From readiness to collaborative learning: a Cooperative Inquiry into organisational death literacy in a compassionate community in Hong Kong

Hong Kong faces population ageing and growing demand for community-based palliative care. The 2023 Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Bill marks a shift towards autonomy in death and dying, alongside emerging compassionate community initiatives. This article reports the first stage of a Cooperative Inquiry (CI) with the non-profit organisation Forget Thee Not (FTN), which has promoted community-based approaches to dying since 2013. Between May and August 2024, five co-inquirers (board members, staff, and an academic facilitator) engaged in four reflection cycles to prepare the organisation for developing organisational death literacy. Drawing on service data and frontline reflections, the analysis identifies four themes: (1) increasing community demand for death literacy and support; (2) FTN’s distinctive positioning within the health and social care system; (3) challenges in articulating the social impact of funeral services; and (4) the role of organisational reflection in fostering death literacy. These findings informed subsequent CI stages, in which 25 co-inquirers participated in re-articulating experiential knowledge as a basis for organisational learning. The article advances the concept of organisational death literacy by demonstrating how it is constituted through organisational reflection within participatory inquiry, extending existing discussions of death literacy beyond individual knowledge to collective practice.