Global Research on Ethical Leadership: A Bibliometric Investigation and Knowledge Mapping
The aim of this study is to investigate the publishing and trends of citation on moral and ethical leadership in the past four decades (1979-2022). Moreover, this bibliometric study examines the top authors, countries, organizations, journals, nature of collaboration, and highly cited articles. Bibliometric analysis techniques has been employed to extract data from the Web of Science (WoS) database. A wide-ranging search strategy was developed to extract more relevant data from this source. Finally, 2232 research records were selected. For data analysis and bibliometric indicator classification, the study utilized the following software packages: MS Excel, VOSviewer, Biblioshiny, and BibExcel. The study found that a total of 2290 items were published in Web of Science from which 2232 were shortlisted after screening during this period. The largest number of studies were published in the year of 2022 and USA was found the most productive country with most productive organizations, authors, and author collaborations. The most productive authors were Trevino LK, Brown ME and Walumbwa FO, and most productive organizations were Wuhan University, Erasmus University, and Michigan State University. Journal of Business Ethics is the top rated journal in the domain of ethical leadership. Single-author was the prevailing authorship pattern, followed by the two-author pattern. The top three collaborating countries are USA, China, and Pakistan. The analysis of keywords reflected that the published literature focused on ethical leadership.
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