Erik Dane

Paying Attention to Mindfulness and Its Effects on Task Performance in the Workplace

Although the concept of mindfulness has attracted scholarly attention across multiple disciplines, research on mindfulness in the field of management remains limited. In particular, little research in this field has examined the nature of mindfulness and whether it relates to task performance in organizational and occupational settings. Filling these gaps, the present article delineates mindfulness by (a) defining it as a state of consciousness in which attention is focused on present-moment phenomena occurring both externally and internally, (b) comparing it to a range of other attention-related concepts, and (c) developing theory concerning the factors that determine when mindfulness is beneficial versus costly from a task performance standpoint.

Examining workplace mindfulness and its relations to job performance and turnover intention

In recent years, research on mindfulness has burgeoned across several lines of scholarship. Nevertheless, very little empirical research has investigated mindfulness from a workplace perspective. In the study reported here, we address this oversight by examining workplace mindfulness – the degree to which individuals are mindful in their work setting. We hypothesize that, in a dynamic work environment, workplace mindfulness is positively related to job performance and negatively related to turnover intention, and that these relationships account for variance beyond the effects of constructs occupying a similar conceptual space – namely, the constituent dimensions of work engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption). Testing these claims in a dynamic service industry context, we find support for a positive relationship between workplace mindfulness and job performance that holds even when accounting for all three work engagement dimensions. We also find support for a negative relationship between workplace mindfulness and turnover intention, though this relationship becomes insignificant when accounting for the dimensions of work engagement. We consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and highlight a number of avenues for conducting research on mindfulness in the workplace.

Things Seen and Unseen: Investigating Experience-Based Qualities of Attention in a Dynamic Work Setting

While interest in the topic of attention has a long history in organizational studies, little research has investigated what qualities of attention are most pertinent to working professionals—and how these qualities may be attained. Through the study reported here, I elaborate theory concerning the qualities of attention in a dynamic work setting (trial law). Specifically, I identify the importance of two qualities of attention—attentional breadth and attentional integration—and examine how these qualities connect to the experiences individuals accrue within the focal context. My findings indicate that, through the acquisition of experience, individuals become attentive to a wide range of events surrounding them (via attentional breadth) and attuned to the opportunities that reside within these events (via attentional integration). Therefore, in achieving these two qualities of attention, individuals are able to see not only more events but also more possibilities.

On the role of experience in ethical decision making at work: An ethical expertise perspective

Previous research has produced contradictory results on whether and how “experience” relates to ethical decision making in the workplace. Maintaining that these divergent findings result from underspecified and inconsistent treatments of experience in the business ethics literature, we build theory around experience and its connection to ethical decision making. To this end, we draw upon and advance research on ethical expertise, defined as the degree to which one is knowledgeable about and skilled at applying moral values within a given work context. We also unpack the nature and consequences of two forms of ethical expertise, convergent and divergent. Building on this foundation—and seeking to reconcile the contradictory results around experience and ethical decision making—we theorize factors associated with the acquisition of ethical expertise in the workplace. We conclude by discussing the implications of our theorizing for business ethics scholarship and expertise research.

Changing the Tune of Academic Writing: Muting Cognitive Entrenchment

Much academic writing sounds the same—stilted, distant, and overly qualified. The “sound” of academic writing is primarily the result of institutional pressures that lead authors to become cognitively entrenched in their writing style. The author of this article suggests that we not only can but should mute cognitive entrenchment and change the tune of academic writing. The author also suggests three routes for doing so—writing for nonacademic audiences, writing creatively, and reading widely—and addresses possible objections to his appeal.

Traveler’s Mind: A Narrative-Based Account of Working and Living Mindfully

Traveling to novel destinations can give rise to a state of attention referred to here as a “traveler’s mind”—a state in which two forms of a popular concept in management and organization studies, mindfulness, occur in tandem. In this essay, written as a personal narrative, I explore the nature of a traveler’s mind, discuss the conditions under which this state of attention is most likely to arise, and consider how this state connects to and informs our understanding of related concepts of note (e.g., mindfulness and sensemaking). I also propose that a traveler’s mind can be achieved not only through travel but also on a more mundane basis and highlight practices organizations and their members can adopt to foster this state of attention. Together, the observations provided here suggest that cultivating a traveler’s mind is as much a matter of mind-set as of geography.

The Hidden Side of Trust: Supporting and Sustaining Leaps of Faith among Firefighters*:

Some occupations and organizations rely heavily on trust, as their members’ roles involve risk and are interdependent. Trust can emerge from two sources: knowledge or evidence that is meaningful in that context, which has been studied extensively in the literature on trust, and faith, which has not. Through a multi-phase, largely inductive study of firefighters in the United States, we explore processes that facilitate and maintain leaps of faith. These processes are critical to trust under high uncertainty, when direct experience in a task domain is chronically limited, as is the case in our context because very few calls coming into a fire station are fire related. We suggest that leaps of faith are initiated and perpetuated through two sets of dynamics: supporting and sustaining. Supporting dynamics, such as telling stories about fighting fires, evoke domain-relevant standards that are applied to weak, non-domain-specific evidence, such as how routine tasks are performed at the fire station, to help members feel a sense of certainty about whom to trust. Sustaining dynamics both limit the impact of new evidence about trustworthiness and bolster one’s sense of certainty surrounding existing evidence. These two sets of dynamics, embedded in broader task and occupational conditions, act together as a largely closed system that allows trustors to be at peace with the uncertainty surrounding trust assessments—they make leaps of faith possible by increasing certainty and inhibiting doubt. Our study helps address key questions in both psychological and sociological treatments of trust, exploring an enigmatic phenomenon core to the concept of trust but rarely examined.