Ethics and entrepreneurship: A bibliometric study and literature review

Abstract

The entrepreneurship literature pays increasing attention to the ethical aspects of the field. However, only a fragmented understanding is known about how the context influences the ethical judgment of entrepreneurs. We argue that individual socio-cultural background, organizational and societal context shape entrepreneurial ethical judgment. In our article, we contribute to contemporary literature by carving out the intersections between Ethics and Entrepreneurship. We do this by employing a two-step research approach: 1) We use bibliometric techniques to analyze 719 contributions in Business and Economics research and present a comprehensive contextual picture of ethics in entrepreneurship research by a analyzing the 30 most relevant foundation articles. 2) A subsequent content analysis of the 50 most relevant academic contributions was carried with an enlarged database out to augment these findings, detailing ethics and entrepreneurship research on an individual, organizational and societal level of analyses. By comparing the two analyses, this paper concludes by outlining possible avenues for future research.