Learning empathy through literature

ABSTRACT

In the field of organization studies, little consideration has thus far been devoted to the study of literature. The lacuna in the extant scholarship is unfortunate insofar as there is much to be gained for researchers interested in understanding organization to critically engage with literature. As an illustrative example of how literature can inform myriad pertinent discourses in organization studies, in this piece we study the question of empathy. That is, we describe just some of what may be gleaned about empathy from literature using anecdotes from a pedagogical exercise. Finally, we close this piece with a brief overview of the articles selected for this special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• fiction
• literature
• organization

In his landmark text, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), Thomas Piketty locates the significance of literature in conceptualizing various economic realities. As Piketty (2013, 2) writes, ‘nineteenth-century novels … are full of detailed information about the relative wealth and living standards of different social groups, and especially about the deep structure of inequality, the way it is justified, and its impact on individual lives.’ He further explains that the novels of Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac offer vivid illustrations into how systems of economic inequality organized British and French societies, respectively, during the authors’ lives.

While the burgeoning scholarship in the field of organization studies dedicated to popular culture has established creative spaces from which to think about organizations/organizing (e.g., Parker 2012; Rhodes and Lilley 2012), little consideration has thus far been devoted to the study of literature (some exceptions include Matanle, McCann, and Ashmore 2008; McCabe 2015). The lacuna in the extant scholarship is unfortunate insofar as there is much to be gained for researchers interested in understanding organization to critically engage with literature (Czarniawska 1997; Michaelson 2016; Theweleit 1987). In the introduction to their edited book, Good Novels, Better Management, de Monthoux and Czarniawska-Joerges (1994, 1) open with the assertion that ‘good novels can educate better managers.’ Knights and Willmott (1999, viii) have offered veracity to this assertion in their book, Management Lives, in which they use fiction as a way of conceptualizing ‘managing as an everyday activity that involves interactions between people.’

As an illustrative example of how literature can inform myriad pertinent discourses in organization studies, in this piece we study the question of empathy (Prasad 2012). That is, we describe just some of what may be gleaned about empathy from literature using anecdotes from a pedagogical exercise (similar to what Chiaramonte and Mills [1998] did with movies). Finally, we close this piece with a brief overview of the articles selected for this special issue.

Empathy and organization

Empathy has been finding its way into mainstream organizational practices (e.g., in product and service design, in leadership, in customer service, in stakeholder relations). To substantiate this point, the authors’ non-scientific search of EBSCO's Business Source Complete database revealed that, between 1960 and 2000, an average of 26.5 Harvard Business Review articles per decade contained the word ‘empathy.’ From 2000 to 2010, that number increased to 114 while thus far this decade, ‘empathy’ has already appeared in 571 articles (as of 14 November 2018). Empathy is commonly recognized today as a necessary aspect of organizational openness, through which individuals learn to adapt (i.e., favorably alter their relationship with) to their organizational environment.

Working from this backdrop, it seems timely to ask: How can fiction and narration contribute to organizational change by way of empathy? A great deal, according to some. For Nussbaum (1990), our relationship with the narrative, our immersion within worlds otherwise out of reach, our internal re-enactments of the social complexes woven into the narrative's plot, and our entering beneath the skin of its characters, ‘wrest[s] from our frequently obtuse and blunted imaginations an acknowledgment of those who are other than ourselves, both in concrete circumstances and even in thought and emotion’ (Nussbaum 2008, 156). Extending this idea, Oatley (1995) describes the literary narrative as a simulation of human actions running on the minds of the reader. The reader is drawn into the ambiguity of the narrative, and must construct inferences regarding the characters’ motives, beliefs, and emotions (Mar and Oatley 2008) – a kind of role-taking (Koopman and Hakemulder 2015). Even though it functions largely at the intellectual level, narrative comprehension involves the same networks as those recruited in the completion of actual tasks of social processing (Mar 2011; Mar and Oatley 2008). This suggests that engagements with literary narrative interfaces with corporeality and materiality (Prasad 2016) – themes that have acquired much currency within the field of organization studies in the last decade (e.g., Prasad 2014; Pullen and Rhodes 2014; Segarra and Prasad 2018).

This kind of embodied perspective-taking can evoke narrative emotions such as empathy with characters, and it promotes the ability to generate theory of mind – the ability to understand behavior of others by reasoning about their beliefs, desires and intentions (Apperly 2012). Importantly, narrative fiction can transcend the limitations of immediate physical experience (Mar and Oatley 2008) insofar as it is able to transport us to people and places that we would be otherwise unable to reach due to physical or historical distance or to predilection whether formed by social conventions, culture, or personal biases.

Kidd and Castano’s (2013) widely publicized study found support for the conclusion that the reading of literary fiction (compared to popular fiction, non-fiction, or nothing) can improve performance on a variety of instruments designed to test theory of mind. Though replication studies have produced variable results (see Panero et al. 2016; Kidd and Castano in press), the linkage between literary fiction and empathy has been positively received. This effect should not be considered being confined to the imaginary. A substantial body of research has lent support to the notion that the literature-empathy linkage can be generalized to the ‘real world.’ Studies examining the effects of reading on attitudes suggest that reading can promote prosocial attitudes toward (typically, minority) others (for a summary of examples, see Hakemulder 2000 and Paluck and Green 2009). Literature as a pathway to empathy also has a long tradition within medical education for patient care (see, for example, Schneiderman 2002). Thus, it would seem that the reading of literary fiction offers the possibility of an intentional intervention to promote empathy.

Beyond being a feeling of deep identification and compassion, empathy is also a call-to-action. Batson (1992, 72) suggests that ‘empathy evokes motivation directed toward the ultimate goal of reducing the needy person's suffering.’ Once one feels empathic concern, they are motivated to take altruistic action to reduce the need of the valued other (Batson, Lishner, and Stocks 2015). Thus, to the extent that empathy can be induced by reading literary texts, literature may actually offer the potential to promote real-world acts of citizenship.

It is with this possibility in mind that one of us (Thexton) explored the pedagogical use of literature as a means of engendering among business students a sense of empathy toward nature and, ultimately, pro-environmental behavior. Book Club brought together a voluntary group of undergraduate business students to read and reflect upon literary treatments of the non-human through works such as Alexis's Fifteen Dogs and Kaneko's Are You an Echo?

The intervention's theory of change is founded upon three important areas of scholarship: that which links the reading of literary texts with empathy (c.f., above); that which extends theories of both empathy and narrative empathy to the non-human; and that which links empathy with action. These latter two points are elaborated below, followed by a description of Book Club.

Empathy and the non-human

Book Club is premised on the idea that empathy toward nature is not only possible, but can be induced through purposeful intervention. This premise has been supported by several important studies. Schultz (2000) found that participants who were shown images of harmed animals and instructed to relate empathetically with the subject of the images reported significantly higher levels of biospheric concern for animals, plants, marine life, and birds than those instructed to remain objective. Likewise, Berenguer (2007) found that participants shown images of an oil-soaked bird and a felled stand of trees scored significantly higher on a self-reported measure of empathy when those participants were encouraged to imagine how the bird or trees feel about what was depicted in the image. As Tam (2013) notes, some environmental scholars have drawn on the literature linking empathy with altruism to conclude that empathy to nature is an important – if not necessary – condition for conservation and sustainability. Sobel (1996), for example, writes, ‘we must begin in empathy, by becoming the animals before we can save them.’

The above-mentioned study by Berenguer (2007) provides some support to the hypothesis that empathy can invoke altruistic behavior toward nature. Those in his ‘empathy’ condition more strongly endorsed a sense of moral obligation to help the bird or the tree, as well as a desire to help nature as a whole. When asked to allocate fictitious funds toward various causes, those in the ‘empathy’ condition allocated a significantly greater proportion toward environmental protection.

Literary texts as a path to nature-empathy

To many of us, the idea that literature can evoke empathy within us, deepening our sense of compassion for fellow humans and broadening our sense of humanity is unsurprising. However, to extend that notion to the realm of the non-human is perhaps less intuitive. Beierl (2008) enumerates examples of literature that invoke sympathetic imagination of the human-animal bond. Whether following the tragic, though ultimately hopeful, life path of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, the rough life of Jack London's White Fang, or the eventual demise of Hazel from Richard Adams's Watership Down, we might recall reading literary fiction that has, indeed, evoked empathy toward the non-human – at least, to animals.

Representation of the non-human in literary fiction is inherently problematic; as noted by Borkfelt (2011, 151): ‘[A]ny human representation of the animal will still be exactly that: human.’ The risk, clearly, is that we mistake empathy for the non-human with a kind of sentimentality projected upon humanized representations of the non-human.

How does the author overcome the anthropomorphizing tendency to project onto the non-human other, aspirations, beliefs and sentiments that properly belong to the human author? In his review of Barbara Gowdy's, The White Bone, Borkfelt (2011, 148) notes the author's ‘postcolonial and non-anthropocentric form, which avoids traditional stereotypes and othering of non-human animals.’ Gowdy narratively interprets observations of elephant behavior into terms that can be apprehended by humans. The elephants have their own decidedly elephantic perspectives, language, and motivations. Though they are depicted as experiencing human language as ‘yells,’ we can nevertheless enter the elephants’ world through the authors’ English translation of their utterances.

De Felip (2014, 94) describes this literary approach – present also in the German lyric poetry of Mall, Kling and Mayröcker – as an ‘identification with animals in which intellectual insight into the animals’ conditions merges with a clearly perceptible affective concern.’ The postcolonial writing of the non-human is consistent with Mierek’s (2010, 18) description of naturalistic narrative depictions of the non-human:

[R]elationships among the animals or between animals and humans that are rich, important, and recognizable from the perspective of the reader. The animal or animals are the center, however, and the concerns of the animal characters are animal concerns. As such they are quite distinct from stories in which animals walk and talk like people we have known.

Admitting the possibility of empathy with nature that can be evoked through the reading of particular literary representations of the non-human, Book Club explored how reading could alter or deepen business students’ relationship with nature. Texts were selected from literature described above as postcolonial writing of the non-human. Among the titles included were André Alexis's (2015) novel, Fifteen Dogs and Misuzu Kaneko's (2016) collection of poetry, Are you a. echo?

In many ways, Fifteen Dogs is an easy entry point into narrative empathy with the non-human. Early in the story, the dogs are granted ‘human intelligence’ by the god Apollo as part of his wager with Hermes over whether or not this ‘gift’ would make them less happy than humans. This clever narrative device opens for the reader a window into the consciousness of the stories’ characters. Alexis carefully translates dog-mind to the reader, enabling us to peer into the emerging self-consciousness of his characters. Nevertheless, his fifteen dogs are faithfully allowed to act out their dog-ish concerns (to piss, to mount, to scavenge, to lick) – authentic concerns that can readily be observed at any dog park.

Empathy comes most easily for those dogs who most fully embrace the ‘gift’ of human intelligence and, as such, move most closely toward our human sensibilities – characters like Majnoun, a wise and (mostly) kind black poodle. Likewise, Prince--a mongrel who develops a love for language and for its play in the form of poetry – is a portal between the human and non-human insofar as he embodies the elegance of human expression while remaining immersed in decidedly dog-ish themes:

With one paw, trying

the edges of the winter pond,

finding its waters solid,

he advances, nails sliding,

still far from home. (106)

Or,

I’ve eaten green that comes up black,

risen cold from torrid mud.

I’ve licked my paws and tasted blood. (157)

But the book also reflects on how the non-human recedes from our human sensibilities. Atticus, the Neapolitan Mastiff ultimately focuses both his will and savagery toward the suppression of his humanization – refuses the colonization of his identity by human intelligence. With Atticus, determined in his dog-ness, we struggle to empathize. With his distancing from the human, he recedes from our sympathies. It bears underscoring, though, that even in this case we can empathize with the sense of disorientation and liminality that human intelligence has imposed upon him. Perhaps Atticus represents most authentically a non-human perspective within the antropocene:

And yet, said Atticus, I am sometimes afraid that I will not know the feeling [of belonging] again, that I will never again know what it is to be a dog among dogs. This thinking of yours, black dog, it is an endless dead field. Since the change, I have been alone with thoughts I do not want. (39)

Misuzu Kaneko's, Are you a. echo?, was written originally for children but is much more universal in its appeal. The beauty of Kaneko's poems resides in her ability to imagine, for example, the feelings of each successive layer in the snow pile, or the happiness that the flower shop man wishes for the flowers he has sold, or the response of the sardines to the ‘Great Catch’:

At sunrise, glorious sunrise

it's a big catch!

A big catch of sardines!

On the beach, it's like a festival

but in the sea, they will hold

funerals

for the tens of thousands dead.

Kaneko consistently evokes defamiliarization – the characteristic of some literary texts to disorient or unsettle the reader such that the familiar becomes strange (Koopman and Hakemulder 2015). Defamiliarization demands that we pause and reflect, which may lead to a deepening or broadening of understanding. Our unbridled joy at a harvest of sardines oscillates with our grieving of the survivors. We must reconcile our dinner with the innocence of the fish we eat:

But the fish in the sea—

no one looks after them;

they do no harm.

And yet, her I am about to eat one.

Book Club participants clearly recognized the capacity of these works to invoke our empathy toward nature and to enlist our imaginations toward a redefining of our relationship with the non-human. The readings and our reflections upon them brought about, simultaneously, a heightened appreciation of natural beauty with a deepened sense of grief and remorse. For some, the poems were a call to action (‘We need to fix a broken economic system that produces tragic natural consequences’) or an indictment of human behavior (‘We’re killing the planet’). For others, the poems engendered a deeply emotional response from which escape felt critical (‘When I think about it, it makes me so sad that I no longer know how to act in this world. How to eat, earn a livelihood … ’).

Though grief may be an appropriate response to the state of our natural ecosystems, it brings the risk of inaction arising from despair. Empathizing with nature may be insufficient, in and of itself, to arouse pro-environmental behaviors. As such, we concluded our Book Club with a reading that draws from Indigenous ways of thinking and being. The intent of invoking such ways of thinking and being inform a relationship with nature that balances empathy with a realistic call to action.

Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass weaves autobiography with the sacred stories of her ancestors in a loving and compelling invitation into Indigenous ways of thinking about and being within nature. Her narrative reveals her own deep empathy for nature – her capacity to gaze upon the ‘silent green lives’ (p. 129) of the corn, the bean and the pumpkin and to learn (from) their stories. A constant theme in the work is the notion of nature as a gift. Likewise, in The Gift of Strawberries, Kimmerer relates, ‘The fields made a gift of berries to us, and we made of gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes’ (27). When we conceive of nature as a gift, our human relationship with it is altered. Nature is no longer a commodity to be harvested and sold for personal gain. Rather, with nature as gift, we are compelled to what Kimmerer describes as the ‘Honorable Harvest.’ The Honorable Harvest includes thirteen simple guidelines that direct how we ought receive this gift for our livelihood – guidelines like asking permission before taking, taking only what you need, leaving some for others, never wasting, sharing, and giving back in reciprocity.

Book Club was never intended to function within the realm of science, even though it borrowed – in its conception – from scholars of empathy, altruism, and literature. As such, no effort was made to measure or quantify its outcome. Neither was the purpose of Book Club to incite radical pro-enviornmentalism, to promote panpsychism or animistim, or to ‘Indigenize’ participants’ relationship with nature and the non-human. Simply put, it was an effort to enlist imagination in order to kindle an openness to a new, deeper, and (hopefully) more sustainable relationship between us and nature. It responds to Buell’s (1995, 2) call to action: ‘[E]nvironmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination the amelioration of which depends on finding better ways of imaging nature and humanity's relation to it.’

Overview of special issue

We were pleased to receive many high quality submissions to the special issue. Unfortunately, due to spatial constraints, we were only able to accept five articles for inclusion in the special issue. Given the call for papers was purposefully broad in its purview, the selected articles that comprise this special issue are diverse in both content and scope. We close this introduction with a brief overview of the articles.

The first three pieces offer concrete examples of how literary works can inform understanding of organizations and organizing. Otto, Pors, and Johnsen (2019) use China Mieville's novel, The City and the City, to explore and issue that is increasingly becoming conspicuous in organizational (and political) life – public secrecy. The authors offer an insightful study into the interplay between public secrets and clandestine acts intended to achieve certain ideological outcomes. Aroles, Clegg, and Granter (2019) focus on organizational crime in Andrey Kurkov's novel, Death and the Penguin. In studying the construct, they illuminate the multivocality of organizational realities. In a somewhat similar vein, Calvard (2019) examines the central character in Anthony Trollope's novel, The Way We Live Now, to account for the role of the swindler in organizational life. Calvard's article prompts readers to conceptualize how certain (often unscrupulous) individuals accumulate and consolidate power. These pieces are especially timely as they engage with discourses that have been acquiring currency in the current political landscape that has led to the rise of right-wing populism in the United States and Europe.

The final two pieces explore the possibilities of, what Grey and Sinclair (2006) call, ‘writing differently.’ Benozzo, Koro-Ljungberg, and Adamo (2019) not only revisit organizational fiction by considering characters from television (Mad Men) and literature (Bartleby, the Scrivener), but they present their ideas using a set of, what they call, ‘textual and performative writings.’ Grafstrom and Jonsson (2019) extend this discussion by demonstrating the pedagogical utility of developing a textbook on organization theory that is based upon a novel. A textbook that adopts such an approach would go a long way in achieving the pillars of critical management studies – denaturalization, non-performative intent, and reflexivity (Prasad and Mills 2010). These pieces capture both the benefits for authors to experiment with writing and the need for reviewers and editors to be open to different modes and genres of writing.

Acknowledgement

This special issue was guest edited by Albert Mills and Ajnesh Prasad. Todd Thexton fully participated in the preparation of this introductory essay to the special issue. The guest editors thank the editors-in-chief of Culture and Organization for being supportive of our idea and the reviewers who offered constructive and timely reviews on the manuscripts submitted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.