CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 159Job Satisfaction and Organizational BehaviorStress and Burnout ResearchEmployee Performance and Management

Public Service Sector: The Compassionate Workplace—The Effect of Compassion and Stress on Employee Engagement, Burnout, and Performance

Eldor, Liat·2018·Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
DOI 10.1093/jopart/mux028
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the effect of compassion in the public service workplace. Our compassion model is based on public service sector employees who receive compassionate feelings such as affection, generosity, caring, and tenderness from their supervisors. A longitudinal study of 166 public service employees, their supervisors and 333 of their clients (citizens) was conducted in Israel. In this longitudinal study, we found evidence that receipt of compassion from supervisors (at time 1) in the public service workplace was positively associated with employees' sense of work engagement, and negatively related to their work burnout (at time 2). Furthermore, receipt of compassion (at time 1) was also found to impact public service employees' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and knowledge sharing (at time 2) as rated by their supervisors, as well as their service-oriented performance of compassionate behavior toward clients (at time 2), rated by the citizens. Finally, we found evidence for compassion acting as a mechanism for coping with common stressful public service conditions such as demanding citizens and administrative workload, which are inherent in this sector. Compassion in the public service workplace may therefore be salient in effecting public service work performance, and as such should be consciously targeted by public sector managers and policy makers.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/jopart/mux028

Cites

137 of 137 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Compassion is of undeniable importance in the public sector, stimulating significant attitudinal outcomes such as work engagement and work burnout, and intensifying OCB and knowledge-sharing.

    “Compassion is of undeniable importance in the public sector which stimulates significant attitudinal outcomes, such as work engagement and work burnout, intensifies OCB and knowledge-sharing”

    From Whither compassionate leadership? A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Eldor (2018)

  • Receipt of compassion from supervisors has a contagious effect and impacts compassionate employee behaviour.

    “Receipt of compassion from supervisors has a contagious effect and impacts compassionate employee behaviour”

    From Whither compassionate leadership? A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Eldor (2018)

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Eldor, L.
Affiliations
University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
Eldor, Liat
ORCID
Eldor, Liat
Venue
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2017-09-26
Volume
28
Issue
1
Pages
86-103
ISSN
  • 1053-1858 (ISSN-L)
  • 1477-9803
DOI
10.1093/jopart/mux028
OpenAlex
W4240555416
Cited by
159
References
137
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5
FWCI
12.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
academic.oup.com/journals/pages/about_us/legal/notices (vor)
Locations
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
  • Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Employee Performance and Management
Keywords
compassion, public sector employees, work engagement, burnout, organizational citizenship behavior, knowledge sharing, occupational stress, administrative workload, public sector management

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review