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.