Both 'organizational goals' theorists and 'systems' theorists err in seeking to assess organizational effectiveness by producing a single statement about an organization's effectiveness. This paper argues that judgments about how well an organization is performing are contingent upon who is making the judgment. The evaluative criteria required to transform a descriptive into an evaluative statement flow from the persons or groups (constituencies) composing the organization or receiving its products or services. The multiple constituency approach to assessing the effectiveness of an organization seeks to determine what constituencies exist in a particular setting, the effectiveness assessments held by each constituency, and the consequences of these assessments. From these issues flow a number of others: the distribution of satisfactions across constituencies, the opportunities for constituencies to affect the organization (and vice versa), the organization's location at the nexus of influence 'loops' embracing its current and possible future constituencies, and others. Twenty-two references are provided.