Compassion Lab

"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
-- William Faulkner

Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December, 1950

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe… He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us … Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We are a group of researchers working in business schools 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.

Compassion provides a window into suffering in organizations—a window that reveals the pervasiveness of suffering as part of organizational life. The CompassionLab has endeavored to draw attention to suffering as part of the reality of all work, as we did in featuring narratives of compassion from university faculty and staff (see Frost et al., 2000). This work builds on what is known about the significant cost of suffering for organizations, in both human and economic terms, with the Grief Recovery Institute providing estimates of the annual cost of grief in the workplace at over $75 billion.

Compassion is the heart’s response to this 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 (see Kanov et al., 2004).

The CompassionLab has worked to trace the forms of compassion at work and to map its consequences. The most common forms of compassion at work seem to be providing emotional support, offering flexibility with work time, and giving material goods that are both helpful and symbolic of concern (see Lilius et al., 2008). The experience of compassion include changes in the way people think about themselves and the way they see their coworkers—compassion builds bonds between people. Experiencing compassion at work can also change the way people see the entire organization as a more caring place, and heighten both their positive emotions and organizational commitment (Lilius et al., 2008).

As organizational researchers, the CompassionLab has worked to develop theoretical explanations about how compassion can become organized and spread throughout human systems. In a fine-grained case study of a response to a fire, we found that compassion as a collective response becomes organized through a combination of 1) networks of people who know one another well enough to share information about pain and suffering; 2) routines for service or hospitality, which foster regularity in human contact; and 3) values such as shared humanity (see Dutton et al., 2006). In addition, the actions of leaders affect how much compassion spreads in an organization, while the actions of impromptu coordinators is important for coordinating and customizing responses to suffering.

The CompassionLab continues to study the expression of compassion in workplaces to learn more about how compassion is organized in human systems (Frost et al., 2006). We need to know more about how organizations become can responsive to suffering and therefore can also enable healing. The need to maintain focus on compassion as a healing force in organizations is reflected in a Cherokee proverb (taken from www.snowowl.com) that reminds us to pay attention to the power of our research focus:

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."

By feeding the wolf of compassion, we can see the impact of small acts and begin to understand the extraordinary accomplishment of collective healing, as well as to think more deeply about how organizations build unique capabilities that bring out the best of the human condition.