Darren Good

Contemplating Mindfulness at Work: An Integrative Review

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important questions and challenges key assumptions within management science, generating an agenda for future research.

The Work of Middle Managers Sensemaking and Sensegiving for Creating Positive Social Change

Corporate social initiatives are well positioned to generate virtuousness through and within organizations. Yet they are embedded in multiple and potentially contradictory institutional demands of profit and social logics, which must be addressed to sustain the initiative. Generatively addressing this perceived contradiction requires intentional and purposeful work by institutional actors. In this article, we posit that middle managers are crucial actors in performing this work and maintaining the hybridity of logics. We build on theories of institutional work and on sensemaking–sensegiving to describe the middle manager’s process of meeting competing demands of the initiative. We then propose a conceptual model and illustrate the posited relationships with data from the field. This describes how middle managers act on behalf of the organization and create virtuous human systems through sustenance of corporate social initiatives. We highlight various capacities required for this work and propose ways in which organizations can enable these capacities.

Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Intelligence and Personality as Predictors of Sales Leadership Performance

Leaders of sales organizations must recruit and inspire salespeople to grow the organization. Skepticism remains about the role of emotional and social intelligence (ESI) in effective leadership. ESI is criticized as not providing distinctive variance in leadership performance beyond general intelligence and personality. This study assessed the role of the behavioral level of ESI competencies on leader performance. The number of new recruits was shown to predict new cash invested 6 years later. ESI significantly predicted leader performance (i.e., recruitment) whereas measures of generalized intelligence and personality did not. Adaptability and influence were two competencies distinctively predicting sales leadership performance.

Individual Ambidexterity: Exploring and Exploiting in Dynamic Contexts

ABSTRACT Previous research regarding the role of individuals within the organizational ambidexterity construct has primarily focused on behavioral characteristics of managers. Drawing from the organizational, psychological, and neuroscience literatures, this study develops and tests hypotheses concerning the formative construct of Individual Ambidexterity (IA), the cognitive abilities necessary to balance efforts of exploration and exploitation. In an initial criterion-related predictive validity laboratory study, 181 undergraduate students completed successive trials in a computer-simulated, real-time dynamic microworld context. Findings explained unique variance beyond measures of general intelligence on the total score of task adaptive performance. The results indicate a novel combination of abilities that may further understanding of how individual abilities contribute to the ambidexterity literature.

Introduction to Special Issue on Paradox in Context: Advances in Theory and Practice

Modern organizations and the individuals who manage within them must operate in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, and ambiguous business environment. These conditions have helped foster an experience of ongoing complexity that presents a stream of tensions that can pull the individual and organization in multiple-competing directions. These tensions emerge in various parts, places and processes to include strategy (i.e., long-term vs. short-term), structure (i.e., centralize vs. decentralize) and leadership (i.e., direct vs. follow). Approaching these tensions as either–or choices creates a conundrum—one that calls on a different mind-set on the part of organizations, its leadership, and those academics who study them. Reframing competing demands as a paradox may help in creating a new set of choices that can ultimately improve organizational functioning and expand the range of scholarly inquiry. Yet, how organizational leaders and scholars bring paradox to awareness and manage such competing demands simultaneously remains in question. This special issue hopes to shed new light on this question. Managing paradox provides an understanding that presenting tensions are not always an either–or solution. Instead, this paradox perspective highlights a movement toward understanding and developing ways to adopt a both–and stance. Paradoxrelated scholarship can be found in journal special issues (like the one here), top-level peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, and major conference subthemes. Additionally, organization development and change practitioners have long applied a paradoxical lens to increase the awareness and adaptation of organizational actors to complex workplace functioning. Applying such a perspective to complex phenomena is seen as an increasingly important skill for managers in organizations (e.g., Clegg, Cuhna, & Cuhna, 2002; Smith & Tushman, 2005) as well as for the researchers who study them (Eisenhardt, 2000).

Being While Doing: An Inductive Model of Mindfulness at Work

Mindfulness at work has drawn growing interest as empirical evidence increasingly supports its positive workplace impacts. Yet theory also suggests that mindfulness is a cognitive mode of “Being” that may be incompatible with the cognitive mode of “Doing” that undergirds workplace functioning. Therefore, mindfulness at work has been theorized as “being while doing,” but little is known regarding how people experience these two modes in combination, nor the influences or outcomes of this interaction. Drawing on a sample of 39 semi-structured interviews, this study explores how professionals experience being mindful at work. The relationship between Being and Doing modes demonstrated changing compatibility across individuals and experience, with two basic types of experiences and three types of transitions. We labeled experiences when informants were unable to activate Being mode while engaging Doing mode as Entanglement, and those when informants reported simultaneous co-activation of Being and Doing modes as Disentanglement. This combination was a valuable resource for offsetting important limitations of the typical reliance on the Doing cognitive mode. Overall our results have yielded an inductive model of mindfulness at work, with the core experience, outcomes, and antecedent factors unified into one system that may inform future research and practice.

The Moral Metacognition Scale: Development and Validation

Scholars have advocated for the inclusion of metacognition (i.e., the extent to which one thinks about one’s thinking) in our understanding of the ethical decision making process and in support of moral learning. An instrument to measure metacognition as a domain-specific capacity related to ethical decision making (i.e. moral metacognition) is not found in the current literature. This research describes the development and validation of the 20-item Moral Metacognition Scale (MMS). Psychometric properties of the scale were assessed by exploration (Study 1) and confirmation (Study 2) of the factor structure, and the demonstration of convergent (Studies 3 and 4), discriminant (Studies 3 and 4), and predictive (Study 4) validity. Moral metacognition, as measured by the MMS, was significantly correlated with ethical awareness and ethical judgment. Limitations of our research, suggestions for future exploration, and practical implications are discussed.

Cognitive Behavioral Executive Coaching

Abstract Traditional clinical psychological practices have often been adapted for the context of executive coaching. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in particular is the most scientifically supported psychological modality. CBT like other practices has been used in coaching as cognitive behavioral coaching but rarely discussed more explicitly for the executive population. Here, we offer a specific adaptation – cognitive behavioral executive coaching (CBEC) – and suggest that it presents a flexible structure that can meet the multiple agendas that are framed for executive coaching. Additionally, the core features of CBT and CBEC in particular satisfy the major needs of executives in coaching arrangements. We conclude by demonstrating a CBEC process model for coaching the high-performing executive.

A Little More Rigidity: Firming the Construct of Leader Flexibility

Scholars and practitioners have identified leader flexibility as a determinant of leader emergence and effectiveness. Yet the existing literature on leader flexibility describes it as a general capacity to respond well to situational requirements. Described as a general capacity, it is difficult for leaders to consider specific strategies to develop flexibility. By looking at flexibilities (e.g. cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal) available in other literatures, we can deepen our understanding of the multi-dimensionality of leader flexibility. The purpose of this article is to: (a) introduce various specific flexibilities found within the broader psychological literature, (b) integrate these with leader flexibility, (c) identify thematic patterns across the specific flexibilities, in order to (d) construct a general framework to better understand leader flexibility. The article contributes to the literature by offering a detailed and nuanced version of the flexibility construct as it applies to leadership. It provides specific types of flexibility for leaders to consider in their development.

It Takes a (Virtual) Village: Exploring the role of a career community to support sensemaking as a proactive socialization practice

Scholars have long advocated for individuals to play a more proactive role during organizational entry rather than relying on institutionally led processes. The primary benefit being that the newcomer moves from passive recipient, dependent on the institution to highlight relevant information, to active agent with self-determined sources and methods to aid in adjustment. A virtual career community made up of 12 first year business faculty members was created to provide such a self-determined source of support during the transition from doctoral studies to full-time assistant professorship. After the entry period (1 academic year), the interactions in this community were used as data for a phenomenon driven research study. The results illustrate how a virtual career community could be used as a proactive socialization tool by encouraging sensemaking amongst first year faculty peers. The sensemaking process consists of perceived contrasts and tensions, followed by positive and negative self-disclosures, community feedback, and the experience of cognitive-behavioral shifts. The findings also expand the proactive use of external referents during organizational entry, which previously had only looked at friends and family members of the newcomer.