Research Note and Review of the Empirical Ethical Decision-Making Literature: Boundary Conditions and Extensions

In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s (J Bus Ethics 117(2):221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation (30 studies) and mediation (23 studies) effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making.