Perspective Taking in Workplaces

Abstract Workplaces are often described as places in which individuals are motivated by their self-interests and in which negative events like time pressure, anxiety, conflict with co-workers, miscomprehensions, difficulties in solving problems, not-transmitted or not-exchanged information that lead to mistakes, and in some cases to injuries, stress or control, are part of everyday life (Dormann & Zapf, 2002; Schabracq, Winnubst and Cooper, 2003). Such situations are often the result of the limited comprehension of needs, skills, or information available to colleagues, supervisors, subordinates, clients or providers. However, workplaces are also places in which employees take care of clients, support colleagues and subordinates (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002), are enthusiastic about their job (Bakker et al., 2008), are motivated by leaders that encourage employees to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the group or the organization and provide them with the confidence to perform beyond expectations (Bass, 1997). Thus positive relationships at work are becoming a new interdisciplinary domain of inquiry (Dutton & Ragins, 2006). Within this positive relationships framework, in this paper we focus on a positive component of workplaces, and particularly on an individual cognitive and emotional process that has an important role in the workplace because it facilitates interpersonal relations and communications: it is the perspective taking process. In order to describe perspective taking, we will refer to some empirical studies and particularly to the review published by Parker, Atkins and Axtell in 2008 on the International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Perspective taking is a well established psychological construct, investigated both in the field of human development, as an important component of reasoning and moral development, and also in social and clinical psychology, where it is considered a component of social behaviors and of the therapeutic process (Parker & Axtell, 2001). It has also been conceptualized in different ways. Duan and Hill (1996) describe three approaches to explain reasons for perspective taking behavior: a dispositional approach, that considers empathy as a relatively stable trait or a general ability; a cognitive-affective experience influenced by situational conditions; and finally as a multiphased experiential process. However, although in modern organizations working cooperatively and taking into account customers’ needs and experiences are becoming even more important (Schneider, White, and Paul, 1998; West, Tjosvold and Smith, 2003), very few studies have considered perspective taking process within organizations (Parker & Axtell, 2001). This is interesting because taking into account the perspective of others may contribute to more collaborative workplaces, where it is pleasant to work, as also enlighted in the title of the Parker, Atkins and Axtell’s (2008) paper: “Building better workplaces” is one of the possible outcomes of perspective taking. This paper aims to make available to a large audience such studies and, in relation to the topic of the conference organized by “Psychology and Communion”, consider connections between this concept and ideas and writings by Chiara Lubich.