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Research done to date has produced a wide range of perspectives that center on the junction between the specific function and responsibility of the entrepreneur when applying ethical dimensions to the field of entrepreneurship. By combining a bibliometric analysis with the literature review, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of entrepreneurship ethics and its contribution to sustainable development goals, along with future research directions on the topic of entrepreneurship and ethics.

The research looked for literature based on entrepreneurship ethics from the Dimension database. The authors accumulated 2,279 articles for the period of 2002–2022 for analysis. The authors used bibliometric analysis for analyzing the topic with the use of VosViewer and Excel.

By combining a bibliometric analysis with a literature review, this study aimed to provide an overview of the ethics and entrepreneurship and contribution to sustainable development goals. The most influential author and journal are Vanessa Ratten and the Journal of Business Ethics, respectively. The top sustainable development goals (SDGs) being contributed by entrepreneurship ethics are SDG4, SDG8, SDG16, SDG11 and SDG3. By contrasting these two interpretations, the authors have demonstrated that the entrepreneurship environment involves various ethical issues connected to personal, organizational and societal sectors.

The current study may serve as a general guideline for future investigation into this topic.

Regarding the practical ramifications, the findings can help entrepreneurs who are preparing to launch a business or are already doing so. The findings provide a comprehensive framework of success variables that must be considered to improve the venture’s performance.

This study’s originality is from presenting a structured and in-depth literature review that describes the current state of entrepreneurship ethics and its contribution to sustainable development goals. A complete analysis of the data gathered on entrepreneurship ethics is offered to establish that it is sustainable.

The task of this paper is to critique the ethics of an university entrepreneurship curriculum. For what purpose is entrepreneurship curriculum designed? Who decides what is to be included in an entrepreneurship curriculum? Ethics has a plurality and implies moral judgment informed by any individual’s values. In applying entrepreneurship education the rationale and justification of what is offered and why should be clear. The paper provides a synthesis conducted on an extant literature review on the ethics of an entrepreneurship curriculum, entrepreneurship education stakeholders, and stakeholder rights and obligations. An ethics enquiry framework is concluded that entrepreneurship education curriculum designers can apply to surface the assumptions underpinning the curriculum and assist educators to be clear and explicit about the intent and ambitions for an entrepreneurship education curriculum design. While this paper develops a framework, it has yet to be tested. Further research can examine specific sets of stakeholder expectations, variations in obligations among regulatory or institutional settings, explicitly examine the range of effects of an entrepreneurship curriculum, and report the usability and practical relevance of such an evaluative framework. Ethics in entrepreneurship education is under-researched and more particularly the ethics of the entrepreneurship curriculum appears to have rarely been questioned. Entrepreneurship education lays the foundation for the future actions of those who shape and socially structure entrepreneurship. Therefore, as educators, there is a greater responsibility for ensuring that the education provided meets certain expectations of and obligations to various stakeholder groups.

We explore the current landscape of business ethics and entrepreneurship within the undergraduate business school curricula and programmatic structure. We then present a couple of approaches we have used to advance the understanding and teaching of business ethics and entrepreneurship as a set of foundational principles.

As contextual framing for our analysis we convened eight colloquia/workshops over the past three years that bring a wide-ranging group of business school faculty, scholars in complementary disciplines, and business practitioners into a small-group setting to have in-depth conversations about the role of business ethics and entrepreneurship within the business school. Data used in our analysis catalog the ways and the degree to which AACSB-accredited business schools focus their undergraduate curricula and degree program structure on ethics and entrepreneurship. Working through publically available data, primarily from business school websites, we use content analysis as a framework for statistical analysis of the alignment between how a business school articulates strategic focus (mission, vision, and purpose statements) and how it structures its curricular offerings and degree programs. Most business schools continue to operationalize their approach to business ethics and entrepreneurship as programmatic appendages rather than a foundational set of knowledge and skills that are central to the school’s teaching mission. In general, business schools are missing an opportunity to teach practical business ethics and principled entrepreneurship as the central driving force in value-creating activities within all organizations.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of multidisciplinary training in the perceived development of social entrepreneurship competence. By means of a sample of an ethics class, this study seeks to argue the relevance of new social entrepreneurs having a broad training, beyond the knowledge they receive from the business area.

This paper is based on a quantitative analysis methodology. Based on the application of a validated questionnaire measuring the perceived development of social entrepreneurship competence, a longitudinal measurement was carried out at two points in time, at the beginning and at the end of an ethics course, in a sample population of 132 undergraduate students. Based on these results, a multifactorial diagnosis was made using a Z-test.

Overall, the sample results did not show a significant improvement in their level of perception of students' development of the social entrepreneurship competence. However, the individual results of the perceived development of sub-competences that make up this competence did reflect some development, especially the sub-competence of social innovation. Thus, this study demonstrates that there is a measurable impact of the contribution of other disciplines, in this case the ethical education, in the training of new entrepreneurs, arguing the importance of multidisciplinary training.

The results of this study contribute to the work of universities in developing social entrepreneurship competence. Based on its findings, institutions will be able to recognize the relevance of multidisciplinary training in the generation of new social entrepreneurs, valuing other disciplinary areas, such as humanities and social sciences, beyond training based exclusively on business knowledge. A key point to capitalize on in training practices for social entrepreneurship is “social innovation”, due to the sense of transcendence and impact that universities should seek, precisely because of their social responsibility to create value.

This research provides empirical evidence of the impact of ethics education on social entrepreneurship education. It argues the importance of reflecting on multidisciplinary education as a complementary element in the perceived development of social entrepreneurship competence in students.

This article investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship and ethics under extreme poverty conditions to unearth context-specific nuances faced by entrepreneurs in these conditions.

A qualitative case study, research method approach was used to collect data from established firms engaged in some form of entrepreneurship and new entrepreneurs.

Findings from the study indicate that a different mindset is required for entrepreneurs to conduct business in conditions of extreme poverty, and therefore a different approach is needed to evaluate business ethics instead of a wholesale adaptation of Western-based ethical values and practices. The study identifies and provides evidence of imitative entrepreneurship undertaken by both new entrepreneurs and established firms to address basic human needs such as for food and personal hygiene.

The emic focus on Zimbabwe, which has its own inherent circumstances, has the potential to minimise the generalisability of findings from the study. However, this does not detract from the findings of the study but actually provides a basis for further research in other markets that have extreme poverty conditions.

Coping strategies are outlined for managing constraints faced by entrepreneurs and opportunities for interacting with consumers. A conceptual framework is developed for use in understanding and managing the relationship between entrepreneurship and ethics in markets where there are conditions of extreme poverty.

Previous studies have largely focused on Western developed markets. This article extends the debate to markets under conditions of extreme poverty.

The purpose of this paper is to question the supposed self‐evidence of a core category in the social entrepreneurship literature: “social value creation”. By criticizing the taken‐for‐granted use of the dichotomy “social vs business” the paper aims to develop a multi‐dimensional approach that conceptualizes the creative entrepreneurial process as generating several forms of value for individuals and society.

The paper proceeds in two steps. First, the shortcomings of the “social vs business” dichotomy are revealed by analyzing its common yet mostly unquestioned use on several levels of inquiry. Then, some conceptual ideas from institutional theory and virtue business ethics are used to sketch a framework for the “social” dimensions of entrepreneurial value creation.

The result of the discussion is a coherent set of conceptual pairs, each characterizing two important aspects of “social” value beyond the utilitarian mainstream. In this respect, the paper gives an overview of potentially useful categories which could help to fill the conceptual void resulting from the vagueness of the “social value creation” concept.

The proposed categories are not exhaustive, as a brief outlook on further ambiguities of value creation shows. Nevertheless, they are an attempt to point out the fruitfulness of virtue business ethics to developing an extended understanding of entrepreneurial value creation for society. An important consequence is an uncommon view on what is the range of relevant examples of social entrepreneurship in the first place.

The paper offers novel, possibly more adequate categories for dealing with the societal and ethical qualities of entrepreneurial value creation. Eventually, it can lead future research to maybe less obvious, but equally important, expressions of social entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to study the role of ethics in the social innovation process and its effect on entrepreneurial passion. It explores the factors that encourage social entrepreneurs to innovate by examining the concepts of harmonious and obsessive passion and ethics.

The database consists of 97 entrepreneurs who benefited from the services offered by the support organizations for social entrepreneurs. The data are analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show that Islamic ethics has a positive effect on social innovation. This effect can be further amplified by harmonious passion (HP). Such passion certainly strengthens social entrepreneurs throughout the innovation process and consolidates the implementation phase of their projects.

This study highlights the importance of ethics in the process of social innovation. Ethics acts directly or through HP to stimulate social innovation. This passion enables taking actions and favors the creation of innovative social projects.

These findings add value to the previous literature by introducing ethics into the entrepreneurial passion theory and exploring new factors that promote social innovation.

Retail or entrepreneurial shops support economic growth, conducting studies in this area is needed. Our study examines whether the buyers have moral intensity, religious beliefs, and self-concept affect purchase ethics. Using quantitative analysis, we employ 150 respondents, consisting of 94 women and 56 men; the analysis tool used is the structure equation modeling model. The results showed that moral intensity influences religiosity. Moral intensity does not affect self-concept, but religiosity stimulates self-concept, and self-concept impacts purchasing ethics. The limitations of this study have not tested the ethical attitudes of retailers, and respondents are very limited.

We explored whether employees in smaller, younger firms would be more ethically compromised, and whether employee identification moderates this relationship.We collected survey data from 154 working professionals enrolled in an MBA program in the southeastern United States. We found that employees of smaller, younger firms selected more compromised ethical choices than employees of larger, older firms. Contrary to our expectations, employee identification had no effect in smaller, younger, firms, yet in larger, older firms, identification actually reduced ethical compliance, suggesting that there is not a simple relationship between identification and ethical compliance.