The ethical behavior in the public organizations: A bibliometric analysis of the academic literature

This research paper aims to present a thorough overview of the existing academic literature an analysis of the most prolific writers of ethical behavior and ethical codes applied to Public Administration (PA) in the last few years, to understand how ethical considerations are being discussed by researchers, and practitioners, and to identify gaps, priorities and recommendations for ethical practice. Through a bibliometric analysis, we managed and analyzed 360 records in the period from 2018 to 2021, collected on databases Web of Science and Scopus. The findings of this analysis show a map of the knowledge regards the ethical behavior measured through the coordinates of many scientific approaches, but still lacking within public administrations such as the universities. This research contributes to ethic knowledge about behavior and code within PA. It also provides to define the peculiarity of ethical profiles in the public sector, in a multidimensional perspective of organizational behavior, digital communication and institutional communication.