Social Sciences and Business Ethics
Alex C. Michalos
It is convenient to think of the social sciences as the organized pursuit of law like regularities and theories regarding human action, and to think of business ethics as the theory and practice of human action aimed at securing a good life in a market, a mixed market, or an exchange economy. Perhaps the most important word in this brief definition is ‘‘convenient,’’ because it emphasizes the fact that what is being offered is merely a stipulative definition or conventional understanding about the key words designating this subject matter.
Although there is no general agreement about the proper way to define the social sciences and its diverse disciplines, there are different identifiable, self defined, specialized research communities (i.e., professional or learned societies), academic departments, and scholarly journals.
So one way to proceed to an exhaustive analysis of our subject would be to list the appropriate social science societies and types of academic departments and journals, and then examine their particular relations to business ethics. One would still have borderline cases, one of the oldest being history and one of the newest being evaluation science (Michalos, 1992). Among the social sciences, one would include family studies, geography (especially economic and social geography), political science, policy science, planning (urban, rural, and regional), sociology (especially criminology, quality of work life, sociology of work or labor studies, industrial relations and social indicators, psych ology, economics, organizational behavior) and anthropology.
Unfortunately, the suggested strategy of app roaching our subject is oversimplified because it assumes that we are confronted with a many–one relation (many disciplines to one business ethics), when in fact we are faced with a many to many relationship, because different people construe ethics and business ethics in different ways. One theoretical approach in the study of ethics is consequentialism (including utilitarian ism as a particular species). However, it too comes in many forms, which increases the variety of subheadings on the business ethics side of the relationship to be correlated with the social sciences side.
A few examples will suffice to illustrate the great importance of social scientific research to consequentialism. Ruut Veenhoven maintains an excellent website called World Database of Happiness that includes a Bibliography of Happiness with over 3,400 titles of scientific studies, a Catalog of Happiness Queries with over 500 standardized measures, a list of Happiness in Nations with results from over 1,800 surveys in 112 nations, and a detailed file of Correlational Findings on Happiness with over 7,400 findings from 705 studies in 140 nations. In Michalos (1991) it was reported that biennial computer searches of the research literature carried out over a dozen years on the key words ‘‘happiness’’ and ‘‘satisfaction’’ had revealed an average annual publication rate of over 1,100 titles for nearly 20 years.
Although few philosophers have ventured into this empirical work in the consequentialist moral tradition, social scientists have been very active and social scientists working on business ethics are increasingly drawing on this tradition. Collins (2000) wrote a very thorough review of the first 1,500 articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics, covering the period from its first issue in 1982 through 1999. Among other things, he showed that (1) survey research ac counted for 14 percent of the articles published in 1982, increased to 51 percent in 1996, and decreased to 33 percent in 1999; (2) ‘‘researchers consistently report that survey respondents perceive their own ethical standards to be higher than those of their peers’’; (3) ethical sensitivity is ‘‘by far the most researched topic among’’ the first 1,500 articles, with, for example, most studies showing that ‘‘women are more ethically sensitive than men’’and that ‘‘upper level man agers are less tolerant of unethical behavior than those of lower organizational rank’’; (4) most large firms in the United States have codes of ethics but there are a variety of ‘‘social control mechanisms’’ such as moral/social audits, stakeholder analysis, and ethics programs; (5) ‘‘people perceive corporate social performance and reputation as a multidimensional concept beyond economic performance and obeying the law’’; and (6) the three most frequently studied professions are accounting, marketing, and finance.
Georges Enderle edited a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics (Volume 16, Number 14, October 1997) that included a fine set of reviews of business ethics in the 1990s in Australia and New Zealand, Japan, China, the Philippines, India, South Africa, Russia, the Czech Republic, Eastern and Southern Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and North America. As one might have expected, the reviews revealed a wide variety of views about the meaning of ‘‘business ethics,’’ a variety of cultural settings, and a variety of approaches to identifying and addressing central issues.
Loe, Ferrell, and Mansfield (2000) wrote a review of 188 empirical studies of ethical decision making in business, and found that the most frequently studied issues involved the role of gender and moral philosophy. The Journal of Business Ethics accounted for the greatest number of such studies (61), with the Journal of Business Research (8) and the Journal of Marketing Science (7) a distant second and third.
Sabrin (2002) examined 13 journals focusing on business ethics in the five year period 1995–99 in order to measure ‘‘the most productive business ethics scholars.’’ Over half of the 2,371 business ethics scholars included in the study ‘‘published less than a single article during the entire five year period.’’ What is perhaps most interesting about this investigation is that ‘‘the ‘top’ MBA schools were not the ones whose faculties were doing business ethics research. Most of the top producing schools had MBA programs that were either unranked or were ranked relatively low.’’ Speculating on why that might be the case, Sabrin said: ‘‘perhaps ethics, like religion, is left to the individual to decide for himself or herself.’’
Another way to measure the impact of social science on business ethics is by means of the most recent issue of the Journal Citation Reports of the Social Sciences Citation Index. Examining the ‘‘Cited Journal Listing’’ for 1992 (Grid: M5), one finds that only one (8 percent) of the 12 journals that are listed as citing JOBE in 1992, 1991, and 1990 was not a social science journal. Going in the other direction, one finds that every one of the 48 journals cited by authors in JOBE was a social science journal (Grid: H9, 19). In 2001, JOBE was cited 73 times, all by articles in social science journals. Every one of the 296 journals cited by JOBE articles in 2001 was a social science journal.
Finally, then, it is worthwhile to mention that although the focus of the present entry is on different ways of measuring the impact of social science on business ethics, the causal arrows of influence obviously run in both directions. Business ethics has had and will likely continue to have a profound impact on social science. Indeed, it does not seem to be an exaggeration to say that we have not witnessed such a morally provocative influence on the social sciences since the turn of the twentieth century, when virtually all of these sciences were driven by reform minded researchers committed to improving the human condition with the help of their new tools of social analysis.
Bibliography
Collins, D. (2000). The quest to improve the human condition: The first 1,500 articles published in Journal of Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 26, 1 73.
Loe, T. W., Ferrell, L., and Mansfield, P. (2000). A review of empirical studies assessing ethical decision- making in business. Journal of Business Ethics, 25, 185 204.
Michalos, A. C. (1991). Global Report on Student Well Being, Vol. 1: Life Satisfaction and Happiness. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Michalos, A. C. (1992). Ethical considerations in evaluation. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 7, 61 75.
Robertson, D. C. (1993). Empiricism in business ethics: Suggested research directions. Journal of Business Ethics, 8, 585 600.
Sabrin, M. (2002). A ranking of the most productive business ethics scholars: A five-year study. Journal of Business Ethics, 36, 355 79.