Authorship trends and collaboration patterns in business ethics literature

• Author: Mehmet Ali Köseoglu,Taha Ciftci,Mehmet Yildiz
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12177

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Authorship trends and collaboration patterns in business ethics

literature

Mehmet Ali K€

oseoglu

1

|

Mehmet Yildiz

2

|

Taha Ciftci

3

1

School of Hotel and Tourism Management,

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,

Kowloon, Hong Kong

2

Business School, Yildirim Beyazit

University, Ankara, Turkey

3

Independent Researcher, Ankara, Turkey

Correspondence

Mehmet Ali K€

oseoglu, School of Hotel and

Tourism Management, The Hong Kong

Polytechnic University, Kowloon,

Hong Kong.

Email: MehmetAli.Koseoglu@polyu.edu.hk;

trmaliktr@yahoo.com

The primary aim of thisstudy is to clarify the authorship trends, collaboration patterns, and impact

factors in business ethics literature by looking at articles published between 1960 and 2015 in

four leading business ethics journals: Business and Society,Business Ethics: A European Review,

Business Ethics Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics. This study showed the growth type of

business ethics literature, authorship trends, collaboration patterns, authors’productivity evolved

by subperiods and journals, and authors’dominance factor by subperiods and journals. After pro-

viding an evaluation of the results of the study, the authors discuss the study’s limitations and

suggestionsfor future research.

1

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INTRODUCTION

To survive in competitive environments, companies consider their

stakeholders when formulating and implementing strategies or tactics

at operational, business, and corporate levels (Bridoux & Stoelhorst,

2014; Fassin, de Colle, & Freeman, 2017; Menon & Yao, 2017; Prusty,

Mohapatra, & Mukherjee, 2017). While the outcomes of these strat-

egies, tactics, or actions may be good or right for one company, they

may be bad or wrong for others(Epstein, Peysakhovich, & Rand, 2016;

Rodrigo, Duran, & Arenas, 2016; Trevino & Nelson, 2016).

Consequently, conflicts may emerge among groups or individuals

(Smith, Gonin, & Besharov, 2013). In practice, managers focus on how

to eliminate orminimize these conflicts to increaseperformance indica-

tors (G

omez-Bezares, Przychodzen, & Przychodzen, 2017; Zhao, Chen,

& Xiong, 2016). In theory, researchers investigate the antecedents and

outcomes of these conflicts (Hasnas, 1998; Kaler, 1999; Reidenbach &

Robin, 1990; Solomon,1992), to determine how such issues should be

solved and managed through integration with the existing processes

of organizations (Jones, 1991; Lehnert, Craft, Singh, & Park, 2016;

O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005; Street, Douglas, Geiger, & Martinko,

2001). These efforts create the boundaries and structure of the busi-

ness ethics (BE) discipline. Researchers have produced significant

knowledge relatedto BE and its derivatives, including corporate ethics,

corporate social responsibility, social performance, corporate citizen-

ship, and socialresponsiveness (Chan, Fung, Fung,& Yau, 2016).

In this respect, this study’s primary aims are to examineauthorship

trends and collaboration patterns and to determine the impact factors

these trends and patternshave on journals in the BE literature. Specifi-

cally, this research analyzes articlespublished between 1960 and 2015

in four leading BE journals—Business and Society (BS), Business Ethics: A

European Review (BEER), Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ), and Journal of

Business Ethics (JBE)—to assess the social structure of the business

ethics literature.

Previously conducted bibliometric studies have helped researchers

understand the growth and evolution of the discipline’s intellectual

structure, including the knowledge domain and epistemological roots

of BE; and the social structureof the field, including the productivityof

authors, institutions, and countries. While bibliometric studies on the

intellectual structure of disciplines identify how the knowledge domain

of given disciplines evolve or develop, based on the theories,

approaches, structures used within it, bibliometric studies examining

the social structure of disciplines identify how collaboration within

given disciplines evolve or develop (Zupic & 

Cater, 2015). Additionally,

the social structure of a discipline reveals its productivity level. A pri-

mary indicator of this is Lotka’s Law, which confirms that a handful of

scholars are responsible for most of the research within a discipline

(Barrios, Borrego, Vilagin

es, Oll

e, & Somoza, 2008). In BE, which has a

remarkable knowledge stock in theliterature, these bibliometricstudies

assess the maturity of the field as a scientific discipline. Many biblio-

metric studies (Chan et al., 2016; Chan, Fung, & Yau, 2010; Geiger,

2010; Lemke & Driscoll, 2009; €

Ozmen Uysal, 2010; Robertson, 2008;

Sehitoglu, Ross, & Koseoglu, 2017; Serenko & Bontis, 2009) examine

and clarify the intellectual structure of the BE literature. Only one

study, by Talukdar (2011), investigated the productivity of authors in

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V

C2017 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer BusinessEthics: A Eur Rev. 2018;27:1 64–177.

Received:1 July 2017

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Revised: 2 November2017

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Accepted:19 November 2017

DOI: 10.1111/beer.12177