Compassion and Workplace Incivility: Implications for Open Innovation

The purpose of this study was to examine mechanisms of how compassion experienced by employees affects workplace incivility. Specifically, this study aimed to explore the double mediation effect of positive emotion and leadership on the relationship between compassion and workplace incivility. Empirical results using survey data from 304 employees in South Korea confirm that employees who experience compassion at work are less likely to engage in workplace incivility. More importantly, positive emotions and positive leadership sequentially mediate the negative relationship between compassion and workplace incivility. The theoretical and practical implications are of this are also discussed.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Individual Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Gratitude and Compassion at Work

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and activities are aimed at, executed for, and witnessed by individuals, yet CSR literature has long overlooked assessing CSR outcomes at the individual level. Previous CSR research has focused primarily on macro- and institutional-level outcomes. The current paper addresses this issue by analyzing the influence of CSR on a crucial stakeholder for hospitality organizations: their employees. Specifically, gratitude and compassion at work were tested as parallel mediators between employees’ perceptions of CSR and their well-being and organizational citizenship behavior directed toward the organization (OCBO). Drawing from the affect theory of social exchange and moral emotions, this article aims to understand how CSR leads to improving employees’ well-being and OCBO through the underlying emotional mechanisms of gratitude and compassion. Survey data from two independent samples were gathered to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that employees’ perceptions of CSR activities had a significant positive direct effect on eudaimonic well-being but not on hedonic well-being. Gratitude mediated the relationship between perceived CSR and OCBO as well as hedonic well-being. Compassion mediated the relationship between perceived CSR and hedonic well-being as well as OCBO. Besides theoretical contributions of testing these mechanisms together in a hospitality context and evaluating the influence of CSR efforts on certain dimensions of well-being, this research will be particularly relevant to hospitality managers when formulating CSR strategies and promoting a CSR culture.

Compassion in the Clink: When and How Human Services Workers Overcome Barriers to Care

A key assumption in past literature has been that human services workers become emotionally distant from their charges (such as clients or patients). Such distancing is said to protect workers from the emotionally draining aspects of the job but creates challenges to feeling and behaving compassionately. Because little is known about when and how compassion occurs under these circumstances, we conducted a multiphased qualitative study of 119 correctional officers in the United States using interviews and observations. Officers’ accounts and our observations of their interactions with inmates included cruel, disciplinary, unemotional, and compassionate treatment. Such treatment varied by the situations that officers faced, and compassion was surprisingly common when inmates were misbehaving—challenging current understanding of the occurrence of compassion at work. Examining officers’ accounts more closely, we uncovered a novel way that we theorize human services workers can be compassionate, even under such difficult circumstances. We find that officers describe engaging in practices in which they (a) relate to others by leveling group-based differences between themselves and their charges and (b) engage in self-protection by shielding themselves from the negative emotions triggered by their charges. We posit that the combined use of such practices offsets different emotional tensions in the work, rather than only providing emotional distance, and in doing so, can foster compassionate treatment under some of the most trying situations and organizational barriers to compassion.

Book review: Monica C. Worline and Jane E. Dutton, Awakening Compassion at Work

Monica C. Worline and Jane E. Dutton, Awakening Compassion at Work, Berrtt-Koehler Publishers, 242 pp., US$17.23. ISBN-13:978-1626564459.

Do compassionate firms outperform? The role of organizational learning

PurposeBased on a new management paradigm rooted on care and compassion, this study explores the consequences of compassion at work on organizational learning and firm performance.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the research model by using data from two different samples.FindingsResults confirm that compassion increases firm performance through organizational learning capability; however, compassion do not enhances directly firm performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe study findings indicate that when compassion is propagated among organizational members, organizations are better able to learn so they obtain a competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate and leads to higher firm performance.Originality/valueThis study takes a step forward on literature by providing empirical evidence for a promising area of management research such is compassion in organizations.