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Call for Papers

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Special Issue: "Mindfulness at Work: Pushing Theoretical and Empirical Boundaries"

Deadline: 30 November 2017

Overview

Organizational interest in mindfulness has been exploding with many organizations either offering mindfulness training programs to their employees and leaders or considering doing so. Mindfulness seems to address important issues organizations are struggling with in a time of attention overload, multi-tasking, and ever-increasing stressors from increasingly complex work arrangements and 24/7 connectivity. At the same time, mindfulness training has been criticized by some journalists and researchers alike.  This is, in part, a result of research that has primarily studied mindfulness in a clinical context, making it less clear to what extent these findings translate to workplace samples and settings; and research on mindfulness at work is arguably still in its infancy. This special issue is meant to publish what will become seminal papers on mindfulness at work that will both provide a rigorous empirical foundation and substantially accelerate and shape the direction of research in this area. 

Scope and Topics

Appropriate papers should address an important research question in the domain of mindfulness at work. We particularly seek manuscripts that shed light on important ongoing debates, link mindfulness to other constructs and theories in the areas of organizational behavior and decision making, or open up promising directions for future research. We accept both quantitative and qualitative studies and inductive and deductive approaches. While we anticipate most published papers to make empirical contributions, we will also consider theory papers that address important research questions and make significant theoretical contributions.

An illustrative, but not exhaustive list of topics that fall within the scope of this special issue is provided below:

Most research on mindfulness has been conducted on clinical samples and in clinical settings. What important differences and implications, if any, are there when studying mindfulness in a workplace context? How can studying mindfulness at work enhance both organizational and mindfulness scholarship?

1.       Most research on mindfulness at work has examined mindfulness as an independent variable. What new insights can be gained by construing mindfulness as a mediator or as a moderator? Relatedly, what are the affective (e.g., emotion regulation) and cognitive mechanisms through which mindfulness affects individual and collective outcomes?

2.       Existing research has focused on intra-unit relations of mindfulness with other variables. What are the inter-unit relations of mindfulness? For example, how does one employee's mindfulness influence his or her co-workers (e.g., mindful contagion)? How might an organization's mindful organizing influence other organizations?  Could worker mindfulness influence family member outcomes?

3.       Organizational research on mindfulness has broadly followed two paradigms: an individual-level approach drawing on seminal work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and others on Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) coming from a Buddhist tradition; and an organizational-level approach extending seminal work of Ellen Langer to organizational contexts. Can empirical work bridge or even integrate these perspectives? For example, do higher levels of individual mindfulness aggregate to collective mindfulness or do they work to enable the social processes of mindful organizing described in the work of Karl Weick and others?

4.       There is ongoing debate about the measurement of mindfulness. What can organizational scholars contribute to this debate by examining, for example, measurement of mindfulness at work, other-ratings of mindfulness or other issues related to the measurement of mindfulness?

5.       Collective mindfulness has most frequently been studied in high-reliability organizations (e.g., nuclear power control rooms) or reliability-seeking organizations (e.g., intensive care units) prioritizing safety, does it influence a wider array of outcomes (e.g., productivity) and do so in more prosaic contexts (e.g., routine service work)?  Do similar practices and processes elicit collective mindfulness in these contexts?

6.       Mindfulness is central to Eastern contemplative traditions, yet interestingly, most of the academic research on mindfulness has been conducted in Western settings. What cultural factors, if any, are relevant in considering the practice and outcomes of mindfulness at the workplace?

7.       Mindfulness is often used interchangeably with meditation in clinical research.  In work contexts, are there factors other than meditation that are associated with higher mindfulness (e.g., work design)? And if mindfulness indeed has beneficial outcomes at the workplace, what can organizations do to facilitate mindfulness at the individual, team, and organizational level? What can we learn by studying mindfulness as a dependent variable? 

8.       Going beyond establishing the benefits of mindfulness at the generic levels, what insights can be gain on best practices for mindfulness training approaches in organizations (including delivery mechanisms, dosage, etc)?

9.       Last, but by no means least: Mindfulness research often seems to have a decidedly positivist and practical approach focusing on whether mindfulness training programs "work" for the average participant. We seek research that helps us understand for whom workplace mindfulness training "works" and for whom it doesn't, for what outcomes it "works" and for what outcomes it doesn't, who is attracted to such training programs, and who isn't, etc. 

Guest Editors

Jochen Reb, Singapore Management University

Tammy Allen, University of South Florida

Tim Vogus, Vanderbilt University

Submission Process
Papers submitted to the special issue will follow the standard peer review procedure for OBHDP.  

All papers must be submitted to EVISE from 1 September 2017 – 30 November 2017. Please select the correct special issue when submitting your paper.

If you have questions about this special issue, you may contact the guest editors at jreb@smu.edu.sg (Jochen Reb), tallen@mail.usf.edu (Tammy Allen), or timothy.vogus@owen.vanderbilt.edu (Tim Vogus). 

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