Interpretations of mindfulness practices in organizations: A multi-level analysis of interpretations on an organizational, group, and individual level

Marina Fiedler,Kim Strunk,Andreas Ihl

doi:10.1177/1350508420968195

Abstract

Organizations increasingly experiment with spiritual and wellness practices in contemporary work contexts. Particularly, mindfulness practices play a dominant role in this movement. Rooted in spirituality and applied in clinical psychology, mindfulness is explained as a tool for dealing with workplace demands. Despite the increasing interest in mindfulness practices and the critical debate on their appropriation in the business context, knowledge on how organizational members interpret these practices, is underdeveloped. This inhibits a comprehensive understanding of what these practices are meant to achieve, and what they imply for organizational members. Viewing organizations as interpretive systems, we investigate how organizational members interpret mindfulness practices on the organizational, group, and individual level. Our qualitative study reveals the multiple interpretations of mindfulness practices existing in organizations. On an organizational level, mindfulness practices are interpreted as generalizable human resource development tools, aimed at boosting performance. Yet, mindfulness produces uncertainties in the organizational level interpretation. On a group level, mindfulness practices are interpreted as a means to enhance group efficiency via improved personal relationships; however, they are also associated with creating dysfunctional group dynamics. On an individual level, practicing mindfulness is interpreted as a tool for self-actualization. Even so, individuals associate the risk of negative social ramifications with the practice. We show the multiple meanings of mindfulness in organizations. This informs the critical debate among organizational scholars and explains the multitude of applications. Further, the paper offers a balanced view on benefits as well as unintended consequences, in relation to former applications and interpretations of the concept.

Highlights

Organizations increasingly experiment with spiritual and wellness practices in contemporary work contexts
Building on the idea of organizations as interpretative systems, organizational members could interpret the practices variously, depending whether they make sense of them on an organizational level (Walsh, 1995), on a group level, or on an individual level (Maitlis, 2005)
We found specific interpretations of mindfulness practices and what they entailed on each level of our analysis

Summary

Introduction

Organizations increasingly experiment with spiritual and wellness practices in contemporary work contexts. This criticism emphasizes the extensive diversity in programs captured in the term “mindfulness.” Despite commonalities across the different programs including contemplational elements, critical voices assume an uniformed and unreflective implementations that ignore the concept’s roots in spirituality and clinical therapy (Hyland, 2015) This criticism draws attention to the rationales for introducing mindfulness in organizational practice, ostensibly regarding humanist values, while they are driven by business acceleration goals. Research falls short in showing how organizational members interpret mindfulness practices on an organizational, group, and individual level With such limited insight organizational literature cannot comprehensively theorize about mindfulness and its associated consequences within the social and subjective dynamics of sensemaking in organizations. Our findings reveal that on the overarching organizational level, mindfulness becomes meaningful as a general human resource development tool This interpretation has the associated benefit of enhancing the entire organization’s productivity. A downside of this perception is that individuals struggle to realize these benefits within the organization, as they anticipate negative social reactions or even experience co-workers’ disdain when they engage in these practices

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