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Compassion in the Clink: When and How Human Services Workers Overcome Barriers to Care

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  • Katherine A. DeCelles

    (Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6, Canada)

  • Michel Anteby

    (Questrom School of Business, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215)

Abstract

A key assumption in past literature has been that human services workers become emotionally distant from their charges (such as clients or patients). Such distancing is said to protect workers from the emotionally draining aspects of the job but creates challenges to feeling and behaving compassionately. Because little is known about when and how compassion occurs under these circumstances, we conducted a multiphased qualitative study of 119 correctional officers in the United States using interviews and observations. Officers’ accounts and our observations of their interactions with inmates included cruel, disciplinary, unemotional, and compassionate treatment. Such treatment varied by the situations that officers faced, and compassion was surprisingly common when inmates were misbehaving—challenging current understanding of the occurrence of compassion at work. Examining officers’ accounts more closely, we uncovered a novel way that we theorize human services workers can be compassionate, even under such difficult circumstances. We find that officers describe engaging in practices in which they (a) relate to others by leveling group-based differences between themselves and their charges and (b) engage in self-protection by shielding themselves from the negative emotions triggered by their charges. We posit that the combined use of such practices offsets different emotional tensions in the work, rather than only providing emotional distance, and in doing so, can foster compassionate treatment under some of the most trying situations and organizational barriers to compassion.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine A. DeCelles & Michel Anteby, 2020. "Compassion in the Clink: When and How Human Services Workers Overcome Barriers to Care," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 1408-1431, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:31:y:2020:i:6:p:1408-1431
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2020.1358
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Katherine A. DeCelles & Paul E. Tesluk & Faye S. Taxman, 2013. "A Field Investigation of Multilevel Cynicism Toward Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 154-171, February.
    4. Farkas, Mary Ann, 1999. "Correctional officer attitudes toward inmates and working with inmates in a "get tough" era," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 495-506.
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    Cited by:

    1. Roscoe Conan d'Souza & Ignasi Marti, 2022. "Organizations as Spaces for Caring : A Case of an Anti-trafficking Organization in India," Post-Print hal-04381311, HAL.
    2. Roscoe Conan D’Souza & Ignasi Martí, 2022. "Organizations as Spaces for Caring: A Case of an Anti-trafficking Organization in India," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(4), pages 829-842, May.

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