It works pretty much the same. However, organization in lightroom makes the workflow for importing, browsing, selecting photos to edit in a breeze. No more seperate opening of individual raw files to edit. No more external program to review photos. No more manual select all copy and paste in your hard drive. All done pretty automatically from the moment you insert your memory card to your computer. And all within this single software.
On top of that, it also serve as a base to export your photo to specialised software to specialised editing via plugins. Such as Nik Software suite, Photomatix and of course to Photoshop itself if you still need to work with layers. You can also define programs without plugins and export to those for editing, such as Nikon Capture NX2. After you are done with those, just save and they will be reimport back to lightroom.
It's a great tool specialised for photographers.