How ethical behavior is considered in different contexts: A bibliometric analysis of global research trends using vosviewer

Abstract

From 1980 to now, the topic of ethics has been receiving much attention worldwide, especially ethical behavior in many different specific contexts. The research paper is a compilation of a series of ethical behaviors in different contexts around the world to analyze prominent research trends in different periods and countries as well as propose and predict new and potential research directions in the field of behavioral and contextual ethics. The data was taken from the Web of Science with two main keywords “Ethical behavior” and “Context”, the results found a total of 1540 articles, then filtered out 131 duplicate or unrelated articles. In the end, a total of 1409 articles were used for analysis. Regarding the research method, the study uses the biometric analysis method with the following techniques: Bibliographic Coupling (with analysis units being countries, journals, publications, and authors); Co-citation (with the analysis unit being journals, publications, and authors); and Co-occurrence (with the analysis unit being keywords) via VOSviewer software. Before performing bibliometric analysis, the study relied on previous studies to outline a broad theoretical basis for ethical behavior and contexts. According to that, the research starts analyzing data on VOSviewer. Through Bibliographic Coupling and Co-citation analysis with journals, publications, and authors, this research synthesizes important and necessary documents, thereby helping other researchers have an overview of contexts of ethical behavior from major journals, influential authors, and important publications to underpin future research. For the Co-occurrence technique using Density Visualization, Network Visualization, and Overlay Visualization analysis, the research analyzes the frequency of keywords to identify the main focus of ethical behavior research in different contexts as well as the emerging topics in recent times. Finally, by comparing Bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis, the study proposed new and potential research directions through the comparison of clusters systematically established in VOSviewer software, each cluster represents a context of ethical behavior. Since then, scientists can continue to advance their understanding of ethical behavior in these contexts to expand more valuable and important research in the future. This is the first study to combine a variety of ethical behaviors in various contexts, so it is inevitable that there will be some limitations. Research findings may vary if data from other sources or data are used, as well as at a different time; research articles frequently concentrate on a small number of nations, so the research perspective is influenced by the society and culture in those countries, rather than being general; and the classification and placement of clusters in the study are subject to subjectivity.