ORGANIZACIJOS IR JOS DARBUOTOJO SOCIALINĖ ATSAKOMYBĖ: LIGOS ATVEJO ANALIZĖ
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF ORGANIZATION AND ITS EMPLOYEE: SICKNESS CASE ANALYSIS

Summary/Abstract: Organizational social responsibility is more than a management theory. By no means, management theoreticians and practitioners affirm that accelerating globalization and international development of companies have turned it into a business changing strategy. A wide spectrum of general interesting signs of social responsibility promote scientific research. Accordingly, combining academic literature review and empirical research results the article selected sickness case analysis as a method analysing organization's management, as well as, its employees’ perception and implementation of social responsibility. Though healthcare and sickness are frequent and popular subjects within medical, sociological and psychological fields, apparently, they lack attention in the context of management sciences. Taking this into consideration, the article spotlights healthcare and social responsibility aspects associated with it, thus, questioning what behaviour is characteristic to an organization and its employee in case of sickness and how it relates to social responsibility? Hereby, organization and its employee’s behaviour became the object of the research, which aims at determining theoretical and practical relationship between organization and its employees’ behaviour and social responsibility, specifically, in case of sickness. The analysis of academic papers leads us to conclusion that organization stakeholders’ expectations and ensuing requirements are related to the quality of their lives. The expectations can be identified by the stakeholders’ physical and emotional well-being, material and social wealth. These factors could be measured by and based on objective facts on life conditions and/or subjective stakeholder’s perceptions. Both organization social groups – employers and employees – must work together in case of sickness to maintain and foster social responsibility in labour market relations. The employee must actively seek medical care and the organization should give him an opportunity to have a break from playing the employee’s role. The results of the empirical research showed that the respondents’ sickness frequency does not affect their socially responsible behaviour with colleagues or the organization. Yet, it is not a rare behaviour, when the employee goes to work having disease symptoms (e.g., slight fever, cough, runny nose). The results revealed that the decreasing income in case of sickness is a compelling reason for the socially irresponsible behaviour. Withal, the analysis of empirical research data shows the employee’s insecurity and social instability, thus, refuting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Therefore, it can be concluded that the employee is socially responsible only when the organization behaving in a socially responsible manner allows him/her to be a socially responsible employee.

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