Mindful Unlearning in Unprecedented times: Implications for Management and Organizations

Abstract

Crises trigger both learning and unlearning at both intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels. This paper stresses the need to facilitate unlearning for effective crisis management and shows how we could use mindfulness practice to enhance unlearning and transformative learning in a crisis. In this study, we propose the conceptualization of mindful unlearning in times of crisis with different mechanisms to foster unlearning in three stages of crisis (pre-crisis, during crisis, and post-crisis). These mechanisms include mindful awareness of impermanent and sensual processing (pre-crisis stage), mindful awareness of interdependence and right intention (crisis management stage), and mindful awareness of transiency and past experiences (post-crisis stage).