Ethics in services: an historical perspective and new research arcs

Before the Service Industries Journal published its first issue in 1981, or the Journal of Business Ethics started in 1982, there was scant mention of ethics in business research, let alone in services. Early dictionary definitions of ethics included ‘the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy,’ or ‘the system or code of morals of a particular philosopher, religion, group, profession, etc.’ (Webster's New World Dictionary, 1968, p. 499). It is interesting to note that, although these definitions avoided using the word ‘ethics,’ they relied on other equally abstract verbiage including ‘morals’ and ‘philosophy.’ This observation foretells subsequent difficulties in defining and implementing ethics in research or in practice.

In the marketing literature, two early articles focused on ethics in services. In an article regarding ethics in marketing research services, Tybout and Zaltman (1975, p. 234) argued that ‘what is morally right or ethical is left to the individual researcher.’ Although these authors did not define the term ‘ethics,’ they did clarify that ethics held and decisions made by an individual service provider can have an effect on the service experience and outcome received by a customer. The authors closed by asking ‘Is it possible or feasible to conduct systematic research on the practical relevance of ethics’ in services? (Tybout & Zaltman, 1975, p. 236). Kotler and Connor (1977), in the second article, expressed concern over contemporaneous beliefs that it was unethical for professional service providers to advertise or to discuss price. Such beliefs were typically promulgated by professional organizations, whose codes of ethics often prohibited marketing activities. However, court rulings began to allow promotional activities, and Kotler and Connor (1977) wrote in support of them. The authors did not define the term ‘ethics,’ although their recommendations depended directly on its meaning. However, similar to Tybout and Zaltman (1975), they did observe that service providers should not mislead customers or misappropriate personal information.

This special issue of the Service Industries Journal (SIJ), on ethics in services, begins with the present editorial that takes an historical view of research progress related to service ethics, starting in the 1980s. Important research arcs have occurred during two key periods, the first of which was from about 1980 through 2008; the ending of this early time period coincides with the last SIJ special issue on ethics, published in January 2009. Important questions addressed during the early time period include such topics as: how did different authors define ethics and use various ethical philosophies, including teleology and deontology? In the later period, literature published between 2009 and 2020 is discussed. Important topics included identifying constructs that would be appropriate for scale items to measure ethics, describing outcomes related to ethics (e.g. consumer choices), and assessing the impact of top management on corporate and employee ethics. Today, a new arc of the story in service ethics has begun, and some very recent articles in the areas of technology and ethics are explored in this issue.

Early service ethics literature

Researchers during the early period considered various moral philosophies used for business decision making, including deontology, teleology, and situational ethics/relativism. However, their greatest contribution was arguably their observation that employee ethics and ethical behaviors are driven by top management (Hunt et al., 1989; Murphy & Laczniak, 1981; Segal & Giacobbe, 2007). Although all three of these cited articles acknowledged the importance of ethics in decision making, none attempted to define the term. Following are more specifics of the contributions of each of these three author-teams.

Murphy and Laczniak (1981) discussed marketing ethics, noting the importance of the moral philosophy used to make a decision. Although the authors alluded to a correlation between ethics and the decision processes that identify winners and losers, they did not specifically address this relationship. However, they mentioned teleologies, deontologies, and situational ethics or relativism as potential ethical philosophies. These authors acknowledged the importance of top management in setting an ethical tone for a firm, and also found some evidence for greater customer sensitivity to ethics among services than among manufactured goods.

Hunt et al. (1989, p. 79) observed that ‘corporate ethical values are considered to be a composite of the individual ethical values of managers and both the formal and informal policies on ethics of the organization.’ The authors described ethical choices as those that are ‘right’ and ‘worth doing’; thus, they viewed corporate ethics through a deontological lens. Because a clear definition of ethics was unavailable, Hunt et al. (1989, p. 82) assessed ethics using a ‘measure of corporate ethical values’ that ‘attempts to capture the broader principles of the degree to which organizations take an interest in ethical issues and act in an ethical manner.’ The authors developed a five-item Likert scale, which was completed by employees to measure perceptions of organizational ethics. Unfortunately, all five items depend on the meaning of the word ‘ethic,’ so the results cannot provide insight as to how ethics might be defined or perceived. (See Table 1 for details.)

Table 1. Scales used to measure ethics.

Hunt et al. (1989, p. 84)

1. Managers in my company often engage in behaviors that I consider to be unethical.

2. Top management in my company has let it be known in no uncertain terms that unethical behaviors will not be tolerated.

3. In order to succeed in my company, it is often necessary to compromise one’s ethics.

4. If a manager in my company is discovered to have engaged in unethical behavior that results primarily in personal gain (rather than corporate gain), he or she will be promptly reprimanded.

5. If a manager in my company is discovered to have engaged in unethical behavior that results primarily in corporate gain (rather than personal gain), he or she will be promptly reprimanded.

Reidenbach and Robin (1990, p. 639)

Moral equity items:

1. Fair/Unfair

2. Just/Unjust

3. Morally right/Not morally right

4. Acceptable/Unacceptable to my family

Relativism items:

5. Traditionally acceptable/Traditionally unacceptable

6. Culturally acceptable/Culturally unacceptable

Contractualism items:

7. Violates/Does not violate an unspoken promise

8. Violates/Does not violate an unwritten contract

Rao and Singhapakdi (1997, pp. 423–424)

1. The ethics and social responsibility of a firm is essential to its long term profitability.

2. Business ethics and social responsibility are critical to the survival of a business enterprise.

3. The overall effectiveness of a business can be determined to a great extent by the degree to which it is ethical and socially responsible.

4. Good ethics is often good business.

5. Business has a social responsibility beyond making a profit

6. Corporate planning and goal setting sessions should include discussions of ethics and social responsibility.

7. Social responsibility and profitability can be compatible

Babin et al. (2000, p. 352)

Trust and Responsibility items:

1. All employees here are held accountable for their actions

2. Employees here act first to further their customers' interests

3. People always get treated justly here

4. Employees here are truly committed to high moral standards in their treatment of others

Peer Behavior Ethicality items:

5. Employees here have performed unethical acts

6. I have seen other employees do things that bother me from a moral viewpoint

7. Some of the people that I work with do things that I feel are unethical

8. Generally, employees here simply act to protect their own self-interest

9. Employees here do things based on the ‘CYA’ (protect yourself) principle

10. Employees here sometimes take revenge out on customers

Consequences of Violating Ethical Norms items:

11. If I spent a lot of time thinking about how morally right everyone is treated, I'd be really stressed out

12. Employees acting unethically for personal gain are punished

13. Employees acting unethically for company gain are punished

Nature of Selling Practices items:

14. Employees here are encouraged highly to ‘up-sell’ customers

15. Employees here are required to be very aggressive in making ‘suggested sales’ or selling ‘add-ons’

16. Customers here are sometimes encouraged to buy something they might not truly need

Schwepker and Hartline (2005, p. 393)

1. Top management does not support ethical behavior at work.

2. There is not much support among my coworkers for honesty at work.

3. I know of a customer who was cheated.

4. I think my organization is more interested in making money than in meeting customers’ needs.

5. I have seen people I work with do dishonest things at work.

6. Some of my coworkers do not support the idea that customers should be treated fairly.

7. Our field is so competitive that we have to do some unethical things at work just to stay in business.

In an effort to improve upon earlier attempts to measure ethics, Reidenbach and Robin (1990, p. 639) pooled the work of previous authors and then reduced the resulting 33-item scale to ‘eight items (that) comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension.’ Details of this scale are provided in Table 1.

To assess what had been accomplished to date on ethics in services, Kennedy and Lawton (1993) performed a literature search but found only six articles. They noted that these articles primarily addressed codes of ethics for various services and mentioned the importance of examining the potential for role conflict. Kennedy and Lawton (1993) further observed that services offer extensive opportunities for ethical violations because there are increased effects of human interfaces and because services are more difficult to evaluate than goods; such issues take on even more importance in high-risk services. Similarly, Howe et al. (1994, pp. 504–505) expressed concern that ‘due to the experience and credence attributes that characterize complex services, consumers rely on provider information when making purchasing decisions … . Thus, the need does exist to study the ethical conduct and customer-oriented behavior of the providers.’

Culture affects what is considered ethical, according to Segal and Giacobbe (2007). However, culture and ethics can be at odds, leading to person-role conflict for service providers. These authors’ goals included clarifying ethical standards, assessing the importance of ethics, identifying factors contributing to unethical behavior, and describing how organizational climate affects ethical practices. Survey results showed that high-ranking executives are primarily responsible for ethical leadership: their personal values, attitudes, and behaviors were found to be critical in determining ethical behavior among employees. It is notable that the term ‘ethics’ was not defined in the article, nor were measurement scales provided.

During the period from about 1980 until 2008, a number of moral philosophies were utilized in organizational decision making. These included deontologies, both utilitarian and egoistic teleological approaches, and others. Details are provided in Table 2. Several of the author-teams listed expressed a need to be able to assess ethics and made attempts to do so. Highlights from selected works follow.

Table 2. Articles published before 2009.

Authors	Year	Journal	Core Service	Ethical Philosophies Included
Murphy/Laczniak	1981	Review of Mktg	marketing research	teleology, deontology, situational ethics
Hunt/Wood/Chonko	1989	JM	marketing research, advertising	deontology
Reidenbach/Robin	1990	JBE	marketing	justice, relativism, egoism, utilitarian, deontology
Kennedy/Lawton	1993	JBE	services	N/A
Howe/Hoffman/Hardigree	1994	JBE	insurance	N/A
Malhotra/Miller	1996	JHCM	healthcare	teleology, deontology, hybrid, relativism
Bush/Harris/Bush	1997	JSM	examples only	variety
Rao/Singhapakdi	1997	JSM	marketing	deontology, relativism
Babin/Boles/Robin	2000	JAMS	marketing	deontology, teleology
Schwepker/Hartline	2005	JSR	front-line providers	N/A
Warren	2005	SIJ	front-line providers	utilitarian
Segal/Giacobbe	2007	Services Mktg Q	marketing research	N/A
Abela/Murphy	2008	JAMS	marketing	deontology

Malhotra and Miller (1996) observed that teleologies focus on outcomes, whereas deontologies focus on intentions. However, they actually took a relativistic point of view when they stated that ‘objectivism holds that ethics are determined by whatever is occurring in the real world. Thus, one should attempt to deal with or eliminate the unethical behaviors that do exist, rather than worry about what ought to be’ (Malhotra & Miller, 1996, p. 61). Although a number of issues related to making ethical decisions were discussed, the authors did not define the word ‘ethics’ or attempt to develop a measurement scale.

Bush et al. (1997, p. 265) stated that their goal was to ‘introduce an alternative or supplemental approach to assist service marketers in making ethical decisions.’ Because the authors viewed service as a performance, they said that ethics required ‘managing the performance to avoid the appearance of fraud or deception’ (Bush et al., 1997, p. 267). Furthermore, these authors observed that the scale used to measure ethicality is typically unidimensional and anchored by ethical/unethical. Therefore, they instead recommended use of storytelling to draw out the individual and cultural aspects of an ethicality assessment. The authors concluded that ethicality can be assessed on the basis of such narratives by comparing results to expectations; however, they did not provide a rubric for doing so.

According to Rao and Singhapakdi (1997), services have a poor image in terms of ethics; this may be related to the fact that services are harder for consumers to evaluate than goods, providing more opportunity for unethical behavior. Rao and Singhapakdi (1997, p. 413) attempted to measure ethics: they noted that ‘all of the variables selected for comparison are important determinants of ethical behavior.’ The authors tested a number of scales, but only one, entitled ‘Ethics is good business,’ was found to differ significantly between service marketers and non-service marketers. The items they used for this scale are provided in Table 1. Although the results did not help to define ‘ethics,’ the authors observed that an ethical decision reflects a choice as to who will benefit and who might be harmed.

Babin et al. (2000) developed scale items to measure perceptions of ethical work climate, with the goal of assessing its impact on job performance. (Details of the scale items are provided in Table 1.) Following factor analysis of survey results, the authors noted that of 21 scale items, only five incorporated the word ‘ethics,’ and these loaded on three of four factors. The fourth factor, which related to upselling pressure, was measured using only related terminology. Thus, some of the scale items might be useful in describing the concept of ethics. Babin et al. (2000) determined that dimensions of ethical work climate included trust/responsibility, perceived ethicality of peer behavior, perceived consequences of violating ethical norms, and nature of selling practices. The authors inferred that, because there are consequences to violating ethical norms, a deontological philosophy was in place. However, they also observed that sales practices emphasizing profits rather than meeting customer needs are unethical in a utilitarian teleological sense.

One other topic that came up during the early time period was the importance of front-line provider behavior in creating service climate. Schwepker and Hartline (2005) listed behaviors that they believed to be unethical, including creating unrealistic expectations, manipulating customers, and being rude or dishonest. Although they did not define ‘unethical,’ they developed a model for improving an organization's ‘ethical climate,’ assuming that employees are familiar with the organization's code of ethics. No survey items were presented to measure ethics, but the measures of ethical climate hint at what might be considered unethical. The measurement scale is detailed in Table 1. This scale is notable because five out of seven items avoided use of the word ‘ethical.’ Terms that are used instead include honesty, cheating, interest in money, dishonesty, and fair treatment; this suggests that ethics are about honesty and fairness, which themselves require definition and may lack content validity.

According to Warren (2005), service work can be degrading and it is important to assess the related ethics. One issue is attitude toward work. Front-line service work in particular differs from a manufacturing work environment due to the need for personality, interpersonal relationships, working directly with the customer, and emotional labor. After meeting their own basic needs, service workers crave respect: Warren (2005, p. 1002) explored ‘the mechanisms which bestow and deny respect and dignity.’ The author described utilitarian teleology, and concluded (Warren, 2005, p. 1010) that service work can ‘be morally evaluated according to the degree to which it helps to form and maintain the virtues of employees.’ Although the author did not define ‘ethics,’ he stated that virtue, gratitude, politeness, and honesty should be cultivated. These terms may be useful in scale items to assess ethics.

Although their focus was on understanding the relevance of taking a service-dominant point of view on business ethics, Abela and Murphy (2008, p. 39) used the opportunity to define marketing ethics as ‘the systematic study of how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviors and institutions.’ The authors observed that, through 2008, scholarship in marketing ethics took a normative approach, providing rules for ethical behavior. But although this suggests the authors held a deontological point of view, their explanation that being ethical means applying moral standards according to a set of rules does not provide a clear and relatable definition of the term ‘ethics.’ Abela and Murphy (2008) apparently had a goal of building a firmer foundation for ethical behavior: the authors asked how people could be taught to identify ethical issues and then invoke ethics in decision making. This goal is consistent with Google's slogan, adopted over two decades ago: according to Quora.com, ‘“Don't be evil” is a warning. It proscribes certain actions. In effect, it's saying with all of the power we have, we need to be careful how we wield it. The ends don't justify the means, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ (www.quora.com, 25 January 2017). Abela and Murphy (2008) included trust, transparency, and relationship integrity among ethical principles, which may be useful in scale items to measure ethics. Furthermore, service providers can be taught to identify these components of ethics.

In summary, research during the period from about 1980 through 2008 developed several important themes. It became evident in this early literature that the word ‘ethics’ eluded definition, both conceptually and operationally, as evidenced by measurement scales proposed for ethics which often incorporated the word ‘ethics.’ Only five articles were identified that attempted to measure ethics (see Table 1 for details). Another observation is that a variety of moral philosophies, which are held at the individual level, can result in very different ethical decisions. One outcome of this is that top management attitudes and behaviors regarding ethics impact all levels in an organization. Another outcome is the potential for person-role conflict among front-line service providers (Kennedy & Lawton, 1993; Segal & Giacobbe, 2007), particularly when organizational ethical standards and individual moral philosophies lead to opposing decisions. Bush et al. (1997) suggested that better understanding the individual and cultural aspects of an ethicality assessment might reduce role conflict. Finally, because consumers have a harder time evaluating services than goods (Rao & Singhapakdi, 1997), they have greater sensitivity to ethics in services, according to Murphy and Laczniak (1981). Thus, perceived ethics are more informative when buying services, due to the need for greater trust. Unfortunately, there is concern that services have a poor image in terms of ethics (Rao & Singhapakdi, 1997); this may be related to the fact that delivery of services can open many opportunities for ethical violations (Kennedy & Lawton, 1993). Thus, it is important to understand and address how ethics are interpreted and implemented in service organizations.

More recent service ethics literature

The second wave of service ethics literature was published between 2009 and 2020: during this time period, the focus was on enhancing understanding and implementation of ethics in services. Rendtorff and Mattsson (2009) were among the first to conceptualize and operationalize the content of ethics. They described relationships between ethics and integrity, leadership, corporate social responsibility (CSR), multicultural issues, and employee relations, and observed that the goal of services should be to benefit the customer, through privacy and respect, fairness, reliability, and accuracy. Rendtorff (2009, p. 9) continued this theme, arguing that, at both the individual and organizational levels, ‘autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability can have significance as basic ethical principles that are guiding ideas of business ethics in service industries.’

Among the researchers who made efforts to better comprehend ethics in services were Ardichvili et al. (2009), who interviewed 67 executives and academics to generate rich descriptions of ethical practices. These authors ‘identified five clusters of characteristics: Mission and Values-Driven, Stakeholder Balance, Leadership Effectiveness, Process Integrity, and Long-term Perspective’ of ethical organizational cultures (Ardichvili et al., 2009, p. 445), which they linked to ethical behavior. They stressed the importance of top managers in creating and maintaining an ethical organizational climate.

Issa and Pick (2010) proposed that managers faced with an ethical decision might use a utilitarian (i.e. teleological) philosophical model or one characterized by fairness and justice (i.e. deontology) to guide them. They observed that individual ethics can clash with organizational requirements, similar to earlier research that pointed out sources of role conflict (Kennedy & Lawton, 1993; Segal & Giacobbe, 2007). Issa and Pick (2010) used online surveys to assess statements about ethics, and principal components analysis resulted in the following eight dimensions of an ethical mindset: esthetic judgment, spirituality, optimism, harmony/balance, contentment, truth telling, individual responsibility, and professionalism. According to Issa and Pick (2010, p. 625) ‘an ethical mindset is the filter of personal beliefs and values deriving from the individual's inner self through which appreciation of, reflection about, and actions on situations that develop’ pass.

Schwepker et al. (2019, p. 616) wanted to show that ethical training and ethical climate can enhance service quality, and did so via an online survey of front-line hospitality employees. Based on the results, they stated: ‘ethical climate echoes the organization's ethical character and indicates the “right” way for employees to behave’ (Schwepker et al., 2019, p. 616), reflecting a deontological point of view.

Following these attempts to enhance understanding of service ethics, several related concepts were examined. For instance, Coelho et al. (2010) set out to identify various impacts of perceived ethics in service organizations, and found that front-line service providers are responsive to perceived organizational ethical climate. In particular, the findings indicated that a climate supportive of ethics encourages employees making ethical decisions to adhere to organizational values; this improved role clarity and reduced role conflict.

From a point of view that relates more closely to personal than to organizational values, Ndubisi et al. (2016, p. 373) defined ethical conduct as ‘adhering to one's personal moral standards.’ They also stated their opinion that the only fundamental moral philosophy is a deontology. Ndubisi et al. (2016, p. 372) proposed that ‘service providers that build relationship quality with their clients will display increased ethical conduct toward them,’ and findings in a survey of customer service officers indicated that long-term orientation and commitment in relationships resulted in more ethical employee conduct.

Ethical decisions which can be related to both individual and organizational ethics have been identified as allocating resources, and in the process, determining which individuals and/or groups benefit and which suffer (Bridges, 2018). Consistent with this, ethical decisions by high-level executives were found to impact front-line providers directly and customers indirectly. By interviewing executives in successful service organizations, Bridges (2018) explored how high-level service executives make ethical decisions, creating culture and values within their organizations. Qualitative analysis of the results revealed two groups of executives, one more outcome-oriented in decision making and the other more process-oriented. The former group tended to hold teleological personal moral philosophies and their organizations had more paternalistic cultures, whereas members of the latter group were characterized by deontological personal moral philosophies and valued adaptability and diversity, consistent with the earlier findings of Malhotra and Miller (1996).

Finally, Wei et al. (2019) assumed that ethics are individual beliefs, and furthermore, that perceived ethicalness is based on what service providers should do, as compared to what they actually do. In an online survey, Wei et al. (2019, p. 931) found that ‘ethicalness is negatively influenced by coproduction intensity (co-creation during initial service delivery), but positively influenced by co-creation of recovery.’

In summary, during the period from 2009 to 2020, service researchers began to move beyond defining ethics and instead considered how they are developed and what impact they have on an organization, its employees, and its customers. For instance, Coelho et al. (2010) found that front-line service providers were responsive to perceived organizational ethical climate; such a climate encouraged employees making ethical decisions to adhere to organizational values. This also improved role clarity and reduced role conflict. Articles included in this later time period discussion are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. Articles published from 2009 to 2020.

Authors	Year	Journal	Core Service	Ethical Philosophies Included
Rendtorff/Mattsson	2009	SIJ	services	related themes
Rendtorff	2009	SIJ	healthcare, etc.	related principles
Ardichvili/Mitchell/Jondle	2009	SIJ	variety of services	related characteristics
Coelho/Augusto/Coelho/Sá	2010	SIJ	telecommunication	N/A
Issa/Pick	2010	J Bus Ethics	health, education, nonprofit	teleology, deontology
Ndubisi/Malhotra/Capel/Agarwal/Satkunasingam/Ndubisi/Patil	2016	Psych & Mktg	outsourcing	deontology
Bridges	2018	JSTP	service executives	deontology, teleology
Schwepker/Dimitriou/McClure	2019	JSM	hotel/motel	deontology
Wei/Ang/Anaza	2019	JSM	tax services	N/A

Most recent articles: the emerging arcs between 2021 and 2024

During the past three years, one key topic that is emerging in the service ethics literature relates to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the creation of value and delivery of services. A seminal article by Du and Xie (2021) provides a structure for better understanding of these issues and the related decision making. The authors separated points of view of the product, consumer, and society, and described ethical implications at each level related to multifunctionality, interactivity, and AI intelligence stage. According to Du and Xie (2021, p. 961), ethical issues ‘include AI biases, ethical design, consumer privacy, cybersecurity, individual autonomy and wellbeing, and unemployment.’ Examples of products where these issues might occur include digital personal assistants and self-driving vehicles. The authors argue that ethics matter when AI is used, because ‘ethical decisions are often coproduction of humans and technologies’ (Du & Xie, 2021, p. 963).

Although Du and Xie (2021) viewed greater functionality as attractive in a product, this also increases complexity and risk. And, despite the likelihood of less bias in more functional products, these products are subject to greater risks to privacy, security, and autonomy. The authors noted that ‘interactivity is high when the interaction format is contingent, synchronous, participative, modality-rich, and anthropomorphic’ (Du & Xie, 2021, p. 965). However, high interactivity also has issues with regard to privacy, security, and autonomy. Intelligence of usable AI has not yet progressed to high, more powerful levels; however, the authors expressed concerns that when it does, privacy, security, autonomy, and employment may all be threatened. For these reasons, Du and Xie (2021) argued that AI-based products should be bias-free and ethically designed. In particular, care should be taken at the consumer level to address privacy and security. At the societal level, individual autonomy and well-being should be protected, and unemployment issues should be addressed.

In a related article the same year, Belk (2021, p. 860) addressed more specific ethical concerns related to robots and AI, including ‘(1) ubiquitous surveillance, (2) social engineering, (3) military robots, (4) sex robots, and (5) transhumanism.’ The author pointed out that consumers opt in to surveillance simply by carrying a cell phone, even though they might not realize that is part of their service agreement. Other service providers, such as car or health insurers, also collect consumer data and use it for decision making. Industries such as banking and retailing track credit scores, loyalty behaviors, and social media posts. Military systems that are operated by AI are also of concern; although they do not suffer from subjective biases, they can be more cold-blooded killers. Sex robots threaten social norms and dehumanize women. Finally, ‘transhumanism’ refers to a future time in which ‘humans may be able to upload their consciousness into a computer or AI robot in order to achieve immortality by discarding their biological bodies’ (Belk, 2021, p. 868).

Other authors have also discussed ethics and related topics in connection with adoption of technology. For instance, Tlili et al. (2023) reviewed articles on adoption of the metaverse by industrial service companies, in order to increase productivity and sustainability in customer-facing services. Privacy and security were seen as the primary ethical challenges in doing so. Ivanov (2023, p. 1055) focused ‘on the negative aspects of artificial intelligence in higher education’ and observed that AI ‘is associated with many ethical issues such as biases, privacy, surveillance, manipulation of behaviour, opacity, (and) displacement of employees’ (Ivanov, 2023, p. 1060). Lastly, Belanche et al. (2024) stated that use of AI should be disclosed to customers prior to use. Furthermore, these authors expressed concerns over ethical issues, such as bias, lack of transparency, lack of explicability of decisions, unintended consequences, inaccurate information, privacy and security issues, dependence on technology, the resultant loss of skills, and lack of emotion.

The articles discussed above from this most recent time period, focusing on technology and ethics in services, are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4. Recent articles with technology and ethics focus.

Authors	Date	Journal	Core Service	Ethical Issues Mentioned
Du/Xie	2021	JBR	services	ethical issues include biases, design, privacy, security, autonomy, well-being, unemployment
Belk	2021	SIJ	robots, AI	reviews five specific ethical concerns: ubiquitous surveillance, social engineering, military robots, sex robots, and transhumanism
Tlili	2023	SIJ	industrial services	use of metaverse; ethical issues focus on privacy and security
Ivanov	2023	SIJ	higher education	biases, plagiarism, factual incorrectness, micromanagement, behavior manipulation, surveillance, overreliance on AI, lack of transparency, skill loss, privacy
Belanche/Belk/Casaló/Flavián	2024	SIJ	AI in services	biases, privacy, lack of emotion, dependence, loss of skills, lack of transparency

The recent research stream that develops ideas in ethics and artificial intelligence is related to key topics covered in this special issue. At this particular intersection of academic thought between technology and ethics, artificial intelligence has made implementation of ethical guidelines more urgent. New technologies are introducing new sources of concern that need addressing, including opaque biases, behavior tracking, and threats to privacy, security, and autonomy. The first two articles deal directly with this dynamic topic.

Camilleri et al. (2024) (‘Ethical considerations of service organizations in the information age’) reviewed 42 recent articles focusing on ethics in services; these were published in the past five years and were heavily cited. Many of these current articles relate to use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology in services. Thus, the reviewed topics are critically important to developing future research that addresses urgent issues in service ethics, especially those related to AI. The authors developed a helpful table that summarizes future research ideas generated by their review. Many of these concepts focus in the areas of ethical leadership and ethical responsibilities of organizations.

The second article, ‘Ethical implementation of artificial intelligence in the service industries,’ describes an approach to ethically integrating artificial intelligence into services (Vatankhah et al., 2024). The authors provided both a systematic literature review and a bibliometric analysis of 90 relevant articles dating from 2000 through 2024. They also completed a keyword co-occurrence analysis and cluster analysis demonstrating relationships between groups of terms; for instance, one such group includes AI, ethics, and accountability. The authors’ efforts were shown to be useful in identifying underexplored topics and developing a roadmap for further research.

Junaid et al. (2024) (‘Responsible brand leadership in services: Fostering love, ethics, and empowerment’) found that responsible leadership is positively related to customer perceptions of brand ethics, which are positively related to customer love of the brand. These results were obtained by surveying a convenience sample of restaurant customers in Pakistan. In addition to supporting key hypotheses, the authors were able to observe differences in their results for different types of restaurants and for customer gender. Further research was recommended to better understand what characteristics of service organizations and customers might explain these differences.

Yao and Xiong (2024) (‘The impact of family-like employee-organization relationship on unethical pro-family behavior’) described a problem that is common in China, which is behavior on the part of a service employee that unethically helps their own family rather than benefitting the service organization. The authors argued that, culturally, this is likely to occur because in China ‘the organization is regarded as another family by employees, and the leader is considered a parent’ (Yao & Xiong, 2024). However, the authors suggested that the tendency for unethical behavior can be mitigated if the employee has a family-like relationship with the organization. They supported their theory using a series of employee surveys within a large real estate development firm. Future research ideas included exploring whether the theory is also supported in other social and organizational cultures.

In ‘Leveraging responsible artificial intelligence to enhance salesperson well-being and performance,’ Yuan et al. (2024) argued that responsible use of artificial intelligence (including individual and organizational ethics) can positively influence well-being of sales representatives and enhance their performance. Initially, 42 employees working in artificial intelligence were surveyed in person; this was followed by a larger-scale online survey involving 280 respondents. The survey design included two types of sales encounters, adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling, to better understand how well-being affects salesperson performance. Findings supported the hypothesis that responsible use of AI enhances salesperson well-being, which in turn improves sales encounters and performance.

In ‘Conceptualizing service ethics for the complexity of modern service interactions,’ Sebhatu et al. (2024) developed the idea that individuals who are not customers of a service organization may yet be impacted by activities on the organization's digital service platform. The authors provided two examples of situations in which customer interactions with digital platforms negatively impact non-customers; they considered this detrimental impact an involuntary exchange on the part of the non-customer. (The first example relates to involuntary trading of indentured housemaids, and the second example involves use of public walkways to discard rental e-scooters.) Sebhatu et al. (2024) offered ideas to protect non-customers from such interactions, and considered the purpose, process, and outcome of such service exchanges to better understand their effects. They recommended future research to enhance ethical decision making in relation to non-customer experiences.

In summary, the six articles that follow in this issue present a number of current topics in service ethics and recommend directions for future research. The first two articles dealt with the ethical use of artificial intelligence in services, where many emerging issues are occurring simultaneously. Other topics related to service ethics that are included in this special issue are responsible leadership, customer reactions to perceived service ethics, the influence of working for a family-like organization on ethical employee behavior, the impact of artificial intelligence on salesperson well-being, and the importance of paying ethical consideration to non-customers.