Research on compassion in organizations has grown over the last decade, however, there is still a need for empirical work on the topic before we truly understand compassion and the various factors that influence it in everyday organizational life (Atkins & Parker, 2012; Dutton, Workman & Hardin, 2014). The purpose of this dissertation is to review the current literature on compassion in organizations and extend research on compassion by exploring potential moderators of the relationship between compassionate feelings and compassionate responses from potential compassion givers. The moderators under investigation are in the form of individual (i.e., moral identity, moral disengagement), situational (i.e., cognitive appraisals) and organizational (i.e., ethical leadership, ethical climate) contextual variables. Findings from experimental and field studies are presented. Theoretical and practical implications of compassion in organizations are discussed, and areas for future research are identified.

This thesis explores how digital communication can support compassionate leaders and compassionate workplaces. Through grounded theory methods, exploration and understanding emerged from compassionate leader semi-structured interviews. Emergent themes maintain digital communication can support the evolution of compassionate workplace connectedness and collaboration leading to a compassionate workplace experience. Compassionate leaders stimulating workplace compassion build an atmosphere of trust culminating in increased productivity and a joyful culture where one-on-one to multi-way interaction is supported by digital communication tools.

Background: An appreciation of the broader social determinants of health and wellbeing has led to the inclusion of new public health principles and practice within health and social care. End-of-life care has been no exception and there exists a favourable policy context, significant body of theoretical work, substantial practitioner interest and numerous practice examples. Despite this context, there has been little empirical exploration and the approaches remain poorly characterised. Aims and objectives: The aim of this study was to understand the impact a new public health approach to end-of-life care project can have when initiated through a hospice. Specifically this study sought to explore how a compassionate community project is experienced, what tensions exist, what processes support or impede the work, what specific challenges such a project developed from within this sector presents and what learning exists for the wider field. Methods: A mixed methods study employing multiple methods of data collection was performed. Data collection methods included: interviews; focus groups; participant observation; documentary analysis and service records. Ethics approval was obtained. Data were analysed according to modified grounded theory and using online software tool Dedoose. Results: Twenty-one interviews, two focus groups and 19 episodes of participant observation were conducted, 11 documents and service data on 180 Compassionate Neighbours and 173 Community Members were also included. Six key actions facilitated integration of new public health approaches with service provision approaches. Impacts from the work were wide ranging and included a reduction in loneliness, improvements in wellbeing and changes to hospice practice. Further to this, three underlying drivers emerged that underpinned the work as a whole. They were seen to translate the observed actions of the project into the impacts and included: altered power dynamics, expression of reciprocity in relationships and the development of agency. Discussion: The three drivers allow a deeper appreciation of the factors involved in the development of a compassionate community. The redressing of power dynamics within traditional provider-recipient relationships allowed for more equity, and created a space for reciprocal and mutual relations to emerge. Not only were these reciprocal relations observed between those at the end of life and those visiting them, but also between participants in the project and the hospice. In order to adequately capture these new perspectives offered through this study, a new term collective social capital is introduced. This moves beyond existing conceptualisations of social capital in end-of-life care to provide novel perspectives on the role of reciprocity and interdependency between the lay and professional worlds. Conclusion: This study provides a reflexive and critical account of the processes and impacts of compassionate communities work in practice. It situates reciprocal relationships as its foundation and forces an assessment of the nature of power and agency in all interactions. Through the presentation of the new concept of collective social capital, it presents a collaborative and interdependent path forward for new public health and end-of-life care in the future.

This research examined the use of compassionate release policy in response to the fastest-increasing segment of the prison population- elderly offenders. Though this policy is an approach to this problem, there was little available research regarding which correctional organizations in the United States adopt compassionate release and how it is used. The purpose of this nonexperimental comparative quantitative study was to examine the use of the policy in neighboring and distant state correctional systems relative to those organizations that used the policy more frequently to determine if the leader-laggard theory of policy diffusion was an effective policy-implementation framework. The research questions were structured to determine if there was a significant difference between the use of compassionate release policy in state and federal prisons and if there was a significantly higher concentration of policy use in states directly neighboring those where the policy was used more-frequently. Data were collected from 31 state and federal correctional agencies' publicly-available records regarding compassionate release policy use. Data were analyzed using a test of differences for the first research question and independent-samples t-tests for the second research question. The results suggested that there was significantly higher use of the policy by state correctional organizations compared to the federal prison system and that there were not significant differences in policy use between neighboring and distant states of high-use policy areas. Implications for positive social change include informing prisons about processes that may assist in reducing organizational costs and increase safety of elderly offenders, correctional workers, stakeholders, and community members/taxpayers.

Bakgrund: En bra relation motverkar ångest och depression medan en dålig relation är sämre för den psykiska hälsan än att vara singel. Bra kärleksrelationer består av komponenter som exempelvis nöjdhet, intimitet, kärlek och engagemang. Nöjdhet predicerar dessutom nöjdhet senare i relationen. Kärlek belyses utifrån definitionerna romantisk kärlek, kamratlig kärlek, vuxen anknytningskärlek och medkännande kärlek. Medkännande kärlek innefattar ömhet, omsorg, förståelse, vård, stöttning och hjälpsamhet. Hängivenhet innebär att vara lyhörd inför sin partners behov och hjälpa denne.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur man i tidigare forskning beskrivit hur hän-givenhet och medkännande kärlek i en kärleksrelation påverkar förhållandet. Metod: En litteraturstudie där åtta artiklar om hängivenhet och medkännande kärlek i förhål-landen undersöktes. Genom en innehållsanalys av de åtta artiklarna skapades temat ”Att bry sig om sin partner”, samt huvudkategorierna ”Att ha kärlek att ge” och ”Upplevelsen av att ha fått något”. Resultat: Personer som har mycket kärlek att ge upplever att de får mycket kärlek tillbaka då de betraktar sin partner till stor del utifrån sig själva och att denna syn på sig själva och sin partner skapade mer omtanke och bättre förhållanden vilket var ömsesidigt förstärkande. Omtanken kunde vara förankrad i människors identitet och det fanns mycket som indikerade att omtänksamma personer kände högre grad av medkänsla mot sin partner. Medkänslan och den positiva synen på partnern var delaktig i den genuina viljan och glädjen över att hjälpa sin part-ner och att den glädjen behövde upprätthållas genom att personen fick omtanke tillbaka. Diskussion: Resultatet från analysen diskuteras utifrån anknytningsteorin som teoretisk referensram där det fanns indikationer för att medkännande kärlek, hängivenhet och trygg anknytning skulle kunna vara ömsesidigt förstärkande. / Background: A good relationship counteracts anxiety and depression, while a bad relationship is worse for the mental health than being single. Good romantic relationships consist of com-ponents such as satisfaction, intimacy, love and commitment. Satisfaction also predicts satis-faction later in the relationship. Love is illuminated according to the definitions romantic love, companionate love, adult attachment love and compassionate love. Compassionate love include tenderness, caring, understanding, care, supportiveness and helpfulness. Devotion (communal) means to be responsive to your partner's needs and help them. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the previous research has described how devotion and compassionate love in a love relationship affect the relationship. Method: A literature study where eight articles about the dedication and compassionate love in relations were investigated. Through a content analysis of the eight articles the theme "Caring about your partner” was created, as well as the main categories "To have love to give" and ”The experience of have been given something". Results: People who have much love to give experience that they recieve much love in return as their perception of their partner is largely based on themselves and that this view of themsel-ves and their partners created greater care and better conditions, which were mutually reinfor-cing. The thoughtfulness could be rooted in people's identity and there was much that indicated that thoughtful people felt a greater degree of compassion towards their partners. The compass-ion and the positive perception of the partner were a part of the genuine will and joy of helping their partners and in order for the joy to be maintained, the person needed to recieve care in return. Discussion: The results of the analysis are discussed with attachment theory as a theoretical reference frame where there were indications that compassionate love, devotion and secure attachment could be mutually reinforcing.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of former teen talking circle participant’s experience with the practice of compassionate listening in talking circles and to explore compassionate listening as a form of spiritual activism. This study explored the use and effect of compassionate listening within the facilitator training materials developed and used by the organization Teen Talking Circles as well as the use and experience of compassionate listening within the teen talking circles. For the purpose of this study, I interviewed seven former female teen talking circle participants. Open ended semi-structured interviews were the means of data collection. Data were analyzed thematically and after reviewing the transcripts from all seven interviews, the five strongest themes to come out of the interviews were: increased communication skills, increased awareness, less judgment of self and others, deeper relationships and an increased sense of empathy.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of former teen talking circle participant’s experience with the practice of compassionate listening in talking circles and to explore compassionate listening as a form of spiritual activism. This study explored the use and effect of compassionate listening within the facilitator training materials developed and used by the organization Teen Talking Circles as well as the use and experience of compassionate listening within the teen talking circles. For the purpose of this study, I interviewed seven former female teen talking circle participants. Open ended semi-structured interviews were the means of data collection. Data were analyzed thematically and after reviewing the transcripts from all seven interviews, the five strongest themes to come out of the interviews were: increased communication skills, increased awareness, less judgment of self and others, deeper relationships and an increased sense of empathy.

abstract: The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a Compassionate Communication Scale (CCS) by conducting a series of studies. The first study used qualitative data to identify and develop initial scale items. A series of follow-up studies used exploratory factor analysis to investigate the underlying structure of the CCS. A three-factor structure emerged, which included: Compassionate conversation, such as listening, letting the distressed person disclose feelings, and making empathetic remarks; compassionate touch, such as holding someone's hand or patting someone's back; and compassionate messaging, such as posting an encouraging message on a social networking site or sending a sympathetic email. The next study tested convergent and divergent validity by determining how the three forms of compassionate communication associate with various traits. Compassionate conversation was positively related to compassion, empathetic concern, perspective taking, emotional intelligence, social expressivity, emotional expressivity and benevolence, and negatively related to verbal aggressiveness and narcissism. Compassionate touch was positively correlated with compassion, empathetic concern, perspective taking, emotional intelligence, social expressivity, emotional expressivity, and benevolence, and uncorrelated with verbal aggressiveness and benevolence. Finally, compassionate messaging was positively correlated with social expressivity, emotional expressivity, and uncorrelated with verbal aggressiveness and narcissism. The next study focused on cross-validation and criterion-related validity. Correlations showing that self-reports of a person's compassionate communication were positively related to a friend or romantic partner's report of that person's compassionate communication provided cross-validation. The test for criterion-related validity examined whether compassionate communication predicts relational satisfaction. Regression analyses revealed that people were more relationally satisfied when they perceived themselves to use compassionate conversation, when they perceived their partner to use compassionate conversation, and when their partner reported using compassionate conversation. This finding did not extend to compassionate touch or compassionate messaging. In fact, in one regression analysis, people reported more relational satisfaction when they perceived that their partners used high levels of compassionate conversation and low levels of compassionate touch. Overall, the analyses suggest that of the three forms of compassionate communication, compassionate conversation is most strongly related to relational satisfaction. Taken together, this series of studies provides initial evidence for the validity of the CCS. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication Studies 2013

Notre travail se propose de rendre compte de l’une des spécificités de l’écriture de Marguerite Duras qui consiste à inscrire l’émotion dans ses textes en tant que dispositif clé. Nous montrerons dans quelle mesure le phénomène émotionnel se décline sur plusieurs niveaux au sein de l'œuvre littéraire de l’auteur. L’émotion se propose tout d’abord comme le point de départ de la construction des personnages qui sont ainsi définis tant au niveau de leurs comportements qu’au niveau de leur être intime. Ensuite, l’émotion se glisse dans les dialogues qui revêtent un rôle important dans les récits durassiens et elle en devient l’enjeu principal. L’émotion s’impose également comme le principe de base de cette communication tout à fait personnelle que Duras a toujours su entretenir avec son lecteur. Ainsi, se trace une constante de l’écriture durassienne qui passe par le(s) corps et la voix de l’auteur et de ses personnages. Du fait de son éclectisme qui a donné naissance à une production très hétérogène, nous avons choisi de concentrer notre attention sur les romans qui offrent une vision globale du phénomène émotionnel jouant sur les trois niveaux de sa manifestation : la représentation, le fonctionnement du récit en qualité de dispositif scriptural, le rapport au lecteur. Nous avons également décidé de considérer les œuvres qui ont jalonné la longue carrière que l’auteur a connue sans nous limiter à une période, puisque le phénomène appelé « émotion » habite l’écriture de Marguerite Duras dès ses débuts. / The purpose of our work is to report on one of the specificities of Marguerite Duras’s writing style, which consists in including emotion in her texts as a key device. We will show to what extent the emotional phenomenon can be enunciated on several levels in the writer’s literary work. Emotion is first of all suggested as the starting point of the construction of the characters whose behavior and most intimate self are thus defined. Then, emotion creeps into the dialogs which play an important part in Duras’s narrations, and becomes their mainspring. Emotion also stands out as the basic principle of the highly personal communication that Duras has always known how to maintain with her readers. This is how a permanent trait of Duras’s writing appears, conveyed by the bodies and voices of the writer and her characters. Given her eclecticism, which gave rise to a highly heterogeneous production, we decided to focus on the novels which offer a global vision of the emotional phenomenon on its three levels of expression: its representation, the way the narration operates as a scriptural device and the relationship with the reader. We also decided to take into consideration the works which punctuated the writer’s long career without identifying periods since the phenomenon of “emotion” was a de facto part of Marguerite Duras’s writings ever since her early days.

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