Organizational compassion in social enterprises: arguing for a new research sub-stream

Abstract

Organizational compassion has moved closer to center stage in organizational studies. Frost (1999) pioneered the intellectual shift, then later further developed by Dutton and colleagues (2006). Yet, I argue that compassion research in organizations has tended to hold onto assumptions that have precluded it from moving forward; in particularly the assumption of organizational stability. In this paper, I argue for a new organizational site fraught with tension and challenges (i.e. social enterprises), as a way to bring to the foreground the contested and coconstructed nature of compassion process – a new research sub-stream I propose in this field.