Ethical Theory and Stakeholder-Related Decisions: The Role of Stakeholder Culture

We use convergent elements of major ethical theories to create a typology of corporate stakeholder cultures--the aspects of organizational culture consisting of the beliefs, values, and practices that have evolved for solving problems and otherwise managing stakeholder relationships. We describe five stakeholder cultures--agency, corporate egoist, instrumentalist, moralist, and altruist--and explain how these cultures lie on a continuum, ranging from individually self-interested (agency culture) to fully other-regarding (altruist culture). We demonstrate the utility of our framework by showing how it can refine stakeholder salience theory.