The entrepreneurship literature pays increasing attention to the ethical aspects of the field. However, only a fragmented understanding is known about how the context influences the ethical judgment of entrepreneurs. We argue that individual socio-cultural background, organizational and societal context shape entrepreneurial ethical judgment. In our article, we contribute to contemporary literature by carving out the intersections between Ethics and Entrepreneurship. We do this by employing a two-step research approach: 1) We use bibliometric techniques to analyze 719 contributions in Business and Economics research and present a comprehensive contextual picture of ethics in entrepreneurship research by a analyzing the 30 most relevant foundation articles. 2) A subsequent content analysis of the 50 most relevant academic contributions was carried with an enlarged database out to augment these findings, detailing ethics and entrepreneurship research on an individual, organizational and societal level of analyses. By comparing the two analyses, this paper concludes by outlining possible avenues for future research.

Introduction

Embedded in the dynamic context of today’s global environment, any kind of entrepreneurial activity might also tackle ethical questions. In order to answer these, research at the intersection of ethics and entrepreneurship has established a fairly young stream that seeks to shed light on the complex issues surrounding this field. Entrepreneurs are frequently confronted with an array of situations that may compromise their own ethical and moral judgements (Morris, Schindehutte, Walton, & Allen, 2002). Often, when assessing moral issues, a typical question ethics raises is “What should I/we do?” However, the normative ethical principles that are derived to answer this question are not compulsory and are no set rules (Tokarski, 2009). They might help identify the right behavior in a particular situation, sensitizing individuals in building up an ability to judge and handle moral issues (Frankena, 2016). This happens within the scope of the individual who is free to make his or her own decisions. Nevertheless, in reality, this scope underlies – specifically in the context of entrepreneurs – several limitations, including scarce resources in terms of money or personnel, any legal order, an economic framework, the founder’s value/company value, or the personal limits of the individual in question (Tokarski, 2009).