Introduction

Ethics matters—but to think a step forward, ethics education matters.

(Lau, 2010, p. 582)

Our world is currently facing several grand challenges that put pressure on the teaching of business ethics. Consequences of environmental and societal problems such as climate change and social injustice (e.g. in the areas of race, gender, social class and wealth distribution) have risen to the level where they are considered urgent issues that need to be addressed by the business community (Montiel et al., 2020). This concern is also reflected in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this business and social context, business schools face increased global scrutiny due to their role in educating future business professionals to act responsibly in the contemporary environment. For instance, over the last two decades, a number of scholars and practitioners have criticised business schools for continuing to maintain a too-narrow focus on theories that promote only short-term thinking and decision-making that emphasises shareholder interests (Ghoshal, 2005; Hoffman, 2021; Mitroff, 2004), thereby diminishing the concerns for the wider society and the complexity of its challenges.

In response, we argue that there is a need for business ethics education to change. To specify particular changes and to recommend strategies to implement these, we argue that a serious appraisal of past and current discussions in the academic literature ought to be undertaken. An extended treatment of this academic discourse is crucial to the formulation of any programme of change and reform.

The purpose of this study is therefore to answer the following research question: How has the academic literature on business ethics education developed since the 1980s, 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 supplementary content analyses of (a) the 25 most locally cited articlesFootnote 1 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 business 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 business 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 investigated 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 accounting. By doing this, we examine and compare the earlier and the more recent trends in the literature. With this comprehensive 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 encompasses ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability.Footnote 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 discerned 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 frequently 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 contribute to achieving the SDGs by educating responsible business professionals. However, a majority of these studies 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 contribute to the research literature by identifying this shift in scholarly interest and treating its implications for business ethics education. Furthermore, we develop a new framework which we call Transforming Ethics Education 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 methodology 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 business 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 achieving 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 analysing 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.Footnote 3

Content analysis is a methodological tool that categorises 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 identify 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.Footnote 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.

The final search string consisted of a combination of the following keywords: (a) ‘corporate social responsibility’, ‘ethics/morality’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘ESG’ (Environmental, Social and Governance; to capture all three business ethics 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 sustainab* OR moral* OR ESG) AND (business OR management 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 evaluating research results. The search identified a total of 83,992 documents,Footnote 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’ content and ensure shared comprehension among this study’s authors and readers. Finally, the search results were filtered 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.Footnote 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.Footnote 7 This criterion applied to 1622 journals, leading to the elimination of 4250 articles. Thereafter, the aims and scope of the remaining 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.

Table 1 Journal exclusion criteria
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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.

Table 2 Inclusion and exclusion criteria
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The sample was prepared for bibliometric analysis by creating a thesaurus file and browsing the data for similar terms, thus filtering the data during analysis in VOSviewer (Hallinger & 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.Footnote 8 It was initially decided that only the 25 most locally cited articles in the sample would be read and analysed 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 published 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.Footnote 9

Two of the authors conducted the content analyses using NVivo. The coding was organised according to thematic distinctions (i.e. recurring themes in the articles). An exploratory approach was adopted (i.e. no coding matrices or distinct 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 to teaching practices. The research process is summarised in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
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Research framework. Note. n = sample size

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Results: Bibliometric and Content Analyses

A basic overview of the annual scientific production of articles 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. Considering the substantial impact of the report (Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016, p. 528), one would expect this interest 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 & Brinkmann, 2003) and the dot-com bubble burst from two years 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 education (Ghoshal, 2005; Mitroff, 2004; Pfeffer, 2005; Sims & Brinkmann, 2003).

Fig. 2
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Annual scientific production of articles (1982–2021)

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The following years saw a continued increase in article production, 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 discussions gained some momentum in the literature. Nevertheless, 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 frequency 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 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 interesting observation is that eight were based in the United States, which indicates a geographical imbalance. The educational 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 implementation of CSR in firms and in business school curricula (Carroll 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 education and called for a revision of the theories currently taught in business schools (Ghoshal, Giacalone and Pfeffer).

Table 3 Ten most co-cited authors in the business ethics education literature
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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 and a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 2.44. Therefore, JBE is arguably the core journal in the literature on business ethics education.

Table 4 Ten most relevant journals in the business ethics education literature
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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 disproportion 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).

Table 5 Top 10 contributing countries in the business ethics education literature
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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 ranking were listed (Financial Times, 2022).

Table 6 Top 11 contributing institutions in the business ethics education literature
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In addition, six of the top 11 contributing institutions were found to be Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) signatories.Footnote 10 This may indicate that their work on implementing and integrating sustainability across their institutions is reflected in their research output, 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 thematic 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.

Fig. 3
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Keyword co-occurrence of article authors’ keywords over time

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Fig. 4
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Keyword co-occurrence of article authors’ keywords in thematic clusters

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Table 7 Thematic evolution of article authors’ keywords
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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 generally 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 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 sustainability’ 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 discussed 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.Footnote 11

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 (cluster 2), (c) Sustainability (cluster 3), (d) PRME and SDGs in business schools (cluster 4) and (e) Pedagogical tools (cluster 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 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 current prevalence as a frequently discussed pedagogical tool that is utilised by business school educators for teaching 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 topical 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 ‘sustainability’, 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.

Table 8 Category frequency in the 25 most locally cited articles
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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 business 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 discussion regarding the conceptualisation of key terms is a common 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 constituted part of a broader argument for business ethics education (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.

Integration of Business Ethics into Business School Curricula

There has been both theoretical (i.e. conceptual discussions 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, 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 ethics into business education, business schools would need to map possible barriers to integration, such as the willingness 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 Business (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).

Pedagogical Approaches and Tools Used to Teach Business Ethics

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, Cornelius 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, Shrivastava (2010) described a pragmatic approach called ‘passion for sustainability’, which utilises experiential learning as a pedagogical tool to stimulate students’ spiritual and emotional development (p. 445). To facilitate the pedagogical approaches, specific pedagogical tools are needed. See Table 9 for a complete list of the identified tools with corresponding examples.

Table 9 List of pedagogical tools in the 25 most locally cited articles
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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 overview 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 evolution 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 (philosophical) 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. Second, 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 application of ethical criticism (i.e. focusing on the moral content of the text).

Another interesting observation is the continued relevance of discussions related to the integration of business 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 noticeable 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 articles), 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 sustainability, 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 ethics, 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 starting point while also allowing for new themes to emerge. In this case, PRME and SDGs were identified as new categories (Table 10). To limit the discussion, the remainder of this section discusses only the following two categories: (a) integration and (b) pedagogical approaches and tools, with a focus on the sustainability-related concepts of PRME and SDGs.

Table 10 Category frequency in the 15 most locally cited articles (2016–2021)
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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 curricular, methodological and institutional integration across the entire business school (Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016, p. 533).

Institutional integration refers to the integration of business 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-oriented 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 connected 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 frameworks 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 Sustainability (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), sustainability 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 interdisciplinary 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 interdisciplinarity was also evident in the articles. Whereas multidisciplinarity 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 multidisciplinary nature, the siloed approach implemented by a majority of business schools can be considered inadequate 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 interdisciplinary 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 integration of business ethics, such as the lack of specialist faculty, or faculty members generally lacking an incentive to integrate 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 complicating the process of institutional change (p. 206).

Similar to how non-specialist, or demotivated, faculty members can serve as barriers to the integration of business 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 making 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 therefore 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). According 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 consumption issues based on their experiences (p. 211).

Table 11 List of pedagogical tools in the 15 most locally cited articles (2016–2021)
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Moreover, co-curricular learning through student organisations 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 development of soft skills that enable business school graduates and the schools themselves to have a more meaningful role in 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 promoting 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 relevant 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 displayed 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 leaders. The discussions in contemporary articles, however, are more concerned with sustainability and the role that business 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 content 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 immediate consequence of this is that discussions pertaining to the integration and teaching of fundamental ethics concepts have become nearly obsolete. An imminent danger to business 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 sustainability rather than to the underlying ethical considerations. 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 integrating 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 that they be made aware of the ethical considerations that motivate this ambition. Thus, for a business school to educate 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 economic activity has contributed greatly to violating planetary boundaries (Sachs, 2020, p. 197) cannot be solved by focusing 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 education 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 integration 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 curricula 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 concepts 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 to bettering the local, regional, national and global community. We certainly lend our support to the overarching objective of integrating sustainability concepts across business 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 Weybrecht’s (2017) framework focuses mainly on the characteristics 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 integration. 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 imperative that the main efforts are centred on classroom education. Students need to be exposed to a wide range of pedagogical 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 simultaneously 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 ethics should occupy in any type of business ethics integration 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).

Fig. 5
figure 5

Transforming ethics education in business schools—a framework

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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 process 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 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 indicates 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 important to take into account the rigid nature of the business school culture, which has been criticised for promoting values such as greed (Walker, 1992) among students and faculty 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), initiatives 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 connects 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.

Conclusions

The aim of this study was to explore how the business ethics education literature has developed since the 1980s and identify the more recent trends in this literature. By applying an SLR, bibliometric techniques and two supplementary 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 sustainability-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 integration (e.g. by encouraging the adoption of the PRME). Second, 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 integration is accomplished across different business schools or to compare the integration of business ethics in business 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.