Background

Suffering is thought to be being inevitable and ubiquitous in organizational life (Dutton et al., 2014; Lilius et al., 2008). Compassion literature positions compassion as a way to alleviate suffering in organizational members (Kanov et al., 2017; Lilius et al., 2011).  However, the nature of suffering is taken for granted in compassion literature, often equating it with a pain event that befalls the organizational member or a pain experience.  Suffering speaks to the existential meaning of the pain as it pertains to the continued existence of the self (Kahn & Steeves, 1986; Reich, 1989; Worline & Dutton, 2017).  Thus, suffering depends upon a mixture of context, the pain event itself, how it is experienced, and the meaning that is derived from it (Kahn & Steeves, 1986).  While ample research exists on what organizations do that leads to employee suffering, it’s not clear why organizations cause suffering. 

Aims

My study aims to unpack suffering to better understand how contemporary organizations contribute to suffering in employees through how organizational practices are implemented. 

Method

This inductive qualitative study included 26 managers and non-managers in Australia and the United States from various business industries during 2021-2022, with the goal of understanding their experiences of suffering and compassion in response to organizational practices. 

Results

This study found that suffering occurred in employees when employees interpreted organizational practices such that it created a sense of undesired loss, where the discrepancy between one’s ‘ideal self’ and ‘actual self’ disrupted the coherency of the individual’s personhood. 

Conclusion

If the subjective and social nature of suffering is not taken into account, it poses a risk that not only might compassionate actions not be properly targeted to suffering to alleviate it, they may also contribute to it.  This study’s finding suggests that how the organization implements practices, where the individual’s personhood coherency and sense of self are maintained, can prevent or minimize suffering