The Theory and
Practice of Compassion in Work Organizations
or
Seeing Organizations Differently: Three Lenses on Compassion
Peter J. Frost, Jane E. Dutton, Sally
Maitlis, Jacoba M. Lilius,
Jason M. Kanov and Monica C. Worline
For the Handbook
of Organization Studies :: 2nd edition
We are a group of
high-energy, dedicated, professional scholars
who strive to create a new
vision of organizations as sites
for the development and
expression of compassion.
We are part of a broader
community of scholars
who are dedicated to
developing a perspective
on organizations as sites
for human growth
and the development of human
strengths.
We thank
Tom Lawrence for comments
on an earlier draft of this paper
He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me ...
it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy,
sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance,
self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,
superiority, and ego.
The other wolf
stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and
faith.
The same fight is going on inside you, and inside every
other person, too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child
asked his grandfather, Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied... "The one you feed. "
-- Cherokee Proverb (www.snowowl.com)
Table 1: Three ways of seeing compassion in
organizations
|
|
Compassion as interpersonal
work
|
Compassion as narrative
|
Compassion as organizing
|
|
|
Compassion
is one of the many everyday
interpersonal
interactions or types of
relational
work that take place in
organizations
|
Compassion
is carried in language and
stories
in ways that help people make sense
of
pain and make meaning of their
experiences at work
|
Compassion
becomes a collective
accomplishment
through processes that
create, maintain, and
dissolve social units
|
|
Main idea
|
|
|
|
|
Core assumptions
of this lens
|
Relational and interpersonal work requires
skill
and competence
Relational and interpersonal work is often
gendered
and disappeared
Relational and interpersonal work is
consequential and
productive
|
Compassion narratives reflect the hidden
reality
of pain in organizations
Compassion narratives help constitute the
human
response to pain
Narratives are powerful windows into the
construction
of individual and collective
identities
|
Different processes in organizations
enable
people to notice, feel, and
respond
to pain
Features of the organizational context
facilitate
or hinder noticing, feeling, and
responding
to pain
Agentic activity by proactive
individuals
can
amplify collective response to pain
|
|
Central ideas
about compassion
as seen through
this lens
|
Compassion
involves a three-part human
experience
of noticing, feeling, and
responding.
Several types of well-known
interpersonal
interactions help to facilitate
elements of this experience
|
Compassion
narratives reveal important
shared
values and beliefs that are the heart
of
organizations. Compassion narratives
also
help constitute organizational
members
identities and realign them with
organizational
identity.
|
Compassion
becomes an effective
collective
accomplishment when individual
agentic
actions are legitimated, when
attention
and information about pain is
propagated,
and when systems are in place
that
allow for easy coordination of effort.
|
|
Key insights
developed
through this lens
|
Compassion is effortful work that involves
expenditure
of cognitive and emotional
energy
Compassion depends on skilled
interpersonal
interactions and emotional
attunement
Small acts of compassion may have large
consequences
|
Compassion narratives show the
emotional
tendencies of a collective
Exposure to compassion narratives in
organizations
affects people in
consequential
ways, often having a
developmental
effect
Compassion narratives reveal a process
by
which members re-align their sense of
the
organizational identity with their
perceptions
of organizational action
Compassion narratives open the door for
critical
analysis of power dynamics,
political
aspects of organizations, and
what
is left unsaid about pain
|
Compassion as organizing relies on
interdependent
observations, feelings,
and
actions
Compassion as organizing is subject to
nonlinear
dynamics and feedback loops
that
influence the shape of the response
Organizing processes are embedded in
time
and may feed into expectations for
compassionate
response in the future
Organizing compassion has secondary
effects
such as raising the level of
efficacy to meet
challenges in a system
|
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... "The one you feed." -- Cherokee Proverb (www.snowowl.com)
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