Compassion and Conflict-Centric Theories of the Workplace: Interbeing at Work

Contemporary theories on workplace governance predominantly emphasize solutions rooted in conflict. Essentially, these theories revolve around the idea that achieving workplace justice is best accomplished through the establishment of mechanisms that facilitate contestation, both internally and externally in the workplace. Examples of such mechanisms include the right to strike, the formation of unions, and other forms of contestation. While these measures are crucial, conflict-centric theories often overlook two critical facets of today's workplace governance. First, the intrinsic values of certain institutional settings, like the trust and cooperation nurtured by frontline entities such as work councils, are not always captured by these theories. Second, there is frequently an underestimation of the social and psychological strains arising from conflicts. In this paper, we posit that the Buddhist perspectives of compassion offer fruitful resources to address the limitations of conflict-centric theories of workplace governance. Specifically, the Zen Buddhist notion of interbeing sheds light on the interconnection between the suffering of self and others. We propose that by drawing on the Zen Buddhist insight into interbeing, we can reinterpret existing institutional structures by switching the focus from self-interest to caring for others, and offer original institutional proposals that lessen the social and psychological impacts of conflict-driven models.