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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Ethics in military organisations : implementation in the battlefield and lessons for management sciences

subject

description

This research questions the idea of military ethics. Our work uses an analytical framework combining three different disciplines: Ethics of care, developed in moral philosophy, Stakeholder theory, from business ethics, New institutionalism theory, from management science. This framework is then applied on two different research fields: the first one deals with the study of battles where ethical stakes were particularly high: the battle of Alger, the Iraqi war, the Srebrenica battle.The second one is qualitative interviews with officers coming back from the battlefield: 10 US officers from the Iraqi conflict and 7 French militaries from Afghanistan. These two research fields are completed by an analysis of initial trainings made in France and in the US for officers. Research results shows military men act upon a feeling of care, particularly strong towards their regimental comrade. This is a true ethics of care, more than virtues or an attachment to great principles that drives soldiers and officers’ action, even if this care to the other needs does not apply to all stakeholders, only to people from the same unit. Lessons of this work can lead to future researches not only for soldiers and officers trainings, but also in values, ethics and corporate culture.The research originality is also in the implementation of ethics of care and stakeholder theory upon military organisations.