Abstract
Within the business and management literature, empathy has taken on increased importance as a central element to leadership, improving marketing strategies, corporate philanthropy, creating organizational connectedness, and as a strategy for preventing managerial wrongdoing. Although defining empathy is difficult, it is the identification with another’s thoughts and emotions through an imaginative process. This identification, ideally, will facilitate a wider connection with stakeholders beyond self-interest and motivate a better business environment. This article argues empathy is an overblown concept that is only marginally supported by the philosophical and psychological research and, therefore, has limited application to business. Empathy is problematic because our inferences of mind are often inaccurate; not everyone is good at empathizing; it’s not necessary to understand action intention; doesn’t motivate helping behaviour; and could lead to immoral actions. My stance is definitively anti-empathy; perspective-taking is not sufficient or necessary as a management or business tool. Our understanding of people rests, not on empathy, but with our emotions, norms, and the social context in which we find ourselves.
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Notes
The terms empathy, perspective-taking, and simulation will be used synonymously throughout this article.
The roots of empathy can be traced back to David Hume and Adam Smith. Both philosophers use the term sympathy to explore numerous psychological phenomena. Hume, for example, uses sympathy to explain how emotions can become contagious (Hatfield et al. 1993)—we feel sad when we witness another person cry. He also uses sympathy to define our unique reactions to another person’s suffering (e.g., we feel sympathy for someone bereaving the death of a child) (Stueber 2006). Adam Smith refined Hume’s conceptualization of sympathy to make it the keystone to his moral philosophy. Smith argues sympathy is important for reshaping moral behaviour by allowing us to imaginatively take the perspectives of other people. But Smith, like Hume, also uses sympathy in multiple ways which have different meanings and, therefore, has led to much definitional confusion.
Developments in neuroscience have contributed significantly to understanding the process of empathy. Originally found in monkeys (Rizzolatti et al. 1996) and then in humans (Mukamel et al. 2010), researchers discovered a sharing or mirroring of neural pathways in the F5 region of the brain between the actor and the witness of the action. It is this mirroring which allows people to understand the action intentions and emotions of others. Mirror neurons are a kind of embodied simulation or empathy.
Although language and words used are important for empathic accuracy, we should not conclude that words alone are sufficient. Hall and Schmid Mast (2007), in comparing empathic accuracy with self-reported thoughts and feelings, found merely reading transcripts of interactions between people led to poor accuracy rates, while listening to the words and voice of others and watching their nonverbal cues increased accuracy rates. In short, words, body language, and situational context matter.
Stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984) asks managers to consider the interconnected relationship between shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and all others who have a stake in the organization’s business. The term ‘stakeholder’, however, is not easily defined; stakeholders are often an amorphous group with often no discernible individual to empathize with. Moreover, it would be psychologically impossible for managers to simulate the mind of all stakeholders and, even if they could, given the low accuracy rate, any usable information from inferring the thoughts and emotions would be meagre, at best, to determine shared interests.
Social class is defined as those with material wealth, educational attainment, income, and occupational prestige.
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Ohreen, D. The Managerial Use of Empathy: Missteps into the Mind of Others. Philosophy of Management 21, 135–161 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-021-00176-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-021-00176-y