Business ethics research in the hospitality industry: topics, methods and trends

Abstract

This study investigates how business ethics research has evolved in hospitality management (HM). This evolution is explored using bibliometrics from articles related to ethics published in HM journals indexed in SSCI. This study provides a broad view on ethics research in HM related to topics discussed, methods employed, and trends. As a first study of HM with a business ethics focus, the findings show several things. First, there has been a significant increase in the number of such articles. Second, the most popular topics are corporate social responsibility and natural environmental issues. Third, quantitative methods and primary data provided by hotels are dominant in many studies; qualitative, hybrid research approaches, and advanced statistical methods have become more common in recent years. Accordingly, referring to the findings related to this study, this article presents limitations of the study and future steps.Keywords: business ethics; codes; hospitality; journals; bibliometric analysis; topics; methods; trends. Business ethics research in the hospitality industry

Authorship trends and collaboration patterns in business ethics literature

“…Country-focused studies Turkey (Koseoglu et al, 2015) Industry-focused studies Hospitality (Koseoglu, Sehitoglu et al, 2016;Sehitoglu et al, 2017) Subfield-focused studies Ethical decision-making literature (Lehnert et al, 2016;O'Fallon & Butterfield, 2005); corporate volunteering (Dreesbach-Bundy & Scheck, 2017); corporate social responsibility (Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016)…”

“…There is one country‐focused study , investigating the evolution of BE in Turkey (Koseoglu et al, ). Two industry‐focused studies focus on the progress of BE research in the tourism and hospitality industries (Koseoglu, Sehitoglu, Ross, & Parnell, ; Sehitoglu et al, ). Finally, subfield‐focused studies investigate progress in the subfields of BE, such as in the ethical decision‐making literature (Lehnert et al, ; O'Fallon & Butterfield, ), corporate volunteering (Dreesbach‐Bundy & Scheck, ), and corporate social responsibility (Frynas & Yamahaki, ).…”

“…In BE, which has a remarkable knowledge stock in the literature, these bibliometric studies assess the maturity of the field as a scientific discipline. Many bibliometric studies (Chan et al, ; Chan, Fung, & Yau, ; Geiger, ; Lemke & Driscoll, ; Özmen Uysal, ; Robertson, ; Sehitoglu, Ross, & Koseoglu, ; Serenko & Bontis, ) examine and clarify the intellectual structure of the BE literature. Only one study, by Talukdar (), investigated the productivity of authors in two leading BE journals ( BEQ and JBE ).…”