Learning empathy through literature

Abstract

In the field of organization studies, little consideration has thus far been devoted to the study of literature. The lacuna in the extant scholarship is unfortunate insofar as there is much to be gained for researchers interested in understanding organization to critically engage with literature. As an illustrative example of how literature can inform myriad pertinent discourses in organization studies, in this piece we study the question of empathy. That is, we describe just some of what may be gleaned about empathy from literature using anecdotes from a pedagogical exercise. Finally, we close this piece with a brief overview of the articles selected for this special issue.