Defining Compassion

Posted by on Jan 2, 2013 in Featured, Portfolio | 0 comments Compassion is the heart’s response to suffering. Compassion — from the roots passio (suffering) and com (with) — means to suffer with another. Compassion is an innate part of human response to suffering, which is comprised of a three-part experience of noticing another’s pain, feeling with another, and responding in some way. In this article we explore the meaning of compassion for work...
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Compassion Organizing

Posted by on Jan 1, 2013 in Featured, Portfolio | 0 comments Pain and suffering, though often unspoken, are ubiquitous in work organizations. Sometimes the work of the organization itself becomes painful, while at other times pain comes from tragic and unexpected events in employees’ lives. Pain and loss, though they are inevitable parts of people’s experience, are not within the usual purview of studies of organization. This paper takes up the topic...
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Contours and Consequences

Posted by on Dec 2, 2012 in Featured, Portfolio | 0 comments In this paper, we use a combination of narrative and survey methods to explore the contours and consequences of compassion at work. Stories of compassion at work provide testimony to its power in cultivating positive identification with the workplace and with one’s co-workers. Survey findings suggest that the experience of compassion at work is positively related to people’s...
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Compassion Capability

Posted by on Jan 3, 2012 in Featured | 0 comments What makes one group of people highly able to coordinate compassionate responses to suffering in their midst, while another group may fail to take notice at all, and another may exhibit a minimal response? In this paper, we take up this question by looking closely at one organizational unit that exhibited an extraordinary capacity to respond to the suffering of its members. We found a work unit...
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