Working with animals: Implications for employees’ compassion, awe, prosocial behavior, and task performance
研究人与动物协作工作如何激发员工的同情心和敬畏感，进而提升亲社会行为和任务绩效，对管理者和组织有实践启示。
Abstract Human‐animal work represents a collaboration between humans and animals to achieve work goals, and is common in the domains of healthcare, therapy, entertainment, and education. Although the scope and types of human‐animal work is diversifying and increasing, organizational scholars have yet to explore its impacts on employees. Drawing from the models of compassion and mind perception theories, we first develop a theoretical model pertaining to the development of compassion as a result of human‐animal work. In a study with zookeepers (Study 1), we find that human‐animal work evokes the emotion of compassion, which in turn is positively associated with employee prosocial behavior and task performance. These mediated effects are moderated by how employees perceive animals—employees are more likely to experience compassion, and in turn, become more prosocial and work better when they generally perceive animals to be able to experience emotions and bodily sensations. Furthermore, two follow‐up studies (i.e., Studies 2 and 3) with employees who engage in human‐animal work in Hong Kong and the United States reveal that working with animals evokes awe in addition to compassion, and provides insight into their resultant impact on prosocial behavior and task performance. We end by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of this work.