Literature review on ethical decision making in organizations

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on ethical decision making in organizations, to establish its levels of disciplinary integration, as well as its more notorious theoretical and methodological approaches. To that end, systematic and narrative analysis were combined. The systematic review was based on references obtained from the Web of Science (WoS), which were analyzed through the Tree of Science (ToS) platform to identify citation networks. The narrative review was based on the analysis of complementary references through Gephi. The literature was classified into three levels of disciplinary dialogue: 1) Conceptual importation; 2) Theoretical reciprocity; and 3) Theoretical unity. It is concluded that the lack of studies grounded in theoretical unity, integrated and mixed approaches, justifies the development of studies based on a more transdisciplinary vision of decision-making theory and practice. Hence, it is proposed to resort to complex integral realism, as a promising route to develop the required transdisciplinary vision of Ethical Decision Making.