Opinion PaperBuilding a compassionate workplace using information technology: Considerations for information systems research
Introduction
Our lives, businesses, and entire societies around the world have been disrupted as never before by the COVID-19 crisis (Venkatesh, 2020). Reacting to this unforeseen disruption, academics and practitioners alike have recognized the need for transformative changes in the nature of work and organizing to address the unprecedented challenges that this pandemic has brought upon us (Davison, 2020; Dwivedi et al., 2020). A prominent transformative idea-that has been forwarded to counter the negative ramifications of this pandemic-is the notion of organizational resilience and the need to improve it in a technology-mediated, fluid, and remote organizational workspace (Rai, 2020; Watson, Ives, & Piccoli, 2020). Resilient organizations are those that “thrive despite experiencing conditions that are surprising, uncertain, often adverse, and usually unstable” (Lengnick-Hall, Beck, & Lengnick-Hall, 2011, p. 243) −conditions that capture the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organizations quite accurately.
One of the critical pathways to achieving organizational resilience is through the acknowledgement and practice of compassion within organizations (Kanov et al., 2004; Lilius, Worline, Dutton, Kanov, & Maitlis, 2011). Organizational compassion refers to a collective aspect of organizational work, where people notice suffering (amongst one or more colleagues), become empathetic to the sufferer(s), make sense of the cause of suffering, and act collectively so as to alleviate the suffering (Dutton, Workman, & Hardin, 2014; Lilius, Kanov, Dutton, Worline, & Maitlis, 2012). In an organization, compassion generates relational resources, strengthens shared values, and cultivates critical relational skills (Lilius et al., 2011)–factors that generate mutuality within the workforce, a prominent factor in attaining organizational resilience (Kanov, Powley, & Walshe, 2017). In organizations disrupted by pandemics like COVID-19, compassion becomes an important consideration for organizations as employees wrestle with challenges of alienation, increasing technology dependence, possibilities of job loss, psychological pressures to maintain productivity, and managing work-life conflict (Inchausti, MacBeth, Hasson-Ohayon, & Dimaggio, 2020; Torous, Myrick, Rauseo-Ricupero, & Firth, 2020; Walker & Oldford, 2020).
From an IS standpoint, an understanding of the role of technology in the enablement of organizational resilience–by promoting compassion–thus becomes critical. The understanding of how IT enables compassion within an organizational workforce is vital, as arguably, that understanding will shape the future of technology-mediated work to a large extent. The salience of IT to promoting compassion becomes especially relevant given that technology-mediated work is also known to have issues of dehumanizing individuals (Lowry, Zhang, Wang, & Siponen, 2016), resulting in negative outcomes such as technostress (Califf, Sarker, & Sarker, 2020; Pirkkalainen, Salo, Tarafdar, & Makkonen, 2019; Tarafdar, DArcy, Turel, & Gupta, 2015), anxiety (Martínez-Córcoles, Teichmann, & Murdvee, 2017), and severe work-life imbalance (Sarker, Xiao, Sarker, & Ahuja, 2012; Syrek, Apostel, & Antoni, 2013). We fear that the COVID-19 impact will accentuate these harmful consequences. Considering the harmful implications of a technology-mediated dehumanized workforce leads us to reflect upon the salience of IT in the promotion and practice of compassion, as an important antidote to possible dystopic outcomes, and as critical to achieving organizational resilience.
However, technology-mediated work does not always have a dark side. For example, technology can be leveraged to address mental challenges during lockdowns by allowing for the delivering of therapy to alleviate mental challenges (Inchausti et al., 2020). Both the harmful effects of technology on the organizational workforce, and the possibilities of technology allowing us to address challenges related societal distress (e.g. as a result of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic) increase the salience of investigating compassion within an IT context. This need for compassion in IS research motivates this paper. We focus the rest of the paper on the ways and means of exploring how information technology and systems can facilitate the emergence and enactment of compassion, particularly within an organizational context.1 We are optimistic that the ideas put forward in this paper will be helpful as we attempt to address IT-related workplace issues and build more resilient organizations which can survive challenges such as those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We believe the message of our paper is consistent with those embraced by movements across different academic communities, particularly the disciplines of management and organizational studies, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Association for Information Systems (AIS). The disciplines of management and organizational studies have recognized compassion as a core focus in their disciplines (Tsui, 2013) within a larger emphasis on positive organizational scholarship (POS). POS, which focuses on “what is positive, flourishing, and life-giving in organizations” (Cameron & Caza, 2004, p. 731), includes compassion as a salient focus of inquiry (Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis, 2012). Similarly, the conception of positive computing within the ACM community is consistent with views espoused in this paper. ACM promoted the paradigm of “positive computing” at its annual 2016 CHI conference, as a part of a bigger agenda on “designing technology for wellbeing” (Tondello, 2017, p. 20). Positive computing is based on the idea that design decisions should promote human thriving (Calvo, Peters, & D’Mello, 2015) and is increasingly garnering scholarly interest in the ACM community. Finally, we believe that our paper reflects AIS’ adoption of “the Grand Vision Project for the ICT-enabled Bright Society (in short, the Bright ICT Initiative)” (Lee, 2016, p. 1). The goal of this initiative is to mitigate the adverse effects of IT in businesses and society, as well as specifically use IT for human enrichment (Lee, 2016). We took inspiration from these academic movements while writing this paper.
Our paper proceeds as follows. We first sensitize the IS community on why it is valuable and necessary to conduct research on compassion. Next, we propose a possible integrative framework that captures the phenomenon of compassion as it relates to IS research. Finally, we use this integrative framework to develop some guidelines to energize IS research on compassion.
Section snippets
The value of IS research on compassion
Focusing on organizational compassion allows IS research to examine an increasing promethean dilemma confronting contemporary use and design of technology. While technologies enable organizations to be successful and innovative (Kohli & Melville, 2019; Nambisan, Lyytinen, Majchrzak, & Song, 2017; Nevo & Wade, 2010), the increasing embeddedness of technology in organizations and society has a record of dystopic consequences, where technology has often been a chosen conduit for pursuing an
An integrative framework mapping the scope of compassion in IS
The integrative framework (see Fig. 1 and Table 1) depicts the authors’ perspective of the relevance of IT to organizational compassion. This viewpoint is later used to outline possible considerations for IS research. We invite our colleagues to contribute to the discussion on IS and compassion by proposing alternate viewpoints as well.
To begin, we propose that the enactment of organizational compassion is influenced by two triggers – a) organizational compassionate imperative (OCI) and b)
A compassionate charter: considerations for IS research
The integrative framework described above can help define a Compassionate Charter for IS Research. The different elements of the framework (identified as conceptual areas) are used to develop research themes, leading to research questions based upon salient literature. Specifically, there are four conceptual areas that follow from Fig. 1:
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Organizational compassionate imperative (OCI)
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IT-enabled enactment of compassion
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Infusion of compassion in technology design and information systems development
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Conclusion
Organizational compassion can yield varied benefits for organizations that practice it and researchers in other fields have already produced a vigorous and ongoing stream of scholarship on this important topic. Given the workplace challenges due to COVID-19, the time has come for IS researchers to make our unique mark on the study of organizational compassion and perhaps gain some intellectual stake into this important and relevant phenomenon. To encourage distinct contributions by IS
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