The state of ethical decision‐making research in accounting: A retrospective assessment from 1987 to 2022

Godfred Matthew Yaw Owusu and Gabriel Korankye

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2023, vol. 32, issue 2, 419-434

Abstract: This study employs the bibliometric analysis approach to examine research on ethical decision‐making (EDM) of accountants from 1987 to 2022. The study specifically examines the developments in EDM research and evaluates the intellectual structure of the research field. Employing citation, co‐authorship, co‐occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses, bibliometric data on 908 publications from the Scopus database was analysed. The results indicate that there has been a significant increase in the rate of publication on EDM of accountants following the spate of ethical breaches in the early 2000s. Further, we find that a large proportion of EDM in accounting research originates from developed countries like USA, Australia and UK. Our cluster analysis suggests that two main research streams have evolved over the period. Prior to 2012, researchers in this field mainly focused on individual level issues, particularly, on the determinants of the EDM process of individuals. Research, post 2012, however, has focused on firm‐level EDM issues including organisational ethics, culture, and corporate governance. The study further discusses the themes in detail andproposes a future research agenda.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12519

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:buseth:v:32:y:2023:i:2:p:419-434

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().