Twenty-second International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

In recent years a paradigm shift has been proposed in the organizational sciences that includes a change from self-centeredness to interconnectedness. This emergent management paradigm considers that employees are not only motivated by self-interest, but also by other-centered values such as altruism and compassion for others. This alternative proposal suggests the need for a more humanistic perspective for management. We draw on this approach to explore the consequences of compassion and altruism in the workplace for firm performance, using organizational resilience as a mediating variable. To this end, we applied a structural equation model to a sample of highly innovative companies from different sectors. The results confirm that compassion at work leads to a climate based on altruism, which indirectly increases firm performance by means of organizational resilience. This study contributes to the organizational literature by revealing some benefits of promoting altruism and compassion in organizations.