Mindfulness and Social Sustainability: An Integrative Review

Abstract

The purpose of this review paper is to present a holistic conceptualization by synthesizing mindfulness and social sustainability literature and introducing an integrative mindfulness-social sustainability framework. To this end, we conducted an extensive review of the mindfulness and social sustainability literature. The findings revealed that there is a paucity of research that has examined the relationship between mindfulness and social sustainability. While some recent studies have begun to explore the role of mindfulness in ecological sustainability, the link between mindfulness and social sustainability has remained under-researched. This paper introduces an integrative mindfulness-social sustainability framework that explicates how mindfulness practice can be employed in the workplace context to achieve social sustainability outcomes. In this regard, we first discuss how mindfulness is related to social sustainability at the individual (e.g., employee health and well-being) and organizational (e.g., ethical behavior, employee performance, workplace spirituality) levels. Next, we examine how individual and organizational social sustainability might relate to some wider societal sustainability outcomes (e.g., social justice, collective social capital). We argue that this is one of the few early theoretical papers that has investigated the potential connections between two important, albeit fragmented disciplines—mindfulness and social sustainability. This paper suggests potential courses of action to address social sustainability challenges by integrating mindfulness and social sustainability.