Methods of Mitigating the Paradox of Compassion in the Organizational Behavior of Government Employees: A Case of Animal Protection Agencies in Taiwan

• 作者: Tsai Ya-Chuan Wu Chuang-Hsien
• 来源期刊: 文化与宗教研究:英文版
• 学科: 工学
• 关键词: gate-keeper COMPASSION compassion fatigue structural equation modeling
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（5）
• 页码范围: 255-273
• 页数: 19页
• 分类号: TG1

摘要

According to psychologists,for workers whose job is to help others,their quality of service is improved if they have compassion.However,compassion potentially produces the side effect of compassion fatigue,which decreases service quality.According to sociologists,professionals who must interact with animals,such as veterinarians or butchers adopt the role of a“gate-keeper”.Specifically,these professionals are troubled by the conflict between compassion and the faithful execution of the law.This conflict induces,in them,harmful behavior toward the animals.To verify these arguments,we empirically investigated government employees in a Taiwanese animal protection agency.Results from structural equation modeling indicate that although compassion toward animals can increase discretionary effort and mitigate ethics exhaustion,compassion fatigue weakened the factors mitigating ethics exhaustion,which increased harm toward the animals.Therefore,to relieve compassion fatigue,the workload of government employees must be reduced.