Jane Dutton's research focuses on how organizational conditions strengthen capabilities of individuals and firms. She is a co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations.

Monica Worline's research is dedicated to the mission of enlivening work and workplaces is a founding member of CompassionLab, and a collaborating scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University.

JD: Some managers in some organizations don't see compassion as part of an organization's capability for adaptation, for innovation and those kinds of things. But part of what we're trying to do in the book is showing that the compassion is something we are born with and it actually contributes to these really important capabilities that are associated with organizational effectiveness.

JD: The work that we've done over the years is thinking less of compassion as just an emotion and thinking about it as more of a process. The process of compassion involves noticing the suffering of others, making sense of the pain they're suffering, feeling for the other person (empathic concern), and acting (or in some cases not-acting, because sometimes we have withhold action as a way to help the sufferer). In terms of understanding how compassion unfolds in an organization and when it actually gets stunted or stopped, it sometimes really helpful to think what is it in the organization that is helping or hindering the noticing of suffering , helping or hindering what we call as generous interpretations of the suffering, what is hurting or helping empathic concern, and what is hurting or helping people to take appropriate action towards the sufferer. A really important point of the book is to talk about this idea that some compassion is more competent than others. That is, the way the process unfolds actually is helpful to the suffering and in some cases it's not. When it is more helpful in alleviating suffering we call that more competent compassion. Two of the major points in the book have to do with this process, and what is it in the organization's context that opens or shuts down these sub processes, and what makes compassion more or less competent.

MW: I think it's really important for us to clarify that when we talk about compassion competence. In our book when we talk about competence were talking about the competence of the system to create compassion for people. But there's also competence and skill at the interpersonal level. People can become more skilled at noticing suffering around them inter-personally and they can build more sensitivity and emotional intelligence and capacity to engage in skilled action at the interpersonal level. The arguments that is very unique to the work that Jane and I have done, and where we make I think a distinctive contribution in the field of compassion research is to look at competence at the level of the system not just at the interpersonal level.

To read more of Immanual Joseph's interview with Jane Dutton and Monica Worline, please click here.