The Roles of Compassion and Resilience on Employee Thriving, Well-being, and Interpersonal Deviance

Abstract

In this study, we examine how and when employees can continue to thrive at work despite the influence of adverse situations. We expand the social embeddedness model of thriving and integrate it with the literature on compassion to propose a hypothetical model in which compassion indirectly affects employees’ thriving through negative and challenge appraisals of adversity. We further hypothesize that resilience moderates these indirect effects. Finally, we propose that employees’ thriving negatively relates to negative affect and interpersonal deviance in the workplace. We tested this model in a time-lagged, three-wave sample—where employees and supervisors are experiencing adversity (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic outbreak)—at a financial service firm in Wuhan, China. Our results showed that experiencing compassion had an indirect effect on thriving through an increase in the challenge appraisals of adversity. Also, compassion had a positive indirect effect on thriving via decreased negative appraisals when employee resilience was low. We also found the positive functioning of employee thriving, such that it is negatively related to negative affect (i.e., improved individual well-being) and interpersonal deviance. These findings highlight the compensatory effect of compassion and resilience, especially considering that compassion is critical for those employees with lower levels of resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the positive functioning of employee thriving on their end outcomes. The theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.