Kunst, Hannah; Byington, Eliza; and Johnson, Anya, M.

To advance scientific knowledge on workplace compassion, we need to know “where we are now” in order to identify “where we need to go next”. To provide a comprehensive and systematic review of workplace compassion research to date, spanning almost 30 years and synthesising 1,433 research articles, this research employs bibliometric techniques to 1) identify and visually map the literature’s key intellectual foundations, 2) identify key research topics in workplace compassion research across the social sciences, and 3) provide an empirically derived taxonomy of two primary topic clusters in this literature. The two major topic clusters that will be presented are: Cluster 1: Compassionate Labour research (e.g. research in healthcare settings, where compassion is relevant to the work being done) and 2) Mental Health research (e.g. research on burnout, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, stress, intervention techniques, and those who especially need mental health support as well as provide it to others – such as social workers and psychologists). This paper provides a systematic review of major research themes in the workplace compassion scholarship associated with each cluster that we identified through the systematic article coding. Promising future research directions to help advance the field going forward are identified and discussed.

By the end of the presentation, attendees will have developed their understanding of ‘where we are now’ in the field of workplace compassion, and will understand ‘where we need to go next’. Additionally, attendees will have an understanding of the use and technical details of bibliometric study designs.
This will be achieved in the following way:
Attendees will be asked to reflect on their perception of/use of compassion at work. This will facilitate understanding of the concept, and help drive application (personal relevance).
The bibliometric technique will be discussed in a clear and stepwise manner, to facilitate understanding of this (potentially novel to attendees) technique.
Attendees are invited to reflect on the two major topic clusters, and asked whether they can place their own understanding/use of compassion at work in one of the two clusters. This will help facilitate analysis.