Abstract: [Purpose/Significance] Facing an increasingly diverse social and cultural environment, as well as rapidly changing scientific and technological advancements, the ethical and moral issues in knowledge organization have become important topics of concern in this field. [Design/Methodology] This study adopted a systematic literature review method to analyze relevant literature on ethics and morals in knowledge organization, to identify ethical risks in knowledge organization, trace the causes of these risks, and consequently summarize future pathways of avoiding these risks. [Findings/Conclusion] The ethical risks within knowledge organizations are composed of four dimensions: the individual level, knowledge representation and expression level, contextual level, and technological level, along with their corresponding 9 subcategories and 35 concrete risk manifestations, collectively constituted the ethical risk elements in knowledge organization. It also reveales the comprehensive impact of contextual factors, cognitive factors, cultural factors, individual factors, and technological factors on the ethical risks in knowledge organization. Finally, it proposes strategies to mitigate ethical risks, that namely, to build the knowledge organization system from multiple perspectives, to encourage the collaborative progress of diverse stakeholders including knowledge organization practitioners, users, professional institutions, and domain scholars, to practice cultural assurance and hospitality principles, to promote the construction of multilingual and interoperable knowledge organization systems, and to emphasize sustainable development of knowledge organization driven by digital technologies. [Originality/Value] This study contributes to expand the perspective of knowledge organization research, clarify ethical risks in the field, and promot the construction of a healthy, inclusive, fair, and just ecosystem for knowledge organization.

Keywords: Knowledge organization, Knowledge organization system, Ethics and morality, Ethical risk, Systematic literature review