Compassion Organizing

January 1, 2013

By: Jane Dutton, Monica Worline

Originally posted on Compassion at Work Blog

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 of organizing to address compassion.  While it is easy to see compassion as an individual concern, it is also crucial to see it as a collective concern. In this paper, we consider compassion as a systemic organizing process manifest in dynamics that unfold over time. We propose a model of compassion organizing to describe how compassionate responses are activated, mobilized, and organized through time.

To read the paper, click here.