The Dark Side of Empathy and Organization Studies

Empathy is widely celebrated as a leadership skill and moral virtue. We agree that empathy is central to social connection, but argue that it is not inherently virtuous. To understand its impacts on organizations, we must move beyond individual-centric views of empathy and instead see it as a relational phenomenon embedded in power relations. Drawing on psychology, feminist theory, political science, and anthropology, we identify four often repressed dark sides of empathy. Distress from somatic empathy exposes the embodied costs of engaging with others’ suffering. Disparity persists through the empathy tax, as the burden of emotional labour falls disproportionately on women. Division persists through preferential empathy, privileging those we identify with while excluding others. Deception arises from tactical empathy, using emotional insight manipulatively. Together, these dark sides expose empathy as an organizing force marked by uneven distributions, contested purposes, and ambivalent consequences. We bring attention to these fundamental tensions in empathy, yet resist campaigns to discredit it. Instead, we propose relational empathy as a way of understanding its complex, power-laden nature.