Recommendations for future research
1.) Humility studies: organisational analysis —Through the cursory glance of humility taken in this essay, it is clear that the current research is primarily measuring interpersonal manifestations of humility and are mostly descriptive in nature.
What is missing is a focus on the applied practice of humility. While Neilson and Marrone's (2018) research aimed to measure the role and function of humility in organizational structure, it assumes that the location of humility in an organizational setting originates from the individuals that inhabit positions in the organization. In contrast, what if one were to locate humility in the environmental ‘DNA' of the workplace structure and therefore, by necessity, it would either be embedded in the legislation, policies, and procedures of the organizational culture or not. To take the work of Chancellor and Lyubomirsky (2013) and their proposed ‘hallmarks' of humility further, one might want to ask, how can an organization move in the direction of being more ‘free from distortion', ‘open to new information', ‘other-focused', and ‘egalitarian'? Could these proposed hallmarks be measured as foundational to an organizational climate or culture of humility? And, if so, could this lead to identifying and comparing both humble and non-humble organizations? These and other questions are yet to be fully hypothesized or researched in a comprehensive manner.2. ) Forgiveness and humility studies: collective analysis — A plethora of material has been
written and published on forgiveness from an interpersonal perspective. Like humility however, what is less clear is the idea of ‘collective forgiveness'.With the rise of the field of transitional justice (including truth and reconciliation commissions), there has been a claim that whole nations, societies, people-groups, or communities can experience corporate forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation (Shriver, 1995; Hartwell, 1999;Tutu, 2000; and Helmick and Peterson, 2001).And, if this were so, it would also take a ‘culture of humility' to intentionally enact these processes.
However, can these collective emotions be assumed to be true? Do masses of people have a shared psyche? If so, what would corporate processes of forgiveness and humility look like and feel like in the public domain? Trudy Govier in her seminal work on macro-forgiveness processes states that to make the claim of the existence of collective forgiveness, three aspects would need to be proven: 1.) That groups can be agents responsible for wrong-doing, 2.) That groups can suffer wrongful harm, and 3.) That groups can have — and can amend — feelings, attitudes, and beliefs about harms they have suffered at the hands of others (Govier, 2002, p. 87). All three of Govier's standards for macro-forgiveness would also apply to measuring the existence, role, and function of cultural or group humility.3. ) Restorative justice and humility studies: structural power analysis — The intra- and
inter-personal linkages between the ‘value-outcomes' of both humility and Restorative Justice are quite self-evident.What is less apparent, is if there are power-structural connections between humility as a cultural force and Restorative Justice as a social movement. It could be argued that for humility to be understood as a powerful collective phenomenon it needs to be activated and expressed in public spaces.This argument then raises the question: Does the movement of Restorative Justice offer a bounded structure necessary for the applied practice of corporate humility to become manifest in the political domain? Gaventa (2006) proposes a multi-dimensional ‘Power Cube' model that provides a more nuanced differentiation of the various forms of power: 1.) Places of Power — household, local, national, and global, 2.) Types of Power — visible, hidden, and invisible, and 3.) Spaces of Power — claimed, invited, and closed. Applying these categorizations to a power analysis of the Restorative Justice social movement, the idea of collective humility, and the potential synergies that they generate for social change could prove to be a useful research agenda.
4. ) Group humility and nonviolent strategic action studies — It is too simplistic to
equate humility with meekness or weakness alone.To understand the power of humility as a response to the threat of force or violation, a complex and nuanced conceptual view of humility must be investigated. In order to keep fidelity to the true meaning of humility, it needs to be comprehended as a paradoxical, yet powerful, balance between self and other, strength and sensitivity, truth and mercy, and risk and protection. Potentially, one could hypothesize that the activation and expression of group humility may function as a forerunner to prepare the way and cast the back-drop for the application of nonviolent strategic action (Sharp, 2005; Ackerman and DuVall, 2000; Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011; and Vinthagen, 2015). A sample of questions arising from this thread of research are: Does the exercise of group humility, open up options to apply individual agency and collective will? Does the application of group humility provide an array of creative choices that could surprise the oppressive “powers that be?” (Wink, 1999). And, in a world where punitive violence dictates the “rules” of conflict and war, might the posture of group humility change these “rules of the game” (Conflict Management Group, 1994), and thereby offer a formidable opponent to oppressive structural powers?
Notes
1 This is a paraphrased quote taken from an HBO video focusing on Victim-Offender Mediation cases in the early 1990s.The video is no longer available.
2 While the 5 steps of forgiveness outlined here are from Worthington’s REACH model (2001), the descriptions of each of them represent my own verbiage and understanding of them.
3 This section is a paraphrased summary of the idea of Restorative Justice as a social movement adapted from three of my previous collaborative publications: Restorative Justice Listening Project — Final Report (2017); The next generation of restorative justice (2018), and Restorative JusticeTaking the Pulse of a Movement (2019) — (see all citations in Reference List).
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