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The purpose of this paper is to focus on “mindfulness” as an emerging wellness, performance, and leadership solution in business, and the role of human resources (HR) in effectively leveraging the potential value while minimizing the potential risks.

This paper reviews current research and current discussion of mindfulness in business, leadership, health, and management media, and provides recommendations for effective adoption.

Benefits of mindfulness practices include improved overall health and improved stress management for individuals and correlated benefits in productivity and performance of individuals, teams, and leaders. The potential risks of mindfulness include disengagement of non-participants and wasted investment if not integrated with company practices and culture.

This paper highlights the importance of aligning introduction of mindfulness with company practices and culture, ensuring voluntary participation, providing effective communication, and maintaining a secular nature of implementation.

This paper helps HR leaders leverage mindfulness for performance and wellness of individuals, teams and leaders.

Library administration is a balancing act: leading and managing the library and its employees while simultaneously responding to initiatives and demands of institutional leaders and/or trustees. This chapter provides an overview of emotional self-regulation, its importance to library administrators, and the roles that intentional reflective practice and mindfulness play in adaptive emotional self-regulation. There were few articles exploring the impact of intentional reflective practice or mindfulness in libraries, particularly with respect to emotional self-regulation. Much of the reviewed literature was from other disciplines; however, there was much to be applied to library administrators. There are a variety of techniques for intentional reflective practice that library administrators can use to improve emotional self-regulation (as well as improve other aspects of performance). There are fewer techniques to increase mindfulness, though there is stronger evidence of the benefits of mindfulness meditation on emotional self-regulation. This chapter is the first review applying intentional reflective practice and mindfulness on the emotional self-regulation of library administrators.

Routines are the very material of human organization. But there is little guarantee that routines will be enacted flexibly enough to ensure that organization survives. Mindfulness has been offered as a guarantor of sorts, but it remains unclear exactly what people mean by mindfulness and how mindfulness might relate to routines. This chapter reviews evolving conceptions of mindfulness and routines—from Langer’s early work to routine dynamics to Levinthal and Rerup’s seminal debate with Weick and Sutcliffe. It puts forth the argument that the recent theory of mindfulness as metacognitive practice retains important insights from throughout this conceptual evolution, while resolving ambiguity and debate about the relation between mindfulness and routines in at least four critical areas related to agency, duality, flexibility, and social organization. This resolution, in turn, opens up further avenues to understand the social processes by which people come to understand their minds—and how this understanding embeds within organization itself.

In this chapter, we contribute to the conceptualization of self by engaging in a self-study of teacher education practices in which we distilled our perspectives on incorporating mindfulness in teacher education. Mindfulness is currently incorporated in teacher learning and education mostly toward stress-reduction and well-being, yet its ancestries stress its role as a path toward self-knowledge. Working in teacher education departments set in Israel, on the one hand, and Canada, on the other, we describe the place of the practice in our personal lives and articulate how we view its contribution to teacher education. Specifically, we focus on how “self” features in our endeavors, by examining “who it is” in the teacher that we seek to evoke/invoke by the application of mindfulness? We engaged in dialogue and reflective writing, in which each of us served as the other's critical friend in an attempt to clarify our different views. Oren emerges with a view of mindfulness as invoking “self as moment-to-moment experience” and the “teleological self,” both crucial for teachers. These senses of self mobilize us away from sociopolitical identities toward human-to-human relationships and reground teachers in the values they view as core to their call to teach. Conversely, Karen stresses the practice as a primer for situating the self in the sociopolitical. It enables deeper engagement in critical pedagogy, invoking teachers' “fluid self” situated in open-mindedness. Here mindfulness becomes a practice of social justice that allows us to acknowledge marginalized voices. Highlighting these different approaches, we contribute to the understanding of the role of mindfulness in teacher education. In particular, we extend the practice's main positioning within teacher well-being to its role within the discourse of teacher identity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of regular mindfulness meditation practice on five personal qualities that an extensive literature review deems critical for successful leadership in an age of rapid organizational change and uncertainty.

In this eight-week study, the authors investigated whether a weekly, 45-minute mindfulness practice routine (n=20) would significantly improve five leadership qualities when compared with a weekly, three hour graduate level leadership course (n=21), which in contrast incorporated theoretical instruction, skills practice, and experiential learning. Both samples included organizational leaders throughout the Minneapolis/St Paul area.

Results of a pre-post survey confirmed that when compared with participants in the leadership course condition, participants in the mindfulness practice condition demonstrated a significant increase in promotional regulatory focus and a significant reduction in trait anxiety and stress. No significant changes were seen for resilience or tolerance for ambiguity. This study also uncovered significant inter-correlations between scores on trait anxiety and a number of variables, most notably promotional regulatory focus. Implications exist for numerous bodies of research concerning leadership, well-being and the leadership development programs they influence, which include leadership psychology, organization development, and mindfulness-based stress reduction.

This is the first study of its kind (to date) to investigate the impact of mindfulness practice on leadership qualities, which according to research, are critical to leadership performance.

The study's objective was to examine whether and how mindfulness training and practice might impact indicators of three capacities identified as critical for leading in the twenty-first century: resilience, leading in complex contexts and collaboration.

We conducted a non-randomised wait-list controlled study with 57 senior leaders (81 per cent female) who undertook an eight-week “Mindful Leader” programme.

Our findings suggest the programme was effective in developing leaders in terms of their mindfulness, resilience and self-perceived leadership competencies such as collaboration and agility in complex situations. The amount of mindfulness practice the leaders undertook was associated with improvements in mindfulness, resilience and collaboration. Furthermore, participants reported that the programme was beneficial for them as leaders and that the training format was feasible. However, objective measures of cognitive functioning and leadership competence did not improve significantly within the mindfulness intervention group.

Mindfulness practice may be a promising and effective method for leader development. Our results suggest that mindfulness can be learnt and developed by executive leaders, as long as they practice for at least 10 min per day.

This is the first study to investigate how resilience, leading in complex contexts and collaboration can be developed through mindfulness training.

World Health Organizations (WHO) (2023) states that governments and employers have a responsibility to uphold that right by providing work that simultaneously prevents workers from experiencing excessive stress and mental health risks. The business environment continues to produce a lot of stress on workers, which includes internal pressures to achieve results and employees suffer the consequences. Some companies have turned to mindfulness as a technique that helps mitigate these consequences and have joined Kaizen as a process improvement technique in the work environment. Therefore, this study has a research purpose: “to comprehend the possible linkage between Kaizen philosophy from an individual perspective, with Mindfulness ZEN Buddhism technique to understand the individual benefit (well-being) of each employee in organizations.” The answer to this represents the research gap in this article. The research questions governing this study are as follows: RQ1: Does Mindfulness is used as Kaizen technique of personal-individual improvement in 21st-century organizations? RQ2: What elements and characteristics of Kaizen and mindfulness can be found working together? And RQ3: Which qualitative impact of mindfulness and Kaizen in the workplace outcome (well-being, performance of the job (process)) and relationships with other employees)?

This research used a qualitative approach due to the recent phenomenon studied. In a certain way, it was used a mixed-method (combination of qualitative data – web search secondary data analysis and qualitative research-Convergence Model). First, it was done an intensive web search with the aim to identify companies' corporate mindfulness programs, along with companies which have applied mindfulness and Kaizen programs. It was identified a group of big companies with global and international presence (“famous” for their products and services) in diverse industrial and service sectors, country of origin and business locations; with the purpose of getting a holistic vision of all organizations which have practice Kaizen and mindfulness. Therefore, this study explored secondary data related to both practices, analyzing reports or briefings published in management magazines and official WEB pages and/or business magazines.

As a result of the triangulation of the data with its secondary data convergence model and qualitative research, a theoretical framework was reached that shows the benefits of the two combined twin techniques of Kaizen and mindfulness. The worker experiences a path that goes from concentrating on the execution of their processes, following their operating standards (Standardize, Do, Check, Act [SDCA] cycle), going through the evolution to continuous improvement or Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, experiencing work with concentration-awareness and reducing your daily stress, maintaining high sensitivity to the work process and your environment and finally, discovering an essential life purpose. Finally, worker experiences benefit when there is wide application of both with the SDCA and PDCA cycles such as high motivation, constant learning from your mistakes, day-to-day learning and the Munen Musso (not using the mind).

The main limitation is the qualitative methodological bias and secondary data research. In addition, to have a theoretical sample. However, the richness of the data helps to overcome this limitation. On the other hand, the qualitative research interviews are for a certain geographical area, therefore, the results cannot be generalized.

The results of this research can shed light on operations managers in the use of techniques for continuous improvement and improvement of people's quality of life, such as mindfulness. In Mexico, they are beginning to be used jointly (twin techniques) to comply with Regulation 035 of psychosocial risk, the researchers are sure that in other countries it will be used in the same way to comply with regulations. However, the research findings show the benefits that can be provided to workers in organizations by applying Kaizen and Mindfulness together.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, according to the literature review, this is the first article that explores the relationship between Kaizen and Mindfulness as twin techniques that help improve the individual quality of life of employees in organizations.

Business schools need to prepare students for effective, ethical decision-making. When faced with stressful life events that negatively affect wellbeing, making decisions can become more challenging. As future managers, students will need to learn how to make decisions when they are at the same time faced with stress and cognitive overload. In such situations, the brain looks for mental shortcuts in making choices to make things faster and easier, which leads to less optimal decision-making. Research shows that mindfulness meditation can effectively decrease stress and anxiety. Mindfulness meditation increases metacognition and, in the process, reduces the effects of biases, ethical blind spots, and psychological traps. Therefore, introducing students to these techniques has significant pedagogical potential for business education as students learn mindfulness meditation and show a need to include such practices in the curriculum. This chapter sheds light on two mindfulness technique cases with business school students in Lebanon and Switzerland. In these cases, the authors explore the impact of mindfulness practices on students by applying the emotional intelligence mood metre and mindfulness meditation. The authors also apply the ‘response time testing’ (RTT) methodology in the Swiss case to measure students’ attitudes. As a result, the authors provide simple confirmations from their classrooms that engaging in mindfulness activities and meditation is a simple and productive exercise that is essential for student wellbeing, learning, and decision-making. Therefore, the authors’ purpose is to encourage and give mindfulness practices a viable place in business education.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the emergence of school-based, secular, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for educators and students that aim to cultivate mindfulness and its putative benefits for teaching, learning, and well-being.

The paper has four sections: (a) a description of indicators of increased interest in mindfulness generally and in education; (b) substantive and functional definitions of mindfulness; (c) rationales for the potential value of mindfulness for teaching, learning, and well-being; and (d) a review of extant research on MBIs for teachers and students in schools.

On the basis of this review, it is concluded that school-based MBIs represent a promising emerging approach to enhancing teaching, learning, and well-being in schools; but that more research, with more rigorous study designs and measures, need to be done to establish the scientific validity of the effects of school-based MBIs for teachers and students alike.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of mindfulness awareness practice (MAP) on mid-level health-care managers’ leadership.

In total, 11 mid-level health-care managers in eastern Canada took part in an intensive weekend retreat and a follow-up webinar on mindfulness awareness. Perceived stress and leadership effectiveness were assessed pre- and post-intervention (i.e. four and eight weeks). A control group (n=10) also completed the same measures twice. Additionally, informants (n=28) provided assessments of participants’ leadership pre- and post-intervention. Follow-up interviews were carried out with eight participants 12-16 weeks post-intervention.

In comparison to controls, retreat participants showed significant increases in mindfulness and corresponding decreases in stress that were sustained across eight weeks post-retreat; retreat participants reported significant positive changes in their leadership effectiveness that were corroborated by informants. Qualitative data, however, suggest that sustaining a mindfulness practice presents significant challenges to middle managers in a health care setting.

The findings are useful to management working in health services that are plagued by increasing demands and changes. Despite the small sample and lack of random assignment, the pilot data support the efficacy of MAP in improving leadership.

Little empirical research supports the claim that MAP enhances leadership. The present study employed a mixed methods approach to address this gap and demonstrates the potential benefits of MAP among mid-level managers.