Journal of Business Ethics98.1 (Jan 2011): 137-151.
Patterns of Research Productivity
in the Business Ethics Literature: Insights
from Analyses of Bibliometric Distributions
Debabrata Talukdar
ABSTRACT. In any academic discipline, published
articles in respective journals represent ‘‘production
units’’ of scientific knowledge, and bibliometric distri-
butions reflect the patterns in such outputs across authors
or ‘‘producers.’’ Closely following the analysis approach
used for similar studies in the economics and finance lit-
erature, we present the first study to examine whether
there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric
patterns of research productivity in the business ethics
literature. Our results present strong evidence that there
indeed exists a distinct empirical regularity. It is the
so-called Generalized Lotka’s Law of scientific produc-
tivity pattern: the number of authors publishing
n
papers
is about
1/n
c
of those publishing one paper. We discuss
the likely processes that underlie the productivity pattern
postulated by the Generalized Lotka’s Law. We find that
the value of the exponent
c
is equal to about 2.6 for the
comprehensive bibliometric data across the two leading
business ethics journals. The observed research produc-
tivity pattern in the business ethics area, a relatively young
discipline, is interestingly very consistent with those
found in much older, related business disciplines like
economics, accounting, and finance. We discuss the
general implications of our findings.
KEY WORDS: bibliometric distributions, business eth-
ics, cumulative advantage, empirical regularity, knowl-
edge creation, Lotka’s Law, research productivity patterns
Introduction
Every year thousands of peer-reviewed research
articles are published in journals across various aca-
demic disciplines. For any academic discipline, the
published articles in its respective journals represent
‘‘production units’’ of scientific knowledge, and
their bibliometric distributions reflect the patterns in
such scientific productivity across authors or ‘‘pro-
ducers’’ (Coile,
1977
; Solla,
1976
). This process of
scientific knowledge generation and accumulation
raises several interesting research questions. For
instance, is there an empirical regularity in scientific
productivity patterns as captured in bibliometric
distributions across authors? If so, how universal is
such regularity across disciplines? What does it imply
about the extent of ‘‘success breeds success’’ phe-
nomenon in the context of publication outcomes by
authors in an academic discipline and in its leading
research journals?
The aforesaid questions seek insights that are not
only of considerable general interest, but also of
particular import to researchers in various academic
disciplines in understanding the patterns of scientific
productivity and their implications. Not surprisingly,
there exists a rich stream of research that has
examined the role of journals as means of scientific
outputs in academic disciplines and the patterns in
such outputs as captured through bibliometric dis-
tributions across authors (e.g., Bino et al.,
2005
;
DiPrete and Eirich,
2006
; Huber,
2002
; Lovell,
1973
; Morris and Goldstein,
2007
; Price,
1976
;
Stigler et al.,
1995
). Arguably, the most influential
and well-known study on the patterns of biblio-
metric distributions is the seminal paper by Lotka
(
1926
).
In his aforesaid paper, Lotka investigated the
frequency distribution of publication productivity
of chemists and physicists. After analyzing a number
of publication contributions by chemists listed
in
Chemical Abstracts
and of physicists listed in
Auerbach’s
Geschichtstafeln der Physik
, he observed
that the number of authors making
n
publication
contributions is about
1/n
2
of those making one, and
Journal of Business Ethics (2011) 98:137–151
DOI 10.1007/s10551-010-0539-5
media.proquest.com