Journal of Business Ethics (2024) 190:1–22

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05400-5

ORIGINAL PAPER

Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education?

Berina Jaganjac1 · Line M. Abrahamsen1 · Torunn S. Olsen1 · John A. Hunnes1

Received: 28 March 2022 / Accepted: 14 March 2023 / Published online: 4 April 2023
© The Author(s) 2023

Abstract
This study explores the business ethics education literature published between 1982 and 2021. A systematic literature review
and bibliometric analysis of 862 scholarly articles spanning 40 years of research on business ethics education revealed a
thematic shift in the literature. Whereas older articles were predominantly concerned with ethics, relatively newer articles
mainly focus on addressing the broader concept of sustainability. A content analysis of the 25 most locally cited articles
between 1987 and 2012 identified two main research streams: (a) integration of business ethics into business school cur-
ricula and (b) the pedagogical approaches and tools used to teach business ethics. An additional content analysis of the 15
most locally cited articles published between 2016 and 2021 revealed that discussions related to integration and pedagogical
approaches and tools were still ongoing in the literature, albeit with a focus on sustainability-related concepts such as the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). Building upon
our findings and existing literature, we develop a framework that we refer to as Transforming Ethics Education in Business
Schools (TEEBS), which we argue may help business schools reclaim the ‘ethics’ in business ethics education.

Keywords Business ethics education · Ethics · Corporate social responsibility · Sustainability · Sustainable development
goals · Principles for responsible management education · Bibliometrics

Introduction addressed by the business community (Montiel et al., 2020).

This concern is also reflected in the UN’s Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals (SDGs). In this business and social context,
Ethics matters—but to think a step forward, ethics edu-
business schools face increased global scrutiny due to their
cation matters.
role in educating future business professionals to act respon-
(Lau, 2010, p. 582) sibly in the contemporary environment. For instance, over
the last two decades, a number of scholars and practitioners
Our world is currently facing several grand challenges
have criticised business schools for continuing to maintain
that put pressure on the teaching of business ethics. Con-
a too-narrow focus on theories that promote only short-term
sequences of environmental and societal problems such as
thinking and decision-making that emphasises shareholder
climate change and social injustice (e.g. in the areas of race,
interests (Ghoshal, 2005; Hoffman, 2021; Mitroff, 2004),
gender, social class and wealth distribution) have risen to the
thereby diminishing the concerns for the wider society and
level where they are considered urgent issues that need to be
the complexity of its challenges.
In response, we argue that there is a need for business
* Berina Jaganjac ethics education to change. To specify particular changes
berina.jaganjac@uia.no
and to recommend strategies to implement these, we argue
Line M. Abrahamsen that a serious appraisal of past and current discussions in
line_mogen@hotmail.com
the academic literature ought to be undertaken. An extended
Torunn S. Olsen treatment of this academic discourse is crucial to the formu-
torunn.s.olsen@uia.no
lation of any programme of change and reform.
John A. Hunnes The purpose of this study is therefore to answer the fol-
john.a.hunnes@uia.no
lowing research question: How has the academic literature
1
School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Post on business ethics education developed since the 1980s,
Box 422, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
2 B. Jaganjac et al.
and what are the more recent trends in this literature? We
assume that by mapping the development of the literature
on business ethics education, we can shed light on the most
significant themes that have been discussed in the literature
and assess directions for change. Such an approach may well
give us the knowledge and insight necessary to delineate
how business ethics education should be transformed to
enable business schools to address the challenges brought
on by contemporary business practices and environmental
changes.
Methodologically, we contribute to the literature by
applying three methods: a Systematic Literature Review
(SLR) and bibliometric analysis of 862 scholarly articles
discussing business ethics education, followed by two sup-
plementary content analyses of (a) the 25 most locally
cited articles1 published between 1987 and 2012 to gain an
understanding of the most prevalent research streams and
(b) the 15 most locally cited articles published between
2016 and 2021 to map current discussions and trends in
the more recent academic literature. This methodological
approach allows us to analyse the business ethics education
literature from two perspectives: a quantitative perspective
which focuses on the application of bibliometric methods
that allow us to examine trends in all the 862 articles, and a
qualitative perspective which focuses on the detailed reading
of the key articles mentioned in (a) and (b).
Although several authors have synthesised the various
contributions to the business ethics education literature,
most reviews have been limited in scope, discipline or
conceptual approach. For instance, Weber (1990), Waples
et al. (2009) and Medeiros et al. (2017) performed meta-
analyses solely focusing on summarising the results of
empirical studies on the impact of ethics education on busi-
ness students and practitioners; thus limiting their scope
by ignoring the literature that treats other aspects of ethics
education (e.g. theoretical articles addressing curriculum
design). In another example, Poje and Zaman Groff (2022)
conducted a bibliometric analysis of the literature on busi-
ness ethics education, but these scholars restricted their
analysis to the accounting discipline. In addition, Cullen
(2017) performed a bibliometric analysis of the literature
on sustainability education, but Cullen’s (2017) review
focused only on sustainability. In a word, Cullen investi-
gated but a part of what we consider to be key elements of
the business ethics curriculum.
To overcome the limitations of the previous studies, we
adopt an exploratory approach by mapping many ongoing
discussions in the business ethics education literature that
pertain to the fields of business, management and account-
ing. By doing this, we examine and compare the earlier and
1
The meaning of local citations is explained in footnote eight in the
methodology section.
13
the more recent trends in the literature. With this compre-
hensive comparative review, we can derive implications
for how business schools can transform ethics education in
a manner that addresses the major challenges of our day.
Specifically, we build on Cullen’s (2017) review; however,
we differ from Cullen by applying a broader search criteria
to define business ethics as an umbrella term that encom-
passes ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and
sustainability.2
Applying this conceptualisation in our methodological
approach, we find what seems to have been a thematic
shift in the discussions on business ethics education over
the period of our study, a shift from a focus on ethics to
a concentration on sustainability. This shift can be dis-
cerned in both the bibliometric and content analyses. First,
the bibliometric analysis revealed a change over time in
the article authors’ listing of keywords in their studies,
with sustainability-related keywords (e.g. sustainability,
SDGs, education for sustainability) occurring most fre-
quently in the recent articles published between 2016 and
2021. Second, both content analyses of the most locally
cited articles in our sample identified two main topics
that were discussed in the literature: (a) integration of
business ethics into business school curricula and (b) the
pedagogical approaches and tools used to teach business
ethics. By contrast, the second content analysis of the 15
most locally cited articles published between 2016 and
2021 showed that current discussions in the literature are
mainly about the sustainability component of the business
ethics concept, and how the business schools can con-
tribute to achieving the SDGs by educating responsible
business professionals. However, a majority of these stud-
ies seem to not include a broader ethical reflection. We
are concerned about this finding because it emphasises
the business aspects of sustainability, but downplays the
underlying ethical considerations which we contend are
vital for addressing the major challenges that ought to be
a part of contemporary business education. We contrib-
ute to the research literature by identifying this shift in
scholarly interest and treating its implications for busi-
ness ethics education. Furthermore, we develop a new
framework which we call Transforming Ethics Education
2
In defining each of the components ethics, CSR and sustainability
we draw on Christensen et al. (2007) who define ethics as the appli-
cation of ethical rules to a business setting, CSR as “the voluntary
actions taken by a company to address economic, social and environ-
mental impacts of its business operations and the concerns of its prin-
cipal stakeholders” (p. 351) and sustainability or sustainable business
as “business that contributes to an equitable and ecologically sustain-
able economy. Sustainable businesses offer products and services
that fulfil society’s needs while contributing to the well-being of the
earth’s inhabitants” (p. 351).
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 3
in Business Schools (TEEBS). We conclude by arguing
that this framework may help business schools reclaim the
‘ethics’ in business ethics education.
In the following sections we first describe our meth-
odology before we provide a detailed presentation of the
findings. This is followed by a discussion from which we
develop the TEEBS framework and implications for busi-
ness school policy. After a brief summary, we come to
the conclusion that an ethical foundation must be present
throughout all integration and teaching efforts if business
ethics education is to transform in a way that effectively
addresses the grand challenges and contributes to achiev-
ing the SDGs.
Methodology
We combine three different methodologies to address our
research question. An SLR is a rigorous scientific approach
to mapping the literature on a topic to identify possible
research gaps and, therefore, the boundaries of knowledge
(Jia & Jiang, 2018; Tranfield et al., 2003; Xu et al., 2018).
In our study, the SLR was employed in the data extraction
process to narrow our search results down to a final sample
for inclusion in the bibliometric analyses.
Bibliometric analysis is a method for quantitatively ana-
lysing a large number of documents and their properties
(Gingras, 2014). There are several types of bibliometric
analyses. This study utilised a combination of direct citation
analysis, co-citation analysis and co-word analysis.3
Content analysis is a methodological tool that catego-
rises or ‘codes’ words, themes or concepts to determine their
presence within a dataset (Erlingsson & Brysiewicz, 2017;
Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). In other words, it is used to iden-
tify trends in scholarly literature.
Following the approach of Hassan et al. (2022), we
decided to divide the SLR into two main stages, namely
planning the review and completing it. During the planning
stage, three initial preliminary searches for ‘ethics’, ‘CSR’
and ‘sustainability’, coupled with the terms ‘business’ and
‘education’, were carried out in Google Scholar.4 The 10
most relevant articles returned by Google Scholar were then
skimmed by two of the authors, who noted down the topics
that they perceived as being frequently discussed in the 10
articles as keywords, thus leading to the development of the
final search string that was employed in the study.
3
See Zupic & Čater (2015) for a comprehensive overview of these
methods.
4
Google Scholar was used for the initial preliminary searches
because it enabled the greatest number of results to be returned (Has-
san, 2022).
The final search string consisted of a combination of the
following keywords: (a) ‘corporate social responsibility’,
‘ethics/morality’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘ESG’ (Environmen-
tal, Social and Governance; to capture all three business eth-
ics concepts as well as the new and trending ESG concept),
(b) ‘business’, ‘management’ and ‘accounting’ (to align the
results with our field of study) and (c) ‘education’, ‘teaching’
and ‘learning’ (to account for terms related to education).
Similar to Cullen (2017), for keywords such as ‘education’,
a wildcard character was applied at the end of the word stem
(e.g. ‘educat*’) to ensure the identification of all variations
of a term (p. 431). The search terms were then combined
into a final search string:
("corporate social responsibility" OR ethics OR sus-
tainab* OR moral* OR ESG) AND (business OR man-
agement OR accounting) AND (educat* OR teach*
OR learn*)
The search was conducted in the two main bibliographic
databases, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), which,
according to Pranckutė (2021), are well suited for evaluat-
ing research results. The search identified a total of 83,992
documents,5 which were then filtered so that the year 2022
was excluded from the sample, as it was still ongoing. The
search results were further limited to only one document
type, namely published journal articles, as such documents
will have undergone a rigorous peer-review process and
may therefore be considered recognised knowledge in a
given field (Zhao et al., 2018). The search results were
also filtered by language (i.e. only articles in English were
included), as this made it easier to compare articles’ con-
tent and ensure shared comprehension among this study’s
authors and readers. Finally, the search results were fil-
tered by subject area, namely (a) Business, Management
and Accounting (Scopus) (b) Economics, Econometrics
and Finance (Scopus) and (c) Business Economics (WoS),
to ensure that the articles included in the search results had
been published in journals that focus on topics relevant
to business ethics education. This led to the elimination
of 73,323 documents, yielding a total of 10,669 articles.6
To further reduce the sample to an analysable number of
articles, a journal examination was carried out by two of
the study’s authors. All journals that featured fewer than 11
publications in the sample were thus removed.7 This crite-
rion applied to 1622 journals, leading to the elimination of
5
53,111 documents in Scopus and 30,881 documents in WoS.
6
6907 articles in Scopus and 3762 articles in WoS.
7
The elimination of journals that featured fewer than 11 publications
in the sample was carried out for the following two reasons: (a) to
further reduce the sample to a feasible number of articles that could
be analysed by the authors within the time and scope restrictions of
the study and (b) journals that have had a substantial impact on the
business ethics education literature could reasonably be expected to
13
4 B. Jaganjac et al.

Table 1  Journal exclusion criteria

No. Criterion

1 The main research field covered by the journal is not business (e.g. engineering or nursing)
2 The journal’s coverage is too sector-specific (e.g. tourism and hospitality)
3 The journal only publishes teaching cases (e.g. topic cases for use in the classroom)
4 The journal is too narrow in scope (e.g. human relations, innovation, total quality management)
5 The journal is practice-orientated, and the focus of the journal is not on business school education (e.g. workplace training)
6 The quality of the journal is unknown (i.e. it cannot be found on journal quality lists such as AJG and ABDC)

If the aims and scope of a journal corresponded to at least one of the six exclusion criteria, it was removed from the sample

Table 2  Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Parameter Inclusion Exclusion

Document type Articles Other document types

Source type Journals Other source types
Study language English Other languages
Subject area (Scopus) Business, Management and Accounting; Economics,
Econometrics and Finance
Research area (WoS) Business Economics
Study time frame Articles prior to 2022 2022
Topic Articles addressing business ethics education in general Articles addressing business ethics within corporations
Articles focusing on business ethics education in specific Articles discussing conceptualisations of terms related to
parts of the world, such as the United States or Australia business ethics but with no implications for education
Articles focusing on specific concepts, such as green Articles applying business ethics to narrow disciplines or
building, but stating clear implications for business ethics topics such as farming, textiles, mining, whistleblow-
education ing, sports management, cheating/plagiarism, tourism
or hospitality
Populations of interest Business schools (including coordinators, deans, faculty Other study programmes, such as engineering
and students from all business majors, such as manage- Higher education in general
ment, accounting, marketing and entrepreneurship)
Academic level Undergraduate, graduate and MBA PhD

The first six inclusion/exclusion parameters were applied using Scopus and WoS filters, while the last three parameters were employed during
the examination of the titles, keywords and abstracts

4250 articles. Thereafter, the aims and scope of the remain-
ing journals were thoroughly screened for topical relevance
by two of the authors following the elimination criteria
listed in Table 1, leading to the further elimination of 54
journals and 2012 articles.
After the removal of duplicates, the titles, keywords and
abstracts of the remaining 3370 articles in the sample were
examined to exclude individual articles that were not of
topical relevance to the research (Table 2). This reduced the
number of articles to a final sample of 862, with the oldest
one dating back to 1982.
The sample was prepared for bibliometric analysis by cre-
ating a thesaurus file and browsing the data for similar terms,
thus filtering the data during analysis in VOSviewer (Hal-
linger & Chatpinyakoop, 2019; Van Eck & Waltman, 2014).
Additional bibliometric visualisation programmes, such as
the Bibliometrix R-package and Biblioshiny tools, were used
in the analysis. The final stage of the bibliometric analysis
involved selecting articles for content analysis. Biblioshiny
was used to generate a list of the most locally cited articles
in the sample.8 It was initially decided that only the 25 most
locally cited articles in the sample would be read and analysed

8
Footnote 11 (continued) Local citations refer to the number of times the articles within a
sample have cited each other. Thus, the most locally cited articles
have published a steady number of articles on the topic over time
could be considered the key articles that the rest of the articles in the
(which could be considered particularly relevant in terms of this study
sample build upon. The most locally cited articles may therefore be
encompassing articles that were published more than 40 years ago).
deemed as being largely representative of the sample as a whole.

13
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 5
Fig. 1  Research framework. Note. n = sample size
by the authors. However, as these articles were published
between 1987 and 2012, they could be considered rather ‘old’
in terms of addressing recent trends and discussions in the
literature. Therefore, similar to Maditati et al. (2018), it was
decided that further content analysis of more recent articles
should be executed with the 15 most locally cited articles pub-
lished between 2016 and 2021 being chosen for this. In the
case that two articles had the same number of local citations,
global citations were used to determine their rank.9
Two of the authors conducted the content analyses using
NVivo. The coding was organised according to thematic dis-
tinctions (i.e. recurring themes in the articles). An explora-
tory approach was adopted (i.e. no coding matrices or dis-
tinct categories were employed in advance) to avoid limiting
the scope of analysis. However, following Elo and Kyngäs
(2008), in advance of the coding process, the authors agreed
to look for certain topics, such as specific discussions related
9
Global citations refer to the total number of citations that any given
article in the sample has received in either the Scopus or WoS data-
base. Thus, global citations may not necessarily be indicative of the
articles that have been cited the most in discussions specifically per-
taining to business ethics education but rather may indicate the gen-
eral impact of an article (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2022).
to teaching practices. The research process is summarised
in Fig. 1.
Results: Bibliometric and Content Analyses
A basic overview of the annual scientific production of arti-
cles in the sample is shown in Fig. 2. As can be discerned
from the trend line (black solid line), relatively few articles
were published between 1982, the year in which the Journal
of Business Ethics was founded (Böhm et al., 2022), and
1987, when the report Our Common Future (also commonly
referred to as the Brundtland report) was issued by the World
Commission on Environment and Development. Consider-
ing the substantial impact of the report (Setó-Pamies &
Papaoikonomou, 2016, p. 528), one would expect this inter-
est to be mirrored by the business ethics education literature.
Indeed, the period following 1987 saw a slight increase in
the production of articles that subsided in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. However, in 2002 (line a), a sudden sharp
increase in article production can be seen that is likely to be
attributed to the infamous Enron scandal (Sims & Brink-
mann, 2003) and the dot-com bubble burst from two years
13
6 B. Jaganjac et al.
Fig. 2  Annual scientific production of articles (1982–2021)
prior (Ofek & Richardson, 2003). Thus, it is reasonable to
conclude that an important consequence of these two events
was that they revived the debate on business ethics educa-
tion (Ghoshal, 2005; Mitroff, 2004; Pfeffer, 2005; Sims &
Brinkmann, 2003).
The following years saw a continued increase in article pro-
duction, which was likely to have been reinforced by the impact
of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 (Fassin &
Gosselin, 2011). Remarkably, article production dropped in
the years following the adoption of the UN’s 17 SDGs in 2015
(line b), even though target 4.7 aimed to ensure that by 2030,
all learners would acquire the knowledge and skills needed to
promote sustainable development (Décamps et al., 2017, p.
140). It is difficult to explain this drop, as it could have been
caused by a multitude of factors. For example, scholars and
researchers may have decided to focus their research on other
topics, or journals may not have prioritised the publication of
articles focusing on business ethics education.
One takeaway from the findings in the sample is that UN
events and conferences on sustainability apparently had
a minor impact on discussions related to business ethics
education. It was only during major business scandals and
crises (such as the Enron scandal and the GFC) that these
13
discussions gained some momentum in the literature. Nev-
ertheless, our sample illustrates a clear trend of increasing
production of articles addressing business ethics education,
with the most articles in a year (66 articles) being produced
in 2020. This indicates that the discourse on business ethics
education has recently and rapidly been attracting increasing
interest among scholars.
Top Contributing Authors, Journals,
Countries, Institutions and Articles
A co-citation analysis of authors, which counts the fre-
quency when two authors are cited together in the reference
lists of the articles in our sample (Zupic & Čater, 2015),
was conducted in VOSviewer. A fundamental assumption
to the co-citation analysis is that the more two authors are
cited together, the more likely it is that their work is related.
Thus, the co-citation analysis allowed us to identify the most
influential authors who constituted the intellectual structure
upon which the articles in our sample build. The co-citation
analysis thus aided our understanding of which authors
were the most influential in developing the research streams
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 7

Table 3  Ten most co-cited authors in the business ethics education literature
No. Name of author Country of residence Latest institutional affiliation Co-citations Total link ­strengtha

1 Linda Klebe Trevino United States Penn State Smeal College of Business 343 19,876
2 James R. ­Restb United States University of Minnesota Twin Cities 289 13,570
3 Lawrence ­Kohlbergb United States Harvard University 247 9728
4 Ronald R. Sims United States Raymond A. Mason School of Business 196 8240
5 Robert A. Giacalone United States John Carroll University 179 9444
6 James Weber United States Duquesne University 167 7325
7 Jeffrey Pfeffer United States Stanford University 158 8632
8 Sumantra ­Ghoshalb United Kingdom London Business School 158 8189
9 Jeremy Moon Denmark Copenhagen Business School 120 7145
10 Archie B. Carroll United States University of Georgia 120 5157

Latest institutional affiliation (from the Scopus database) was used to determine the author’s country of residence
a
Total strength of the co-citation links (i.e. relations or connections) of the given author with other authors, in which the strength is represented
by a positive numerical value. The higher the value, the stronger the link (see Van Eck & Waltman, 2018)
b
Author is deceased

Table 4  Ten most relevant journals in the business ethics education literature
No. Name of journal Articles CiteScore ­2021a SJR ­2021b Publisher
included in
sample

1 Journal of Business Ethics 319 10.8 2.44 Springer Nature

2 Journal of Management Education 60 3.3 0.64 SAGE
3 International Journal of Management Education 48 5.5 0.82 Elsevier
4 Journal of Education for Business 45 2.1 0.46 Taylor & Francis
5 Accounting Education 33 4.6 0.74 Taylor & Francis
6 Journal of Management Development 25 4.2 0.65 Emerald
7 Journal of Cleaner Production 24 15.8 1.92 Elsevier
8 Academy of Management Learning & Education 22 5.4 1.76 George Washington University
9 Journal of Marketing Education 22 5.2 0.78 SAGE
10 Journal of Teaching in International Business 18 1.9 0.33 Taylor & Francis
a
The Scopus CiteScore 2021 was computed by dividing the number of citations received between 2018 and 2021 by the number of articles pub-
lished in the same period
b
The SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR) ranks journals based on citation information from the Scopus database

within the business ethics education literature. However,
since co-citation analyses, at the time of writing, cannot be
conducted on merged bibliographic data (Bibliometrix, n.d.),
only Scopus data were employed in the analysis. These data
were selected because they pertained to a sub-sample of 840
articles, or 97% of the original merged sample.
As can be discerned from Table 3, the 10 most co-cited
authors were co-cited more than 100 times. Another inter-
esting observation is that eight were based in the United
States, which indicates a geographical imbalance. The edu-
cational backgrounds and research interests of the authors
were diverse, but the authors could largely be grouped into
the following four categories: (a) authors focusing on the
psychological aspects of moral development (Kohlberg and
Rest), (b) authors focusing on the definition or implementa-
tion of CSR in firms and in business school curricula (Car-
roll and Moon), (c) authors focusing on how business ethics
should be taught in business schools (Trevino, Sims and
Weber) and (d) authors who have criticised business educa-
tion and called for a revision of the theories currently taught
in business schools (Ghoshal, Giacalone and Pfeffer).
A list of the 10 most relevant journals is presented in
Table 4. The source details of each journal were examined
in Scopus to determine the subject coverage and journal
impact. The results revealed that the Journal of Business
Ethics (JBE) was both the most productive journal, having
published 319 (37%) of the articles in our sample, and the
most impactful, with a Scopus CiteScore of 10.8 in 2021

13
8 B. Jaganjac et al.

Table 5  Top 10 contributing countries in the business ethics educa- Table 6  Top 11 contributing institutions in the business ethics educa-
tion literature tion literature
No. Country Number of SCPa MCPb No. Institution Country Number
articles of articles

1 United States 347 325 22 1 Macquarie University Australia 15

2 United Kingdom 84 70 14 2 Griffith University Australia 9
3 Australia 62 57 5 3 Babson College United States 8
4 Canada 41 38 3 4 Duquesne University United States 8
5 Spain 25 22 3 5 University of St. Thomas Min- United States 8
6 New Zealand 17 14 3 nesota
7 Brazil 15 15 0 6 California State University United States 7
8 China 14 9 5 7 Copenhagen Business School Denmark 7
9 Germany 10 9 1 8 University of Nottingham United King- 7
dom
10 Belgium 8 6 2
9 Miami University United States 6
10 Finland 8 6 2
10 University of Southampton United King- 6
The ranking is based on the corresponding author’s country of resi- dom
dence 11 York University Canada 6
a
Single country publications
b Because Biblioshiny did not provide information other than article
Multiple country publications
production in the ranking of institutions, the top 11, rather than the
top 10, most contributing institutions are listed

and a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 2.44. Therefore, JBE

is arguably the core journal in the literature on business
ethics education.
We then proceeded to conduct an analysis of country
productivity (Table 5). Unsurprisingly, the top contributing
authors of the 862 articles (Table 3) and the data in Table 5
coincide, affirming the geographical imbalance, with US-
based articles ranking the highest. This geographical dispro-
portion in article production is mirrored by the knowledge
structure on which the articles in our sample are based, as
17 of the 25 most locally cited articles in our sample were
all authored by US-based scholars (Appendix A).
Although the geographical imbalance in the production
of articles is significant, a review of the top contributing
institutions paints a different picture (Table 6), as the top two
institutions are both based in Australia. This may indicate
that although most published articles were written by US-
based authors, the authors were likely to be spread across
several different educational institutions in the United States.
Moreover, it is noteworthy that none of the top 10 business
schools according to the Financial Times’s MBA 2022 rank-
ing were listed (Financial Times, 2022).
10
The PRME were developed in 2007 under the coordination of the
United Nations Global Compact, the Association to Advance Colle-
giate Schools of Business (AACSB) and other leading academic insti-
tutions (Nonet et al., 2016, p. 717). The PRME framework consists
of six principles (purpose, values, method, research, partnerships and
dialogue) and engages business schools to ensure that they develop
future leaders who can balance economic and sustainability goals
(PRME, n.d.).
In addition, six of the top 11 contributing institutions
were found to be Principles for Responsible Management
Education (PRME) signatories.10 This may indicate that
their work on implementing and integrating sustainability
across their institutions is reflected in their research out-
put, and thus their impact on the business ethics education
literature.
The Evolution of Business Ethics Education
Research and Underlying Research Streams
To map the evolution of business ethics education research
over time, a keyword co-occurrence analysis was conducted
(Figs. 3 and 4). A keyword co-occurrence analysis counts
the frequency of keywords occurring together in documents,
thus indicating which concepts can be considered closely
related (Zupic & Čater, 2015). The output of a keyword co-
occurrence analysis can therefore be used to gain a broader
overview of the conceptual space of a given field. The the-
matic evolution of the 31 keywords featured in the keyword
co-occurrence analyses were then mapped over three given
time periods (Table 7) corresponding to the periods depicted
in Fig. 2.
As expected, considering the large increase in article
production following the Enron accounting scandal in 2002
(Fig. 2), the average keyword frequency per year was gen-
erally highest in the latter two periods (Table 7). The term
‘business ethics’ became especially prominent in the period
immediately following the Enron scandal and after the

13
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 9
Fig. 3  Keyword co-occurrence of article authors’ keywords over time
global financial crisis (occurring an average amount of 12
times per year between 2003 and 2015), before subsiding in
the period between 2016 and 2021 (occurring 7.83 times per
year). On the other hand, sustainability-related terms such as
‘sustainability’, ‘the SDGs’ and ‘education for sustainabil-
ity’ gained momentum in the years following the adoption
of the SDGs in 2015. This is indicative of a significant shift
in the terminology employed over the last two decades, as
is visually depicted in Fig. 3 with relatively older terms (i.e.
business ethics and values) being shown in dark blue, while
relatively newer terms (i.e. sustainability and the SDGs) are
visualised in light green and yellow.
What can be considered especially interesting is the
relatively few occurrences of the terms ‘responsible
management education’ and ‘PRME’ in the period between
2003 and 2015, taking into consideration that the PRME
were founded in 2007. This finding may imply that, in the
business ethics education literature, the PRME are dis-
cussed more prominently in relation to the achievement of
the SDGs. This notion is supported by the terms appearing
together in the fourth thematic cluster in Fig. 4.11
11
The thematic clusters depicted in Fig. 4 were generated by
VOSviewer based on the following principles: (a) each keyword is
considered one item, and the size of the circle and label of the item
is determined by the weight of that item, which in turn corresponds
to its total link strength, (b) each thematic cluster is assigned a default
colour by VOSviewer for presentation purposes, and the colour of
an individual item is determined by the cluster to which the item
belongs, (c) each item is assigned to only one cluster, (d) the lines
between the items represent links between the items, and (e) the
13
10
Fig. 4  Keyword co-occurrence of article authors’ keywords in thematic clusters
Indeed, by considering the common theme among the
keywords in the clusters depicted in Fig. 4, we distinguish
between five thematic clusters which we label: (a) Business
ethics (cluster 1), (b) Corporate Social Responsibility (clus-
ter 2), (c) Sustainability (cluster 3), (d) PRME and SDGs in
business schools (cluster 4) and (e) Pedagogical tools (clus-
ter 5). One may note that all three terms (‘business ethics’,
‘CSR’ and ‘sustainability’) constitute their own clusters,
indicating differences in the general themes discussed in
relation to each of the three concepts. For instance, while
business ethics is discussed in relation to concepts such as
ethical decision-making, CSR is mainly linked to the terms
‘business education’ and ‘curriculum’. In fact, all three
Footnote 11 (continued)
distance between two items indicates their relatedness (Van Eck &
Waltman, 2018). Thus, VOSviewer assigns keywords that frequently
appear together in articles to the same thematic cluster. We may
therefore assume that each cluster represents one specific theme that
has been discussed in the business ethics education literature. As the
clusters are not automatically labelled by VOSviewer, we follow the
approach of Poje and Zaman Groff (2022) by labelling the clusters
ourselves based on the common theme among the keywords.
13
B. Jaganjac et al.
clusters are linked to educational terms such as ‘business
ethics education’ (cluster 1), ‘business education’ (cluster
2) and ‘education’ (cluster 3). When it comes to specific
sub-disciplines within business education, terms related to
accounting appear mainly in cluster 1. This may indicate
that discussions pertaining to accounting in the literature
seemingly focus more on aspects related to ethics, values
and integrity, rather than sustainability-related concepts such
as the PRME and SDGs, which instead appear together with
the term ‘management education’ in cluster 4. This can be
seen in combination with the term ‘ESG’ not being included
in the keyword co-occurrence results, thus indicating the
relatively recent emergence of discussions regarding the role
of sustainability in accounting.
Another observation of interest is the parallel shift from
discussing business ethics education and related concepts
such as ethical decision-making to discussing education
for sustainability. The shift to focusing more on education
for sustainability has also led to an increased emphasis on
related topics (cluster 4) such as the SDGs and PRME.
Moreover, the relatively recent occurrence of the term
‘experiential learning’ (Fig. 3) may be indicative of its
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 11

Table 7  Thematic evolution of Keyworda Total 1982–2002 2003–2015 2016–2021

article authors’ keywords
Total Average Total Average Total Average

Business ethics 213 10 0.48 156 12.00 47 7.83

Sustainability 125 – – 70 5.38 55 9.17
CSR 90 2 0.10 56 4.31 32 5.33
Business ethics education 59 – – 37 2.85 22 3.67
Teaching business ethics 59 3 0.14 42 3.23 14 2.33
Management education 57 – – 29 2.23 28 4.67
Teaching 57 – – 42 3.23 15 2.50
Education 55 2 0.10 30 2.31 23 3.83
Business schools 51 – – 27 2.08 24 4.00
Business education/studies 40 – – 29 2.23 11 1.83
Active/experiential learning 31 – – 18 1.38 13 2.17
Curriculum 30 – – 25 1.92 5 0.83
PRME 30 – – 8 0.62 22 3.67
Responsible management education 27 – – 5 0.38 22 3.67
Education for sustainability 23 – – 6 0.46 17 2.83
SDGs 23 – – – – 23 3.83
Ethical decision-making 22 – – 12 0.92 10 1.67
Students 19 – – 12 0.92 7 1.17
Accounting 18 3 0.14 12 0.92 3 0.50
Accounting education 17 – – 13 1.00 4 0.67
Leadership 17 – – 12 0.92 5 0.83
Case studies 16 – – 12 0.92 4 0.67
Values 15 – – 11 0.85 4 0.67
Accounting ethics 12 – – 5 0.38 7 1.17
Gender 12 – – 7 0.54 5 0.83
Universities 12 – – 9 0.69 3 0.50
Learning 11 – – 9 0.69 2 0.33
Service learning 11 – – 5 0.38 6 1.00
Moral reasoning 10 – – 7 0.54 3 0.50
Business 9 – – 6 0.46 3 0.50
Literature 9 – – 7 0.54 2 0.33

The keywords are sorted in descending order according to the total number of occurrences in the overall
time period (1982–2021)
a
The highlighted keywords have seen an increase in the average keyword frequency per year in the third
time period (2016–2021) compared to the second time period (2003–2015)

current prevalence as a frequently discussed pedagogical
tool that is utilised by business school educators for teach-
ing business ethics. This is evidenced in Fig. 4, in which the
term ‘experiential learning’ appears in cluster 5, positioned
between cluster 1, 2 and 3. The other keywords belonging to
cluster 5, which all present various pedagogical tools used
in the teaching of business ethics, also seem to be rather
spread out with case studies being discussed in relation to
business ethics and CSR, while service learning, values and
literature are discussed with CSR-related terms.
To gain a more complete understanding of the changes in
research streams over the years, a content analysis of the 25 most
locally cited articles in the sample was conducted. Appendix A
provides an overview of the topical focus of each of the articles,
which could be ethics, CSR or sustainability individually or a
combination of each. Unsurprisingly, the most frequent topi-
cal focus was ethics (23 articles), while the other two received
surprisingly little focus, as only four articles focused on CSR
and two articles focused on sustainability. One possible reason
for this could be that these articles dated from 1987 to 2012 and
could therefore be considered rather old. Therefore, an increased
topical focus on relatively newer terms, such as ‘CSR’ and ‘sus-
tainability’, may be expected in more recent articles, since the
use of these is more common today (as discussed below).
Table 8 provides an overview of the six distinct categories
that emerged from the content analysis of the 25 articles.

13
12 B. Jaganjac et al.

Table 8  Category frequency in the 25 most locally cited articles

Category Description Articlea Frequency

Pedagogical Articles discussing various pedagogical approaches to busi- 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21
approaches and ness ethics education, as well as tools that can be employed 17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 25
tools by business ethics instructors
For and against Articles discussing arguments for and against business ethics 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 22, 23, 25 15
education
Integration Articles discussing different ways of integrating business eth- 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 15
ics into business school curricula
Moral values Articles linking business ethics education to the development 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25 12
of moral values in business students
Impact Articles either conducting empirical studies on the impact 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20 11
of ethics education on business students or discussing their
results
Definitions Articles discussing conceptualisations of the terms ‘ethics’, 2, 3, 11, 13, 16, 25 6
‘CSR’ and ‘sustainability’

The frequencies reflect the number of articles discussing the category

a
The numbers refer to the articles listed in Appendix A

The categories of for and against, definitions, moral values
and impact arguably do not need to be discussed further in
this study for multiple reasons. First, although several of the
articles in the sample provide arguments for and against busi-
ness ethics education, most of the articles agree that the debate
on whether business schools should teach business ethics has
been settled. Indeed, there is no longer a debate about whether
business ethics should be taught in business schools, but rather
how and to what degree it should be taught (McWilliams &
Nahavandi, 2006; Solberg et al., 1995). Second, an initial dis-
cussion regarding the conceptualisation of key terms is a com-
mon element in academic writing (Van Mil & Henman, 2016).
Third, although discussions related to the moral development
of students were seen in 12 articles, the discussions often con-
stituted part of a broader argument for business ethics educa-
tion (Lau, 2010; Ritter, 2006; Trevino, 1992). Fourth, articles
detailing empirical studies (or those of other researchers) on
the impact of business ethics education on students mainly
concluded that there was a positive impact. Therefore, these
categories will not be discussed further in this study.
Rutherford et al. (2012) argue for a combined approach
which involves teaching students ‘critical lower-level
knowledge’ through an initial stand-alone ethics course.
The knowledge can thereafter be applied by the students as
a foundation for better understanding the integrated ethics
component throughout the curriculum (p. 176).
However, to achieve the full integration of business eth-
ics into business education, business schools would need
to map possible barriers to integration, such as the willing-
ness and ability of staff to teach business ethics (Cornelius
et al., 2007, p. 133; McDonald & Donleavy, 1995, p. 847;
Matten & Moon, 2004, p. 331; Rutherford et al., 2012, p.
176; Sims & Sims, 1991, p. 216). Examples of possible
drivers of integration include approval and support from
the business community (Matten & Moon, 2004, p. 331;
Sims & Sims, 1991, p. 213), and accreditation bodies such
as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Busi-
ness (AACSB) requiring business schools to have an ethics
component in their curriculum (Rutherford et al., 2012,
p. 176) as well as initiatives taken by individual faculty
members (Matten & Moon, 2004, p. 330).

Integration of Business Ethics into Business Pedagogical Approaches and Tools Used
School Curricula to Teach Business Ethics

There has been both theoretical (i.e. conceptual discus-
sions regarding business ethics education) and empirical
debate over whether business ethics should be integrated
into existing courses or taught as stand-alone ones and
whether the courses should be mandatory or elective. This
debate has been addressed in both relatively old (George,
1987; McDonald & Donleavy, 1995; Schoenfeldt et al.,
1991) and relatively recent (Christensen et al., 2007;
Rutherford et al., 2012) works in our sample. For instance,
The subject discussed in the greatest number of articles in
Table 8 relates to pedagogical approaches and tools that
could be used to teach business ethics. For instance, Cor-
nelius et al. (2007) distinguished between reactive (only
informing about legal and regulatory requirements) and
proactive (facilitating the development of moral reasoning
in students) ethics education (p. 129). Moreover, Shrivas-
tava (2010) described a pragmatic approach called ‘pas-
sion for sustainability’, which utilises experiential learning

13
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 13

Table 9  List of pedagogical tools in the 25 most locally cited articles

Pedagogical tool Description Articlea Frequency

Case studies Creating case studies based on real management situations for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 18, 22, 24, 25 13
real-world learning experiences
Experiential learning Learning by doing rather than the traditional ‘chalk-and-talk’ 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 19, 22 10
format
Guest speakers Inviting lecturers from businesses, NGOs and other universities 2, 3, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 22, 25 9
Audio-visual aids The use of films and video tapes during lectures 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 15, 18, 19 8
Games and simulations The use of games and simulations, such as the prisoner’s dilemma 2, 12, 14, 18, 19 5
Excursions Visiting places that can facilitate students’ learning experiences 2, 5, 9, 19 4
(e.g. white-collar prisons and rain forests)
Role play Students role playing ethical dilemmas 2, 8, 9, 12 4
Team projects Organising students in study groups 13, 18, 19, 22 4
Co-curricular learning Students forming campus-based organisations, such as sustainable 2, 13 2
management clubs, or running on-campus businesses
E-learning The use of internet-tools such as Skype and YouTube 3, 18 2
a
The numbers refer to the articles listed in Appendix A

as a pedagogical tool to stimulate students’ spiritual and
emotional development (p. 445). To facilitate the pedagogi-
cal approaches, specific pedagogical tools are needed. See
Table 9 for a complete list of the identified tools with cor-
responding examples.
Recent Trends in the Business Ethics
Education Literature
In what follows, the results of an additional content analysis
of the 15 most locally cited articles published between 2016
and 2021 (Appendix B) are described to provide an over-
view of the recent trends in the business ethics education
literature. This time period in our sample corresponds to
the years after the adoption of the UN SDGs in 2015, which
is also in line with the time periods depicted in Fig. 2 and
Table 7. An initial observation regarding the topical focus
of the 15 articles is the relatively large number of articles
centred on sustainability compared to those in Appendix A.
This indicates a significant change from an overall topical
emphasis on ethics to a dominant focus on sustainability
during the last decade, as mirrored by the thematic evolu-
tion in the article authors’ keywords portrayed in Fig. 3 and
Table 7. However, there are two notable exceptions to this.
First, is the study by De Los Reyes et al. (2017), in which
the authors drew a distinction between normative (philo-
sophical) and descriptive (behavioural) ethics through panel
discussions with several tenured business ethics educators
before developing and affirming the need for an intertwined
‘spaghetti-like’ approach to business ethics pedagogy. Sec-
ond, is the essay by Michaelson (2016), in which he makes
the case for a narrative pedagogical approach to business
ethics education, by analysing novels through the applica-
tion of ethical criticism (i.e. focusing on the moral content
of the text).
Another interesting observation is the continued rel-
evance of discussions related to the integration of busi-
ness ethics into business school curricula and the use of
various pedagogical approaches and tools. This may indicate
that although the 25 most locally cited articles (i.e. from
the previous content analysis) are rather old, they are still
highly relevant with regard to more recent literature, as
they comprise the didactic structure that underpins current
discussions.
From our initial reading of the articles, there was a notice-
able change in the manner in which the terms ‘ethics’, ‘CSR’
and ‘sustainability’ were employed by the authors. Instead of
being treated clearly as three separate but related concepts
(as was frequently observed in the 25 most locally cited arti-
cles), the terms were used interchangeably in the more recent
articles. Thus, although the focus of almost all the more
recent articles (13 of the 15 articles) was indeed sustain-
ability, some articles had a tendency to actively combine the
use of the three terms throughout the text (Annan-Diab &
Molinari, 2017; Kolb et al., 2017; Weybrecht, 2017). This
finding aligns with our conceptualisation of business ethics
as an umbrella term encompassing the three concepts of eth-
ics, CSR and sustainability.
The content analysis of the 15 articles in Appendix B
produced eight categories. Note, however, that we employed
the categories from the previous content analysis as a start-
ing point while also allowing for new themes to emerge. In
this case, PRME and SDGs were identified as new catego-
ries (Table 10). To limit the discussion, the remainder of
this section discusses only the following two categories: (a)

13
14 B. Jaganjac et al.

Table 10  Category frequency in the 15 most locally cited articles (2016–2021)

Category Description Articlea Frequency

Pedagogical Articles discussing various pedagogical approaches to business ethics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 13
approaches and education and tools that can be employed by business ethics instructors
tools
Integration Articles discussing different ways of integrating business ethics into busi- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15 12
ness school curricula
PRME Articles discussing the PRME principles with regard to business ethics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15 12
education
For and against Articles discussing arguments for and against business ethics education 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 11
Definitions Articles discussing conceptualisations of the terms ethics, CSR and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 8
sustainability
SDGs Articles discussing the SDGs with regard to business ethics education 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15 8
Impact Articles either conducting or discussing the results of empirical studies 5, 8, 13, 14, 15 5
on the impact of business ethics education on business students
Moral values Articles linking business ethics education to the development of moral 7, 8, 11 3
values in business students

The frequencies reflect the number of articles discussing the category

a
The numbers refer to the articles listed in Appendix B

integration and (b) pedagogical approaches and tools, with
a focus on the sustainability-related concepts of PRME and
SDGs.
Recent Trends Related to Integration
Several articles discussed the integration of a holistic
understanding of ethics, CSR and sustainability in business
education (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017, p. 77; De Los
Reyes et al., 2017, p. 18; Greenberg et al., 2017, p. 208;
Kolb et al., 2017, p. 282; Ortiz & Huber-Heim, 2017, p.
330; Painter-Morland et al., 2016, p. 742; Setó-Pamies &
Papaoikonomou, 2016, pp. 525, 534; Storey et al., 2017, pp.
96, 99). The term ‘holistic’ refers to interdisciplinary cur-
ricular, methodological and institutional integration across
the entire business school (Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou,
2016, p. 533).
Institutional integration refers to the integration of busi-
ness ethics throughout the business school. For instance,
Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou (2016) describe how the
integration of ethics, CSR and sustainability (which they
abbreviate to ECSRS) in business education should first be
carried out on the institutional level. This can be achieved by
incorporating these concepts into business schools’ visions,
missions, values and strategies; establishing an ECSRS-ori-
ented culture; and designing curricular and extracurricular
activities for students, faculty and staff (p. 531). Meanwhile,
Painter-Morland et al. (2016) emphasised the importance
of systemic institutional integration, which focuses on con-
nected leadership and capacity building. This finding is
especially relevant, considering how the 2016 version of
the PRME was recently revised to incorporate institutional
integration (PRME, 2020, p. 50). Moreover, several frame-
works or models for institutional integration were described
in the articles. For instance, Weybrecht (2017) developed the
Spectrum of Sustainability Engagement in Business Schools
framework and Greenberg et al. (2017) described the Social,
Economic and Environmental Responsibility and Sustain-
ability (SEERS) framework.
The curricular discussions that pervaded in the 25 most
locally cited articles were still relevant in the more recent
articles, as the integration of business ethics into either
stand-alone courses or across entire curricula continues to
be among the principal debates (Beddewela et al., 2017,
p. 270; Kolb et al., 2017, p. 286; Painter-Morland et al.,
2016, p. 747; Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016, pp.
532–533; Storey et al., 2017, p. 94; Weybrecht, 2017, p.
88). For instance, according to Weybrecht (2017), sustain-
ability topics should be embedded across all business school
programmes and initiatives in a manner that is both useful
and relevant to all students (p. 88). Furthermore, Kolb et al.
(2017) argued that integrating business ethics across the
curriculum has the benefit of creating a holistic and inter-
disciplinary view of management by enabling a connection
across different functional areas, which may help students
overcome their aversion to issues related to business ethics
(p. 286).
An increased focus on multidisciplinarity and interdis-
ciplinarity was also evident in the articles. Whereas mul-
tidisciplinarity refers to disciplines working in parallel to
address common goals, interdisciplinarity has to do with
disciplines that work in an integrated way (Annan-Diab
& Molinari, 2017, p. 75). As global issues are largely of a

13
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 15

Table 11  List of pedagogical tools in the 15 most locally cited articles (2016–2021)
Pedagogical tool Description Articlea Frequency

Experiential learning Learning by doing rather than the traditional ‘chalk-and-talk’ format 1, 3, 4, 7, 12, 13, 14 7
Case studies Creating case studies based on real management situations for real-world learning 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 6
experiences
Guest speakers Inviting lecturers from businesses, NGOs and other universities 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 5
Co-curricular learning Students forming campus-based organisations, such as sustainable management 1, 4, 9, 14 4
clubs, or running on-campus businesses
Team projects Organising students in study groups 2, 3, 4, 5 4
Games and simulations The use of games and simulations such as the prisoner’s dilemma 1, 4, 13 3
Excursions Visiting places that can facilitate students’ learning experiences (e.g. white-collar 4, 5 2
prisons and rain forests)
Sulitest Useful to measure students’ sustainability literacy 1, 15 2
a
The numbers refer to the articles listed in Appendix B

multidisciplinary nature, the siloed approach implemented
by a majority of business schools can be considered inad-
equate for addressing these issues (Weybrecht, 2017, p.
89). The SDGs may therefore prove helpful in achieving
interdisciplinary integration. Mainstreaming SDGs across
all aspects of business school curricula mirrors real-world
decisions, ensuring that students can think in terms of inter-
disciplinary contexts rather than in the silo of a stand-alone
course (Storey et al., 2017, p. 95).
As was also evidenced in the prior content analysis, the
more recent articles described various barriers to the integra-
tion of business ethics, such as the lack of specialist faculty,
or faculty members generally lacking an incentive to inte-
grate business ethics into their work (Beddewela et al., 2017,
p. 265; Décamps et al., 2017, p. 141; Painter-Morland et al.,
2016, p. 751). As emphasised by Greenberg et al. (2017),
individual faculty members’ vision of their own career path,
and the vision of the university, may not overlap, thus com-
plicating the process of institutional change (p. 206).
Similar to how non-specialist, or demotivated, faculty
members can serve as barriers to the integration of busi-
ness ethics education, the so-called individual champions
who are specialist or motivated faculty members, may also
act as drivers (Beddewela et al., 2017, p. 265; Weybrecht,
2017, p. 85). Moreover, accreditation bodies such as the
AACSB (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017, p. 74; Beddewela
et al., 2017, s. 266; Storey et al., 2017, p. 95) request that
business schools integrate responsibility and sustainability
into their curricula and co-curricular activities, thus mak-
ing the integration of the concepts a requirement so that the
academic system can remain legitimate (Kolb et al., 2017, p.
281). The influence of these accrediting bodies may there-
fore be particularly crucial to affect change in both explicit
and implicit ways (Storey et al., 2017, p. 95). In a similar
manner, the PRME can also be regarded as a catalyst to
integration (Greenberg et al., 2017, p. 205; Haski-Leventhal
et al., 2017, p. 220; Nonet et al., 2016, p. 718; Setó-Pamies
& Papaoikonomou, 2016, p. 531; Weybrecht, 2017, p. 92).
However, according to Beddewela et al. (2017), one may
also argue that the PRME themselves cannot be considered a
driver for change but instead reflect practices that are already
in place within institutions (p. 266).
Recent Trends Related to Pedagogical
Approaches and Tools
The 15 most locally cited articles largely mentioned the
same tools that were found during the content analysis of
the 25 most locally cited articles. However, one new tool was
identified: the Sulitest, which is an international measure for
testing sustainability literacy through global and local lenses
(Storey et al., 2017, p. 100). In general, discussions about
pedagogical tools have focused on practical tools rather than
traditional chalk-and-talk methods. This is illustrated by
the notable presence of tools such as experiential learning,
excursions and co-curricular learning (Table 11). Accord-
ing to Ortiz and Huber-Heim (2017), experiential learning
involves activities in which students ‘learn by doing’ (p.
322). For instance, De Los Reyes et al. (2017) stressed the
importance of experiential learning as a way of introducing
normative ethics to students in a way that is tailored to the
business context (p. 12). Greenberg et al. (2017) described
various experiential learning activities, such as the ‘six
items or less’ experiment, which teaches students economic
responsibility by having them wear six clothing items for
two weeks while simultaneously designing solutions to con-
sumption issues based on their experiences (p. 211).
Moreover, co-curricular learning through student organi-
sations connects students by beliefs, passions and ideals in
a common purpose to achieve multiple objectives (Borges
et al., 2017, p. 181) while also emphasising the develop-
ment of soft skills that enable business school graduates and
the schools themselves to have a more meaningful role in

13
16
the global agenda (Weybrecht, 2017, p. 89). According to
Borges et al. (2017), co-curricular learning through student
organisations may therefore be an effective tool for promot-
ing the incorporation of the PRME principles and SDGs
into the business school culture through the efforts and
activities of student organisations (p. 173). The students in
such organisations may therefore have experiences related to
the SDGs even before graduating (p. 181), making it a rel-
evant tool that could be implemented in business schools to
advance students’ understanding of and interest in business
ethics topics—in other words, to ensure that future leaders
are sustainability literate. A complete list of the tools is dis-
played in Table 11.
Discussion
The findings of this study indicate that there has been a
major shift in the business ethics education discourse over
the last four decades. Articles published in the 1980s,
1990s and early 2000s focused mainly on the ethics-related
component of business ethics education in relation to how
business schools can educate ethical future business lead-
ers. The discussions in contemporary articles, however, are
more concerned with sustainability and the role that busi-
ness schools play in paving the path towards achieving the
SDGs. This finding was confirmed by both the bibliometric
keyword co-occurrence analysis and the two further con-
tent analyses of the most locally cited articles in the sample.
It was noted in particular that the shift in the discussions
was enveloped by a focus on the institutional integration of
Responsible Management Education (RME), in line with
the PRME principles.
Although the shift in the topical focus of the articles is
very much in tune with current global efforts to tackle the
grand challenges and achieve a green transition, an imme-
diate consequence of this is that discussions pertaining to
the integration and teaching of fundamental ethics concepts
have become nearly obsolete. An imminent danger to busi-
ness schools overly focusing their efforts on integrating the
sustainability component of business ethics is that they train
students merely to pay attention to the business side of sus-
tainability rather than to the underlying ethical considera-
tions. Although it can be argued that the efforts to integrate
sustainability across the business school in itself is an ethical
action, it may not necessarily be the result of ethical intent
nor lead to ethical outcomes. Indeed, the intent of integrat-
ing sustainability across a business school may as well be
to improve its reputation and thus attract more prospective
students—what scholars have referred to as ‘SDG-washing’
(Van Zanten & Van Tulder, 2021).
For business school faculty and students to realise the
importance of achieving a sustainable world, it is paramount
13
B. Jaganjac et al.
that they be made aware of the ethical considerations that
motivate this ambition. Thus, for a business school to edu-
cate future sustainable business leaders, it is crucial that it
also focuses on educating responsible business leaders who
have a solid ethical foundation in place. For instance, grand
challenges such as poverty in emerging economies, rising
inequality within rich societies and the fact that human eco-
nomic activity has contributed greatly to violating planetary
boundaries (Sachs, 2020, p. 197) cannot be solved by focus-
ing solely on the business side of sustainability. To solve
these problems, we must ‘go deeper’ than simply changing
the way we do business. We must reimagine every aspect
of how we live and treat each other and our responsibility
to every living creature, to nature and to future generations.
In wrestling with these fundamental questions, ethics is the
best tool to guide our discussions. We therefore argue that to
achieve the successful integration of business ethics educa-
tion across a business school, there is a need to pay attention
to not only one of the three components of business ethics
but rather all three. The ethics component—through both its
normative and descriptive dimensions, as emphasised by De
Los Reyes et al. (2017)—should be at the core of all integra-
tion and teaching efforts.
As the findings of this study have shown, there is no
longer a need to discuss whether business ethics should be
taught in business schools. During the last four decades,
business ethics has become a central part of business school
education and can even be considered its own discipline.
Instead, discussions concern how business ethics may be
successfully integrated not only into business school cur-
ricula but across the whole business school institution in
an interdisciplinary manner with the overarching purpose
of achieving the SDGs. Several papers have developed or
described specific frameworks or models that could be
used by business schools to aid the integration process. For
instance, Weybrecht (2017) developed the sustainability
engagement framework, which consists of the following
four steps: (a) setting the scene, (b) integrating (embedding,
collaborating, contributing), (c) setting unique engagement
points (UEPs) and (d) enabling the environment. By setting
the scene, a business school can identify its current stage
of institutional integration, which can be (a) not engaged,
(b) engaged, (c) strategic, (d) integrated or (e) pushing the
boundaries. It can thus move along from one stage to another
through the institutional integration of sustainability con-
cepts by focusing on leveraging UEPs and empowering its
community.
In particular, we consider the framework developed by
Weybrecht (2017) to provide an adequate starting point for
business schools’ sustainability integration efforts. Indeed,
the goal of any business school should be to progress from a
state of no engagement—or the ‘business as usual’ stage—to
the stage of pushing the boundaries and actively contributing
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 17
Fig. 5  Transforming ethics education in business schools—a framework
to bettering the local, regional, national and global com-
munity. We certainly lend our support to the overarching
objective of integrating sustainability concepts across busi-
ness schools. However, as stressed earlier, we cannot ignore
the self-evident pitfall that lies in omitting any mention of
ethical considerations. We argue that ethics should constitute
the foundation on which all integration efforts are built, as
only this will allow for true progress to be made. Resources
should be dedicated to the integration of business ethics as
a whole, rather than it solely being tied to the sustainability
component.
Furthermore, we would also like to point out that Weybre-
cht’s (2017) framework focuses mainly on the characteris-
tics of the various stages of business schools’ sustainability
integration. Nevertheless, as the content analyses of the most
locally cited articles in our sample show, any integration
effort should be accompanied using pedagogical approaches
and practical learning tools (e.g. experiential learning), as
these can be considered the enablers for successful integra-
tion. Business schools are responsible for educating future
decision-makers, who will play an important role in paving
the path towards a sustainable society. For the integration
of business ethics to successfully take place, it is impera-
tive that the main efforts are centred on classroom educa-
tion. Students need to be exposed to a wide range of peda-
gogical approaches and tools that underpin and support the
business ethics curriculum. Ideally, the applied pedagogical
approaches and practical learning tools should be tailored
in such a way that enhances the drivers of, while simultane-
ously impeding the barriers to, successful business ethics
integration.
Consequently, on the basis of the points discussed thus
far, we recognise the need to devise an extended framework
that takes into account both (a) the central place that eth-
ics should occupy in any type of business ethics integra-
tion effort and (b) the role the use of various pedagogical
approaches and practical learning tools play in enabling the
successful integration of business ethics concepts across the
entire business school institution. Thus, we have developed
the Transforming Ethics Education in Business Schools
(TEEBS) framework, which we contend may aid business
schools in incorporating business ethics education into their
DNA (Fig. 5).
On the far left of the TEEBS framework are various grand
challenges such as climate change and inequality, which act
as antecedents that cause business schools to initiate the pro-
cess of incorporating business ethics education into their
programmes. Ethics is depicted as an overarching dimension
that both envelops and constitutes the core of the integration
process through its normative and descriptive dimensions.
By equating these dimensions of ethics, we emphasise the
need for business schools to engage in the pursuit of ethical
13
18
action while simultaneously improving their awareness and
understanding of the behavioural challenges that business
school faculty and students are prone to face both within and
outside the institution’s walls.
At the centre of the TEEBS framework, an arrow indi-
cates how the use of various pedagogical approaches and
tools such as experiential learning enables the integration of
business ethics through a combination of institutional and
multi- or interdisciplinary integration. However, it is also
important to recognise the role of potential barriers (such as
the lack of faculty incentive) as well as institutional catalysts
(such as the PRME and AACSB) in either hampering or
accelerating the integration process.
Indeed, in order to successfully integrate business ethics
education across the business school institution, it is impor-
tant to take into account the rigid nature of the business
school culture, which has been criticised for promoting val-
ues such as greed (Walker, 1992) among students and fac-
ulty members. This may lead to resistance, especially among
faculty members who are not trained in, or do not have the
necessary motivation, to teach business ethics perspectives
in their courses. According to Beddewela et al. (2017), ini-
tiatives which may disrupt current business school practices,
without offering any opportunity for career advancement,
may lead to resistance among faculty members. Just like
Greenberg et al. (2017), we therefore argue that in order
to stimulate and facilitate change, business schools need to
focus on implementing a shared vision for change that con-
nects the personal vision of a critical mass of the business
school faculty to the institution. Such an approach may be
facilitated through institutional catalysts such as the AACSB
or the PRME, who provide specific guidelines for business
schools that are integrating business ethics education. These
effects are depicted in the TEEBS framework as arrows that
may either enhance or impede the integration process.
Only when business ethics is fully integrated so that it
becomes part of business schools’ ‘DNA’ can the overarching
objective of transforming and contributing to a better society,
as expressed, for example, by the SDGs, be achieved. We thus
maintain that the adoption of the TEEBS framework, with
its focus on ethics, will enable business schools to transform
business ethics education in a manner that both preserves and
accentuates the ‘ethics’ in business ethics.
13
B. Jaganjac et al.
Conclusions
The aim of this study was to explore how the business eth-
ics education literature has developed since the 1980s and
identify the more recent trends in this literature. By apply-
ing an SLR, bibliometric techniques and two supplemen-
tary content analyses, this study analysed a sample of 862
articles discussing business ethics education. Our findings
revealed that there has been a major shift in the literature
from mainly focusing on ethics to a concentration on sus-
tainability-related concepts. Thus, we developed the TEEBS
framework, which may aid business schools in integrating
business ethics across their institutions in a manner that
preserves the ‘ethics’ in business ethics. In short, we argue
that an ethical foundation must be present throughout all
integration and teaching initiatives if business schools are
to address the grand challenges and reshape business ethics
education in a way that helps create a better society.
Our study may culminate in several important implications
for business school policy. First, policymakers should provide
the necessary incentives that encourage business schools to
‘move forward’ on the path towards full business ethics inte-
gration (e.g. by encouraging the adoption of the PRME). Sec-
ond, business school administrations need to actively recruit
and thoroughly train specialist and non-specialist faculty
members to increase their knowledge and understanding of
business ethics concepts. Third, policymakers must ensure
that each of the three components of business ethics, namely
ethics, CSR and sustainability, are given equal importance in
both business school education and its operations.
Future researchers could conduct studies related to any
of the components depicted in the TEEBS framework. For
instance, it would be interesting to conduct longitudinal
case studies of how institutional and interdisciplinary inte-
gration is accomplished across different business schools
or to compare the integration of business ethics in busi-
ness schools that are PRME signatories with those that
are not to assess the extent to which the PRME act as
an institutional catalyst to business ethics integration. In
terms of pedagogical approaches and tools, researchers
could conduct empirical studies that examine the ways in
which combining multiple types of tools may help enable
the integration process.
Is It Time to Reclaim the ‘Ethics’ in Business Ethics Education? 19

Appendix A: The 25 Most Locally Cited Articles

Rank Article Nation Topical focus Type of paper TLC TGC​

1 Weber (1990) United States Ethics Theoretical 37 147

2 Christensen et al. (2007) United States Ethics, CSR, Sustain- Empirical 35 272
ability
3 Matten and Moon (2004) United Kingdom CSR Empirical 33 296
4 Waples et al. (2009) United States Ethics Empirical 29 158
5 Sims and Felton (2006) United States Ethics Theoretical 24 123
6 Ritter (2006) United States Ethics Empirical 23 151
7 Trevino (1992) United States Ethics Theoretical 22 252
8 McDonald and DonLeavy (1995) United Kingdom Ethics Theoretical 21 74
9 Felton and Sims (2005) United States Ethics Theoretical 19 84
10 Sims and Sims (1991) United States Ethics Theoretical 19 73
11 Lämsä et al (2008) Finland Ethics, CSR Empirical 18 98
12 McWilliams and Nahavandi (2006) United States Ethics Theoretical 17 63
13 Bishop (1992) United States Ethics Theoretical 17 53
14 Wang et al. (2011) Hong Kong Ethics Empirical 16 142
15 Lau (2010) Ireland Ethics Empirical 16 104
16 Cornelius et al. (2007) United Kingdom Ethics, CSR Empirical 16 104
17 Schoenfeldt et al. (1991) United States Ethics Empirical 16 46
18 Dellaportas (2006) China Ethics Empirical 15 107
19 Shrivastava (2010) United States Sustainability Theoretical 15 106
20 Luthar and Karri (2005) United States Ethics Empirical 15 77
21 Rutherford et al. (2012) United States Ethics Empirical 15 65
22 Solberg et al. (1995) United States Ethics Empirical 15 41
23 George (1987) United States Ethics Empirical 15 34
24 Hartman (2006) United States Ethics Theoretical 14 101
25 Gandz and Hayes (1988) Canada Ethics Theoretical 14 65

Appendix B: The 15 Most Locally Cited Articles (2016–2021)

Rank Article Nation Topical focus Type of paper TLC TGC​

1 Storey et al. (2017) Ireland Sustainability Theoretical 13 81

2 Kolb et al. (2017) Germany CSR, Sustainability Empirical 13 61
3 Painter-Morland et al. (2016) Slovenia Ethics, Sustainability Empirical 11 46
4 Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou (2016) Spain Ethics, CSR, Sustainability Theoretical 10 89
5 Annan-Diab and Molinari (2017) United Kingdom CSR, Sustainability Empirical 9 148
6 Weybrecht (2017) Australia Sustainability Theoretical 9 54
7 Nonet et al. (2016) United States Ethics, CSR, Sustainability Empirical 8 41
8 Haski-Leventhal et al. (2017) Australia Sustainability Empirical 8 40
9 Borges et al. (2017) Brazil Sustainability Empirical 6 39
10 Beddewela et al. (2017) United Kingdom Sustainability Empirical 6 27
11 Michaelson (2016) United States Ethics Theoretical 5 22
12 De Los Reyes et al. (2017) United States Ethics Empirical 5 20
13 Ortiz and Huber-Heim (2017) Austria Sustainability Empirical 5 17
14 Greenberg et al. (2017) United States Sustainability Empirical 5 12
15 Décamps et al. (2017) France Sustainability Empirical 4 52

13
20
Acknowledgements We thank the section editor Dr. Andrew West,
and the two anonymous reviewers, for their extensive and insightful
comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript. We
also thank Cathrine Borgen, Stine Rye Bårdsen and Dr. Tom Skauge
for comments on an early draft of the manuscript. Finally, we would
like to express our gratitude to Dr. Iris Stuart and Dr. Bruce Stuart for
providing detailed and useful feedback on the introduction section.
Funding Open access funding provided by University of Agder.
Data availability All the bibliometric data was extracted from the Sco-
pus and Web of Science (WoS) databases.
Declarations
Conflict of interest This paper is based on a master’s thesis written by
Berina Jaganjac and Line M. Abrahamsen and that was later revised
together with their supervisors Torunn S. Olsen and John A. Hunnes.
This research did not receive any grants from funding agencies in the
public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. We have no conflicts of
interest to disclose.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-
bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-
tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,
provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes
were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will
need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a
copy of this licence, visit http://​creat​iveco​mmons.​org/​licen​ses/​by/4.​0/.
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