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Facilitating Forgiveness in Organizational Contexts: Exploring the Injustice Gap, Emotions, and Expressive Writing Interventions

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Without forgiveness, there is no future – Desmond Tutu

When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive – Alan Paton

Abstract

Despite the numerous benefits associated with forgiveness, many individuals find it difficult to forgive. This is especially true in organizations, where forgiveness is rare and can be under-valued. Across two studies, we explore how to facilitate forgiveness within organizational contexts and in the aftermath of workplace unfairness. We examine whether individuals can reduce the “injustice gap” that can be created by violations and enhance forgiveness through expressive writing interventions—guided writing techniques that can be self-administered. Participants wrote about their reactions to a fictional scenario (Study 1; N = 155) or an actual workplace experience (Study 2; N = 96). Results indicate that expressive writing was associated with higher reported perceived resolution. Whereas negative emotions mediated this relationship in Study 1, positive emotions and perceived injustice mediated this relationship in Study 2. Perceived resolution also mediated the relationship between expressive writing and forgiveness. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Typically, the expressive writing intervention has focused on four conditions: emotions only, thoughts only, emotions and thoughts surrounding a negative experience, and a control condition (Pennebaker 1994). Meta-analytic evidence has indicated that the combined emotions and thoughts condition is the most effective (Smyth 1998). We focus on the emotions and thoughts condition when referring to the “traditional expressive writing intervention.”

  2. We focus on considering forgiveness instead of asking people to forgive because forgiveness is a personal process that needs to occur of one’s own volition (Baskin and Enright 2004; Exline et al. 2003; Wade et al. 2005).

  3. We included Time 1 forgiveness in our analyses as a covariate because this enables the assessment of change that occurred between the start and conclusion of the intervention. Given the extensive issues that have been associated with difference scores, we controlled for pre-intervention forgiveness rather than computing a difference score (see Edwards 1994, 1995 for a discussion of the issues with difference scores).

  4. Reconciliation was measured with Aquino et al.’s (2006) measure of reconciliation.

  5. State empathy was measured with a six-item scale from Batson et al. (1988). We used the same analytic strategy as H1 and H2. We also controlled for empathy measured at Time 1 for the analyses using Study 2 data.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants awarded to the first (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Ontario Early Researcher Award) and second author (Ontario Trillium Scholarship).

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Barclay, L.J., Saldanha, M.F. Facilitating Forgiveness in Organizational Contexts: Exploring the Injustice Gap, Emotions, and Expressive Writing Interventions. J Bus Ethics 137, 699–720 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2750-x

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