Mindfulness at Work: Positive Affect, Hope, and Optimism Mediate the Relationship Between Dispositional Mindfulness, Work Engagement, and Well-Being

Malinowski, Peter; Lim, Hui Jia

doi:10.1007/s12671-015-0388-5

Cited by 246 publications

(282 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…Because mindful individuals are able to observe their experiences without judging, reflecting, evaluating or analyzing those, they become less vulnerable to the negative feelings associated with failure, opinions of others, rewards, status and conflicts (Brown and Ryan, 2003) and develop a capacity to monitor the positive side of life (Wright, 2006). More mindful people report higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect (Brown and Ryan, 2003) and experience more positive emotions like hope, resilience, and optimism (Malinowski and Lim, 2015;Youssef and Luthans, 2007). The positive and receptive attention to activities leads to an increased perception of detail, information, and subtle social cues, thereby enriching the quality of experiences, making individuals happily immersed in them and more intrinsically motivated (Brown and Ryan, 2003).…”

Section: Mindfulness and Intrinsic Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

Kroon

Woerkom

Menting³

2017

JMP

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Purpose Transformational leaders spark the intrinsic motivation of employees, thereby stimulating their extra-role performance. However, not all employees are lucky enough to have a transformational leader. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent mindfulness can function as a substitute for transformational leadership. By being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present, mindfulness provides employees with a source of intrinsic motivation that lies within the person, thereby possibly making employees less dependent on transformational leadership. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was used to collect data of 382 employees working in diverse sectors in the Netherlands. Findings Moderated mediation analyses indicated that mindfulness partly compensates for a low levels of transformational leadership in fostering intrinsic motivation and in turn extra-role performance, thereby providing evidence for the substitutes for leadership theory. Moreover, the findings extend previous research on the contribution of mindfulness to in-role performance by showing its additional value for intrinsic motivation and extra-role performance. Research limitations/implications Despite the use of validated measures and the presence of an interaction effect, common-source bias cannot be out ruled completely. Practical implications Since mindfulness can be developed, the results suggest a training intervention to make employees less dependent on their leaders for their motivation. Originality/value This paper is the first to show that mindful people are more resilient against the absence of transformational leadership. Given the frequent changes in management layers in organizations, knowledge about resources for individual resilience and self-management is sorely needed.

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Section: Mindfulness and Intrinsic Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

Kroon

Woerkom

Menting³

2017

JMP

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“…The results of the current study are also in line with previous research showing a positive relationship between positive affect and work engagement (Sonnentag, Mojza, Binnewies, & Scholl, 2008) and help confirm Malinowski and Lim's (2015) findings that positive affect partially mediates the association between mindfulness and work engagement. Malinowski and Lim (2015) drew on Fredrickson's (2001) Broaden and Build theory of positive emotions to propose that by broadening people's thought-action repertoires positive affect would increase personal resources such as hope and optimism, and that those resources would in turn foster greater work engagement.…”

Section: Dispositional Mindfulness and Work Engagementsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Given the strong association between positive affect and work engagement, mindfulness is 34 expected to enhance engagement via positive affect. That is supported by a recent cross-sectional study of 299 adults in full-time employment that found that positive affect partially mediated the relationship between trait mindfulness and work engagement (Malinowski & Lim, 2015). …”

mentioning

confidence: 65%

“…By observing difficulties and problems non-judgementally and non-reactively, mindful individuals may be better able to respond flexibly and therefore to remain engaged, rather than becoming distracted by rumination or avoidant behaviours. Indeed, a recent study found that it was specifically the ability of mindful individuals to step back from experiences rather than automatically reacting to them that predicted work engagement (Malinowski & Lim, 2015). Nevertheless, this explanation of the current findings is somewhat speculative and more research is needed to elucidate the specific processes of cognitive flexibility via which mindfulness is associated with work engagement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Malinowski and Lim (2015) drew on Fredrickson's (2001) Broaden and Build theory of positive emotions to propose that by broadening people's thought-action repertoires positive affect would increase personal resources such as hope and optimism, and that those resources would in turn foster greater work engagement.…”

Section: Dispositional Mindfulness and Work Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mindfulness at work

Little¹

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Mindfulness broadly describes an open and receptive awareness of current experience that involves the self-regulation of attention, keeping it focussed on the present moment in order to develop greater awareness and recognition of mental events. Research has shown that dispositional mindfulness is positively associated with measures of psychological well-being, including workrelated measures such as job satisfaction, work engagement, and work-family balance. Furthermore, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) delivered to employees have been found to decrease perceived stress, burnout, and depression, and to improve life satisfaction, mood, and sleep quality.The current project extends that body of research by investigating the effects of mindfulness on a range of workplace outcomes that have previously received little empirical investigation, including co-worker relationship quality, innovative behaviours, resistance to change, and engagement and thriving at work. The current research also proposed and investigated a number of mechanisms to explain the effects of mindfulness on these workplace outcomes. Specifically, the proposal drew on previous research suggesting that mindfulness leads to more adaptive functioning and greater selfregulation by increasing cognitive flexibility, positive reappraisal, and positive affect.An initial cross-sectional study of 184 office workers found that dispositional mindfulness was associated with all five workplace outcomes, and that the association with each was fully mediated by one or more of the three proposed mechanisms. Specifically, mindfulness was associated with co-worker relationship quality and thriving at work via positive reappraisal and positive affect, whereas it was associated with innovative behaviours and less resistance to change via cognitive flexibility alone. On the other hand, cognitive flexibility, positive reappraisal, and positive affect all mediated the association between mindfulness and work engagement.A follow-up study found that a 4-week workplace MBI delivered to 131 employees, including office workers, school teachers, cleaners, and senior executives, improved self-reports of mindfulness, positive reappraisal, and negative affect. An additional novel finding was that the MBI reduced dispositional resistance to change. The study also found an unexpected decrease in innovative behaviours following the intervention, but this result may have been an artefact of the measure that was used. No significant pre-post changes were found in the other measures.The current project also investigated the mechanisms of change during the workplace MBI by looking at the correlations between changes in different measures, and by analysing weekly changes during the intervention. Results indicated that decreases in resistance to change correlated with increases in mindfulness, suggesting that mindfulness may have mediated that improvement.iii In contrast, improvements in reappraisal and reductions in negative affect and innovative behaviours were not correla...

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Mindful Organizing

Brummans¹

2017

The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication

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Mindful organizing focuses on cultivating organizational members' collective ability to notice unexpected events and correct errors. Hence, it is typically found in high reliability organizations ( HROs ). This Western perspective on mindful organizing is increasingly complemented by an Eastern perspective that centers on cultivating organizational members' ability to be present in the here‐and‐now and act with wisdom and compassion, based on continuous awareness of the impermanent, interdependent nature of phenomena. Engaging in Eastern mindful organizing is believed to benefit HROs and other types of organizations because it enables members to stabilize their attention, bounce back from unexpected events, and act creatively and ethically by using whatever is at hand in a given situation. This entry gives an overview of the scholarship on mindful organizing from these different perspectives and highlights the contributions of organizational communication scholars to this research.

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Mindfulness at Work: Positive Affect, Hope, and Optimism Mediate the Relationship Between Dispositional Mindfulness, Work Engagement, and Well-Being

Abstract: Mindfulness has been described as

Cited by 246 publications

References 94 publications

Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

Mindfulness at work

Mindful Organizing

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