WHY FOSTERING A CULTURE OF "COMPANIONATE LOVE" IN THE WORKPLACE MATTERS

(Part 2 out of 2)

The study also found that the culture of companionate love rippled out from staff to influence patients and their families. “Certified nursing assistants rated the mood of the residents, and the outside observers rated the culture. Those outside observers could predict that [patients] would be in a better mood if the culture among the staff was more loving,” Barsade says.

Barsade and O’Neill measured patient quality of life based on 11 factors commonly used to assess long-term care facilities, including comfort, dignity, satisfaction with the food and spiritual fulfillment. Across the board, Barsade says, there was a positive correlation between a culture of companionate love and patient quality of life.

Interestingly, however, when the researchers looked at the health outcomes of the patients, they didn’t find as much of an impact of companionate love as they expected. They measured three of the most critical outcomes for patients in long-term care: unnecessary trips to the emergency room, weight gain and incidence of ulcers from spending too much time in bed. They found that while a culture of companionate love did lead to fewer trips to the ER, it didn’t affect weight or ulcers.

“We statistically controlled for factors such as general patient health, physical functioning and degree of cognitive impairment, so it was quite a conservative test,” Barsade says. “But health effects are not always directly seen. I wouldn’t give up on it.”

Beyond Health Care Settings

There is one key question raised by Barsade’s and O’Neill’s research: Does companionate love matter in workplaces that don’t revolve around providing love and compassion to clients? To answer that question, they performed a second study involving 3,201 employees in seven different industries. Using the same scale they employed in the long-term care facility, the researchers found that a culture of companionate love positively correlated with job satisfaction, commitment to the company and accountability for performance.

The relationships they found in the long-term care setting held steady. “What we found is that companionate love does matter across a broad range of industries, including those as diverse as real estate, finance and public utilities,” O’Neill says. “But the interesting thing is that even though the overall baseline of companionate love can differ across industries, there was as much of a difference within industries as between industries. Overall, we found that — regardless of the industry baseline — to the extent that there’s a greater culture of companionate love, that culture is associated with greater satisfaction, commitment and accountability.”

“What we found is that companionate love does matter across a broad range of industries, including those as diverse as real estate, finance and public utilities.”

–Olivia “Mandy” O’Neill

O’Neill and Barsade believe that their initial findings in other industries argue for further investigation. And additional studies are already underway. For example, O’Neill is working with Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard on a study involving firefighters. “What we see is that companionate love acts as a helper for the problems they struggle with at work and outside of work,” O’Neill says. “For example, [firefighters] tend to have high levels of work-family conflict because of the stress that comes from the job. Companionate love actually helps to buffer the effect of job stress and work-family conflict on other outcomes.”

Barsade says her study in the long-term care facility has also inspired her to examine the role of other aspects of emotional culture at work. “We don’t just have one type of emotional culture,” she says. “We happen to be looking at a culture of companionate love here. But you could have a culture of anger. You could have culture of fear. You could have culture of joy. The natural second step is to look at how these factors influence one another, and then to look at the whole picture of how cognitive culture and emotional culture intersect.”

Already, though, the research seems to be pointing to a strong message for managers in all industries, Barsade says: tenderness, compassion, affection and caring matter at work. “Management can do something about this,” she says. “They should be thinking about the emotional culture. It starts with how they are treating their own employees when they see them. Are they showing these kinds of emotions? And it informs what kind of policies they put into place. This is something that can definitely be very purposeful — not just something that rises organically.”

Fuente: KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON

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