This document proposes a model linking mindfulness to improved organizational performance. The model suggests that mindfulness practice can change internal processes like attention, awareness, and reduced mind wandering, which then influence external reactions like increased self-regulation and cognitive flexibility. These changes are associated with improved task performance and health outcomes like lower turnover and absenteeism, benefiting the organization. The model is based on a literature review of 19 articles examining how mindfulness relates to individual and organizational performance.

1. A Model to relate Mindfulness to Performance in Organisations
Víctor Alastuey R. - Full Time MBA Student, Cranfield School of Management Supervisor: Dr Jutta Tobias, Cranfield School of Management
•
The main purpose of this literature review was to produce a document that would offer a simple and straightforward interpretation of how the systematic practice of mindfulness is related to improvement in organisations’ performance.
•
This literature review summarises into a model the main thoughts of 19 articles related to the link between mindfulness and performance.
•
Since theory simplifies reality, this model takes into account only the links that were researched in the articles under study; and not the whole and complex link between these two concepts.
External Reactions
Attention Awareness
Reduced Mind Wandering, Rumination, and Absentmindedness
Internal
Processes
MINDFULNESS
Outcomes
Increased Self- Regulation
Higher Cognitive Flexibility
HEALTH (Lower Turnover and Absenteeism)
TASK PERFORMANCE
This model suggests that the systematic practice of mindfulness may affect some internal processes in the individual that is performing the practice; these internal changes may affect some external reactions of the individual that may generate visible outcomes related to the organisation’s performance in which he/she is involved.
Logic behind the Model
Changes in Internal Processes
•
The focus of mindfulness on the present moment helps the practitioner to remain attentive to the particular situation he/she is involved in, without diverting his/her attention to other concerns.
•
A second internal process that relates to mindfulness is awareness: the ability to notice that one is doing, feeling, thinking, perceiving, or sensing something. This should allow individuals to respond more effectively to challenging and changing situations.
Changes in External Reactions
•With mindfulness practice, individuals tend to enhance their cognitive flexibility and also decrease behaviours like wandering, rumination and being absentminded.
•Cognitive flexibility could be defined “as the human ability to adapt cognitive processing strategies to face new and unexpected conditions”.
•Mind wandering refers to the time when the individual’s attention shifts and moves frequently among different thoughts and goals.
•Research also suggests that these changes in internal process may improve self-regulation of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours; enabling people to react to stressful situations with more equanimity.
Outcome: Task Performance
•Research on mind wandering shows that it actually reduces task performance. On the other hand, awareness should allow individuals to respond and perform in a better way to changing scenarios, since this awareness makes them more receptive to the environment.
•Processes such as rumination or being absent-minded also have a negative impact on performance; since they take the attention of the individual away from the task he/she is performing.
•Different authors define cognitive flexibility as instrumental to performance across a range of tasks and also suggest that it has a positive influence on individual performance, especially for complex and dynamic tasks.
Outcome: Health - Turnover Intention and Absence Rates
•The ability to cope with stressful situations and appraise events with equanimity should lead people to feel less compelled than others to permanently depart from such an environment (Turnover Intention).
•A person that has better cognitive flexibility is less emotionally disturbed and has better attentional resources; this allows him/her to respond more effectively to goal associated opportunities that exist in the present. This characteristic may critically influence absenteeism and mental health at work.
Víctor Alastuey R. - for more information, email valastuey@gmail.com