Phyllis Young

An Analysis of 10 years of Business Ethics

Research in Strategic Management Journal:

1996–2005 Christopher J. Robertson

ABSTRACT. From a corporate governance perspective,

one of the most important jobs of a firm�s top manage- ment team is to create and maintain a positive moral

environment. Business ethics has long been considered a

cornerstone in the field of strategic management and a

number of scholars have called for more research in this

area over the years. In this paper 658 articles that appeared

in Strategic Management Journal over the 10-year period

between 1996 and 2005 are reviewed for business ethics

focus and content. The results reveal that while business

ethics research in Strategic Management Journal is on the

rise, the overall focus on this research stream has been

limited. The most prominent ethics theme during the

review period was environmentalism, accounting for 30%

of all ethics articles. Author affiliations, future research

directions, and implications are also discussed.

KEY WORDS: social responsibility, ethics, strategy

Introduction

Business ethics is a controversial topic that hits home

at all levels of an organization. The recent moral

lapses that triggered the downfalls of firms such

as Enron and WorldCom led to a new wave of

government legislation, such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act,

which is geared toward holding Chief Financial

Officers and other top management team members

directly accountable for the actions of their col-

leagues. New laws and a revamped focus on ethics in

the boardroom have created new and interesting

opportunities for research into issues such as cor-

porate governance and organizational culture. While

the symbiotic relationship between strategy and

ethics has traditionally been a fact of life, it appears

that the two domains are now beginning to truly

coalesce.

It has been just over 10 years since LaRue Tone

Hosmer�s (1994) seminal article ‘‘Strategic Planning As If Ethics Mattered’’ appeared in Strategic Man-

agement Journal (SMJ hereafter). Hosmer methodically

made the case for the inclusion of more ethics

research in the field of strategy and he asserted that

(1994, p. 17), ‘‘Ethics and the moral obligations of

management were an accepted component in the

strategic planning process during the early develop-

ment of Corporate Strategy as a field of study.’’

There is little doubt that earlier strategy scholars

envisioned ethics as a core and vital area in the field.

In his classic, groundbreaking, book Administra-

tive Behavior, Simon (1947, p. 47) asserted that

‘‘administrative decisions in an organizational con-

text always had an ethical as well as factual content.’’

In today�s business environment the pressure on CEOs and Board of Director members to establish

and maintain a cogent and unambiguous moral

environment is formidable. CEOs are now fully

expected to incorporate a moral dimension into their

definition of the firm�s strategic vision. In 1994 Hosmer posed the question, ‘‘where do

we stand now?’’ In the 3 years prior to his article

only three research papers focused on business ethics

appeared in SMJ. Based on this dearth of ethics

research in SMJ, Hosmer issued a directive that we

must do more to incorporate ethics research into the

realm of strategic management. The purpose of this

article is to assess the progress of business ethics

research in SMJ over the past decade. An analysis of

the ethics articles over this period should accomplish

Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 80:745–753 � Springer 2007 DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9466-5

three objectives: first, facilitate an understanding of

how well ethics research has been incorporated into

the field of strategy, second, develop an under-

standing of the primary topics within the strategy-

ethics dyad, and third help identify deficient, and

promising, areas for future research. From a broader

perspective, the ideas generated from this meta

analysis add to the overall domain of business ethics

by focusing on the significant themes that top

management team and corporate governance

researchers have studied. This top down approach to

business ethics is designed to facilitate research

question development from a theoretical perspective

that touches multiple functional areas.

This paper is organized as follows. In the next

section I will review literature that defines core areas

of strategy-ethics research. Next I will review the

methods and results of my analysis of ethics research

in SMJ over the 10-year period. The paper con-

cludes with a comprehensive assessment of the state

of strategy-ethics research and the identification of

promising areas for future research.

Strategy and ethics

The realm of strategic management has traditionally

been concerned with ethical principles and the

cultivation of a certain level of integrity within and

beyond the boundaries of the organization. What are

ethical principles? According to Hosmer (1994,

p. 20), ‘‘ethical principles are not subjective measures

that vary with cultural, social, and economic con-

ditions; they are objective statements that transcend

countries, religions, and times. They are the basic

rules or first principles that have been proposed to

ensure a �good� society.’’ Although Hosmer�s defi- nition appears to dismiss many potential discrepan-

cies in values that lead to differences in ethical

principles it does raise the issue of normative ethics,

an issue that has resonated with the strategy field. In

the nascent years of strategy conceptualization it was

suggested that �the impact on the public good of strategic alternatives� be considered (Learned et al., 1965). Freeman and Gilbert (1988) recommended

that corporate strategy should be built on a foun-

dation of ethical reasoning. Schendel and Hofer

(1979) purported that strategy should relate to an

organization�s social and political environment in a

similar fashion to the strategy industry interface.

More recently a wave of research has focused on the

strategic and moral benefits of having a strong rep-

utation (Dollinger et al., 1997; Ferguson et al.,

2000; Roberts and Dowling, 2002). And the con-

cept of corporate social responsibility, with its focus

on externally oriented discretionary moral behavior,

has also found its way into strategy research (Kassinis

and Vafeas, 2002; McWilliams and Siegel, 2000;

Waddock and Graves, 1998).

There have been number of studies that identified

the potential positive outcomes of fostering a strong

moral environment within a firm. In 1988 Weigelt

and Camerer concluded that the reputation of a firm

could lead to elevated financial performance. This

finding was later dissected and its subthemes

re-examined with generally supportive results

(Dollinger et al., 1997; Shamshie, 2003). While

results related to the corporate social performance–

financial performance relationship have been

mixed (McWilliams and Siegel, 2000; Waddock and

Graves, 1998) and support has been conclusively

linked to the financial benefits of proactive envi-

ronmental strategies (King and Shaver, 2001), min-

imizing white collar crime (Schnatterly, 2003), and

maintaining ethics codes (Stevens et al., 2005).

Other scholars have gone as far to argue that business

ethics can be used as a motivating force within a firm

(Solomon, 1992).

Contemporary strategy scholars have focused on

ethics related topics as diverse as pollution preven-

tion (Marcus and Geffen, 1998), female CEOs (Daily

et al., 1999) and insider trading (Ahuja et al., 2005).

A broad mosaic of theoretical foundations has also

been intertwined with the strategy-ethics research

stream. Robertson and Crittenden (2003) injected

the notion of moral philosophy, and ethical

ideologies such as formalism, relativism, and utili-

tarianism, into the domain. Stevens et al. (2005)

incorporated the theory of planned behavior into

their analysis of ethics codes on financial executive�s decisions. Stakeholder theory, the resource-based

view, control theory, and goal theory have all been

employed in analyses of strategic behavior and cor-

porate governance mechanisms (Branzie et al., 2004;

Hillman and Keim, 2001; Shamsie, 2003).

Hosmer (1994), based on his comprehensive

analysis of the historical links between strategy and

ethics, clearly articulated that the decision process of

746 Christopher J. Robertson

management should go beyond economic consid-

erations. Adding a moral dimension to decision-

making leads to trust, which facilitates higher

commitment and long-term performance (Hosmer,

1994; Stevens et al., 2005). Indeed there is a home

for business ethics research in the strategy literature

for competitive and strategic fit reasons ranging from

protecting shareholder wealth, developing gover-

nance systems, and sustaining environmental per-

formance. It is therefore important at this point in

time, due to the recent lack of ethical reasoning by a

number of high-level executives, to assess the state of

ethics research in strategic management. Moreover,

it has been 10 years since Hosmer�s (1994) clamor for more ethics research and as we press forward as a

field it will be beneficial to know what has been

done, and which streams of research have emerged

within the area.

Method and results

The impact of Strategic Management Journal on the

field of strategic management since its inception has

been more than exceptional. SMJ has rated at or near

the top in every journal ranking in recent years. In

one study SMJ was ranked as the most cited journal

as a percentage of references in a study of 17 jour-

nals, and 1275 articles, with close to 11% of all ref-

erences over a 2-year period (Tahai and Meyer,

1999). SMJ, combined with the Academy of Man-

agement Journal and Journal of Applied Psychology,

accounted for 30% of all citations in Tahai and

Meyer�s (1999) study. Another analysis of journal quality found that SMJ was one of seven top jour-

nals 1

that accounted for over 60% of all citations in

28 journals over a 2-decade span (Podaskoff et al.,

2005). Moreover, SMJ remained in the top group of

journals for the entire 20-year period (Podaskoff

et al., 2005). The evidence from further research

reinforces the general conclusion that SMJ is the

premier journal in the field of strategy since its

inception in 1980 (MacMillan, 1991; Park and

Gordon, 1996; Podaskoff et al., 2005; Salancik,

1986; Tahai and Meyer, 1999; Trieschmann et al.,

2000). Therefore SMJ was selected as the outlet

for strategy-ethics research with the highest level

of impact. Certainly authors can publish their

research focused on the strategy-ethics link in other

important Management journals such as Academy of

Management Journal, Academy of Management Review,

Journal of Management and journals focused on busi-

ness ethics such as Journal of Business Ethics, Business

Ethics Quarterly and Business and Society. Neverthe-

less, to be consistent with Hosmer�s assessment of strategy-ethics research at the highest level it was

concluded that focusing on SMJ alone would yield a

cogent, parsimonious, assessment of the state of

strategy-ethics research.

The time period of 1996–2005 was selected for the

analysis. In addition to the advantage of being recent,

I determined that this 10-year span would capture a

broad spectrum of strategy research which could not

be contained in a shorter period of time. Further,

over the 10 years selected a number of high-profile

scandals (i.e., Enron, Global Crossing) and anti-cor-

ruption legislation and agreements (i.e., Sabanes-

Oxley and the OECD anti-bribery agreement) took

place, which results in an era rich in salient topics.

Although the selection of only one journal for the

analysis has some disadvantages this approach is not

unprecedented (for example see Inkpen and Beam-

ish, 1994). Moreover, based on the general consensus

that there is only one premier or flagship journal in

the field of strategy, I concluded that focusing on

SMJ alone would be the most accurate technique for

assessing the impact of ethics on the field of strategic

management.

The baseline data collection technique employed

was adapted from the procedures used in earlier

studies by Inkpen and Beamish (1994) and Kumar

and Kundu (2004). Thus each article published in

SMJ over the review period was analyzed for ethics

content. Special issue introductions and editorial

commentaries were not counted. A running count

of the annual total of articles and the number of ethics

focused articles was maintained. Information was also

collected on the academic affiliations of authors. To

be consistent with prior methodology in cases of

co-authorship the institutions of each author were

credited with an article (Kumar and Kundu, 2004).

While this technique resulted in double-counting

when an article was written by two scholars from the

same institution, this use of absolute counting has

been employed many times (i.e., Trieshmann et al.,

2000) and can be interpreted objectively since the

ranking of schools is relative. Nevertheless, strong

debate is always possible regarding which affiliation

An Analysis of 10 years of Business Ethics Research 747

counting technique to use; so to facilitate compari-

sons across methods a computation of article totals

adjusted for co-authorship was also performed.

What constitutes ethics focused research? This is

indeed a challenging question, especially since it is

certainly possible to ascertain ethical implications out of

almost any line of research. While an objective of

this article is to evaluate research that is primarily

focused on ethics and ethical decision-making, there

is some degree of subjectivity in the process because

one researcher�s definition of ethics focused may be different than another�s. To better ground the decision of whether or not research was ethics

focused reference to a definition of business ethics

was introduced along with the development of a list

of qualifying topics. The definition presented by

Ferrell et al.(2005, p. 6) is therefore employed,

‘‘Business ethics comprises the principles and stan-

dards that guide behavior in the workplace.’’

In Table I there is a list of qualifying topics for

ethics focused research. The top half of the table

contains topics that were deemed clearly ethics fo-

cused. Topics such as corporate social responsibility,

reputation management, codes of ethics, and envi-

ronmental degradation appear on this list. The lower

half of the list includes topics that were close but

were deemed not exclusively, and primarily, focused

on ethics. It should be noted that if a non-qualifying

topic was in fact conceptually or empirically linked

to an ethical issue, or a qualifying topic, in an article

then that article was included as an ethics focused

article. For example, a study of how CEO com-

pensation relates to stock market performance would

not be included, yet a study of the morality of the gap

between line worker pay and CEO pay would be

included as ethics focused.

Results

So how are we doing in the field of strategy with the

publication of business ethics research? In Table II a

summary of the articles that were deemed ethics

focused in SMJ between 1996 and 2005 is presented.

A total of 23 articles, or 2.3 per year, clearly

appeared to have an objective or purpose that was

primarily oriented toward a business ethics concept.

The 23 articles represent 3.5% of all SMJ articles

during the 10-year period. Interestingly, and as

TABLE I

Qualifying topics for ethics focused research

Qualifying topics

Corruption

Morality

Reputation management

Corporate social responsibility

Glass ceiling/gender equality

Ethical decision-making

White-collar crime

Insider trading

Environmental issues (natural environment)

Codes of ethics

Non-qualifying topics

Layoffs

Downsizing

CEO compensation

Anti-dumping legislation (financial dumping)

Organizational commitment

Business risk

Organizational slack

Patent litigation

Religion

Takeovers

Social capital

Corporate governance

Risk-taking

Firm survival

Bankruptcy

TABLE II

Summary of business ethics articles appearing in Strate-

gic Management Journal: 1996–2005

Year #Articles #Ethics Articles Percentage

1996 47 2 4.3

1997 65 2 3.1

1998 70 1 1.4

1999 63 1 1.6

2000 69 2 2.9

2001 62 2 3.2

2002 71 2 2.8

2003 78 6 7.7

2004 68 2 2.9

2005 65 3 4.6

Total 658 23 3.5

748 Christopher J. Robertson

expected, the number of ethics focused articles has

increased since the widely publicized scandals of

Enron, Worldcom et al. in 2000. Between 1996 and

2000 only eight ethics focused articles appeared in

SMJ (2.5% of all articles during the period) com-

pared to 15 ethics focused articles between 2001 and

2005 (4.4%). Although the overall number of articles

focused on ethics during the 10-year span is on the

low end, this near doubling of strategy-ethics articles

published in SMJ in the past 5 years is a very

positive trend. It is also noteworthy to point out that

the year 2003 was a very strong year with six ethics

articles, or 7.7% of all SMJ articles that year and 25%

of the 10 year total. The passing of Sarbanes-Oxley

Act in July of 2002, and the vast media attention to

ethics in 2000 and 2001 likely played a role in the

higher level of interest and quality research of ethical

topics published in SMJ in that year.

A content analysis of the 23 articles that appeared

in SMJ over the review period was performed to

look for commonalities across thematic areas. 2

A

deeper look at the articles published during the

period revealed six cogent themes that have emerged

in the strategy-ethics literature. Table III summarizes

the major thematic clusters. The most prominent

theme was clearly environmental research with a

total of seven articles. The environmental topics

varied and included such foci as pollution preven-

tion, environmental legislation, natural capital,

and proactive environmental strategies Russo, 2003;

Sharma and Henriques, 2005. Theoretical founda-

tions employed by SMJ�s environmental researchers included stakeholder theory, distinctive competen-

cies, sustainability and board composition. Four of

the seven environmental articles focused on chiefly

on external stakeholder issues while the other three

articles incorporated implications for both internal

and external stakeholders.

The second classification of ethical themes was

labeled ‘‘ethical policies and planning.’’ The five

articles that fell into this group analyzed policy and

performance related ethical issues. Specific topics

included the link between corporate social perfor-

mance and financial performance, executive-level

gender discrimination, and the link between ethics

codes and financial executive decision-making. The

stakeholder focus of the articles in this category was

mixed with one article leaning toward external

stakeholders, two toward internal stakeholders and

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An Analysis of 10 years of Business Ethics Research 749

two mixed. The third thematic area clustered around

reputation management. A total of four articles fell

into this category and the common variable of rep-

utation was linked to joint ventures, performance,

strategic groups, and market dominance Schwab,

1996. All four of these articles emphasized the role of

reputation directed toward external organizational

stakeholders.

The fourth theme identified focused on white-

collar crimes such as insider trading. Two of the three

white-collar crime articles focused explicitly on in-

sider trading while the third looked at the relationship

between firm value and the detection and prevention

of white-collar crimes. All three white-collar crime

articles focused principally on management principles

directed toward internal stakeholders.

The fifth theme coalesced around the relationship

between ethics and internationalization, with an eye

toward foreign market analysis. Two articles assessed

corruption in international business from a market

analysis perspective. One of these articles empha-

sized the link between FDI and Corruption, an

external stakeholder focus, while the other assessed

moral philosophy�s role in international business from a multi-stakeholder paradigm. The sixth and

final theme clustered around the idea of assessments

of business ethics research and contained two arti-

cles. One article, by Hosmer (1996), was essentially a

critique of the impact of business ethics on firm

performance while the other article was a cogent

response to Hosmer�s article. A brief analysis of the affiliations that were most

represented in the 23 ethics focused articles pub-

lished in SMJ over the sampled time frame indicated

that a total of 49 scholars from 27 institutions were

represented. Based on absolute number of author

appearances 13 institutions had two or more articles

published by their faculty members with Indiana

University leading the way with a total of five arti-

cles. The University of Minnesota and Northeastern

University each had four author appearances

followed by Emory University and the University of

British Columbia with three.

Discussion

The themes identified in this analysis shine some

light on what the editorial board members of SMJ

believe is important business ethics research. Despite

the fact that a number of strategy researchers have

lobbied for more emphasis on ethics within the

strategy research agenda there appears to be a certain

level of ambivalence surrounding the value and

importance of the topic in the field. Has Hosmer�s (1994) call more ethics research in the field of

strategy been answered? This is unclear. Yet the

progress has been impressive. As mentioned earlier

only three ethics focused articles, according to

Hosmer, appeared in SMJ in the 3 years prior to his

1994 piece. That is an average of 1.0 per year. After

a 1-year lag, to provide ample time for a response

from academia, the momentum appeared to begin.

With an average of 2.3 articles per year since 1996,

more than double the rate of the early 1990s there is

evidence that ethics has established a strong footing

in the field of strategy.

As a follow-up procedure, I decided to perform

an analysis of the citation impact of the 23 articles

identified as ethics focused to assess which articles

have had the greatest impact. 3

Leading the way was

the 1997 article about the corporate social perfor-

mance–financial performance link by Waddock and

Graves (1998) with 119 citations. Two additional

articles received above 50 citations: Hillman and

Keim�s (2001) ‘‘Shareholder value, stakeholder management, and social issues: what�s the bottom line’’ with 54 citations and Dollinger et al.�s (1997) study of the impact of reputation on joint venture

decisions with 53 citations.

The notion of trust has consistently been deemed a

vital area for researchers of business ethics (Hosmer,

1994; Solomon, 1992). To what extent have strategy

researchers addressed the pivotal ethical issue of trust

in the past decade? Although trust was not directly

analyzed it is a theme that is certainly embedded in a

number of constructs. Of the five ethical themes

identified the trust implications are more than sali-

ent. It is probably not possible to build a (positive)

reputation without the trust of various stakeholders.

White-collar crimes and insider trading are viola-

tions of trust Coff and Lee 2003. Ethics codes, one

could argue, are pragmatic mechanisms that the top

management team or board of directors put in place

as insurance policies for when individuals with a

propensity for misconduct violate trust (Stevens

et al., 2005). The link between trust and environ-

mental issues is intuitive as well. In their article that

750 Christopher J. Robertson

assessed proactive environmental strategies Buysse

and Verbeke (2003) employ a stakeholder manage-

ment perspective to essentially identify a method for

firms to build trust, and thus reputation, via the

pursuit of a conscientious green agenda.

Limitations and future research directions

In any analysis of journal scope and content limita-

tions exits. As mentioned earlier the use of SMJ

alone as the outlet for strategy-ethics research can be

contested. While SMJ is considered the top strategy

journal, researchers have published strategy articles

with an ethics focus in other top journals. Since the

resulting set of ethics focused research only

amounted to 23 articles identifying deep common-

alities across themes was challenging. The summary

of affiliations is also of course limited due to the

narrow scope of this paper. Indeed many institutions

that did not make my list may very well have

scholars that consistently publish strategy-ethics re-

search, yet not in SMJ. A further limitation in the

current analysis is the protocol employed to deter-

mine what constitutes ethics focused research. Very

little precedent exists related to the determination of

topics that fall under the realm of strategy-ethics and

hopefully the list of qualifying topics developed for

this paper, albeit imperfect, will set the tone for

future work in this area.

What are the gaps in the literature? The research

body focused on business ethics has expanded

substantially over the past two decades and scholars

are continually integrating new theoretical bases

into the field of strategy. One suggestion would be

to draw more from peripheral areas, such as the

pervasiveness vs. arbitrariness framework employed

by Rodrı́guez et al. (2005), as a method for

broadening the strategy-ethics paradigm. Only five

ethics focused articles appearing in SMJ over the

past decade have had an international focus, vari-

able set, or sample. With the pace, rhythm and

scope of internationalization it appears that there is

room for more international research of business

ethics in the field of strategy. The link between

corporate governance, a centerpiece of the field of

strategy, and ethics has also been under-represented

in SMJ. Many scholars have argued (i.e., Robertson

and Watson, 2004; Stevens et al., 2005) that poor

governance procedures and mechanisms created

moral corporate climates in the late 1990s and early

into the new millennium in which unethical

behavior flourished. Less than five articles between

1996 and 2005 focused on the implications and

ramifications that poor corporate governance can

have on a firm�s moral performance. Finally, it seems apropos to point out again that

due to the recent moral debacles in industry,

resulting from a lack of ethical reasoning in the

strategic decision processes of executives, the

integrity of financial markets and governance systems

has been extremely damaged (Stevens et al., 2005).

Top management team members of multinational

firms have been facing increasing pressure from

stakeholders with respect to social and ethical issues.

This heightened interest has led to an increase in the

level of scrutiny of business ethics in the global

economy by academic researchers (i.e., Cullen et al.,

2004; Husted, 1999). Business ethics scholars have

examined a multitude of influential factors includ-

ing, but not limited to, individual values, moral

intensity, situational factors, moral philosophies,

cultural values, political inclination, and economic

variables (Fritzsche and Becker, 1984; Jones, 1991;

Rest, 1986). Yet the assimilation of these themes

into the highest level of strategy research has

been limited. Hopefully in this article I have iden-

tified salient topics and gaps in the strategy literature

that will provide a roadmap, albeit incomplete,

which will set the tone for future business ethics

research.

Notes

1 The other six journals were Administrative Science

Quarterly,Academy of Management Review, Academy of

Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Person-

nel Psychology and Organizational Behavior and Human

Decision Processes. 2

The 23 articles are listed in the reference section of

this paper and signified by an asterisk (*). 3

Citation analyses were performed using Google Scho-

lar advanced search. It should be noted as well that it

takes a few years, due to the review process, after an

article is published for other scholars to officially cite

that article.

An Analysis of 10 years of Business Ethics Research 751

References

*Designates one of the 23 articles deemed

ethics focused that appeared in SMJ

between 1996–2005

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752 Christopher J. Robertson

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International Business, College of Business

Administration,

Northeastern University,

313 Hayden Hall, Boston, MA, 02115, U.S.A.

E-mail: [email protected]

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