From the January/February 2011 issue of Ethikos
Business Ethics (Googled) Through The Ages
Teddy Roosevelt was president when "business ethics" first entered the public consciousness--during the Progressive Era. Interest grew in the 1920s leading up to the Great Crash, but attention dwindled during the Depression and for years after.
"Business ethics" got a boost in the mid-1970s with the Lockheed bribery hearings. The trend steepened with implementation of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations in 1991. A peak was reached as the millennium turned, around 2002.
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That scenario is drawn from Googles remarkable new "Books Ngram Viewer," a software program that tracks the frequency of specific words and phrases published between 1500 and 2008. As the New York Times noted in December:
With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities...1
When we entered the words "business ethics"2 and selected a time a period from 1880 to 2008 (the business ethics line was flat before 1880, i.e., virtually no references at all), we generated the graph on Page 1 (the graph is Googles, the labels were added by Ethikos).
Upon closer examination we noted:
- The first sustained mention of "business ethics" in the corpus of English books occurred in the early 1900s, during the Progressive Era, with a peak in 1905.
- Four subsequent spikes in "business ethics" occurred in 1926, 1982, 1998, and 2002. The trend line began to climb upward in the
- The trend line began to climb upward in the mid-1970s, around the time of the Lockheed bribery hearings3 , and more steeply around the time of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (1991), which provided incentives for corporations to implement ethics and compliance programs.
- "Business ethics" references reached an all-time peak in 2002 with a 0.0000600% share (i.e., percentage of all "bigrams"-two word phrases-contained in Googles sample of books written in English).
- Business ethics is primarily an American preoccupation. No national corpus of books has as high a percentage of references to business ethics, although the Germans, ranking second among those tracked, appear to be gaining. If one types "business ethics" and specifies the Chinese "corpus" ("books predominantly in simplified Chinese script"), by comparison, the graph is totally flat; there are no references to "business ethics" at all from 1800 to 2008. The same holds for the Russian corpus of books.
Admittedly, this could be a translation problem, but there is considerable business ethics activity in the German corpus of books-which peaks at about 0.0000400% in 2008. The French corpus reaches a peak of 0.0000200% with smoothing (i.e., using running average versus raw data), and the Spanish corpus hits a peak of 0.0000200% in 2008 with smoothing. The peak for British English is only 0.0000100%--reached in 2008. American English peaks (with smoothing) between 2005 to 2008 at 0.0000500%. - The references to "business ethics" decline markedly after 2002 in the English corpus: the share was only 0.0000340% in 2008 (i.e., raw data, down from 0.0000600% in 2002, as noted). However, if one restricts the search to American English (i.e., the English corpus "but further restricted to books published in the United States"), there is no decline in the later 2000s. In fact, a peak is reached in 2008 with a 0.0000900% share, using raw data.)
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A look at four related terms on the Books Ngram Viewer - corporate compliance, corporate ethics, whistleblower, and corporate responsibility - reveals a generally similar pattern (see below). With corporate compliance, corporate ethics, and whistleblower, there is no or very little activity until about 1970. (Were using a running average here, with smoothing.) This pattern basically holds whether one uses the English corpus (all books published in English) or the American English corpus (books published in the United States alone). Corporate responsibility, by comparison, has consistent activity from 1880, but the graph shoots sharply upward in the early 1990s in the English corpus. Corporate responsibility in the American English corpus veers strongly upward in the late 1990s.
This publication took a closer look at "business ethics" in the five peak periods (English corpus, no smoothing) after 1900.
1905
The first significant peak in business ethics occurred in 1905 (0.0000162%), during the so-called Progressive Era in U.S. business. There were no books with business ethics in their titles published at this time, but there were references in periodicals, such as in the Atlantic Monthly and the Yale Review.
This was the time of the "muckrakers," a term whose modern use is often attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. Ida Tarbell published The Rise of the Standard Oil Company in 1902, a classic about John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil Co., and the manipulation of trusts. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, which revealed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and was a major factor in the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Many of the business ethics references at this time appear to reflect antitrust concerns, a focus of reformers during the Progressive Era. A search in Google books, for instance, revealed this reference from The Atlantic Monthly: Volume 96, page 415, (1905):
These practices, collectively called the factor system, are put under the ban of the new business ethics. The practice of cutting prices in one locality below those that prevail generally, for the purpose of overcoming local competition, has been even more warmly denounced.
Or Herbert B. Mulfords The Square Deal (1905):
Under the scheme of business ethics as thus defined, the captain of industry could dare to do in his office what he never would think of doing in his home. ... Standard Oil sets up the new motto, "Everything that does not incur punishment for crime is good morals in business."
1926
- "Business ethics" reached a second peak in 1926 (raw data); however, with a smoothing of 3 (a running average), the peak was 1929.
- Key event: The stock market crash of October 29, 1929.
- Business ethics' share of "bigrams" was 0.0000300% in 1926, a mark that wasn't surpassed until the early 1990s.
A business ethics reference from the year (1926), from Proceedings of the Stanford Conference on Business Education, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business:
President Morgan: "I started out with the thought that business ethics should not be taught. But as students come in touch with business problems I am more and more convinced that it takes more than good will to make good ethics ... I think if there is any place in the world where the case method is fully appropriate, it is in teaching business ethics."
1982
- A third peak occurred in 1982, with a share of about 0.0000290%.
- Key event: A severe recession in the United States that began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982.
"Business ethics" books published in 1982 included, Business Ethics, Richard T. De George; Business Ethics, Norman E. Bowie; Business Ethics: Doing Ethics in Business, Donald G. Jones.
1998
- A fourth peak occurred in 1998 (0.0000510%)
- Notable economic event: Dot.com bubble (1995-2000).
"Business Ethics" books published in 1998 included: Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases, Manuel G. Velásquez; Business Ethics: The Pragmatic Path Beyond Principles to Process, Rogene A. Buchholz, Sandra B. Rosenthal; Education, Leadership, and Business Ethics, Clarence Cyril Walton, Ronald F. Duska; Business Ethics: Australian Problems and Cases, Damian Grace, Stephen Cohen.
2002
- 'Business ethics' references reached an all-time raw data high mark in 2002 (0.0000600%).
- A recession affected the European Union during 2000 and 2001 and the U.S. in 2002-2003.
- Other notable events: September 11, 2001 attacks. Stock market downturn. Dot.com crash.
Business ethics books published in 2002 included: A Companion to Business Ethics, Robert Frederick; Teaching Business Ethics for Effective Learning, Ronald R. Sims; The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics, Norman E. Bowie.
Using raw data, references to business ethics decline after 2002 in the English corpus: from 0.0000600% in 2002 to about 0.0000340% in 2008. But using 'American English,' 2008 was a peak year, with 'business ethics' share exceeding 0.0000900%.
— Andrew Singer
1Cohen, Patricia, "In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture," New York Times, December 16, 2010.
2 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=business+ethics&year_start=1880&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0
3 In late 1975 and early 1976, a sub-committee of the U.S. Senate led by Senator Frank Church concluded that members of the Lockheed board had paid members of friendly governments to guarantee contracts for military aircraft. The scandal played a key part in the formulation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signed into law in 1977.