biz ethics euro2012

Most cited business ethicspublications: mapping theintellectual structure ofbusiness ethics studiesin 2001–2008Zhenzhong Ma1, Dapeng Liang2, Kuo-Hsun Yu3

and Yender Lee4

1. Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada2. School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China3. Department of Marketing and Logistics Management, Far East University, Tainan, Taiwan4. College of Management, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan, Taiwan

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

Introduction

Business ethics research grew out of religion’s inter-est in ethics in business and management education’sconcern with social issues (De George 1987). Whilethe history of ethics in business is a long one, thedevelopment of business ethics is brief, and somescholars even contend that business ethics is toorecent a phenomenon to have a history. De George(1987) reviewed the development of business ethics inthe 1980s, and his study showed that research onbusiness ethics had experienced five different stages:ethics in business stage (prior to 1960), the rise of

social issues in business (in the 1960s), the rise ofbusiness ethics as an emerging field (in the 1970s), theinitial consolidation period (the first half of the1980s), and the refinement and further developmentof business ethics (after 1985).

Research on business ethics has since developedrapidly, yet no recent study has examined the statusof contemporary business ethics research, and thus,it is not very clear how contemporary business ethicsresearch has evolved, what the status of the presentbusiness ethics studies is, and what their researchparadigms are. The objective of this study is tobridge this gap by exploring the changing research

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Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 21 Number 3 June 2012

© 2012 The AuthorsBusiness Ethics: A European Review © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,

Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8608.2012.01652.x

286

paradigms in business ethics studies in the 21stcentury (2001–2008) and to identify the intellectualstructure of different research topics and themes inthe development of business ethics. In addition, anoverview of contemporary business ethics research isa prerequisite for a better understanding of howbusiness ethics evolves and what the potential futureresearch directions are in the business ethics field.This study is to provide such an overview bymapping major research themes in business ethicsresearch in 2001–2008 and thus provides a useful toolfor scholars to conduct integrated studies on busi-ness ethics.

Research paradigms of a body of academic litera-ture refer to the knowledge network embodied inwritten and published literature that is not obviouslyobserved. A number of ways can be used to studythis body of literature and its changing paradigms.The most popular is the simple literature reviewwhere a highly subjective approach is used to struc-ture earlier research. More objective and quantita-tive techniques have recently become popular whenonline databases are available for such a purpose(Diodato 1994, Pilkington & Teichert 2006). Amongvarious quantitative methods developed in the lastthree decades, citation and co-citation analysis is theearliest and the most commonly accepted method.While researchers from different fields practice citingin various ways and for various reasons, Chandy &Williams (1994) contended that citations are theexplicit linkage between articles with common ele-ments. For any academic discipline, researchers typi-cally cluster into informal networks that focus oncommon questions in common ways (Price 1963),and within these networks, one scholar’s thoughtsand results may be picked up by another (throughcitation), extended, tested, and refined. Therefore,the process of exchange between members of thesenetworks, revealed in patterns of citations, formsresearch paradigms of the given field.

While the citation process may be complicated, thelaws of scientometrics show that hundreds or eventhousands of journal articles can produce only a fewvital, accumulated cited documents (Cronin 1984),which makes the mapping of such a process possible.Recently, scholars created a new term – the invisiblenetwork of knowledge (the INK model) to describethe process of identifying the few vital, yet also most

cited, documents and the intellectual structure of agiven academic field using citation and co-citationanalysis (Ma 2005, Ma et al. 2008). This model inte-grates principles of citation and co-citation and theinvisible nature of academic communication processto visualize connections between different knowledgenodes in a knowledge network. The INK model iden-tifies a set of interlinked invisible knowledge nodesrepresented by publications with their frequency ofcitations and correlations between different publica-tions that share similar subtopics. In this model, thetotal number of times each publication gets cited isused to map their research paradigms. Comparingwith often used expert opinions or armchair schol-ars’ assessment, the INK model is more objectiveand unobtrusive in mapping the changing researchparadigms as well as in evaluating contributions ofdifferent publications and scholars in a given field.This study will follow this line of research and usecitation and co-citation analysis to explore thechanging research paradigm in business ethicsresearch.

The changing research paradigms ofbusiness ethics research

Business ethics research deals with interrelated ques-tions of ethics and business to be untangled andaddressed within an overarching framework. It is thestudy of morality and immorality as well as possiblejustification of economic systems (De George 1987).The framework is not supplied by any ethical theorybut by the systematic interdependence of the ques-tions, which can be approached from various philo-sophical, theological, or other points of views. As aresult, research on business ethics is enormous, and itremains somehow unclear who is doing businessethics research, what the major research topics are inthe business ethics field, and what the prospects andneeds in the current business ethics literature are. Toanswer these questions requires a literature overviewof business ethics studies.

This study explored research paradigms of con-temporary business ethics studies between 2001 and2008. The authors chose such a time period becausebusiness ethics studies after 2001 represent the mostupdated and probably also the most important


© 2012 The AuthorsBusiness Ethics: A European Review © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 287

research in the field of business ethics. Citation andco-citation analysis and social network analysis arethe main methods for this study. With citation andco-citation analysis, this study first identified data-bases to be used, and then analyzed the data, fol-lowed by data mapping with social network analysistechniques. The results of social network analysishelped map the changing research paradigms of busi-ness ethics studies and reveal the most importantresearch themes and their correlations.

In this study, the Social Sciences Citation Index(SSCI) was used for analysis. SSCI is a widely useddatabase, which includes citations published in over2,000 of the world’s leading social sciences scholarlyjournals covering more than 50 disciplines. UsingSSCI provided the most comprehensive and widelyaccepted databases of business ethics publications.Among the journals included in SSCI, BusinessEthics Quarterly (BEQ) and the Journal of BusinessEthics (JBE) are arguably the most influential jour-nals publishing business ethics-related papers andare thus used as the core sources for analysis. Theadvantage of using journals instead of key words togenerate needed citation data is the ‘guaranteedquality’ of their published papers and their clearboundaries of what are acceptable methods andtopics of the field that are defined by editorial poli-cies of specific journals. In particular, this studyincluded all the publications in BEQ and JBE in2001–2008, with BEQ, volume 18, issue 3 and JBEvolume 81, issue 2 as the most recent available pub-lications when the data were collected. The final dataincluded 1,935 (311 from BEQ and 1,624 from JBE)journal articles from the two journals, which furthercited 79,667 publications as references. These journalarticles and cited references together formed the finaldata set used in this study.

Results

Citation analysis

Citation analysis is based on the assumption thatauthors cite papers they consider to be important tothe development of their research. To examine theinfluences of individual publications in the businessethics field, citation analysis was conducted for all ofthe 1,935 source documents with their citation data

using the Microsoft Excel package. The citationanalysis produced interesting background statistics,as shown in the following tables.

Table 1 lists the most cited journals in the field ofbusiness ethics in 2001–2008, among which JBE,Academy of Management Review, BEQ, Academy ofManagement Journal, and Journal of Applied Psy-chology are the top five most cited business ethicsjournals, followed by Journal of Marketing andAdministrative Sciences Quarterly. The ranking ofJBE is higher than many prestigious managementjournals, such as the Academy of ManagementReview and the Academy of Management Journal,and the actual citation counts from the JBE are a lotlarger than the rest of the journals in the list (itscitation counts are almost equal to the sum of theother nine journals’ total citations in the top 10 mostcited journals). This result indicates JBE has proveditself the most influential, if not the best, journal inbusiness ethics research. This also indicates thatbusiness ethics has developed into a somehow

.............................................................................

Table 1: The most cited journals in business ethicsin 2001–2008

Journals Number ofcitations

Journal of Business Ethics 7,849Academy of Management Review 2,241Business Ethics Quarterly 1,613Academy of Management Journal 1,173Journal of Applied Psychology 665Journal of Marketing 599Administrative Science Quarterly 570Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology503

Harvard Business Review 489Strategic Management Journal 487Business and Society 453Business Ethics: A European Review 346Accounting Organizations and Society 317Human Relations 312Journal of Business Research 302Journal of Management 295California Management Review 288Journal of Marketing Research 281Business and Society Review 270Journal of International Business Studies 250.............................................................................


© 2012 The AuthorsBusiness Ethics: A European Review © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd288

fledged field that can support its own knowledgegeneration and dissemination, wherein JBE, togetherwith BEQ, plays a leading role in supporting thecommunication process among business ethics schol-ars. That being said, readers are cautioned in inter-preting the results because the average number eachjournal publishes every year also affects its total cita-tions. The general pattern of the most cited journalsshows that business ethics research in 2001–2008 fea-tured business ethics-specific journals prominently,alongside general management journals, while acluster of business studies, psychology, and market-ing specific journals is also evident.

The most influential publications with the mostcited scholars were also identified by their totalcounts of citation. As shown in Table 2, the mostcited business ethics publication between 2001 and2008 was T. Jones’ (1991) paper ‘Ethics DecisionMaking by Individuals in Organizations: An Issue-Contingent Model’, followed by R. Freeman’s(1984) book Strategic Management: A StakeholderApproach, and Donaldson & Preston’s (1995) paper‘The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Con-cepts, Evidence and Implications’ (see Table 2).Table 2 lists the top 10 most influential publicationsin the field of business ethics and their importance inthe development of business ethics research (see theAppendix for a list of detailed citation data for thetop 50 most cited publications). These publicationscollectively defined the research scope and boundaryof business ethics studies in 2001–2008. ExaminingTables 1 and 2, readers notice that high citations areoften associated with what can be termed field-

defining titles that have built the groundwork for theunderstanding of business ethics as a distinct phe-nomenon, such as those dealing with ethicaldecision-making theories and with stakeholder theo-ries. In particular, two of Donaldson’s publicationswere among the top six most cited publications, indi-cating the prominent status of Donaldson in businessethics research. Tables 1 and 2 also reveal that closeties exist between business ethics research andgeneral management, business studies, and market-ing research.

Co-citation analysis

Co-citation analysis involves recording the totalnumber of citations that a particular pair of docu-ments receives. The number of co-citations is inter-preted as a measure of similarity of the two citeddocuments. This approach is instrumental in group-ings authors, topics, or methods and can help usunderstand the way in which these clusters interre-late with each other (Pilkington & Liston-Heyes1999). More specifically, co-citation analysis com-piles co-citation counts in matrices and statisticallyscales them to capture a snapshot at a distinct pointin time of what is actually a changing and evolvingparadigm of knowledge generation (Small 1993).

Co-citation data were tabulated for all the sourcedocuments in this study. Based on the total numberof citations, the most cited articles were identified(listed in the Appendix, with their total citations-based rankings used as identification numbers), andthen a co-citation matrix was built before a pictorial

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Table 2: Top 10 most cited business ethics publications in 2001–2008

Identification number Full citation index for documents Total citation1 Jones TM, 1991, Acad Manage Rev, V16, P366 1442 Freeman RE, 1984, Strategic Management 1223 Donaldson T, 1995, Acad Manage Rev, V20, P65 1194 Hunt SD, 1986, J Macromarketing Spr, P5 1085 Friedman M, 1970, NY Times, 0913 996 Donaldson T, 1999, Ties Bind 917 Mitchell RK, 1997, Acad Manage Rev, V22, P853 788 Gilligan C, 1982, Different Voice 779 Trevino LK, 1986, Acad Manage Rev, V11, P601 76

10 Carroll AB, 1979, Acad Manage Rev, V4, P497 72...................................................................................................................................................................



map was drawn to describe correlations between dif-ferent articles. Many of the articles had very fewcitations, and therefore, they were either unlikely tohave had a significant impact on the development ofbusiness ethics research or were too new to have hadtime to impact on the literature. To facilitate analy-ses and improve the probability of success, onlyarticles with at least 27 citations were kept in the finaldata set. In so doing, the procedures recommendedby White & Griffith (1981) were followed.

Social network analysis tools were used to graphthe relations in the co-citation matrix and identify thestrongest links and core areas of research in businessethics (Pilkington & Teichert 2006). A co-citationmatrix is inherently very similar to a social network, anetwork of linked papers. The core of the co-citationmatrix, representing key publications from businessethics research, can be shown diagrammatically as anetwork with locations determined using Euclidiandistances. Using the graphing programmerNETDRAW (version 2.0, Analytic Technologies,Lexington, KY, which comes with the social network

software suite UCINET, version 6.1, Analytic Tech-nologies, Lexington, KY; Borgatti et al. 2002), thegraph of business ethics research was drawn as inFigure 1, which shows interlinks among the mostcited publications. This graph shows only the linkswith greater than or equal to nine co-citations in orderto keep the diagram relatively uncluttered and easierto interpret. Basically, a line between two particularpublications indicates that these two publications arecited together at least nine times. The thickness of thelines represents the strength of co-citation ties and thesize of circles represents the number of citationsreceived by each publication as listed in the Appendix.For instance, the line between no. 49 (Fishbein &Ajzen 1975) and no. 50 (Ajzen & Fishbein 1980)indicates that no. 49 and no. 50 are cited together fornine times in the selected publications. If there is noline connection between two publications in thisgraph, then it indicates the co-citations for these twopublications are less than nine times or no co-citationat all. The superstars in the center of Figure 1 arethose that get most citations and thus have most

Figure 1: Network diagram of the core literature in business ethics studies

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influence on business ethics research. These titles col-lectively define contemporary business ethics researchand they delimit what the key research themes are inthe field of business ethics and what their correlationsare with other titles, as well as how strong thesecorrelations are.

To make it more revealing, Figure 2 was drawnusing a different technique. It was again producedusing UCINET software (Borgatti et al. 2002) andshows graphically the core areas of interest in businessethics but with different node shapes representingdifferent clusters, resulting from performing a factionstudy of these titles. This method seeks to groupelements (i.e. publications in this study) in a networkbased on sharing of common links to each other. Thisdiagram shows that research in business ethics in2001–2008 is concentrating on the interactionsbetween social contract theory, ethical decision-making theory, corporate social responsibility (CSR),and stakeholder theory. The few titles centered inFigure 2 are similar to those in Figure 1; they aresuperstars in business ethics research. Their heavycitations and intensive interlinks with each other

undoubtedly indicate their prestigious status in busi-ness ethics research. Their contributions and explora-tion in business ethics collectively define the changingresearch paradigms of business ethics studies.

While the diagrams in Figures 1 and 2 are verytelling and provide a general picture of contempo-rary business ethics studies in 2001–2008, their focusis on the very core area, and only a limited amount ofinformation is available. In order to further examinekey research themes of business ethics research, afactor analysis was conducted by taking theco-citation matrix and grouping the authors usingthe correlations between the entries. The closeness ofauthor points on such diagrams is algorithmicallyrelated to their similarity as perceived by citers. Weuse r-Pearson as a measure of similarity betweenauthor pairs because it registers the likeness in shapeof their co-citation count profiles over all otherauthors in the set (White & McCain 1998). Theco-citation matrix was then factor analyzed usingvarimax rotation, a commonly used procedure,which attempts to load a maximum number ofentries on a minimum number of factors. The diago-

Figure 2: Key research clusters in business ethics studies



nals were considered missing data and the criterionof omission was applied (McCain 1990).

Four factor groups were consequently extractedfrom the citation data in 2001–2008, and together,they explained over 81% of the variances in the cor-relation matrix. Table 3 lists these four factors alongwith the titles that had a factor loading at 0.6 orhigher. As is common in this type of analysis, titleswith less than a 0.6 loading or with cross-loadingswere dropped from the final results (White & Griffith1981). Descriptive names were assigned to thesefactors based on titles with high associated loadings.The final results show that contemporary businessethics research is composed of four fundamental butdistinct subfields: morality and social contracttheory, ethical decision making, CSR, and stake-holder theory.

Cluster 1: Morality and social contract theory

Figure 2 and Table 3 clearly indicate that the mostinfluential publications in business ethics studiesbetween 2001 and 2008 cluster around four majorthemes, and the first one focused on morality andsocial contract theory. While it seems there are few‘most cited’ titles in this research cluster, their con-tribution to contemporary business ethics research isamong the most important, and about half of busi-ness ethics studies in 2001–2008 are around thistheme.

Within this group of research, Donaldson (1982)and Rawls (1971) proposed that there was a moraldimension underpinning socially responsible behav-ior and that the corporation should ‘do good’ becauseit was the right thing to do. Historically, the socialcontract theory has adopted a rigid macro perspectiveon ethical issues, and this approach has been conve-nient for broad moral theory building. Later,Donaldson & Dunfee (1994, 1999) integrated bothmacrosocial and microsocial contracts into the struc-ture of their theory to create a more comprehensivetheory of contractarian ethics. They have increasedthe applicability of social contract theory by down-shifting the level of analysis to the institutional ororganizational level and incorporating local contextwithin their contract framework. Their IntegratedSocial Contract Theory argues that theorists shouldsupplement ‘hyper-norms’ (universal principles

derived from the macrosocial contract) with contex-tual micro-level contracts forged for practicalitywithin the ‘moral free space’ of different cultures(Donaldson & Dunfee 1999). Theoretical develop-ments in this line of research, especially by integratingan institutional level of analysis, have made impor-tant practical applications of social contract theory.

Meanwhile, scholars in this cluster also attempt toexplore the application of business ethics theory inan international context, a topic not well studied yethaving become increasingly important in the age ofglobalization. One of the first monographs on ethicsof international business is that of Donaldson(1989). Donaldson considered multinational corpo-rations as ‘moral agents’ and discussed their socialresponsibility in the global context based on theanalysis of moral values individuals used in decisionmaking in these firms. Donaldson contended that itappeared clear multinational corporations had manyresponsibilities, going beyond just maximizingprofits (Donaldson 1989).

Cluster 2: Ethical decision-making theory

Figure 2 and Table 3 show that ethical decision-making theory permeates the titles in the secondgroup. Over the past two decades, a number offrameworks have been proposed for a better under-standing of reasoning, or decision-making processes,underlying moral/immoral behaviors (e.g. Hunt &Vitell 1986, Rest 1986, Trevino 1986, Trevino &Youngblood 1990). The literature has thus producedseveral ethical decision-making models (Rest 1986,Trevino 1986, Jones 1991). While these theoreticalmodels all share three common elements – percep-tion of a moral problem, process of moral reasoning,and moral behaviors – they differ in the conceptual-ization of the reasoning–behavior link. For example,while both Rest (1986) and Jones (1991) argued thatthe reasoning–behavior link was mediated by moralintentions, Jones (1991) contended that the intensityof the moral issue involved also moderated this rela-tionship. His model provided a useful heuristicframework for understanding the process individualsgo through when deciding whether to engage inunethical behaviors.

The ethical decision-making process is affected bymany factors such as individual attributes and social



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and cultural environments. Trevino (1986) proposedthat the reasoning–behavior relationship was mod-erated by individual and situational factors. Theindividual factors may include those factors such asnationality, gender and age, and the situationalfactors resulting from human development andsocialization processes may include personality, atti-tudes, values, education, religion and employment(Ford & Richardson 1994). Similarly, Hunt & Vitell(1986) suggested religion has influence on an indi-vidual’s perception of ethics. They believed that reli-gion could affect ethical decision making in threeways, namely, the cultural environment, the personalcharacteristic, and finally the religion itself, which isoften a dominant basis for an individual’s deonto-logical norms.

Cluster 3: Corporate social responsibility

The theme of CSR permeates the titles in the thirdgroup. Questions concerning the role of business insociety have given rise to a burgeoning body of litera-ture on the basis for, and relative merits of, greaterCSR (Friedman 1970, Carroll 1999). Carroll (1979)first proposed a four-factor definition of CSR thatwas embedded in a conceptual model of corporatesocial performance (CSP) by differentiating betweenfour types of CSR: economic, legal, ethical, and dis-cretionary. He further argued that firms need to havea basic definition of CSR, an understanding of theissues for which a social responsibility existed, a speci-fication of the philosophy of responsiveness to theethical issues in order to effectively engage in CSP.Other researchers have argued that slack resourcesfor social responsibility are more closely related toprior financial performance than to current profit-ability. This view is supported by the works ofMcGuire et al. (1988) and Waddock & Graves (1997),who found strong relationships between charitablegiving and prior financial performance.

From a broader view of CSR, McWilliams &Siegel (2001) defined CSR as actions that appear toadvance social good, going beyond the interests ofthe firm and what is required by law. The linkagebetween CSR and firm financial performance hasreceived considerable research attention. AlthoughGriffin & Mahon (1997) failed to support a relation-ship between corporate giving and profitability,

more recent reviews of the empirical CSR literatureindicate a positive correlation between investing insocially responsible activities and corporate financialperformance (Waddock & Graves 1997, Margolis &Walsh 2001, Orlitzky et al. 2003).

Cluster 4: Stakeholder theory

The stakeholder theory attracts scholars in thefourth group. There have been many discussionsabout stakeholder management in parallel to, andalso as a consequence of, the debate about CSR.Since the concept of CSR emphasizes the relation-ship with stakeholders, stakeholder management iswidely regarded as a managerial framework fordealing with social responsibility (Freeman 1984). Akey issue in stakeholder theory is to identify salientstakeholders, that is, ‘who and what really counts’(Freeman 1994). In general, there have been twoperspectives on identifying stakeholders: a narrowview of stakeholders and a broad view of stakehold-ers (Mitchell et al. 1997). The narrow view of stake-holders tends to identify those groups that candirectly affect or be affected by the obtainment offirm’s objectives (Donaldson & Preston 1995). Incontrast, the broad view of stakeholders attempts toinclude all the groups and individuals who can affector are affected by the organization’s achievement(Freeman 1984). Mitchell et al. (1997), drawing uponvarious theories of the firm, have developed a theo-retical framework of stakeholder identification andsalience. This framework is based on three relation-ship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. Theyargue that power, legitimacy, and urgency should becombined to identify stakeholders and assess theirlevel of salience.

The main titles in this cluster also show that in thedevelopment of stakeholder theory, there are twodifferent methodological approaches in the litera-ture: the normative stakeholder theory and theinstrumental stakeholder theory (Donaldson &Preston 1995, Berman et al. 1999, Jones & Wicks1999), while some scholars have attempted to inte-grate these two approaches (Jones 1995, Jones &Wicks 1999). The underlying rationale of theirstudies is that ethical behaviors (a normative orien-tation) can result in a significant competitive advan-tage (an instrumental orientation).



Conclusion

The past decade has seen extensive research andrapid development in the business ethics field. Thisstudy explores current research paradigms of con-temporary business ethics research using citation andco-citation analysis on the data published by JBEand BEQ, indexed in SSCI. With the social networkanalysis tools and a factor analysis, this study mapsthe changing research paradigms of business ethicsresearch in 2001–2008, and the results suggest thatcontemporary business ethics research is organizedalong different concentrations of interests: moralityand social contract theory, ethical decision making,CSR, and stakeholder theory.

The mapping of the intellectual structure of busi-ness ethics studies indicates that business ethics hascreated its own literature and that it has gained thereputation as a legitimate academic field, with somebusiness ethics specific journals gaining a prominentstatus, such as JBE, BEQ, and Business Ethics: AEuropean Review. Given that business ethics is stillrelatively young, it is believed that business ethicspublication outlets will gain more popularity andprestige required to become a more prominent aca-demic field when we learn more about the key

research themes and topics in business ethics studies,how they relate, and what they stand for; and con-sequently, business ethics as a field will gain moremomentum for further development.

In addition, the mapping of contemporary busi-ness ethics research in this study also provides animportant tool for new scholars and other academicswho are interested in the research on business ethics.They will have a shortcut into this area withouthaving to spend a great deal of their valuable time onthe ‘startup’ stage. The identified intellectual struc-ture in the literature of business ethics and theresearch paradigms can easily help them walkthrough the business ethics research jungle by pro-viding them with the most influential publicationsand researchers from different fields. The beginnersin the business ethics field can then concentrate onkey themes. Further, this mapping of business ethicsstudies provides researchers with a wide spectrum ofinterconnected knowledge nodes on business ethicsladen with ideas, concepts, and frameworks fromwhere scholars and thinkers can start their owninquiry. Scholars can use this mapping to get a com-prehensive picture of the business ethics field in orderto obtain necessary knowledge to communicate withothers in this field.

Appendix: Most cited business ethics publications in 2001–2008

...................................................................................................................................................................

ID# Full citation index for documents Total citation

1 Jones TM, 1991, ACAD MANAGE REV, V16, P366–395 1442 Freeman RE, 1984, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: A STAKEHOLDER APP 1223 Donaldson T, 1995, ACAD MANAGE REV, V20, P65–91 1194 Hunt SD, 1986, J MACROMARKETING SPR, P5–16 1085 Friedman M, 1970, NY TIMES, 0913 996 Donaldson T, 1999, TIES THAT BIND: A SOCIAL CONTRACTS APPROACH 917 Mitchell RK, 1997, ACAD MANAGE REV, V22, P853–886 788 Gilligan C, 1982, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE 779 Trevino LK, 1986, ACAD MANAGE REV, V11, P601–617 76

10 Carroll AB, 1979, ACAD MANAGE REV, V4, P497–505 7211 Friedman M, 1962, CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM 7012 Jensen MC, 1976, J FINANC ECON, V3, P305–360 6713 Kohlberg L, 1969, HANDBOOK OF SOCIALIZA TH AND RESE (PP.347–480) 6514 Jones TM, 1995, ACAD MANAGE REV, V20, P404–437 5715 Ford RC, 1994, J BUS ETHICS, V13, P205–221 5616 Hofstede G, 1980, CULTURES CONSEQUENCE 5617 Donaldson T, 1994, ACAD MANAGE REV, V19, P252–284 5518 Freeman R, 1994, BUSINESS ETHICS Q, V4, P409–421 5019 Donaldson T, 1989, ETHICS OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 49



Appendix Continued...................................................................................................................................................................ID# Full citation index for documents Total citation20 Rawls J, 1971, A THEORY OF JUSTICE 4921 Forsyth DR, 1980, J PERS SOC PSYCHOL, V39, P175–184 4422 Hegarty WH, 1978, J APPL PSYCHOL, V63, P451–457 4123 Griffin JJ, 1997, BUS SOC, V36, P5–31 3824 Ferrell OC, 1989, J MACROMARKETING, V9, P55–64 3725 Carroll AB, 1991, BUS HORIZONS, V34, P39–48 3726 Jones TM, 1999, ACAD MANAGE REV, V24, P206–221 3627 Hegarty WH, 1979, J APPL PSYCHOL, V64, P331–338 3528 Jackall R, 1988, MORAL MAZES: WORLD CORPORATE MANAGERS 3529 McWilliams A, 2001, ACAD MANAGE REV, V26, P117–127 3530 Barnard CI, 1938, FUNCTIONS OF THE EXECUTIVE 3531 Donaldson T, 1982, CORPORATIONS AND MORALITY 3532 Chonko LB, 1985, J BUS RES, V13, P339–359 3433 Clarkson MBE, 1995, ACAD MANAGE REV, V20, P92–117 3434 Clark GL, 1995, TRANSACTIONS OF INST OF BRIT GEOGR, V20, P204–223 3435 Victor B, 1988, ADM SCI Q, V33, P101–125 3436 Frooman J, 1999, ACAD MANAGE REV, V24, P191–205 3337 Rest JR, 1986, MORAL DEVELOPMENT: ADVANCES IN RES AND THEORY 3238 Goodpaster KE, 1991, BUSINESS ETHICS Q, V1, P53–73 3139 Hunt SD, 1989, J MARKETING, V53, P79–90 3140 Loe TW, 2000, J BUS ETHICS, V25, P185–204 3141 Hillman AJ, 2001, STRATEGIC MANAGE J, V22, P125–139 3042 Carroll AB, 1999, BUS SOC, V38, P268–295 3043 Dimaggio PJ, 1983, AM SOCIOL REV, V48, P147–160 2944 Hofstede G, 1991, CULTURES AND ORG: SOFTWARE OF THE MIND 2845 Hunt SD, 1993, J MARKETING RES, V30, P78–90 2846 Mcguire JB, 1988, ACAD MANAGE J, V31, P854–872 2847 Adams JS, 2001, J BUS ETHICS, V29, P199–211 2848 Berman SL, 1999, ACAD MANAGE J, V42, P488–506 2849 Fishbein M, 1975, BELIEF, ATTITUDE, INTENTION, AND BEHAVIOR 2750 Ajzen I, 1980, UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES AND PREDICTING SOCI BEHR 2751 Trevino LK, 1990, J APPL PSYCHOL, V75, P378–385 27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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