Kindness in Management and Organizational Studies

In this chapter, authors take a narrative/interpretive approach by sharing insights from millennials and Generation Z as to the definition of kindness as a behaviour and action. Sixty-six individuals living in North America, Africa and Europe were interviewed during the pandemic (October 2020). They were asked to describe an incident in which they expressed kindness and/or in which it was expressed to them. Authors identified five themes (metapatterns) which denote different ways kindness is described through narrative. These kindness behaviours include: (1) kindness as a small act, (2) kindness as an event, (3) kindness as intervention and (4) kindness as consideration. The fifth form of kindness operates with more performative qualities, and the authors' have dubbed it as ‘kindness [that] makes me feel good’. Authors attempt not to constrain or essentialize what kindness behaviour is, but rather to reveal patterns while also leaving room for possibilities.

This chapter examines how key management theories in management and organization studies (MOS) have addressed kindness. Beginning with a definition of kindness, the chapter reviews the primary works of Frederick Taylor, Elton Mayo and Henri Fayol to surface an alternate account of MOS. ANTi-History is adopted to examine how each of these management theories present kindness providing an alternate account of MOS that predominantly focuses on efficiency and effectiveness. The chapter then re-evaluates MOS using a lens of kindness and the impact to contemporary organizations.

This chapter presents two stories of inspiring women political leaders, Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minster of New Zealand, and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, to shed light on the dire importance of using feminine leadership models (i.e., embodying kindness, empathy and concern for others) during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as everyday practice. I use a multi-dimensional theoretical conceptualization grounded in gender stereotyping and the theory of androgyny to emphasize the transition from historical masculine leadership ideals (‘think manager, think male’ – Schein & Davidson, 1993) to leadership discourse that symbolizes inclusivity of leadership with an emphasis on using kindness, regardless of whether you identify as a male or female leader.

This chapter looks at kindness in organizations through the perspectives of critical sensemaking and the communicatively constituted organization (CCO). These perspectives unlock questions about the meaning of kindness and the challenges for individuals within organizations to make sense of how kindness is enacted around them. This approach is in contrast to a growing literature encouraging kindness as strategy within the workplace, emphasizing the potential of strategic kindness to improve employee and organizational performance. From the CCO perspective, kindness is reflected as a socially constructed phenomenon. Through this critical lens, this chapter will challenge assumptions about kindness within organizations, exploring the ways in which power and privilege influence its meaning.

Through analysis of a real-life situation in which societal kindness was activated, this chapter proposes that because kindness is rooted in antiquity, it is present in society and just needs to be activated. However, this kindness is lacking in organizations. Organizations need to frame their policies as kind so that kindness can be normalized.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are continuing and chronic workplace problems (Quick & McFadyen, 2017) that affect the health, well-being and socio-economic future of victim/survivors (Blau & Winkler, 2018). Despite this, management and leadership education have been primarily addressing this workplace issue from a legal responsibility perspective and using preventative strategies such as promoting the value of equity, diversity, inclusion and belongingness and explaining the importance of safe, healthy and respectful workplaces. While the establishment of policies, human rights training and disciplinary procedures are undeniably important, rarely do business educators prepare future managers to engage with employees in trauma-informed, compassionate and respectful ways. The co-authors have used a collective restorying process to engage in co-designing a workshop for early career managers and students of management and leadership. The workshop includes iterative exploration of the language and authentic performativity of unbiased compassion while engaging in collective reflexivity. The basis of the workshop centres the research proposition that to support a claimant the manager must performatively lead with authentic compassion while using unbiased language in order to assure procedural justice while mitigating procedural trauma. Early career managers, and hence their organizations, are ill-equipped to deal with workplace investigations of sexual harassment and discrimination. By collectively exploring and practicing unbiased compassion, managers will not only be more prepared to respond to a claim of sexual harassment or discrimination, but they will also reduce employee's felt sense of procedural trauma and increase the organization's likelihood of due diligence.

This chapter offers an overview of the field of care ethics as it has developed over the past 40 years. It considers ways in which care and kindness align, are mutually reinforcing or perhaps diverge, in an effort to consider how both might be bolstered in management and organizational studies (MOS), and beyond, in workplace practice. While definitions of care usually focus on the meeting of needs, kindness is less well defined and explored. The chapter examines the possibilities of kindness as a pathway to care, as a component or stage of care, as congruent with care, as an enhancement to or deepening of care, and also how kindness and care might impede each other. Finally, the chapter considers warnings against half-measures when attempting to entrench care and kindness in the workplace of today.

In this chapter the author examines intergenerational transmissions of kindness through four generations of women in her family. Employing an autoethnographic approach (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011), the author shares her journey of understanding the importance of studying kindness in academia by acting as the connective tissue between the stories and how the author finds the meaning of kindness through her own experiences and interpretations. Using a research methodology called sensebreaking (Pratt, 2000), the author reveals how kindness acts as a catalyst to help recover from challenges by nurturing self-worth. Sensebreaking undoes meaning-making by disrupting the sensemaking process when contradictory evidence causes individuals to question their interpretation (Mirbabaie & Marx, 2020). The author demonstrates how these women struggle with the deep-rooted need for independence and dignity when facing a challenge and define random acts of kindness from others. Across the four generations, a theme of generativity is revealed, showing a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation.

This chapter shares the stories of a Mi'kmaq grandmother's reflections of stories from Elders of the Mi'kmaq Nation to share with Masie, born at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in Mi'kma'ki. These stories form a story-net of teachings and reflections to help guide Masie on her journey as a Mi'kmaq girl growing up in a kind and sometimes unkind world. These stories represent a gift in a written form from a grandmother to a beautiful soul who will need help to navigate a world of uncertainty, but a world with tremendous beauty when seen through a Mi'kmaq historical perspective.

In this chapter, the author examines benevolent sexism as a form of performative kindness. Taking a feminist polemical approach, the author illustrates how being a ‘good girl’ requires submitting to occupy a subject position that attracts benevolent sexism. Benevolent sexism focusses on gendered discourses, such as what women wear and how they act, and it can be mistakenly construed as kind or flattering attention. Such gendered discourses are designed to keep women compliant and conforming to gendered roles, while limiting their voice and agency. A case study is presented which draws on biographical and popular press resources to illustrate how three highly placed American female political leaders, Francis Perkins, Federal Labor Secretary (1933–1945), Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State (2009–2013), and Kamala Harris, Vice President (2021–current), contend with sexism and public interest in their mode of dress and role as mothers. The author demonstrates how these women are punished with hostile sexism, historically and contemporarily, requiring them to tenuously negotiate between accepting benevolent sexism to avoid hostile sexism.

This chapter offers an overview of the research the author completed for her dissertation. She studied public servants' understanding and enactment of kindness at work. Through the questions she asked and Weick's (1995) sensemaking properties, themes emerged. These themes are explored in the chapter through the voices of the public servants and how kindness is and is not understood in the working lives of the informants. Using a sensemaking approach, the author illustrates the multitude of meanings workers have of kindness. Finally, the chapter considers how kindness in management and organizational studies can move beyond theory and engage in meaningful practice to support the health and well-being of employees.