Compassion towards clients: Providing conceptual clarity and a test on its damaging effect on frontline workers

Abstract

Despite its argued importance for the quality of public service, compassion is not yet an integrated research topic in public administration. The main purpose of this study was to gain more understanding on what frontline workers’ compassion towards client entails. It did so by first providing conceptual clarity on frontline workers’ compassion towards clients, and, second, by testing the damaging effects of experiencing compassion towards clients on the wellbeing of frontline workers. Using a factor analysis with data collected on social workers through a survey (n = 849), this study showed that compassion is a distinct emotion from emphatic distress, and that compassion has two underlying dimensions: emphatic concern and compassionate motivation. Second, the study points out that the dimensions of compassion have opposite effects on a frontline worker’s wellbeing: while compassionate motivation is negatively related to emotional exhaustion, emphatic concern is positively related to emotional exhaustion and mediated by working overtime to help clients. Altogether, this study showed that compassion is a more complex construct and potentially damaging emotion than is often proposed and hopes to encourage fellow researchers to continue to gain more understanding on compassion and its essential role for the public service and for the effect it can have on the wellbeing of frontline workers.