A Study of the Impact of Mindfulness and Moral Disengagement Adaptation Strategy on the Compassion Fatigue Phenomena of Civil Servants
Chung-Hsien Wu
Both researchers and practitioners of public administration believe that “good governance” relies on compassionate officials. However, they overlook the fact that “compassion fatigue” often occurs when the officials face the dual pressure of superior orders and empathy towards service receivers, which will inevitably affect their service. By combining the studies of public administration and psychology, this paper analyzes the compassion fatigue of civil servants, and establishes the relationship of variables and the hypotheses of this paper.
Adopting a full-scale investigation on animal protection administrators in Taiwan, this paper discovers that, firstly, the average level of compassion fatigue of the officials is not high. However, there are a few severe cases need attention. They can be identified by gender, seniority, age and job nature. Secondly, it should be noticed that compassion fatigue may affects their mental health and increases the turnover rate, it has little influence on their work intention. Finally, “mindfulness” and “moral disengagement” are “coping strategies” developed in animal protection work place. Although mindfulness generates more positive impact on individuals and on organization than moral disengagement strategy, animal protection administrators tend to adopt the latter. As a result, the encouragement of adopting mindfulness to cope with compassion fatigue will be a priority for authorities.