INCLUSIVE OFFBOARDING AND DIGNIFIED EXIT MANAGEMENT: A HYBRID SYSTEMATIC AND INTEGRATIVE REVIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE, DEIB, AND EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v23.8139Keywords:
Inclusive Offboarding, Employee Exit, Organizational Justice, DEIB, Knowledge Transfer, Post-Exit EngagementAbstract
Although employee offboarding is recognized to have an effect on employee well-being, organizational continuity, and reputation management, this stage of the employment relationship cycle lacks theoretical development. Based on the concepts of organizational justice, social exchange, and identity, this research proposes a dignity-based model by which inclusive offboarding practices affect employee experiences via identity-relevant processes. Through a hybrid systematic and integrative review of 157 scholarly sources (2000-2025), procedural fairness, respectful interaction, and emotional support emerge as key practices, yet there appears to be no underlying mechanism. The current study addresses the issue of inconsistency within organizational justice research in that the current research reveals that perceptions of fairness, standing on its own, cannot account for differences in identity- and relationship-based outcomes but, rather, that employee dignity acts as the proximate socio-emotional mechanism through which such effects emerge. The proposed model outlines the role of dignity as the mediator of the effect of inclusion within the process of offboarding to subsequent outcomes in the form of recovery and organizational advocacy, where the moderating effects of type of exit and organizational ethical climate play a part.
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