Journal Article

Organizational outcomes: It’s not (only) a levels issue

Lefkowitz, Joel

2022

Overview

[...]it seems clear enough both from the title of the piece and from their focus on “financial performance, meeting business objectives, and creating value” (p. X) that “outcomes” refers to traditional economic/business/financial indicators—although the authors also include less traditional outcomes such as company-level customer satisfaction. [...]the conceptual and methodological expansion proposed by Schneider and Pulakos would remain enmeshed in the corporatist value system reflecting a managerial bias (Baritz, 1960; Katzell & Austin, 1992; Kornhauser, 1947; Lefkowitz, 2017; Zickar & Gibby, 2007). Consider the following potential organizational outcomes: the company’s economic influence on the local communities in which it operates; its effect on the local labor force and compensation rates; its general “citizenship behavior” in the community; its demonstrable concern for generally unrecognized stakeholders (such as “false rejects”); and fairness/justice aspects of its human resources practices such as compensation, policies regarding alleged harassment, discrimination, bullying, retention policies, and so on. Just as we study employee perceptions of organizational justice vis-a-vis an organization’s internal human resources activities …, we should also be concerned with the social justice implications of the organization’s external actions, which characterize the probity of its role in society.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Commentaries / Employees / Employment / Humanism / Occupational psychology / Organizational justice / Psychologists / Society / Values