Organizational responsibility: Doing good and doing well.

TL;DR: In this paper, organizational responsibility is defined as context-specific organizational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders' expectations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance.

Abstract: The goals of this chapter are to introduce organizational responsibility research and practice to the field of industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology and to encourage I/O psychology researchers and practitioners to embrace organizational responsibility in their research and practice. Although its definition is elaborated in detail later in the chapter, organizational responsibility is defined as context-specific organizational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders’ expectations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance. In contrast with other topics included in this handbook, organizational responsibility does not seem to be a topic that receives much attention in the literature of mainstream I/O psychology, or even psychology in general. To assess the accuracy of this assertion, I conducted a search in January 2009 using the PsycINFO database and the key words corporate responsibility in all titles and abstracts. The review period covered all items (i.e., books, collections, journals, book chapters, dissertations, conference proceedings, editorials, encyclopedias, handbooks, and textbooks) in all languages included in PsycINFO until that date. There were 52 hits. However, only two of these were for items published in psychology journals (Dumas, 2007; Konczak, 2005). Moreover, neither of these items reported original research; instead, they were book reviews. The remaining 50 items were books, chapters, dissertations, and articles published outside of the field of psychology in journals such as Business Ethics: A European Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Corporate Communications, Journal of Management Development, Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, and Corporate Reputation Review. I conducted the same search on the Business Source Premier database, and the result was 1,917 hits. Of this total, 757 items were articles published in academic journals; 486 were published in magazines and other periodicals, such as The Economist, Fortune, and Supply Management; 547 appeared in trade publications, such as Accountancy, Communication World, Marketing Magazine, and Money Management; and 127 appeared in other sources, such as books. Why this difference in publication rates in I/O psychology compared with other organizational studies disciplines? There are at least four reasons. First, organizational responsibility is an issue that is studied typically at the organizational level of analysis. Although it has shifted its emphasis to include the group level of analysis, most I/O psychology research still addresses primarily the individual level of analysis. In fact, an examination of the chapters included in this handbook suggests that the majority of topics address issues that have been studied primarily at the individual level of analysis. Second, related to the level of analysis reason, the terms organizational responsibility and corporate responsibility are not labels typically used in I/O psychology research. However, because of the interest in the individual