Chapter 1 Introduction*
Alex C. Michalos and Deborah C. Poff (eds.)
This citation classics monograph in the ABER series marks over 30 years of publishing academic articles in the Journal of Business Ethics. As you read the introduction to this book, you will note that we address the strengths and limitations of using various citation indexes and indicators as tools for assessing the scholarly quality and impact of articles in any particular field.
Before we begin that discussion, however, we would like to discuss other indicators of importance for the articles that appear in this collection besides that of citations. In order to do so, let us take you back to our then nascent journal, which first appeared in print in 1982. It was one of the first academic peer-reviewed journals dedicated to the interdisciplinary field of business ethics and over 30 years later remains the only rank A business ethics journal in the Financial Times 45. In fact, we believe that its early establishment as an academic venue for the publication of research in the interdisciplinary field of business ethics is an historically significant event or marker that played a critical role in establishing this new field. Further, it continues to play a pivotal role in the evolution of the field and its cognate interdisciplinary research areas. Our view in this is shared by a number of our past and current editors of the Journal as well as scholars whose articles appear in this book.
If we use Kuhn’s (1970) discussion of a paradigm in scientific theory (leaving aside the criticisms of Kuhn’s famous tract on scientific revolutions), he described a number of notable and recognizable features of an area of intellectual inquiry and
* The first third of this essay is excerpted with some revisions from Michalos (2005). We are grateful to Chis Hurst for his bibliographic help.
A.C. Michalos (*)
Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of Northern British Columbia, (home) 463 13th Street, Brandon, R7A 4P9, MB, Canada e-mail: michalos@brandonu.ca
D.C. Poff (eds.)
President and Vice Chancellor, Brandon University, 18th Street, R7A 6A9, Brandon, MB, Canada
A.C. Michalos and D.C. Poff (eds.), Citation Classics from the Journal of Business Ethics, Advances in Business Ethics Research 2, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4126-3_1, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013
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discovery that are germane here. The manner in which a paradigm transforms a group of scholars into a field or profession, according to Kuhn, includes the enhancement of scholarly careers and reputation through the publication of journal articles and the initiation of those specialized journals where articles are “addressed only to professional colleagues, the men whose knowledge of a shared paradigm can be assumed…” (Kuhn 1970, p. 20). Further, Kuhn noted that the establishment of learned societies, the establishment of curriculum and fields of study as legitimate disciplines within universities and colleges are additional indicators of the acceptance and adoption of a paradigm. As well, monographs on theory and methodology that are innovative and contribute new knowledge to the field count as indicators of the establishment of the paradigm. Finally, the production of textbooks, which are seen as less prestigious because of their didactic role in teaching the norms and established questions in the field are later indicators of the normal and accepted premises of the field.
As you read the articles in this contribution to the ABER book series, it is important to note that in the articles and in the reflections of authors and editors, we have powerful confirmation of the importance of these authors and editors who did precisely what Kuhn itemizes in his list of recognizable contributions and key indicators of the establishment of a new paradigm for a field of inquiry. These scholars contributed to the knowledge creation in the field through their research and publications. They contributed to the reputation of the journal, not only through publication but through service as referees and editors. They established and served on the executives of new learned societies and they contributed to the establishment of other learned journals with different and complementary missions and foci. Finally, many wrote, edited or co-edited the texts that became the standard material for the academic courses and programs of study which they frequently designed, introduced in their university curricula and in which they taught. To all of these contributors, for all of their diverse contributions, we express our sincere thanks. Together we have built the foundation of a field of research whose importance can only increase with time.
Citation Classics
Eugene Garfield was the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and several other important works. According to Garfield (1985), “By definition, a Citation Classic is a paper or book that has been highly cited in its field” (p. 404). Because different fields are characterized by different institutional arrangements (e.g., numbers and kinds of communication media, practitioners, standardized practices and rules of procedure), different numerical thresholds are used to identify classics in each field. In an earlier paper, Garfield (1976) wrote that
…less than 25% of all papers will be cited ten times in all eternity! …any paper cited ten times in one year is ipso facto significant. Occasionally there is an anomaly. But a paper cited ten times in each of two successive years is well on its way to citation stardom. Whether the author is on the way to immortality depends on how well he or she does in other papers (p. 419).
An average paper in the Science Citation Index is cited about 1.7 times per year (Garfield 1972). For the years 1955–1987, Garfield (1989) claimed that for the whole Index database,
…more than 56 percent of the source items are uncited – not even self-cited. (Many of these source items are abstracts, letters, and editorials, of limited interest; nevertheless, a huge number of papers go uncited.) (p. 7).
In 1973 Garfield distinguished three kinds of “uncitedness”, namely, “the uncitedness of the mediocre, the unintelligible, the irrelevant”, then that “of the meritorious but undiscovered or forgotten”, and finally that of the distinction that comes to those whose work has become so well known (and presumably been previously so heavily cited) that one finds it at first tedious, then unnecessary, and finally actually gauche to cite such men at all (p. 413).
Hamilton (1990) reported that ISI data revealed that about 55% of the “papers published between 1981 and 1985 in journals indexed by the institute received no citations at all in the 5 years after they were published” (p. 1331). In response, Pendlebury (1991) wrote that the precise figures were “47.4% uncited for the sciences, 74.7% for the social sciences, and 98.0% for the arts and humanities”. However, more importantly, he explained that
“These statistics represent every type of article that appears in journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in its Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. The journals’ ISI indexes contain not only articles, reviews, and notes, but also meeting abstracts, editorials, obituaries, letters like this one, and other marginalia, which one might expect to be largely un-cited. In 1984, the year of the data quoted by Hamilton, about 27% of the items indexed in the Science Citation Index were such marginalia. The comparable figures for the social sciences and arts and humanities were 48% and 69%, respectively.
If one analyzes the data more narrowly and examines the extent of uncited articles alone (this information was not yet available when Hamilton wrote his articles), the figures shrink, some more than others: 22.4% of 1984 science articles remained uncited by the end of 1988, as did 48.0% of social sciences articles and 93.1% of articles in arts and humanities journals” (pp. 1410–1411).
Table 1.1 illustrates a few thresholds for citation classics from different fields, ranging from papers with 50 or more citations covering the fields of geography and marine biology to 500 or more citations covering all fields listed in the Science Citation Index. Plomp (1990) used a threshold of 25 citations to identify “highly cited papers”, which is a more modest label than ‘citation classic’ and perhaps not quite the same idea. As others had before him (e.g., Garfield 1972), Plomp noticed, for example, that because in 1982 the 40 core biochemistry journals produced 13,500 articles while the 25 core astrosciences journals produced 4,500 articles, there were many more opportunities for citations in the former field than in the latter. In fact, “the most cited biochemistry papers obtained ten times as many citations as the most cited astrosciences papers”, although there were only three times as many biochemistry papers than astrosciences papers.
In the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, the entry for ‘citer motivations’ says
Citations are examples of unobtrusive or nonreactive social science measures. Unobtrusive measures are physical evidences of activity that exist independently of their source: the private act of authorship produces citations that are public objects available for scrutiny and analysis. As with many of these unobtrusive measures, it is difficult to ascertain in any given application what social or psychological construct the citation counts are measuring (Brooks 1988, p. 48).
Merton (1977), a highly productive and respected sociologist of science, believed that the status of any scientist’s research output
…resides only in the recognition accorded his work by peers in the social system of science through reference to his work…Since recognition of the worth of one’s work by qualified peers is, in science, the basic form of reward (all other rewards deriving from it) and since it can only be widely accorded within the social system of science when the attributed work is widely known, this provides institutional incentive for the open publication, without direct financial reward, of scientific work (pp. 47–48, as quoted by Lawani and Bayer 1983).
Lawani and Bayer (1983) claimed that
Despite the ambiguities of citation practices, the difficulties of ascertaining why a paper is or is not cited, and the potential malpractices in citing, considerable evidence has been accumulated to suggest that citations do indeed provide an objective measure of what is variously termed “productivity,” “significance,” “quality,” “utility,” “influence,” “effectiveness,” or “impact” of scientists and their scholarly products (pp. 60–61).
The evidence takes many forms. For example, Narin (1976) reviewed 24 studies published between 1957 and 1975 that generally confirmed the hypothesis that citation counts are positively correlated with peer rankings of the quality of scientific articles, eminence of scientists, graduate schools, graduate departments, editor evaluations, Nobel prizes and other awards, authors’ incomes, access to resources, initial appointments and mobility. Brooks (1985) reported that Virgo (1977)
…found citation analysis to be a consistent and accurate predictor of important scientific papers, better on the average than the individual scientist’s judgment which ‘is a reasonable conclusion if one considers that citations actually reflect a consensus of a large group of readers as compared to the evaluation of a single individual’ [Virgo 1977, p. 423].
Lawani and Bayer (1983) undertook a very thorough study comparing peer assessments of cancer research papers with the papers’ citation rates and concluded that “Highly rated papers are more highly cited than average papers”. Notwithstanding such supporting evidence for the usefulness of citation counts in the evaluation of published research, Garfield has often published cautionary remarks about the use of such counts. For example, he wrote that
Counts of this sort are strictly quantitative and objective. But even admitting this limitation, an author’s or a paper’s frequency of citation has been found to correlate well with professional standing. It is certainly not the only measure, nor one that can be used, for any purpose, in isolation. We do not claim for it the absolute reliability that critics of citation analysis have wrongly imputed to us when they have attacked it. The fact does remain, however, that it provides a useful objective criterion previously unavailable (Garfield 1981, p. 135, reprinted in Garfield 1983).
Among the problems with using citation counts in the ISI databases to evaluate publications, Garfield (1983) mentioned the following. …there are undoubtedly highly useful journals that are not cited frequently [e.g., Scientific American]. Scientists read many such journals for the same reason people read newspapers and other non-scientific periodicals – to keep up with what is going on generally…Another consideration is that citation frequency is sometimes – indeed to some extent must be – a function of variables other than scientific merit. Some such variables may be an author’s reputation, the controversiality of subject matter, a journal’s circulation and its cost, reprint dissemination, its coverage by current-awareness and indexing and abstracting services, society memberships, the availability and extent of libraries’ journal collections, national research priorities (p. 137); see also Garfield (1977, 1988).
While some features of published citation counts have been improved, in a series of papers MacRoberts and MacRoberts (1986, 1987, 1989a, b) challenged the use of citation counts on a variety of grounds. From their papers and others we constructed the following list of criticisms. (1) Many individuals and works that have had an influence on the development of published papers are not cited in those papers (they estimated that “about 15% of the influence on a paper is contained in its references”); (2) sometimes important influences are mentioned in the text of published papers but not in their bibliographies; (3) the motivation for self-citations is suspect (Self-citations are generally estimated to be about 10–30% of all citations; Bonzi and Snyder (1991) surveyed 51 self-citing authors and found “very few differences in motivation” between self- and other-citations.); (4) when review papers are cited, it is unclear exactly who is being “rewarded”; (5) general references within a text also have unclear referents, e.g., “Mendelian genetics”; (6) ISI indexes contain many errors, e.g., when authors’ names are spelled in different ways, or written sometimes with and sometimes without middle initials, separate entries may made for the same document; when page and/or volume numbers are changed, separate entries may be made; when page numbers alone or page numbers and volume numbers are inverted, new entries may be made; (7) ISI indexes cover only about 10% of scientific literature; (8) “English language journals and western science are clearly over-represented, whereas small countries, non-western countries, and journals published in non-Roman scripts are under-represented.”; (9) different disciplines are more or less well represented (e.g., 6% of biology journals are included, compared to 14% of clinical medicine journals); (10) politics seems to have influenced inclusions and exclusions (e.g., Review of Radical Political Economy is excluded, but Public Interest is included); (11) later proponents of views may be cited as the views’ inventers; (12) proponents of views may be cited as opponents, and vice-versa; (13) people often cite material that “they have not seen or that they have seen but have not read”; (14) people make ceremonial and perfunctory citations (Moravcsik and Murugesan (1975) estimated about 40% of the references in a sample of high energy physics papers were perfunctory); (15) private communications are often influential but do not provide a published title to cite; (16) authors are notorious for repeating themselves in different papers, each of which may be cited as an additional contribution to research; (17) people sometimes select only one of several similar papers that influenced them; (18) they also redundantly cite several similar papers because they are similar, although they may have read and/or been
influenced by one (Moravcsik and Murugesan (1975) estimated about one-third of the references in their sample were redundant); (19) they may cite a well-known or fail to cite a relatively unknown author because these practices are perceived to impress their readers; (20) about 70% of citations appear to be “multi-motivated”; (21) different disciplines have different typical rates of citation, which are typically neglected by citation analysts (e.g., engineering and mathematics papers average 5–6 references per publication, psychology and biology average 8–10, earth and space science, physics, chemistry and clinical medicine average 12–15 and biomedical research papers average 18–20); (22) citation rates vary with countries of origin; (23) rates vary with the “size of the pool of available citers”; (24) methods and review papers “receive disproportionately more citations than theoretical or empirical papers”; (25) citation counts cannot allocate credit for papers with several authors; (26) researchers from some countries tend to be aware of and cite papers coming from their countries (e.g., Americans tend to cite papers by Americans); (27) citation counts do not distinguish positive or negative reasons for the citations; (28) authors tend to search the literature for and cite those papers that agree with their views; (29) citation rates vary with the physical accessibility of cited material; (30) changes in editors and editorial boards have produced changes in citation patterns (Sievert and Haughawout 1989); (31) recent papers are cited more than older ones because there are relatively more of the former (Oppenheim and Renn, 1978); (32) rapidly developing fi elds like molecular biology and biochemistry are “more dependent on fresh data” and therefore generate relatively more citations (Vinkler 1987).
Given the evidence just reviewed for and against the use of citation counts as measures of quality, reasonable people may come to different conclusions about their usefulness. In our view, such counts must be used with caution, recognizing that a wide variety of plausible assessment criteria are available and that use of a more robust array of such criteria may lead to different conclusions. Citation counts are used here with this caveat.
Table 1.1 shows that we have some flexibility in specifying a threshold figure for citation classics.
Classics in the Journal of Business Ethics
Our data were extracted from the total Web of Science database which, according to Thomson Reuters (2011), “contains 760 million+ cited references…[drawn from] 12,032 high impact journals”. On the basis of data taken from the Web of Science (and available to anyone), we found that in the 30 year period from 1982 to 2011 (June) there were a total of 4,747 titles published in the Journal of Business Ethics. Since the journal seldom published book reviews, editorials or letters, most of those titles represented articles. One thousand and eighty-four articles (22.8%) were not cited at all, which is fewer half of the 55–57% general average for the whole Index database, lower than the 74.7% for all social sciences material and the 48%
Table 1.1 Citation classics, diverse definitions and fields Required cites, ³ No. of classics Maximum cites Fields/Journals Source
500 3 1255 All Sci.Cit.Index Johnston (2003)
100 36 1255 All Sci.Cit.Index Johnston (2003)
50 150 Na Geography Js Bodman (2003)
158a 100 705 J Am. Med. A Garfield (1987)
100b 50 Anaesthesia & Pain Js Terajima and Åneman (2003)
75 28 405 Chesap. Bio. Lab Waring (2000)
50 21 868 Marine Bio. Js Fuseler-McDowell (1988)
25c na Na Medicine Plomp (1990)
Source: Michalos 2005, p. 29
a Top 100 most cited articles selected, minimum citation frequency was 158
b Top 50 most cited articles selected, minimum citation frequency was 100
c Highly cited articles
for social science articles alone. The 3,663 (77.2%) cited articles generated 33,750 citations, with a classic hyperbolic distribution curve in which relatively few articles attract many citations and relatively many articles attract few citations. The mean number of citations per published article was 7.1, with a mode of 0, a median of 3, and a standard deviation of 12.1. There were 100 articles with 43 or more citations each (i.e., the mean of 7 + 3 standard deviations), and those 100 (2.1%) articles attracted 6,518/33,750 = 19.3%. of all citations. Fifty-one (1.0%) articles with 55 or more citations (i.e., 7 + 4 standard deviations) attracted 4,150/33,750 = 12.3% of all citations. Thirty-three (0.7%) articles with 67 or more citations (i.e., 7 + 5 standard deviations) attracted 3,077/33,750 = 9.1% of all citations.
Since articles with citation rates of 43 or more are 3 standard deviations above the mean, those articles form a fairly distinguished lot. Those with rates of 4 (55 citations), 5 (67 citations) or more standard deviations above the mean form an even more impressive group. If an article has more citations than 99% of all articles published in the journal, that is an outstanding achievement. Accordingly, we designated articles with citation rates at least 4 standard deviations above the mean as citation classics.
Comparing our threshold with those in Table 1.1, our bar has been set at over twice the height of Plomp’s medical journals, and bit higher than Bodman’s geography journals and Fuseler-McDowell’s marine biology journals. The other five thresholds are higher than ours and some considerably higher. Our threshold of 55 citations produces more classics than five of the seven given in Table 1.1 and our paper with the greatest number of citations (210) is lower than that of the five studies providing maximum numbers. If our threshold was set at 5 standard deviations above the mean (67), our number of classics would have been higher than three of the seven entries in Table 1.1.
Table 1.2 contains a breakdown of the 100 most distinguished articles according to their age and citation counts. One would expect that the longer an article is available for citation, the better its chances of being cited and turning up in a list of citation classics. However, examination of the publication dates of the 100
Table 1.2 Age of article and citation rates
articles examined to produce Table 1.2 reveals that this expectation is at best only partially confirmed. Table 1.2 gives a complete picture.
For the top 100, 51 classics and 18 4-standard deviation classics, the expectation is disconfirmed. In these three cases, the relative frequency of publications runs from those in the period 1992–2001 to 1982–1991 to 2001–2011. Among the 100 articles, 39% were published in the period from 1982 to1991 period, 44% in 1992–2001, and 17% in 2002–2011. Among the 51 citation classics, the gap between the 1992–2001 and 1982–1991 figures is larger than the gap for the same periods for the group of 100 articles, i.e., 7.8 vs. 5 percentage points. For the 18 articles whose rates are exactly 4 standard deviations above the mean, the gap is still larger, i.e., 27.8 vs. 7.8 percentage points. When we reach the 33 articles with rates of 5 or more standard deviations above the mean, the expected progression appears, i.e., 45.5% in the earliest period, 42.4% in the middle period and 12.1% in the last. Generally, age is probably an advantage, but not a sufficient condition for achieving the status of a classic.
Table 1.3 lists the 51 citation classics for the 1982–2011 (June) period. Ninetyfour authors produced the 51 citation classics, for an average of 1.84 authors per article. For the 18 articles with rates between 55 and 66, there were 29 authors averaging 1.61 authors per article. For the elite 33 articles, there were 65 authors averaging 1.97 authors per article. Apparently, then, on average there is some advantage in having more authors per paper.
We identified the 51 classics’ country origins by the country of the lead author. It hardly mattered because the lead authors of 86% (44) of the articles lived in the USA. Besides these, there were two articles coming from the Netherlands and Spain, and one each from the UK, Hong Kong and Israel.
Sixty-seven percent (34) of the classics involved some sort of quantitative analysis, e.g., surveys of consumers, business students and managers, as well as meta-analyses, development of new standardized measures and some modeling. There is no logi cally tidy way to distinguish theoretical from philosophical analyses. So, the best we can do is report that the remaining 33% were largely theoretical and/or philosophical.
We tried a variety of ways of sorting articles by topics and/or types, but there are too many articles that might plausibly be characterized in several different ways. Very roughly, about 51.0% of the classics involve some sort of analyses of moral virtue and behaviour, 17.6% are literature reviews, 15.7% are concerned with modeling ethical decision making, 9.8% concern some feature of codes of ethics and 5.9% are about corporate social and financial performance.
Table 1.3
Journal of Business Ethics Citation classics 1982–2011 (June)
Citations Title
210
Ethical decision-making: a review of the empirical literature
147 Toward the development of a multidimensional scale for improving evaluations of business ethics
124 Corporate social responsibility theories: mapping the territory
123 A behavioral model of ethical and unethical decision-making
118 The effects of culture on ethical decision-making: an application of Hofstedes typology
111 Moral reasoning and business ethics: implications for research, education and management
110 Organizational dissidence: the case of whistle-blowing
106 The social desirability response bias in ethics research
106 Methodology in business ethics research: a review and critical assessment
105 A review of the empirical decisionmaking literature: 1996–2003
100 Judging the morality of business practices: the influence of personal moral philosophies
98 A review of empirical studies assessing ethical decision-making in business
98 A study of the effect of age and gender upon student business ethics
97 Some initial steps toward improving the measurement of ethical evaluations of marketing activities
95 Differences in ethical perceptions between male and female managers: myth or reality
88 Business ethics: a literature review with a focus on marketing ethics
86 An integrative model for understanding and managing ethical behavior in business organizations
82 Concerns of college students regarding business ethics
Author(s) Vol. Year
Robert C Ford
Woodrow D Richardson 13 1994
R Eric Reidenbach 9 1990
Donald P Robin
Elisabet Garriga 53 2004
Domenec N Mele
Michael Bommer 6 1987
Clarence Gratto
Jerry Gravander
Mark Tuttle
Scott J Vitell 12 1993
Saviour L Nwachukwu
James H Barnes
Linda Klebe Trevino 11 1992
Janet P Near 4 1985
Marcia P Miceli
Donna M Randall 10 1991
Maria F Fernandes
Donna M Randall 9 1990
Annetta M Gibson
Michael J O’Fallon 59 2005
Kenneth D Butterfield
Donelson R Forsyth 11 1992
Terry W Loe 25 2000
Linda Ferrell
Phylis Mansfield
Durwood Ruegger 11 1992
Earnest W King
R Eric Reidenbach 7 1988
Donald P Robin
Jeaneen M Kidwell 6 1987
Robert E Stevens
Art L Bethke
John Tsalikis 8 1989
David J Fritzsche
W Edward Stead 9 1990
Dan L Worrell
Jean Garner Stead
Richard F Beltramini 3 1984
Robert A Peterson
George Kozmetsky (continued)
Table 1.3 (continued)
Citations Title Author(s)
79 Gender differences in proclivity for unethical behavior
77 Predicting unethical behavior: a comparison of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior
77 Consumer ethics: an investigation of the ethical beliefs of elderly consumers
73 The role of moral intensity in moral judgments: an empirical investigation
73 Will the ethics of business change: a survey of future executives
73 Situational ethics: an empirical study of differentiators of student attitudes
72 The relationship between corporate social performance and organizational size, financial performance and environmental performance
71 Business codes of multinational firms: what do they say?
70 Consumer ethics: an empirical investigation of factors influencing ethical judgments of the final consumer
70 The morality of software piracy: a cross-cultural analysis
Michael Betz 8 1989
Lenahan O’Connell
Jon M Shepard
Man Kit Chang 17 1998
Scott J Vitell 10 1991
James R Lumpkin
Mohammed YA Rawwas
Sara A Morris 14 1995
Robert A McDonald
Thomas M Jones 7 1988
Frederick H Gautschi
Charles W McNichols 4 1985
Thomas W Zimmerer
Peter A Stanwick 17 1998
Sarah A Stanwick
Muel Kaptein 50 2004
Scott J Vitell 11 1992
James Muncy
William R Swinyard 9 1990
Heikki Rinne
Au Keng Kau
69 The association between corporate social responsibility and financial performance: the paradox of social cost Moses L Pava
Joshua Krausz
68 Corporate ethics practices in the mid-1990s: an empirical study of the Fortune 1000 Gary R Weaver 18 1999
Linda Klebe Trevino
Philip L Cochran
67 Concepts and definitions of CSR and corporate sustainability: between agency and communion Marcel van Marrewijk 44 2003
67 An experimental examination of the effects of individual and situational factors on unethical behavioral intentions in the workplace
Gwen E Jones
Michael J Kavanagh
67 Pinto fires and personal ethics: a script analysis of missed opportunities Dennis A Gioia
66 Toward an understanding of ethical climate: it’s relationship to ethical behavior and supervisory influence
65 The influence of stated organizational concern upon ethical decision-making
James C Wimbush 13 1994
Jon M Shepard
Eugene R Laczniak 6 1987
Edward J Inderrieden (continued)
Table 1.3 (continued)
63 Professional codes: why, how and with what impact
63 Ethical beliefs and behavior among managers: a cross-cultural perspective
61 Business ethics: conflicts, practices and belief of industrial executives
60 Codes of ethics as signals for ethical behavior
60 The impact of national culture on software piracy
59 Religiosity, ethical ideology and intentions to report a peer’s wrongdoing
59 Demographic and related differences in ethical views among small businesses
58 An analysis of corporate ethical code studies: where do we go from here
58 Managers’ personal values as drivers of corporate social responsibility
57 Ethical values of individuals at different levels in the organizational hierarchy of a single firm
57 Business students and ethics:
56 The challenge of ethical behavior in organizations
56 Personal characteristics in college students’ evaluations of business ethics and corporate social responsibility
56 Business ethics judgments: a cross-cultural comparison
55 Corporate codes of ethics and sales force behavior: a case study
Troy A Festervand
W Whipple
Comparisons with Business Ethics Quarterly, 2001–2011
Since people often make comparisons between the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly, we thought it would be useful to do some quantitative analysis. Because JOBE existed 10 years before BEQ, it would not have been reasonable or fair to compare the two journals for the life of each one. The best we could do is roughly compare outputs from the years 2001–2011.
For that period of time, JOBE published 2,753 articles, compared to 430 for BEQ, i.e., a bit over six articles were published in the former for every one published in the latter. The total numbers of citations for JOBE and BEQ were 12,697 and 1,895, respectively, again representing a bit over a six to one advantage. The mean citation rates and standard deviations for the two journals are remarkably similar. For JOBE the mean was 4.6 and the standard deviation was 8.0. For BEQ the comparable figures were 4.4 and 8.4. The maximum number of citations for a JOBE article was 124, compared to 90 for BEQ. Thirty-two percent of JOBE articles were not cited at all, compared to 38% of BEQ articles. So articles published in JOBE had a somewhat greater chance of being cited.
When we compared the top 20 articles in JOBE for the longer and shorter periods, we were surprised to find that only two appeared in both sets. In the 1982–2011 period, the Garriga and Mele (2004) article was in third place and the O’Fallon and Butterfield (2005) article was tenth. In the 2001–2011 period, the Garriga and Mele article placed fi rst and O’Fallon and Butter fi eld came second. The differences in the two lists provide additional evidence of the insufficiency of article age as an explanation for citation status. The fact that the two articles appearing in both lists are literature review articles provides additional support to one of the most frequently noticed findings from citation research.
Comparing the JOBE and BEQ lists of the 20 most frequently cited articles by articles’ lead authors, there is only one name appearing in both lists. The author is Geoff Moore. His JOBE article appeared in 2004 (“The fair trade movement: parameters, issues and future research”) and his BEQ article appeared in 2005 (“Humanizing business: a modern virtue ethics and the virtuous corporation”). The JOBE article is a descriptive review of the fair trade movement and the BEQ article is a philosophical analysis. The fact that there is only one name in both lists supports the generally accepted view that the two journals serve somewhat overlapping but different research communities.
The articles by Garriga and Mele (2004) and Moore (2004) appeared in a Special Issue of JOBE based on the 16th Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network, edited by Laszlo Zsolnai and Laszlo Feteke. Apparently, then, very high quality articles may appear in Special Issues as well as in regular issues.
Because we believe in the soundness of most of the 25 arguments offered by Seglen (1997) showing that Journal Impact Factors are invalid measures of journal quality, we have not presented any such figures here. The comparisons explained earlier of the differences in the top ranked articles in JOBE for longer and shorter periods reveals an important time-related dimension for the use of citation rates for any purpose. Articles with impressive citation rates in the short run may have less or more impressive rates in the long run, and there is no rule book to help researchers decide exactly what length time-runs are most appropriate. Since one publishes to be read, if all other things are equal, the longer one’s material is read, the better. Some philosopher said, with exaggeration no doubt, that one should write for all eternity, meaning not take an eternity to write but to be read for eternity. From this point of view, which we accept, it would be preferable to be well-cited over 30 years versus 20 or 2.
One of the most interesting things we found by examining the top 20 articles in JOBE and BEQ for the 2001–2011 period was the very long lag time for citation of articles in both journals. For JOBE, among the top 20 articles, there was one article from 2006, and for BEQ there was one article from 2007, i.e., the article with the nearest publication date to 2011 in the top 20 for JOBE came out 5 years earlier and for BEQ 4 years earlier. If these lag times are anywhere representative of most of the articles published in these two journals, then it would clearly be a serious mistake to suppose that a Journal Impact Factor carries any useful information at all. A Journal’s Impact Factor is calculated by dividing of the number of times articles are cited in any year by the number of articles, reviews, proceedings or notes published in the 2 previous years, e.g., the Impact Factor for JOBE or BEQ for 2011 would be the result of dividing the number of citations to articles in those journals that year by the number of publications in those journals for 2009 and 2010. If it usually takes at least 4 or 5 years before the top articles in these journals are cited, the 2-year basis used for Journal Impact Factors makes such measures irrelevant. Seglen (1997, p. 506) remarked that “far from being a quality indicator, citation impact is primarily a measure of scientific utility, rather than of scientific quality”. We would add the qualification “ short term scientific utility”.
Appendix: Articles with Citation Rates Greater than 3 and Less than 4 Standard Deviations Above the Mean,
54 Supply chain specific? Understanding the patchy success of ethical sourcing initiatives
54 Evolution and implementation: a study of values, business ethics and corporate social responsibility
54 Measuring the impact of teaching ethics to future managers – a review, assessment and recommendations
53 Enron ethics (or: culture matters more than codes)
53 A cross-cultural comparison of the ethics of business students
53 Ethical attitudes of students and business professionals – a study of moral reasoning
James Weber 9 1990
Ronald R Sims 45 2003
Johannes Brinkmann
Steven Lysonski 10 1991
William Gaidis
John A Wood 7 1988
Justin G Longenecker
Joseph A McKinney
Carlos W Moore
1982–2011 (June) (continued)
Appendix (continued)
Citations Title Author(s)
52 An empirical investigation of the relationship between change in corporate social performance and financial performance: a stakeholder theory perspective
52 The institutionalization of organizational ethics
52 Toward a profile of student software piraters
52 Ethical decision-making in the medical profession – an application of the theory of planned behavior
51 The perceived role of ethics and social responsibility: a scale development
51 Situational determinants of software piracy: an equity theory perspective
51 A comparative analysis of ethical beliefs – a 4 country study
Bernadette M Ruf 32 2001
Krishnamurty Muralidhar
Robert M Brown
Jay J Janney
Karen Paul
Ronald R Sims 10 1991
Ronald R Sims 15 1996
Hsing K Cheng
Hildy Teegen
Donna M Randall 10 1991
Annetta M Gibson
Anusorn Singhapakdi 15 1996
Scott J Vitell
Kumar C Rallapalli
Kenneth L Kraft
Richard S Glass 15 1996
Wallace A Wood
Mee-Kau Nyaw 13 1994
Ignace Ng
50 Consumers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibilities: a cross-cultural comparison Isabelle Maignan 30
50 Empiricism in business ethics – suggested research directions Diana C Robertson 12 1993
50 Ethical behavior of marketing managers David J Fritzsche 2 1983
Helmut Becker
49 Corporate legitimacy as deliberation: a communicative framework Guido Palazzo 66 2006 Aandreas G Scherer
49 Ethical codes of conduct and organizational context: a study of the relationship between codes of conduct, employee behavior and organizational values
49 Issue-contingent effects on ethical decision making: a cross-cultural comparison
Mark J Somers 30 2001
Mark A Davis 17 1998
Nancy Brown Johnson
Douglas G Ohmer
49 Softlifting – a model of motivating factors Penny M Simpson 13 1994
Debasish Banerjee
Claude L Simpson
48 The Fair Trade movement: parameters, issues and future research Geoff Moore 53 2004
48 Environmental marketing: a source of reputational, competitive and financial advantage
48 Toward an understanding of cross-cultural ethics – a tentative model
Morgan P Miles 23 2000
Jeffrey G Covin
William A Wines 11 1992
Nancy K Napier (continued)
Appendix (continued)
Fritzsche 48
status of business ethics – past and future
47 The maturing of socially responsible investment: a review of the developing link with corporate social responsibility
ethics research: review, synthesis and suggestions for the future
47 The role of consumers’ trust in onlineshopping
and group norms – the reciprocal influence of whistle-blowers and coworkers
45 Learning from the literature on collegiate cheating: a review of empirical research
Appendix (continued)
Citations Title
44 Corporate social responsibility in the twenty-first century: a view from the world’s most successful firms
44 Corporate communication and impression management – new perspectives why companies engage in corporate social reporting
44 Observer judgments about moral agents’ ethical decisions: the role of scope of justice and moral intensity
44 The influence of ethical fit on employee satisfaction, commitment and turnover
44 Approaches to organizational culture and ethics
43 Codes of ethics
43 Differences in research ethics judgments between male and female marketing professionals
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George CS Benson 8 1989
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Chapter 2 Ethical Decision Making: A Review of the Empirical Literature
Robert C. Ford and Woodrow D. Richardson
Ethical decision making is a topic of great interest in the literature of business ethics. A number of authors have proposed a variety of theoretical models in the effort to explain and predict the process by which a manager makes an ethical decision. These range from the situational-individual interaction model of Trevino (1986) to the contingency framework of Ferrell and Gresham (1985) to the moral intensity model of Jones (1991). While any of these models might serve as a basis for undertaking empirical study of the ethical decision process, there is surprisingly limited effort directed toward theory testing (Randall and Gibson 1990). Indeed, most of the writing on this topic has been nonempirical (Trevino 1986). The paucity of empirical research grounded on theory has substantially impeded the development of the field.
The purpose of this article is to examine the available empirical literature on ethical decision making. By reviewing the extent to which empirical work supports or refutes the ethical decision making models, it will be possible to better understand the extent to which these models are predictive and descriptive of an individual’s ethical decision behavior. Further, it will be possible to identify the factors that have been found associated with such behavior and those factors that are not. It is not our purpose to propose another model of ethical decision making behavior but rather to rely on those already developed to identify those factors which merit further study. Thus, the contribution of this paper is to organize the available empirical information in order to see what we know and need to know about the factors which are hypothesized as determinants of ethical decision behavior.
R.C. Ford (*)
Department of Management, College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida, Orlando FL 32816-1400, USA
e-mail: rford@bus.ucf.edu
W.D. Richardson
Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business, Shenandoah University, Winchester VA 22601, USA
A.C. Michalos and D.C. Poff (eds.), Citation Classics from the Journal of Business Ethics, Advances in Business Ethics Research 2, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4126-3_2, © Springer Science+Business Media
19
In general, the ethical decision making models divide the postulated influences on an individual’s decision behavior into two broad categories (for a review of those theoretical models which have been proposed see Ford and Hansen 1991; Jones 1991; Randall and Gibson 1990). The first category includes variables associated with the individual decision maker. The second category consists of variables which form and define the situation in which the individual makes decisions.
This paper uses these two broad categories as an organizational scheme to review empirical studies that have been published on the ethical decision process. While it could be argued that the second category should actually be divided into situation specific versus general environmental variables (cf. Bommer et al. 1987), the transitory influences of such variables across decision dilemmas makes such a categorization problematic. Although using only two broad categories may sacrifice specificity for the sake of parsimony, we feel that this approach is preferable to creating “another” model of the process. This general approach should allow researchers to better assess the existing body of empirical work and its applicability to their own theoretical efforts.
Individual Factors
Individual factors have received by far the most research attention in the empirical literature. This category includes all those factors that are uniquely associated with the individual decision maker. Thus, these factors include those variables that are a result of birth (e.g. nationality, sex, age, etc.) as well as those that are a result of the human development and socialization process (e.g. personality, attitudes, values, education, religion, employment, etc.). These factors, then, represent the sum total of the life experiences and circumstances of birth that a particular individual brings to the decision making process.
Table 2.1 depicts the variety of factors which have been investigated. The table is divided into categories representing an individual’s personal attributes, education and employment background, and personality.
Personal Attributes
The first four factors reported on Table 2.1 deal with variables associated with an individual’s personal attributes. These factors include attributes determined by the circumstances of an individual’s birth (religion and nationality) as well as those that are set by birth (age and sex).
Religion
The four studies reported here investigated religious value orientation (Hegarty and Sims 1978, 1979) strength of religious belief (McNichols and Zimmerer 1985),
Table 2.1 Empirical evidence relating the effect of individual factors on ethical behavior
Finding
Method
Not signi fi cant
No relationship between denomination or church attendance and perceptions of what is ethical
Strong religious beliefs assoc. with negative attitude toward the acceptability of behaviors
No difference in the responses of managers from S. Africa and Australia
French mgrs. believed more strongly in the ef fi cacy of codes of conduct
Non-U.S. citizen were more unethical
Not signi fi cant
U.S. managers tended to provide higher ethicality ratings
Females more concerned with ethical issues
Not signi fi cant
Not signi fi cant
Males saw fewer ethical problems than females
Not signi fi cant
Females exhibited higher levels of ethical behavior
Not signi fi cant
(continued)
Sample
Lab experiment
Ques. Newstrom and Ruch ( 1975 )
Scenarios
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Variable Study (Year)
Personal attributes
Religion
Hegarty and Sims ( 1978, 1979 ) Grad stud.
Kidwell et al. ( 1987 ) Managers
UG stud.
Managers
McNichols and Zimmerer ( 1985 )
Nationality
Abratt et al. ( 1992 )
French, German and U.S. Mgrs.
Lab experiment
Questionnaire
Vignettes
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Lab experiment
Becker and Fritzche ( 1987 )
Hegarty and Sims ( 1978, 1979 ) Grad stud.
Whipple and Swords ( 1992 ) U.S. and U.K. bus. stud.
White and Rhodeback ( 1992 ) U.S. and Taiwanese
UG students
Members of Pur. Assoc.
Sex
Beltramini et al. ( 1984 )
Browning and Zabriskie ( 1983 )
Callan ( 1992 ) State emp.
Chonko and Hunt ( 1985 ) Managers
Salespeople
Marketing researchers
Dubinsky and Levy ( 1985 )
Ferrell and Skinner ( 1988 )
Hegarty and Sims ( 1978, 1979 ) Grad stud.
Finding
Females less likely to be company loyal in an ethically questionable environment
Males and females differed on only 1 of 17 items
Males more likely to conceal their errors
Not signi fi cant
Females more ethical than males
No difference on three of four ethical indices
Females more critical of ethical issues than male counterparts
Younger mgrs. had a more ethical viewpoint than older mgrs.
Not signi fi cant
Not signi fi cant
Weak signi fi cance on 2 of 14 items
Not signi fi cant
Older students were more ethical
Older workers had stricter interpretations of ethical standards
Method
Open-ended questions
Ques. Newstrom and Ruch ( 1975 )
Scenarios
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Open-ended questions
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Clark ( 1966 ) Not signi fi cant
Questionnaire
Business majors more concerned with ethical issues than other majors
Technical majors more ethical than nontechnical majors
Not signi fi cant
Sample
MBA stud.
Managers
Table 2.1 (continued)
Variable Study (Year)
Jones and Gautschi ( 1988 )
Kidwell et al. ( 1987 )
Students
Students
Insurance employees
Students
Members of Put. Assoc.
McNichols and Zimmerer ( 1985 )
Ruegger and King ( 1992 )
Serwinek ( 1992 )
Whipple and Swords ( 1992 )
Age Browning and Zabriskie ( 1983 )
State emp.
Managers
students
MBA
Managers
Students
Insurance employees
Students and executives
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Callan ( 1992 )
Izraeli ( 1988 )
Jones and Gautschi ( 1988 )
Kidwell et al. ( 1987 )
Ruegger and King ( 1992 )
Serwinek ( 1992 )
Stevens ( 1984 )
Students
Education and employment background
Type of education
Beltramini et al. ( 1984 )
Managers
Salespeople
Chonko and Hunt ( 1985 )
Dubinsky and Ingram ( 1984 )
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
Nous ne pouvons cependant oublier cette enseigne, plus moderne, d’un chapelier du boulevard de Sébastopol, nº 28 bis, qui aurait pu figurer dans le chapitre consacré aux enseignes singulières: A l’Hérissé, figure d’un homme à crinière de porc-épic, s’élevant d’un demi-mètre au-dessus de sa tête, et difficile à coiffer, assurément, pour tout autre que l’ingénieux industriel qui l’arbore au-dessus de sa boutique depuis une vingtaine d’années[267] .
XXVI
LES ENSEIGNES PENDANT LA RÉVOLUTION
LA Révolution commence en 1789, et l’on peut dire, avec Colnet[268], que l’enseigne va parcourir toutes les phases de cette révolution. «Au lieu de rester, comme nous l’avons vue jusqu’ici, dit M. Amédée Berger, tantôt patronale, c’est-à-dire portant l’effigie du saint, protecteur de la corporation, tantôt parlante et représentant les outils du métier, ou enfin imaginaire avec des figures capricieuses et insignifiantes, nous allons la voir devenir politique[269].» Il y avait eu sans doute, et peut-être de tout temps, des enseignes politiques, mais ce n’était qu’une exception, au lieu d’être une généralité. Ainsi l’avénement de Louis XVI au trône avait été signalé par l’enseigne de la Poule au pot, accompagnée de ces vers satiriques:
Enfin la Poule au pot sera donc bientôt mise: On doit du moins le présumer, Car, depuis deux cents ans qu’on nous l’avait promise, On n’a cessé de la plumer
Colnet remarque très judicieusement que les enseignes, à partir de cette époque, semblent faites pour retracer les mœurs du jour et les révolutions des idées. En 1789, après le 14 Juillet, «tout est à la Bastille, dit M. Amédée Berger: l’image de la vieille prison est représentée de cent façons diverses; on la voit sur tous les murs; les hommes portent, sur leurs habits, des boutons représentant les différents épisodes de la journée du 14 Juillet, et les femmes se coiffent avec des bonnets garnis de deux rangs de créneaux en dentelle noire. Pendant l’année 1790, tout devient à la Fédération, et en 1791, c’est le tour de Monsieur Veto.»
L’enseigne suivait le mouvement des esprits: «Il y en avait de révolutionnaires, dit M. J. Poignant[270] , il y en avait de contrerévolutionnaires, et comme le Parisien est essentiellement de l’Opposition, ces dernières étaient les mieux achalandées; il y en avait de gaies, il y en
avait de tristes, il y en avait d’indifférentes.» Les hôtels garnis, dont le nombre augmentait sans cesse avec la population flottante de Paris, avaient changé leurs enseignes pour se disputer les voyageurs qui arrivaient de la province plutôt que de l’étranger; un de ces hôtels, dans la rue de Richelieu, prenait l’enseigne des États-Généraux; un autre, celle de l’Assemblée nationale, un autre celle du Grand Necker.
Le plus somptueux d’entre eux existe encore; c’est le grand hôtel Mirabeau de la rue de la Paix. L’histoire de son enseigne est assez piquante, et nous a été contée par le petit-fils du fondateur. Ce brave homme, originaire du village du Lys, aux environs de Senlis, était venu, comme tant d’autres, chercher fortune à Paris vers 1789. Il avait ouvert à la Chausséed’Antin, qui n’était encore qu’un élégant faubourg, un modeste hôtel meublé qu’il baptisa Hôtel du Lys. Vinrent les premiers troubles de la Révolution, qui dépopularisèrent la fleur de lis à tel point, que l’enseigne du Lys, toute géographique qu’elle était, devenait compromettante. Mirabeau venait de mourir dans un hôtel de la Chaussée-d’Antin, voisin de l’hôtel garni; il n’avait pas dédaigné de venir s’asseoir à la table d’hôte avec des amis politiques, la rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin avait reçu son nom par acclamation populaire; l’hôtel adopta aussi cet illustre patronage, sous lequel il traversa vaillamment les mauvais jours de la Terreur, l’Empire et, ce qui est plus surprenant, la Restauration, que tous les hôteliers de Paris accueillirent avec enthousiasme. Le petit hôtel avait grandi; de la rue du Mont-Blanc, il était passé rue du Helder, puis rue Napoléon, dès son ouverture en 1806. A la rentrée des Bourbons, il conserva fièrement son enseigne, tandis que la rue abdiquait piteusement son nom pour prendre celui de rue de la Paix. Il ne paraît pas disposé à l’abandonner.
On reconnaît bientôt l’affaiblissement du respect des choses religieuses par la disparition successive des images de saints qui avaient été les premiers patrons de l’enseigne, et qui n’étaient pas moins fêtés dans les rues de la capitale que dans le calendrier. On fait enlever, sans bruit et sans scandale, certaines enseignes trop royalistes; on efface certaines inscriptions trop favorables à l’ancien régime: par exemple, le meilleur confiseur de la rue des Lombards, qui recommandait sa maison par l’enseigne du Grand Monarque, corrige cette enseigne en l’intitulant: Au Grand Vainqueur; mais les royalistes lui gardent rancune d’avoir débaptisé cette enseigne renommée, et ils lui tournent le dos pour donner leur clientèle aux magasins du Fidèle
Berger et des Deux Amis, deux boutiques voisines dont les enseignes n’ont rien à démêler avec la politique.
Après l’arrestation du roi et de la famille royale à Varennes (juin 1791), l’Assemblée nationale rend un décret qui ordonne d’effacer partout les emblèmes de la royauté. Ce décret s’attaque surtout aux enseignes sur lesquelles figurent les armes royales et les insignes royaux. Quelquefois le commerçant, irrité de la guerre tyrannique faite à son enseigne, résistait autant que possible à ces misérables tracasseries, exercées contre lui au nom du peuple. Un restaurateur, à l’enseigne du Tigre royal, ayant été sommé par la municipalité de supprimer l’épithète de royal, la remplaça par celle de national et eut l’audace de faire inscrire, à la porte de son établissement: Au Tigre national[271] . Le frontispice d’un Almanach de 1792 représente des ouvriers enlevant des enseignes qui portaient le nom ou les armes du roi, ainsi que les symboles du gouvernement monarchique.
Depuis que l’armée des princes se formait à Coblentz dans le but de venir délivrer Louis XVI, prisonnier de l’Assemblée nationale, les bureaux des racoleurs fonctionnaient à Paris avec une fiévreuse activité pour donner des hommes à l’armée royale, qui avait besoin de nouvelles recrues en prévision d’une guerre d’invasion. D’autre part, ces bureaux s’étaient multipliés depuis que le ministère payait la prime d’engagement, et leurs enseignes, exclusivement militaires et patriotiques, avaient remplacé partout des enseignes bachiques et affriolantes, qui eurent toujours tant d’empire sur les pauvres dupes du racolage. De cette époque datent certaines enseignes qui ont subsisté jusqu’à nos jours, et qui faisaient appel à la bonne volonté des remplaçants, dont la conscription autorisait légalement le trafic, comme une espèce de marché de chair humaine. Il n’y a pas longtemps que nous avons vu disparaître le Petit Tambour, au coin de la rue de Bièvre; le Grenadier, rue Corneille, etc.; l’Ancien Tambour, quai de la Tournelle, existe même encore, ainsi que les Deux Sapeurs de la rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau.
C’est en 1793, après le 10 Août, que la fermeture des églises porta le dernier coup aux statues de piété que la dévotion de nos aïeux avait érigées au coin des rues et sur la façade des maisons. On ne fit pas grâce à celles que le zèle de quelques courageux propriétaires s’efforçait encore de protéger. C’est alors que le buste de Marat remplaça la statue de la Vierge dans la rue aux Ours et qu’un restaurateur de la rue Saint-Honoré inaugura l’enseigne du Grand Marat, avec une double inscription; savoir, d’un côté: Il
fut l’ami du peuple et observateur profond, et de l’autre côté:
Ne pouvant le corrompre, ils l’ont assassiné. «En même temps, ajoute M. Amédée Berger, comme le comique a toujours chez nous sa place à côté des plus lugubres souvenirs, un marchand de la rue Saint-Eustache placarda l’enseigne suivante au-dessus de sa porte: Aux cols, brassières et ceintures nationales, avec cette incroyable inscription: «Les hommes étant convenus de porter la cocarde aux trois couleurs, comme signe de patriotisme, il est étonnant que les femmes ne soient décorées, ni pour elles ni pour leurs enfants, de rien qui puisse prouver leur civisme. C’est pour faciliter ce moyen qu’on vient de fabriquer des ceintures et des brassières aux trois couleurs, qui ne laissent aucun doute sur les principes de ceux qui les porteront.»
Sous le règne de la Terreur, il n’est pas prudent de jouer avec les enseignes, et le plus sage est de les ôter tout à fait plutôt que d’en modifier le sujet et le titre. Aussi faut-il être notoirement républicain pour oser se donner le luxe d’une enseigne nouvelle, car tout était matière à suspicion et à dénonciation. Un cabaretier de Sèvres, qui avait de longue date une belle enseigne: Au rendez-vous des marins d’eau douce, s’imagina que le tutoiement révolutionnaire n’était pas suffisamment observé dans le mot rendez-vous, qu’il changea en rends-toi, et l’on put lire sur cette enseigne: Au rends-toi des marins d’eau douce. Malheur à qui eût osé conserver sur son enseigne une croix, une couronne, ou un écusson d’armoiries!
Le moment était si lugubre et si redoutable, que personne n’avait le cœur d’être plaisant, même sur une enseigne; mais du moins la plaisanterie pouvait cacher la peur. Ainsi un marchand, nommé Basset, avait joué sur son nom en se donnant un chien pour enseigne et en l’intitulant: Au Basset[272] . Un autre, qui demeurait sur la place Vendôme, avait cru se faire de son enseigne un paratonnerre politique en y inscrivant une phrase de Robespierre relative à l’Être suprême[273] . La police, à cette époque terrible, trouvait le temps d’éplucher les enseignes et de les mettre toutes au diapason de la circonstance. Après la création du Calendrier républicain, adopté par la Convention le 24 novembre 1792, un arrêté du Bureau central de Paris enjoignit aux cabaretiers de substituer, sur leurs enseignes, aux mots: bière de mars, ceux-ci: bière de germinal[274] .
M. Firmin Maillard a caractérisé ainsi les enseignes de la Terreur: «Brutus, Spartacus et quelques autres martyrs de la liberté deviennent des héros d’enseignes. C’est à la Lanterne nationale ou à la Carmagnole que vont se désaltérer les garçons bouchers: ils arrivent au cabaret, drapeau déployé, drapeau sur lequel il y a un énorme couteau et ces six mots écrits au bas: «Tremblez, aristocrates, voici les garçons bouchers!» Voilà leur enseigne! mais rien ne peut égaler celle du libraire Tisset, «coopérateur des succès de la République française.» L’abominable homme restait rue de la Barillerie, nº 13, et il avait au-dessus de sa porte une guillotine enluminée entre les montants de laquelle se trouvaient inscrits les noms des personnes qui devaient être exécutées dans la journée. Du reste, cet aimable personnage éditait une liste de condamnés qu’il appelait: Compte rendu aux SansCulottes, par très haute, très puissante et très expéditive dame Guillotine, rédigé et présenté aux amis de ses prouesses, par Tisset.»
AU LION D’ARGENT.
Alors on pouvait dire qu’au-dessus de la France, il y avait une enseigne terrible, sur laquelle flamboyaient ces trois mots, qui depuis ont pris quelque chose de solennel: A la Terreur! Puis, tout finit avec des Notre-Dame-deThermidor, hommage ridicule, mais honnête, rendu à Mᵐᵉ Tallien, qui eut assez d’empire sur son mari pour le forcer à jouer sa tête en décidant la Convention à mettre fin au règne sanglant des Jacobins, par la révolution du 9 Thermidor.
AU LION FERRÉ.
Toutes les enseignes n’ont pas disparu pendant la Révolution; ainsi qu’on a pu le voir par celles que nous avons citées, beaucoup de figures en pierre
ou en bois trouvèrent grâce devant le vandalisme brutal de la populace, quand elles n’avaient aucun sens politique, comme le Lion d’Argent, charmant détail de la maison nº 1 de la rue des Prouvaires, dont la gracieuse ornementation est un des rares spécimens intacts du style Louis XV; le Lion ferré, de la rue Saint-Martin, le Vieux Satyre, de la rue Montfaucon, et surtout comme l’Hercule, de la rue Grégoire-de-Tours, alors rue des Mauvais-Garçons-Saint-Germain, que les républicains du quartier avaient pris sous leur sauvegarde, en le surnommant le Vieux Sans-Culotte, et qui, comme les trois qui précèdent, existe encore aujourd’hui.
On vit renaître les enseignes non politiques et inoffensives sous le Directoire, mais d’abord en très petit nombre. La Terreur avait donné des leçons de prudence et de réserve aux plus aventureux[275]; on hésita quelque temps, avant de se remettre à vivre au dehors, pour ainsi dire. Dans les premiers jours de défiance et de trouble qui suivirent la grande délivrance de Thermidor (27 juillet 1794), on avait eu l’idée de faire inscrire sur les portes des maisons les noms des personnes qui habitaient ces maisons; on renonça bientôt à
cette inquisition intolérable. La Révolution avait tué l’industrie des peintres d’enseignes; on ne les vit renaître de leurs cendres qu’au milieu du Directoire. En attendant, on avait remplacé les enseignes comme on avait pu. Mercier, dans la description qu’il fait du Palais-Égalité, ci-devant PalaisRoyal, en 1799, nous fournit à ce sujet un détail bien singulier: «Les tableaux sortis des cabinets curieux, les gravures libertines, les romans érotiques, servent d’enseignes
à une foule de prostituées logées aux mansardes[276].» On ne faisait alors aucun cas des meilleurs tableaux anciens, qui pourrissaient dans la boue chez les marchands de bric-à-brac. Sébastien Mercier, dans un autre endroit du même ouvrage, raconte qu’un savetier avait pris, pour en faire l’auvent de son échoppe, un superbe tableau de maître, représentant la Cène.
Les premières enseignes peintes qui reparurent à Paris furent celles des restaurants, des cafés, des marchands de comestibles: c’est de ce temps-là que datent l’enseigne de l’hôtel des Américains, rue Saint-Honoré, près de l’Oratoire; la Flotte Sainte-Barbe, rue Saint-Martin; le Gourmand, de Corcellet; le Bœuf à la Mode, de la rue de Valois; le Veau qui tette, de la place du Châtelet, aujourd’hui rue des Halles; l’enseigne des Trois Frères provençaux, etc. Après les établissements de gastronomie, les débits de tabac eurent des enseignes, telles que la Bonne Prise, encore à sa place au nº 7 de la rue Saint-Jacques, la Civette, de la place du Palais-Royal et la Grosse Carotte. «Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois[277] , respecté, disent les frères de Goncourt, a tout à côté de lui une renommée nouvelle, une enseigne fameuse: la Grosse Carotte, ce débit de tabac qui rivalise avec la célèbre Carotte américaine des Halles.» Le jardin Turc, dont la vogue commençait à se prononcer au boulevard du Temple, n’avait trouvé rien de mieux, pour remplacer une enseigne peinte, que d’avoir à sa porte des Turcs, de vrais Turcs, en costume, qui fumaient indolemment leur pipe, de midi à minuit[278]. C’était le premier essai des tableaux vivants.
