期刊名称：Journal for Perspectives of Economic Political and Social Integration
印刷版ISSN：1733-3911
电子版ISSN：2300-0945
出版年度：2013
卷号：19
期号：1-2
页码：55
DOI：10.2478/v10241-012-0007-5
出版社：De Gruyter Open
摘要：Workplaces are often described as places in which individuals are motivatedby their self-interests and in which negative events like time pressure, anxiety,confl ict with co-workers, miscomprehensions, diffi culties in solving problems,not-transmitted or not-exchanged information that lead to mistakes, and insome cases to injuries, stress or control, are part of everyday life (Dormann &Zapf, 2002; Schabracq, Winnubst and Cooper, 2003). Such situations are often theresult of the limited comprehension of needs, skills, or information available tocolleagues, supervisors, subordinates, clients or providers. However, workplacesare also places in which employees take care of clients, support colleagues andsubordinates (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002), are enthusiastic about their job(Bakker et al., 2008), are motivated by leaders that encourage employees totranscend their own self-interests for the good of the group or the organizationand provide them with the confi dence to perform beyond expectations (Bass,1997). Thus positive relationships at work are becoming a new interdisciplinarydomain of inquiry (Dutton & Ragins, 2006). Within this positive relationshipsframework, in this paper we focus on a positive component of workplaces,and particularly on an individual cognitive and emotional process that has animportant role in the workplace because it facilitates interpersonal relationsand communications: it is the perspective taking process. In order to describeperspective taking, we will refer to some empirical studies and particularly tothe review published by Parker, Atkins and Axtell in 2008 on the InternationalReview of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.Perspective taking is a well established psychological construct, investigatedboth in the fi eld of human development, as an important component ofreasoning and moral development, and also in social and clinical psychology,where it is considered a component of social behaviors and of the therapeuticprocess (Parker & Axtell, 2001). It has also been conceptualized in differentways. Duan and Hill (1996) describe three approaches to explain reasons forperspective taking behavior: a dispositional approach, that considers empathyas a relatively stable trait or a general ability; a cognitive-affective experienceinfl uenced by situational conditions; and fi nally as a multiphased experientialprocess. However, although in modern organizations working cooperatively andtaking into account customers’ needs and experiences are becoming even moreimportant (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.
关键词：engagement; perspective taking; building better workplaces
