Compassion capability in resource-limited organizations in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Compassion in organizations benefits the giver and receiver of compassion, and the organization as a whole. Organizations with resource limitations, however, face risks and liabilities for compassion organizing. In South Africa, an emerging economy with a challenged socioeconomic environment, human service organizations face resource limitations. Organizations providing health and social services, such as home-based care, child- and youth care and medicine, in the context of a high burden of disease and limited material resources, face personal resource limitations, such as compassion fatigue and burnout. This article discusses individual staff capacities required for compassion in organizations in resource-limited human service organizations. It applies individual and participatory sensemaking, with embodied experience, as capacities to distinguish between the experiences of empathic concern and personal distress when working with others who are suffering. It serves as a foundation for professional development and supervision of agents working in these circumstances – and should be of primary concern to the HR and Coaching fraternities.

KEYWORDS:

• empathy
• compassion
• compassion capability
• compassion fatigue
• emerging economies
• sensemaking

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Correction

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Katherine Train is an independent practitioner and researcher in professional development, wellbeing, presence, empathy and prevention of compassion fatigue and burnout in the corporate, NGO and public sectors. She holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business where she researched compassion capability in resource-limited organizations in South Africa characterized by diversity across cultural, racial, socio-economic and educational lines. The author can be reached at [email protected]

Kurt April is the Allan Gray Chair, an Endowed Professorship, and Director of the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Cape Town (South Africa), Adjunct Faculty at the Saïd Business School (University of Oxford, UK), and Faculty Member of DukeCE (Duke University, USA). He also sits on the Editorial Boards of a number of international academic journals. Outside of academia, he plays executive roles in business and sits on a number of private company Boards. The author can be reached at [email protected]

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (10.1080/23322373.2020.1737389)