Dr. Dolores del Río, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Business Sciences , analyzes how compassion can be integrated into the very heart of organizational life, based on research that unites philosophy, management and ethnography.

In this edition of Austral InvestigaDr. Dolores del Río shares her academic and personal journey around a concept that profoundly challenges organizations: the compassion. Her research, developed within the framework of the PhD in Management of IAEIt focuses on understanding how it may be possible to build workspaces where compassion is not an individual gesture, but an institutionalized, recognized and legitimized practice.

The project began with an ethnographic immersion in a hospice , an organization dedicated to end-of-life care. “There I discovered that vulnerability affects not only the one receiving care, but also the one providing it,” the researcher recounts. That experience marked a turning point in her worldview and her understanding of the role of organizations.

Inspired by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Dolores del Río incorporates a philosophical perspective on time, space, the body, and the encounter with the other within organizational dynamics into her work. “My 18-year-old self imagined myself doing research in a library, but my experience in management led me to look at the social from within, with a strong humanistic foundation,” she reflects.

Today, their proposal is clear: caring for the vulnerability of others begins with recognizing our own. In times when organizations face increasingly complex challenges, integrating compassion as a structural, rather than an accessory, value can pave the way for transformation. “Organizations have always needed a humanistic perspective, but the pandemic has made it clear that they also need to enable care, legitimize vulnerability, and make it visible.”

Between philosophy and management, between the academic and the human, the work of Dr. Dolores del Río invites us to rethink how we inhabit work spaces and how we can build more empathetic, conscious and profoundly human institutions.

Full interview on our YouTube channel.