Jønsson Thomas Faurholt, Fasano Maria Celeste
Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jul 10;16:1548931. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1548931. eCollection 2025.
Along with an increased centrality of moral values and conduct in society and organizations, scholars' interest in many forms of responsible organizational behaviors has proliferated. The present article intends to contribute to future organizational psychology by conceptualizing what subjective responsibility is and developing a general model of antecedents and consequences of subjective experience. We conducted a rapid literature review, with the purpose of mapping existing domains of responsibility, i.e., what does research in organizational psychology investigate responsibility ? There is much interdisciplinary literature about organizational level "objective" responsibility, e.g., Corporate Social Responsibility, but less about the subjective experience and dynamic nature of responsibility. Therefore, we specifically searched for theories and conceptualizations of responsibility as an organizational psychological, i.e., "subjective," phenomenon. Our results confirm what other scholars have also previously observed, namely that theoretical groundwork centered on the psychological phenomenon of responsibility in organizations is rather rudimentary treated in the literature. This is unfortunate as thorough conceptualization and theory about phenomena generally form the basis for robust future research. Therefore, we integrate extant, theoretically underdeveloped concepts of subjective responsibility to reach a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon. Second, we develop a theoretical model that may be applicable to understand and hypothesize about organizational responsibility for various domains, such as responsibility for work outcomes or the environment. To cover the interplay between organizational structural factors and organizational members' psychological level, we depart from the structure-agency metatheory. Thus, we assume that individuals subjectively regulate areas and degrees of responsibility in reciprocal interplays with structural properties. As outcomes, we focus on how responsible actions may be differently motivated. With the comprehensive conceptual development, we intend to lay the ground for a better understanding and measurement of the organizational psychological phenomena. Moreover, our theoretical model may be applied to support hypothesis development in the many different domains of responsibility, both with respect to organizational and personal antecedents and motivated responsible actions.
随着道德价值观和行为在社会及组织中的核心地位日益凸显，学者们对多种形式的组织责任行为的兴趣也与日俱增。本文旨在通过对主观责任的概念化以及构建一个关于主观体验的前因后果的通用模型，为未来的组织心理学研究做出贡献。我们进行了一次快速文献综述，目的是梳理现有的责任领域，即组织心理学研究中责任所涉及的内容是什么？关于组织层面的“客观”责任，如企业社会责任，有大量跨学科文献，但关于责任的主观体验和动态本质的文献较少。因此，我们专门搜索了将责任视为一种组织心理现象（即“主观”现象）的理论和概念。我们的研究结果证实了其他学者之前也观察到的情况，即在文献中，以组织中责任的心理现象为中心的理论基础相当薄弱。这很不幸，因为对现象的全面概念化和理论通常构成未来稳健研究的基础。因此，我们整合了现有的、理论上尚未充分发展的主观责任概念，以达成对该现象的全面定义。其次，我们构建了一个理论模型，该模型可能适用于理解和假设组织在各个领域的责任，如对工作成果或环境的责任。为了涵盖组织结构因素与组织成员心理层面之间的相互作用，我们基于结构 - 能动性元理论展开研究。因此，我们假设个体在与结构属性的相互作用中主观地调节责任的范围和程度。作为结果，我们关注负责任行为的动机可能存在怎样的差异。通过全面的概念发展，我们旨在为更好地理解和衡量组织心理现象奠定基础。此外，我们的理论模型可用于支持在责任的许多不同领域中进行假设开发，无论是关于组织和个人的前因，还是关于有动机的负责任行为。
