Adhocracy culture buffers for mindfulness outcome: A cross-level moderated mediation analysis

Abstract

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic reduced the performance of the software developer team in the Indian IT industry because of numerous psychosocial challenges while working in a non-dedicated workspace. Therefore, using the lens of self-determination theory (SDT), the present study investigated the indirect effect of mindfulness on team performance via psychological safety and active remote engagement under the bounded condition of adhocracy culture. The web-based responses of 604 team members nested in 99 teams from 10 Indian IT companies were used to perform a multilevel analysis. The analyses were conducted using Mplus 8.0 version to test the hypothesis. The results showed a significant serial mediation role of psychological safety and remote engagement in the relationship between the mindfulness of software developers and team performance. The relationship between mindfulness and psychological safety becomes stronger when the adhocracy culture is high. Similarly, the relationship between mindfulness and team performance via the serial mediation of psychological safety and active remote engagement becomes stronger when the adhocracy culture is high. Similar to many psychological approaches, this study supports the postulates advocated by SDT, while emphasizing the central role played by mindfulness.