When Compassion Constricts: Identity Threat and Organizational Responses to Suffering

Abstract

Organizations devoted to care, morality, and social purpose sometimes generate rather than relieve suffering. Paradoxically, such suffering often persists not because it is unseen, but because acknowledging it threatens the organization and its members’ identities as benevolent and caring. We develop a process theory explaining how organizations respond to organizationally caused suffering under identity threat, and why responses diverge toward either propagation or mitigation. Drawing on systems psychodynamics, compassion research, and identity threat theory, we argue that identity-threatening harm activates threat appraisal concerning valued self-definitions. This appraisal channels responses along two pathways. “Constriction” narrows responsibility, localizes blame, and produces bounded or performative forms of compassion that stabilize personal identity while leaving systemic injuries unaddressed. “Expansion” distributes ownership of harm and enables responsible compassion that more substantively engages suffering. We further theorize how internal sensegivers and organizational conditions shape movement both along and between these pathways. By foregrounding identity threat appraisal as a central mechanism, we explain why compassionate intentions do not reliably produce compassionate outcomes, and why suffering may be compounded in organizations most committed to alleviating it.