Exploring emotion in capabilities for organizing

1. Monica C. Worline Emory University May Meaning Meeting April 24, 2009 Exploring emotion in capabilities for organizing

2. Dedicated, with gratitude, to my collaborators: Jane Dutton Peter Frost Jason Kanov JacobaLilius Sally Maitlis

3. What is the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing in human communities?

4. How I arrived at this question: Part 1 • Dutton, Worline, Frost, & Lilius (2006) ask: how do people organize in response to suffering? • Worline, Lilius, Dutton, Kanov, Maitlis, & Frost (2009) ask: how does organizing in response to suffering become sustainable? • The expression of empathy, and its limitations, plays an important and understudied role in sustainable organizing in response to suffering

5. How I arrived at this question, Part 2 • Worline (2004) asks: how is courage expressed in contemporary work life? • Quinn & Worline (2008) ask: what enables people to organize in the face of unexpected, fearful, or threatening developments? • The regulation of emotions such as anxiety and the creation of emotions such as inspiration play an important and under-studied role in organizing under conditions of duress

6. Seeing Emotion in the Everyday • This view offers a way of seeing the landscape of everyday activity in organizations suffused with emotion • Four things stand out: • Emotion is central to collective capacity for action • Emotion refers to both emotional expression and emotion regulation • Emotion in practice is not simply individual or psychological, but inheres in both activity and structure • Different kinds of capabilities are likely to be associated with different types of emotional expression and emotion regulation in context

7. What is the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing in human communities?

8. Organizing • What is the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing in human communities? • Organizing is central to understanding the patterning of human action in organizations (Weick, 1979; Heath & Sitkin, 2001) • A theoretical emphasis on process • An eye to how structures and actions interrelate • Focus on situated, everyday activities in a community

9. Capabilities • What is the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing in human communities? • Organizations develop ways of doing activities, which, through iteration, create the capacity for competent organized action in particular domains (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Orlikowski, 2002; Weick and Roberts, 1993; Zollo and Winter, 2002) • Organizational scholars use the term capability in different ways, but overall it suggests competent organized action that arises from bundles of practices that are coherent and purposeful (Levinthal, 2001; Dosi, Nelson, & Winter, 2001).

10. Emotion • What is the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing in human communities? • Embodied psychophysiological responses to events and situations that comprise everyday life and thus central to human activity • Emotions are also instantiated by structures such as a workplace’s feeling rules, display rules, or character (Barley & Kunda, 1992; Birnholtz, Cohen, & Hoch, 2007; Callahan, 2004; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987).

11. Emotion & Organizing • Huy (1999) theorizes that collective emotional capability is manifest in an organization’s routines • Huy (2002) suggests that a capability for emotional balancing arises from activities by managers that demonstrate emotional commitment to change projects and that attend to the emotions of change recipients. • Structural conditions enable and constrain how employees draw upon their emotions in ways that make use of their embodied know-how or emotional intelligence (Callahan, 2004; Cetina, 2001; Cote & Huy, 2008; Creed & Scully, 2000; Schatzki, 2001).

12. Two performances of arriving • Tabitha’s lateness • Attendance policy • No managerial attention • Individual problem • Coworker attention to inconvenience • Inattention or deliberate disregard of mood • Norm of non-disclosure about personal issues • Lack of knowledge about help • Lack of action to address suffering • Brittany’s lateness • Attendance policy • Managerial attention • Mutual problem • Coworker attention to inconvenience • Coworkers pay deliberate attention to mood • Norm of inquiry into personal issues • Knowledge about how to help • Skilled action to address suffering

13. Related to capabilities for organizing • Tabitha’s workplace • Attendance policy • No managerial attention • Individual problem • Coworker attention to inconvenience • Inattention or deliberate disregard of mood • Norm of non-disclosure about personal issues • Lack of knowledge about how to help • Lack of action to address suffering • Brittany’s workplace • Attendance policy • Managerial attention • Mutual problem • Coworker attention to inconvenience • Coworkers pay deliberate attention to mood • Norm of inquiry into personal issues • Knowledge about how to help • Skilled action to address suffering Brittany and her coworkers are connected through emotional bonds to manage their personal and professional suffering collaboratively as part of the legitimate activity in the workplace. Brittany’s workplace demonstrates a remarkable capability to harness emotion in organizing to meet challenges. Tabitha and her coworkers are separate emotional selves who manage their personal and professional suffering in their own ways, which go largely unnoticed or unaddressed in the workplace. Tabitha’s workplace demonstrates very little capability to harness emotion in organizing to meet challenges.

14. What we don’t know • How the expression of specific emotions like empathetic concern throughout a human community contributes to capabilities for organizing • How capabilities for organizing that rest on expression of specific emotions become sustainable • How the regulation of emotions such as empathetic concern through a community contributes to capabilities for organizing • Differences in specific emotions as they relate to distinct capabilities for organizing

15. MMM Help - What do you see… • About ways that the expression of emotion contributes to capabilities for organizing? • About ways that capabilities for organizing that rest on expression of emotion become sustainable over time / across episodes? • About the regulation of emotion through a community and capabilities for organizing? • About differences in specific emotions as they relate to distinct capabilities for organizing?

16. Background

17. Compassion Organizing • Compassion is a three-part human experience, consisting of: • Noticing suffering • Feeling empathetic concern • Responding to suffering in some manner • Compassion organizing is a distinct form of organizational capability aimed at extracting, generating, coordinating, and calibrating resources to direct toward those who are suffering (Dutton et al., 2006)

18. Compassion Organizing • Resources are construed broadly and in a dynamic fashion (Feldman, 2004) • Empathetic concern is central (Clark, 1997) • A combination of empathy, an affective response stemming from comprehension of another’s emotional state and feeling similarly • And “sympathy,” or comprehension of another’s feelings and sorrow or concern for them, which may involve cognitive perspective taking (Eisenberg, 2000).

19. How I will address these gaps • How the expression of emotion more broadly throughout a human community contributes to capabilities for organizing • Primary focus is not on managerial action • How capabilities for organizing that rest on expression of emotion become sustainable • Looking at accounts that construe action over time and accounts across episodes of suffering • Differences in specific emotions as they relate to distinct capabilities for organizing • Focus on empathetic concern as distinct emotional experience central to social life

20. Sustainable Expression of Compassion at Midwest Billing

21. Midwest Billing • An ‘extreme’ or ‘positive deviant’ case useful for elaborating theory (Eisenhardt, 1989; Starbuck, 2001; Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2003) • Bounded unit with distinct practices is appropriate for capabilities focus (Levinthal, 2001) • Interacted with all members of the unit during a 2-week observational period • Formal semi-structured interviews with 26 of 30 members

22. Interview Protocol • How long have you been here? • Can you describe what a typical day is like? • Tell us what life is like here in the billing department. • How is this unit similar to other units or other places you have worked? • In what way is this unit compassionate or caring? • In what ways is compassion or caring absent in the unit? • If you were describing to a newcomer what the core values are of this group, what would they be? How do these values get expressed? 

23. Descriptive Hints • Responsible for generating claims for reimbursement on behalf of all physicians affiliated with Midwest Health System • Unit members interact primarily with insurance providers, secondarily with patients • At the time of our observation, the unit comprised all female members (N = 30) • 84% Caucasian, 16% African American • Range in age from 20s to 60s.

24. Truly Describing Life at Midwest Billing

26. Interview Analysis • Three analytic questions guided coding • Was the unit able to engage in the sustainable expression of compassion? • How was the unit able to engage in the sustainable expression of compassion? • What do particular activity clusters accomplish in the unit that members’ accounts of the workplace link to a capability for organizing compassion ?

27. Compassion at Midwest Billing • Overall, 62% of respondents described at least one unique instance of an expression of compassion in the unit • Span of 20 pain triggers across a variety of types of suffering • An episode of domestic violence, a husband undergoing transplant surgery, a mother’s sudden and unexpected death • Expressions of compassion continued beyond one-time offerings and run the gamut • Hugs, phone calls, expressions of support • Sending flowers and cards • Checking on childcare, running errands • Covering work tasks, • Monetary donations • Hospital visits, funeral attendances

28. Takasha • “During that time there were a few people from the department that I know on a personal level outside of work, they…came to the hospital the night that it happened and [one of them] stayed until they discharged me, while [another] periodically came by my Mom’s house to see how I was doing and if I needed anything. Of course, they passed around a card and everyone signed it. Pretty much everyone, I‘m sure, donated, because I was off for almost three months. So the money helped and the prayers and the well wishes and all that good stuff was something that I’ll never forget.”

29. Analytic Question 2: “How was the unit able to engage in the sustainable expression of compassion?” Analytic Question 3: “What, specifically, do practices accomplish in the unit that relate to members experience of compassion at work?” Observations re: what practices accomplish Conditions Activities Practices Praise; Recognizing someone who is good at an element of the job; Attending to one another’s preferences or strengths Celebrating, discussing personal circumstances, and orienting increase information about personal life; Engaging in community service increases information about needs and interests outside of work; Refocusing on work allows people to decrease flow of information about life outside work; Playing increases discretionary non-work activities; Refocusing on work decreases play when necessary; Acknowledging Flexible Semi-permeable Boundary Between Work and Non-work Approaching someone who disagrees; Talking immediately about misunderstandings Addressing conflicts directly Monthly birthday parties; Baby showers; Wedding showers; Potlucks to recognize life events; Parties Celebrating Collective decision-making Daily meetings; Participatory hiring Pod meetings; Discussions Acknowledging ,celebrating, discussing personal circumstances, orienting, and playing build relational knowledge; Addressing conflict directly helps mitigate negative emotion and corrosive connections; Help-offering increases attention to condition of the other; Refocusing on work allows people to keep relationships strong while setting limits with each other Discussing personal circumstances Lunch breaks in common area; Updates in daily meeting about people’s status; Informal conversations Relational Strength Fund raising, Pot of gold, Scarecrow contest, Adopt a family, Grandma Vera Engaging in community service Approaching others who appear to be in need of aid; Monitoring absences or other conditions that may make help necessary Help-offering Addressing conflicts directly, collective decision-making, orienting builds initiative to bring up issues; refocusing on work builds initiative to correct one another; Acknowledging builds initiative to recognize one another; Help-offering builds initiative for quick action on behalf of others Orientation; Job rotation; Training and socialization Orienting Emotion-based Empowerment Water gun fights; Joking; Decorating cubicles; Football rivalries Playing Interrupting breaks that go too long; Explicitly stating when one needs to focus; Stopping play when necessary Refocusing on work

37. Expression of Compassion – in – Practice Attention to Suffering Felt Empathetic Concern Responses to Suffering Ecology of Activity Refocusing on Work Playing Engaging in Community Service Discussing Personal Circumstances Orienting Help-Offering Addressing Conflicts Directly Collective Decision Making Acknowledging Celebrating

42. Limits on Compassion-in-Practice Attention to Suffering Responses to Suffering Felt Empathetic Concern Ecology of Activity Refocusing on Work Playing Engaging in Community Service Discussing Personal Circumstances Orienting Help-Offering Addressing Conflicts Directly Collective Decision Making Acknowledging Celebrating

43. Analytic Question 2: “How was the unit able to engage in the sustainable expression of compassion?” Analytic Question 3: “What, specifically, do practices accomplish in the unit that relate to members experience of compassion at work?” Observations re: what practices accomplish Conditions Activities Practices Praise; Recognizing someone who is good at an element of the job; Attending to one another’s preferences or strengths Celebrating, discussing personal circumstances, and orienting increase information about personal life; Engaging in community service increases information about needs and interests outside of work; Refocusing on work allows people to decrease flow of information about life outside work; Playing increases discretionary non-work activities; Refocusing on work decreases play when necessary; Acknowledging Flexible Semi-permeable Boundary Between Work and Non-work Approaching someone who disagrees; Talking immediately about misunderstandings Addressing conflicts directly Monthly birthday parties; Baby showers; Wedding showers; Potlucks to recognize life events; Parties Celebrating Collective decision-making Daily meetings; Participatory hiring Pod meetings; Discussions Acknowledging ,celebrating, discussing personal circumstances, orienting, and playing build relational knowledge; Addressing conflict directly helps mitigate negative emotion and corrosive connections; Help-offering increases attention to condition of the other; Refocusing on work allows people to keep relationships strong while setting limits with each other Discussing personal circumstances Lunch breaks in common area; Updates in daily meeting about people’s status; Informal conversations Relational Strength Fund raising, Pot of gold, Scarecrow contest, Adopt a family, Grandma Vera Engaging in community service Approaching others who appear to be in need of aid; Monitoring absences or other conditions that may make help necessary Help-offering Addressing conflicts directly, collective decision-making, orienting builds initiative to bring up issues; refocusing on work builds initiative to correct one another; Acknowledging builds initiative to recognize one another; Help-offering builds initiative for quick action on behalf of others Orientation; Job rotation; Training and socialization Orienting Emotion-based Empowerment Water gun fights; Joking; Decorating cubicles; Football rivalries Playing Interrupting breaks that go too long; Explicitly stating when one needs to focus; Stopping play when necessary Refocusing on work

44. Capability for the Sustainable Expression of Compassion • A workplace’s capacity for continued willingness and ability to notice, feel, and respond to suffering in a manner that is purposeful and repeated over time and across episodes Sustainable Compassion-in-Practice “It’s OK. It’s OK to have problems and issues and basically it’s OK to be human. We may be at the workplace and most of us try and keep our personal life out of this place, but sometimes it spills over and you can’t help it and it’s OK. It just makes you feel comfortable enough that you can feel compassionate towards others.” Semi-Permeable Boundary Between Work and Non-Work Refocusing on Work Playing Engaging in Community Service Discussing Personal Circumstances Orienting Help-Offering Addressing Conflicts Directly Collective Decision Making Acknowledging Celebrating

45. Capability for the Sustainable Expression of Compassion • A workplace’s capacity for continued willingness and ability to notice, feel, and respond to suffering in a manner that is purposeful and repeated over time and across episodes Sustainable Compassion-in-Practice “I used to hate my job. I love this job. I feel like I can be myself here. I feel like it’s even had an impact on my home. … I’ve become more myself. I’m not afraid to speak up. I’m not afraid to share what I feel with people, just that kind of thing. … I’m able to be open and if I have a problem, a lot of people will listen, and they will empathize, and they will do whatever they can to help. I’ve never been in a place like this.” Relational Strength Refocusing on Work Playing Engaging in Community Service Discussing Personal Circumstances Orienting Help-Offering Addressing Conflicts Directly Collective Decision Making Acknowledging Celebrating

46. Capability for the Sustainable Expression of Compassion • A workplace’s capacity for continued willingness and ability to notice, feel, and respond to suffering in a manner that is purposeful and repeated over time and across episodes Sustainable Compassion-in-Practice “She’s been going through some really rough times in our group, and the other day I said, “She needs a card.” So I started out, I said, “I wish you happiness and lots of money!” And I taped a quarter with one of those trees on it, you know those money trees? And other people will tape on a piece of candy, or maybe a band-aid, or just some little thing, and send it around to everybody and everybody signs it.” Emotion-Based Empowerment Refocusing on Work Playing Engaging in Community Service Discussing Personal Circumstances Orienting Help-Offering Addressing Conflicts Directly Collective Decision Making Acknowledging Celebrating

47. What does Midwest Billing show us about the role of emotion in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing? Contributions

48. Situated Empathetic Concern • Many scholars acknowledge the situated nature of empathetic concern and its susceptibility to contextual effects • Yet organizational scholars know very little about how workplace contexts enable or constrain people’s empathetic concern for one another • Or how the contextual expression and regulation of empathy relates to capabilities for organizing

49. Empathetic Concern & Organizing • Midwest Billing shows us patterns of activity that facilitate the feeling of empathetic concern among coworkers • Midwest Billing also shows us patterns of activity that allow people to place appropriate limits on the expression of empathetic concern • Both the expression of and regulation of empathetic concern are necessary in organizing the sustainable expression of compassion

50. Beyond Empathetic Concern • Midwest Billing suggests that emotion has a role in generating and sustaining capabilities for organizing more generally • Generalized positive emotion is crucial to organizing for learning and quickly distributing effort in the unit • Limits on expression of negative emotion may be crucial to organizing for reliably high productivity and well-being or satisfaction