Exploring Leadership, Culture, and the Dynamics of Collective Empathy: A Nonprofit Case Study

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 8-24-2025

Abstract

This case study explores the formation, embedding, and sustainability of collective empathy at [Healing Arts for Children; HAC], a pseudonym for small arts-focused nonprofit serving pediatric patients. The 20-year-old organization utilizes art and music to alleviate anxiety and enhance positive health care experiences for critically and chronically ill children and their families. While the existing literature primarily focuses on individual-level empathy in the workplace, this study focuses on the underexplored aspects of system-level empathy applications, which may be essential to determining how empathy forms, embeds, and sustains within an organization. Collective empathy, the shared capacity of organization members to recognize, understand, and respond to both internal and external emotional experiences in coordinated ways, is crucial for organizations serving vulnerable populations as it enhances service quality, staff resilience, and client outcomes. This research contributes to social work practice by examining how collective empathy shapes service delivery and therapeutic relationships in human service organizations. Drawing on established frameworks that examine the emotional demands inherent in social work practice and the role of organizational culture in human services organizations, this study illuminates how organizational factors influence collective empathic practices. The findings suggest that a positive workplace culture stems from mission-aligned employees significantly shaping organizational culture, highlighting the importance of emotional connections and caring communities.

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