Toward a new typology of ethical dilemmas in management : considering the role and influence of stakeholders in ethical decision-making

International audienceThis paper examines how Ethical Decision Making (EDM) is influenced by various persons who interact with the decision-maker. We can refer to these persons as stakeholders of the decision. The study highlights the different roles played by the decision stakeholders in the process of EDM. Besides, we analyse the influence of each stakeholder on the decision-making process by drawing on Mitchell et al. stakeholders' typology which assesses the salience of the stakeholders through their legitimacy, power and urgency. In order to do so, we examine how managers react when they face ethical dilemmas in the workplace, through narratives which relate truly experienced situations. The analysis of the 25 narratives shows that the stakeholders can play four different roles, which we called: decision maker, consultant, trigger and victim. Moreover, the evaluation of each stakeholder's influence in the ethical-decision making process lead us to find 4 different EDM patterns according to the influence of the main protagonist of the dilemma comparing to the other stakeholders. We call these patterns: masterful, mentee, deviant, impotent, in order to highlight that the main protagonist has more or less influence over the other stakeholders and therefore more or less latitude in the ethical choice he/she has to make