Unpacking the Differential Effects of Compassion at Work on Leadership Emergence: the Role of Gender, Compassion Type, and Work Context

Compassion-a focal actor's behavioral response intended to alleviate sufferer distress-offers an antidote to the pervasive challenge of workplace distress. Previous research focused on uniformly favorable, self-relevant inferences observers make about organizations that enable compassion. We examine differential, other-relevant inferences observers make about compassionate focal actors, specifically their leadership emergence. Drawing on Expectancy Violation Theory and the Integrated Framework for Leadership Emergence, we argue that observer inferences of compassionate focal actors differ depending on who displays compassion, what type of compassion is displayed, and where it is displayed. We expect observers to make differential leadership emergence (LE) inferences of compassionate focal actors, arguing that compassion represents a positive unexpected behavior only for men, garnering observers' attention and resulting in men's LE via increased perceptions of warmth and competence. Distinguishing between two forms of compassion, we argue that communal compassion replicates this gender effect, whereas agentic compassion offsets it as a positive unexpected behavior for women. We further suggest that work context attenuates gender and compassion type effects, with uniformly positive LE inferences only in feminine work contexts. We largely support our predictions in a multi-wave field study and two experimental vignettes and discuss our contributions to compassion and LE research.