Nurturing sympathetic knowing in organizational learning: A pragmatist inquiry in onboarding to high-stress social work

This article develops the notion of sympathetic knowing in organizational learning. Sympathetic knowing consists of inquiry into a problematic situation that is evolving when nurturing a community by caring about seeing the size of one another’s burdens. The notion is based on American pragmatist Jane Addams’ (1860–1935) idea of sympathetic knowledge and developed through action research with a Danish social work organization. This organization’s stressful work tasks and high employee turnover were stifling the organizational learning needed to improve their situation, as the unceasing onboarding of newcomers created more work for those remaining. This article reports what such organizations can do to create organizational learning about onboarding with an ethnographic tale, akin to Addams’ narrative writing style, to convey the complexities of bringing forward sympathetic knowing. I then translate insights from this tale, at the expense of some nuances, into an organizational learning theory of sympathetic knowing. This theory conceptualizes how a problematic situation (in onboarding to high-stress social work), community (of mentors), and inquiry (through reflexive dialogues) are the basis for nurturing sympathetic knowing. With this theory and ethnographic tale, this article shows how Jane Addams’ less-recognized pragmatist ideas can help address contemporary problems in organizational learning research.