Routines Matter for Compassion at Work | CompassionLab

As organizational researchers, we have a unique interest in understanding how compassion can be unleashed or stifled in human communities. An organizational lens attunes us to the important role played by routines and practices  in  “grooving” the ways we interact with one another. By routines we mean the recurring, repeated patterns of action that typify a particular organization or unit (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). Many organizational researchers think routines are key to an organization’s capability to reliably produce products and services  (e.g., Nelson & Winter, 1982) and  we see routines as part of the key to understanding an organization’s one time (Dutton et al, 2006) or ongoing capability for compassion (Lilius et al., 2011; Grant et al., 2008).