Co-authorship networks in business ethics: A longitudinal study

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to identify the evolution of collaboration among researchers in business ethics (BE) studies by employing a co-authorship analysis via a social network analysis. Four leading journals—Business and Society (BS), Business Ethics: A European Review (BEER), Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ) and the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE)—were chosen to obtain BE articles that had been published between 1960 and 2015. First, a total of 7289 articles were collected. Then, the attributes of co-authorship networks, which included the assessment of co-authorship networks, a comparison of the attributes of the BE coauthorship network with those of other disciplines, a discussion of whether the small world network theory applied to the BE network and a visualization of critical authors, were explored. As one of the first studies in this field, these research findings provide specific theoretical and practical implications with limitations and the potential for expansion in future studies.