Collective Compassion: How Structures and Agency Influence Individual, Group, and Organizational Compassion in Healthcare Organizations

This dissertation examines compassion in healthcare organizations through a lens of structuration theory. The purpose of this study is to identify structures that healthcare workers describe as enabling and/or constraining compassion, and the ways that healthcare workers (re)produce and transform these structures. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with healthcare workers, this study reveals that multiple structures in healthcare constrain compassion at different stages of the compassion process (i.e., recognizing, relating, and (re)acting). Findings also illuminate how healthcare workers engage in individual and collective compassion to support coworkers, which can (re)produce or challenge the status quo of compassion in organizations. This study extends compassion scholarship by: (a) delineating the differences between individual compassion, group compassion, and organizational compassion, (b) highlighting how structurational divergence in healthcare stunts compassion, (c) examining the limits and consequences of emphasizing compassion in healthcare, and (d) offering insight on the varied success of compassion programs.