars
changed. The top five most cited scholars were
T. Donaldson, A. B. Carroll, A. McWilliams, R. E.
Freeman, and D. J. Wood. These scholars have the
most influence in the development of business ethics
field and thus collectively define this field.
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Zhenzhong Ma
Although citation analysis does not eliminate the
bias against younger scholars, a paper-based ranking
places more emphasis on the quality (as opposed to
the quantity) of the documents produced by a given
scholar than a ranking of authors based on the frequencies with which a particular author has been
cited. In addition, a comparison between highly
cited documents in the first 5 years and the second 5
years reveals some important changes or paradigm
shift (Kuhn, 1962) from the first 5 years (1997–2001)
to the second 5 years (2002–2006). First, the most
influential publications in the first 5 years have relatively smaller number of citations. The most cited
publication between 1997 and 2001 has 26 citations
and the second most cited publication has only 13
citations, lower than the least cited publication in the
second 5 years between 2002 and 2006, which has
14 citations. The gradual increase in total citations
supports the evolving process of business ethics
research as an academic field and the process of
gaining more and more recognition in the literature.
Second, the most influential papers in the first 5
years focus on the theory of ethical decision making,
more of a theoretical nature, which builds the
groundwork for the understanding of business ethics,
and the more influential papers in the second 5 years
shift their foci to corporate social responsibility and
corporate performance, a more practice-oriented
perspective; yet, both types of studies are helping
refine and further advance the development of
business ethics research.
Co-citation analysis
Co-citation analysis is a bibliometric technique that
information scientists use to map intellectual structure of a research field. It involves counting documents from a chosen field – paired or co-cited
documents. Co-citation analysis compiles co-citation counts in matrix form and statistically scales
them to capture a snapshot at a distinct point in time
of what is actually a changing and evolving structure
of knowledge (Small, 1993).
Co-citations were tabulated for every source
document using the Excel package. Many of the
authors had very few citations and were either
unlikely to have had a significant impact on the
development of business ethics or were too recent to
have had time to impact on the literature. To
facilitate our analyses and to improve the probability
of success, all authors included in the final data set
had at least seven citations in the first 5 years and ten
in the second 5 years. Based on the total number of
citations, top scholars in business ethics were identified, and a co-citation matrix was built before a
pictorial map was drawn to describe correlations
among different scholars. In doing so, we were following the procedures recommended by White and
Griffith (1981).
Social network analysis techniques were used to
graph the relations in the co-citation matrix and
identify the strongest links and core areas of interest in
business ethics (Pilkington and Teichert, 2006). Figures 1 and 2 show core research themes in business
ethics studies, based on sampled articles with links of
greater than or equal to five co-citations shown in the
network. This is produced using UCINET software
(Borgatti et al., 2002) and shows graphically the
core areas of interest. Different node shapes come
from performing a faction study of these authors. This
method seeks to group elements in a network based
on the sharing of common links to each other.
The diagrams show that research in business ethics
field is concentrating on the interactions between
ethical decision making, corporate social responsibility, corporate performance, stakeholder theory,
and consumer behavior. The few scholars centered in
Figure 2 are superstars in business ethics research.
Their heavy citations and intensive interlinks with
each other undoubtedly indicate their prestigious
status in business ethics research, and their publications and research work collectively define future
research directions of business ethics studies.
While the diagrams in Figures 1 and 2 are very
telling and provide a clear picture, their foci are only
on the very core areas and a limited amount of
information revealed. Taking the co-citation matrix
and grouping authors using factor analysis of the
correlations between the entries, we can determine
which authors are grouped together and therefore
share a common element. According to this method,
the closeness of author points on these diagrams is
algorithmically related to their similarity as perceived
by citers. We use r-Pearson as a measure of similarity
between author pairs, because it registers the likeness
in shape of their co-citation profiles (White and
McCain, 1998).
The Status of Business Ethics Research
259
I
III
IV
II
Figure 1. Key research themes in business ethics: 1997–2001.
I
IV
III
II
Figure 2. Key research themes in business ethics: 2002–2006.
The co-citation correlation matrix was factor
analyzed using varimax rotation, a commonly used
procedure, which attempts to fit a maximum number
of authors on a minimum number of factors. The
diagonals were considered missing data (McCain,
1990).
Four factors were extracted from the data in the
first 5 years and together they explained over 75% of
the variance in the correlation matrix. Table II lists
the three most important factors along with the
authors that had a factor loading of 0.6 or higher. As is
common in this type of analysis, authors with less than
Zhenzhong Ma
260
TABLE II
Author factor loadings: 1997–2001
Factor 1: Ethical
decision making
DUBINSKY AJ
GLENN JR
FRITZSCHE DJ
VITELL SJ
FORSYTH DR
FERRELL OC
HUNT SD
RANDALL DM
SCHOENFELDT LF
TREVINO LK
MCDONALD GM
41.3% variance
Factor 2: Relationship
between corporate social
responsibility and
corporate performance
24.1%
variance
Factor 3: Status
of business ethics
10.5%
variance
0.935
0.934
0.925
0.917
0.891
0.886
0.860
0.859
0.767
0.766
0.755
WADDOCK SA
MCGUIRE JB
GRIFFIN JJ
CARROLL AB
FRIEDMAN M
FREEMAN RE
JONES TM
0.942
0.932
0.926
0.840
0.815
0.694
0.607
HOSMER LT
STARK A
DUNFEE TW
DEGEORGE RT
SIMS RR
FREDERICK WC
0.878
0.823
0.799
0.768
0.698
0.608
a 0.6 loading or with cross-loadings were dropped
from the final results (White and Griffith, 1981). We
assigned descriptive names to these factors based on
our interpretation of the authors with high associated
loadings. The results show that business ethics
research in this period is composed of at least four
different subfields: ethical decision making, corporate
social responsibility and corporate performance, the
status of business ethics research, and social justice and
social contract theory on business ethics (see Figure 1). We made no attempts to interpret the
remaining factors, given their small eigenvalues.
Figure 1 and Table II clearly indicated the most
influential scholars in business ethics studies between
1997 and 2001 clustered together. The main research
theme is on ethical decision making. Many ethical
decision-making models have been developed over
the years to explain ethical decision-making process
and personal and situational characteristics involved
(Dubinsky and Loken, 1989; Ferrell and Gresham,
1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986; Trevino, 1986). Ferrell
and Gresham (1985) introduced a ‘‘contingency’’
framework of ethics specifying that individual
(knowledge, values), social (significant others), organizational (opportunity, reward, punishment), and
other situational elements could affect an individual’s
response to ethical dilemma. In addition, researchers
in business ethics field also examine behavioral consequences of ethical decision making (Ferrell and
Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986). Indeed,
Dubinsky and Loken (1989) built a decision-making
model based on evaluation of consequences. In a
related line of research, Fritzsche (1991) recognized
the importance of motivational goals for ethical
decision making in organizations. Not only organizational goals can influence ethical decision-making
process, but the goals of groups and individuals – both
internal and external to the organizations, can also
affect the decision-making process of managers and
employees. In a related study, Glenn and Van Loo
(1993) compared the differences in ethical decision
making between students and practitioners in a longitudinal study, and concluded that students’ decisions
are less ethical than practitioners’.
The relationship between corporate social
responsibility and corporate performance attracted
the authors in the second group, as shown in
Figure 1. Questions concerning the role of business
ethics in society have given rise to a burgeoning
body of literature on the relative merits of greater
corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Carroll, 1999;
Friedman, 1970). In 1979, Carroll proposed a threedimensional definition of CSR that was embedded
in a conceptual model of corporate social performance (CSP). In this model, Carroll (1979) differentiated between four types of corporate social
responsibility: economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary. He also argued that firms wishing to effectively improve in CSP need to have (1) a basic
definition of CSR; (2) an understanding of the issues
The Status of Business Ethics Research
for which a social responsibility existed; and (3) a
specification of the philosophy of responsiveness to
the issues. Other researchers have argued that slack
resources are more closely related to prior financial
performance than to current profitability. This view
is supported by the works of McGuire et al. (1988)
and Waddock and Graves (1997), who found strong
relationships between charitable giving and prior
financial performance.
Research on the status of business ethics research
held together the authors in the third group, as
shown in Figure 1. De George’s (1987) description
of business ethics as an interdisciplinary field of
knowledge and practice expresses the dynamic,
evolving nature of the subject of business ethics
research. De George (1987) makes the observation
that the evolution and growth of business ethics has
occurred in phases, each phase reflecting a change in
focus of investigation and study within the field.
These changes can be seen as products of evolving
concerns regarding the role and practices of business
community, and its duties and responsibilities
toward the wider society. As is often pointed out,
there is a significant gap between scholarly discourse
on moral issues and what is required by business
practitioners (Stark, 1993). It is worth noting that
trust is considered an important characteristic of
business ethics. Hosmer (1995) proposed that trust is
seen as a cognitive process associated with the confidence in another person’s goals or purposes, or the
perceived sincerity of another person’s words.
Finally, in the last research cluster in this period,
261
Rawls (1971) explored social justice theory and its
implication in business ethics, while Donaldson and
Dunfee (1994) explored integrative social contract
theory for a unified business ethics framework that
integrates empirical findings as part of a contractarian
process of making normative judgments.
Similarly, studies on business ethics also clustered
into different research themes between 2002 and
2006 and together they explained over 76% of the
variance in the correlation matrix of the second 5
years, as pictured in Figure 2. Table III also lists the
three most important factors along with the authors
that had a factor loading of 0.6 or higher. We also
assigned descriptive names to the factors based on
our interpretation of the authors with high associated
loadings. The results show that business ethics
research at this stage is also composed of at least four
key subfields: stakeholder theory in business ethics,
consumer behavior and corporate social responsibility, relationship between corporate social
responsibility and corporate performance, including
both theoretical exploration and empirical validation
(please see Figure 2).
Figure 2 and Table III clearly indicated that the
most influential scholars in business ethics studies
between 2002 and 2006 clustered together. The
main research focused on stakeholder theory. There
have been many discussions about stakeholder
management, in parallel to, and also as a consequence of, the debate about CSR. Furthermore, the
concept of CSR emphasizes the relationship with
stakeholders. Stakeholder management is widely
TABLE III
Author factor loadings: 2002–2006
Factor 1: Stakeholder
theory in business
ethics
53%
variance
RAWLS J
MITCHELL RK
DEGEORGE RT
TREVINO LK
FREEMAN RE
DONALDSON T
JONES TM
WILLIAMSON OE
0.927
0.854
0.837
0.751
0.749
0.716
0.714
0.685
Factor 2: Consumer
behavior and corporate
social responsibility
SEN S
DRUMWRIGHT ME
BROWN TJ
14.6%
variance
Factor 3: Corporate
social responsibility
and corporate performance
8.6%
variance
0.955
0.941
0.933
ORLITZKY M
GRIFFIN JJ
RUSSO MV
MARGOLIS JD
HILLMAN AJ
WADDOCK SA
MCWILLIAMS A
FOMBRUN CJ
JENSEN MC
0.919
0.912
0.899
0.894
0.842
0.840
0.832
0.749
0.695
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Zhenzhong Ma
regarded as a managerial framework for dealing with
social responsibility (Freeman, 1984). A key issue in
stakeholder theory is to identify the salient stakeholders, that is, ‘‘Who and What Really Counts’’
(Freeman, 1994). In general, there have been two
perspectives for identifying stakeholders: a narrow
view of stakeholders and a broad view of stakeholders (Mitchell et al., 1997). The narrow view of
stakeholders tends to identify those groups that can
directly affect or be affected by the achievements of a
firm’s objectives (Donaldson and Preston, 1995). In
contrast, the broad view of stakeholders attempts to
include all the groups and individuals who can affect
or are affected, directly or indirectly, by the
achievement of a firm’s objectives (Freeman, 1984).
Mitchell and colleagues (1997), drawing upon
various firm theories, have developed a theoretical
framework of stakeholder identification and salience.
This framework is based on three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. They argue
that power, legitimacy, and urgency should be
combined to identify stakeholders and to assess their
level of salience. It is worth noting that Rawls’
(1971) justice notion plays an important role in
stakeholder theory. He proposed that justice is the
first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems
of thought. Justice is fundamentally about fairness, in
particular the distribution of costs and benefits of
actions or policies across a society or social systems
(Rawls, 1971).
Figure 2 and Table III also showed that relationships between consumer behavior and CSR attracted
the authors in the second group. From a marketing
perspective, a firm’s benefits from CSR have been
documented in the link to consumers’ positive
product and brand evaluations, brand choice, and
brand recommendations (Brown and Dacin, 1997;
Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001). Sen and Bhattacharya
(2001) have suggested that organizational identification theory may provide a solid basis for understanding how positive CSR generates active support
from consumers. In addition, Brown and Dacin
(1997) explicitly investigated the roles of corporate
ability and CSR associations in consumer reactions to
products and the psychological mechanisms through
which these types of corporate associations influence
people’s product responses.
The relationship between CSR and corporate
performance is the main research theme for the last
two research clusters, as shown in Figure 2. While
this research theme is consonant with the second
group in the first 5 years, more influential scholars
show interests in this line of research and their works
fall into two different categories: the third research
cluster focuses more on empirical evidence for the
impact of CSR on corporate performance, while the
fourth one more on theory development and crosscultural differences in CSR practices. In the third
group, the linkage between CSR and firm financial
performance has received considerable research
attention (Margolis and Walsh, 2001; Orlitzky et al.,
2003). More recent review of empirical CSR studies
suggests a positive correlation between investing in
socially responsible activities and financial performance (Margolis and Walsh, 2003; Orlitzky et al.,
2003; Waddock and Graves, 1997). McWilliams and
Siegel (2001) defined CSR as actions that appear to
further some social good, which is beyond the
interests of a firm and required by law. Griffin and
Mahon (1997) then tried to find a clear relationship
between corporate giving and profitability. Orlitzky
et al. (2003) offered the first quantitative meta-analysis of 30 years of studies on the relationship between
corporate social performance and financial performance, and concluded that social and financial performance should not be considered as either-or or a
trade-off (Orlitzky, 2005). In the fourth group,
research has been more on theory development of
different conceptual models of corporate social
responsibility and social performance (Aupperle
et al., 1985; Carroll, 1979, 1999; Wood, 1991), and
some have introduced cultural factors into the studies
of CSR practices and their impacts in an international
context (Matten and Crane, 2005). With more evidence from this line of research, scholars in this area
tended to conclude that high corporate social performance is both a determinant and a consequence of
high financial performance (Wood, 1991).
Future research and conclusion
Future research directions
The change of key research themes between the first
5 years (1997–2001) and the second 5 years (2002–
2006) reveals some important insights on future
research directions in business ethics studies. First, one
The Status of Business Ethics Research
of the future research themes will be more likely to
concentrate on the practical importance of business
ethics. It seems a dilemma has formed between the
social nature of business ethics and people’s interests
in the practical significance of promoting business
ethics in organizations. While social responsibility
and social performance have been important topics in
the last decade in business ethics studies (please refer
to Figures 1 and 2), the impact of business ethics on
financial performance has become a key determinant
of promoting ethical behaviors in many organizations. Future studies are more likely to explore
the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance, with an
emphasis on what financial benefits business ethics
could bring to the firm. In other words, the business
side of business ethics will prevail in the development
of business ethics and whether business ethics benefits
the firm financially will decide how popular it can
become in organizations. While this is consistent
with the notion of profit maximization embedded in
capitalist economic systems, it may run contrary to
the idea of cost of business ethics, if any at all, being
necessary sacrifice for the sake of social good in order
to solve the problems brought by the relentless pursuit of profits in capitalism. Future studies will continue in this direction of inquiry.
Second, introduction of cultural factors into the
study of business ethics will become another major
research theme in future. As shown in Figure 2, the
works of Hofstede (2001) have appeared as one of
the key nodes in the knowledge network of contemporary business ethics research. Within the
increasingly globalized world economy, international business and overseas assignments are integral
parts of many organizations’ normal operations, and
consequently, what is socially responsible in a different cultural context and what behaviors are ethical
and what are not requires academic inquiry.
Research has begun to compare cross-cultural differences in business ethics and related concepts in an
attempt to build a set of internationally accepted
ethical standards as guideline for interna