title: How should I care? Understanding the Front-Line Managerial Compassion Process
Creators: name: Wang, Yunong
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: front-line management
subject: FLM
subject: compassion capability
subject: Organisational compassion
subject: emotion-related abilities

description: This research explores front-line managerial (FLM) compassion capability. The fast-paced working environment with increased demands and limited resources have made the contemporary workplace an emotional arena for employees (Fineman, 2000). The accumulation of distressful emotions has been recognised as one of the influencing factors to employees’ general wellbeing and commitment towards the organisation (Holtom, Mitchell, Lee, &amp; Eberly, 2008). The concern of the accumulated distress in return highlights the importance of facilitating compassion in an organisation (Dutton, Frost, Worline, Lilius, &amp; Kanov, 2002; Dutton, Lilius, &amp; Kanov, 2007; Frost, 1999) because compassion has been recognised to have various benefits that specifically deals with individuals’ emotional suffering at work (Dutton et al., 2007). This thesis defines FLM as managers who have supervisory responsibilities and have frequent interactions with their employees (Purcell &amp; Hutchinson, 2007). Purcell and Hutchinson (2007) contend that managers who have been given opportunities to frequently interact with employees are considered as a lynchpin in organisations’ daily operation. Such role makes FLMs the prime candidates to facilitate compassion during their interactions with employees and therefore they are selected as the focal actor to study compassion capability. Organisational compassion scholars have explored areas of workplace spirituality (Petchsawang &amp; Duchon, 2012), self-compassion and mindfulness (Raab, 2014) and organisation compassion capabilities (Madden, Duchon, Madden, &amp; Plowman, 2012). However, the current organisational compassion literature has not obtained a clear understanding of how compassion interactions between two individuals in workplace unfolds and (Dutton, Workman, &amp; Hardin, 2014; Kanov, Powley, &amp; Walshe, 2016). The empirical explorations of organisational compassion have previously focused on what behaviours are considered as compassion in the workplace without much consideration of how the compassion actor notices suffering or how the compassion actor feels when encounter the suffering (Lilius et al., 2008; Lilius, Worline, Dutton, Kanov, &amp; Maitlis, 2011). Therefore, this thesis aims to close the gap in the current organisational compassion literature and further explore FLMs’ compassion capabilities (Dutton, Worline, Frost, &amp; Lilius, 2006; Kanov et al., 2004). This research is underpinned by a theoretical framework that is based on Dutton, Workman and Hardin’s compassion process model (2014). The update of Dutton et al.’s (2014) model is done through incorporating theories from multiple disciplines including emotion intelligence (Mayer, Caruso, &amp; Salovey, 2016), coping and appraising (Lazarus &amp; Folkman, 1984), taxonomy of emotions (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, &amp; O’Connor, 1987), social support (Gleason &amp; Iida, 2015) and non-verbal display theory (Bonaccio, O’Reilly, O’Sullivan, &amp; Chiocchio, 2016). The concept of suffering in this research is broadly defined as a form of incrementally accumulated emotional distress and is relevant to the organisation’s daily operations. The empirical exploration in this research is guided by the interpretivist philosophical paradigm and qualitative methodology. This research collects data from two participating organisations (Mantra Hotel Group and Gold Coast University Hospital) with a total of 28 participants (11 FLMs, 17 Employees). A semi-structured interview method is used to gather narratives and stories from the participants. Interviews are transcribed and analysed using NVivo to code the data and organise the codes into themes. The findings of this study make numerous contributions to theory and practice. On a theoretical basis, this is the first study that closely explores the process view of compassion in the context of the FLM- employee dynamic. The findings of this research also expands the understanding of FLM’s compassion process and found that when FLMs notice employees’ suffering, they utilised their emotional intelligence capabilities to perceive and understand employees’ emotions (Mayer et al., 2016). Further, FLMs’ experienced emotions (love, sadness and anger) are primarily unpleasant and they utilise cognitive appraisals to cope with the experienced emotions during the compassion process. When responding to employees’ suffering, FLMs’ selected social support actions and non-verbal cues which influence the exemplification of compassion. Preceding compassion process literature has not yet recognised the importance of compassion focal actor’s emotional intelligence and various other capabilities (Dutton et al., 2014). On an empirical basis, this research is one of the first to collect data from real life workplaces that provide empirical support to the conceptualisation of compassion process view. The findings can empirically support future studies such as quantitatively examining the correlations between FLMs’ emotion-related abilities and their capabilities of responding in compassion. From a practical viewpoint, the findings from this research will aid organisation practitioners to reinforce training and development for FLMs to advance their emotion-related abilities (e.g., emotional intelligence, non-verbal communication &amp; appraisal and coping) and therefore enhance their capabilities to interact with employees in a compassionate manner. This research provides a solid platform for future research in this emerging field of study.