Ethical Decision Making in Teams: A Systematic Review

In the following systematic review, we offer a novel contribution to the study of ethics in organizations by focusing on ethical decision making at the team level. We systematically analyzed 38 empirical sources, finding that several key variables associated with ethical decision-making processes and outcomes at the individual level also apply to teams (e.g., formalistic vs. utilitarian orientation, domain expertise, ethical reasoning strategies). Unique to team settings, our review identified team diversity and ethical leadership as crucial inputs that tend to improve decision processes and outputs, along with collective moral disengagement that hinders ethical decision making. Additionally, we identified several other (i.e., non-ethics-specific) emergent states and processes (e.g., team trust, cohesion, learning) that exert noteworthy relationships with ethical decision dynamics in teams. Finally, the nuanced influences of moral intensity and baseline climates (e.g., ethical work climate, psychological safety) are discussed. Informed by our review of the literature, we offer a conceptual model summarizing the available empirical literature to help guide organizational scholars and practitioners in understanding the interplay between these key variables in research to date.