An overview of ethics of research and development in business area

Abstract

The importance of ethics in research and development (R&D) has been increasing in recent decades, with more fields of activity involved. In the business field, ethics takes many forms, from ethical behavior to the effects of ethics in business. The objective of the paper is to provide an overview and identify the topics addressed on the ethics in research and development activity from the perspective of companies' businesses. The research methodology is qualitative, with an analysis of a sample of relevant papers that have studied ethics in R&D over the last 50 years, papers that were published in journals indexed in Web of Science Clarivate Analytics. The results obtained show that most of the papers were published in the second part of the selected interval, namely in this millennium. Most of the topics addressed were related to corporate governance and sustainability, ethical developments, changes and perceptions. The paper is a systematic review of the literature that contains useful approaches for researchers in identifying the importance of ethics in business, especially in R&D.