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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether insights into high reliability organizations (HROs) are useful for innovation management teams. HRO teams can keep failure to a minimum level due to high alertness and resilience. Project teams working on innovation management could benefit from HRO principles and thus reduce their chances of failure.

A survey among in total 260 team members and team leaders of project teams in innovation management was conducted to study the relation between, on the one hand, organizational features of HROs (“mindful infrastructure”) and HRO principles (adjusted as “innovation resilience behaviour”, IRB), and on the other hand, between mindful infrastructure and IRB and project outcomes.

From the results it could be concluded that mindful infrastructure associates with IRB, and that IRB has a mediating role in the relation between mindful infrastructure and project outcomes. Innovation management project teams can thus learn from the practice of HRO teams.

To the authors’ knowledge, HRO-thinking has not been applied to team behaviour in innovation management. A fruitful transfer of insights from the domain of safety and crisis management seems applicable to the domain of innovation.

This paper aims to investigate the principles of high reliability organisations (HROs), present in safety and crisis teams, as applied to innovation teams. Safety and crisis teams cannot fail, as failure leads to disaster and casualties. Innovation teams cannot fail either, as this harms the organisations’ competitiveness and effectiveness. Do HRO principles, rooted in mindful infrastructure, enable innovation resilience behaviour (IRB)?

A study of 18 innovation projects performed by project teams was carried out. A survey by team members/leaders of these teams was completed; team members/leaders of other projects were added to achieve a larger sample. Mindful infrastructure consists of team psychological safety, team learning, complexity leadership and team voice. The analyses assessed the teams’ mindful infrastructures as a causal condition enabling IRB.

Applying qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), the findings indicate that mindful infrastructure enables team IRB, which is a set of team behaviours indicating their resilience when encountering critical incidents. Teams apply different “paths” to IRB.

The exploratory study’s generalizability is limited. The findings nonetheless indicate the usefulness of non-linear techniques for understanding different roads to successful innovation processes.

HRO principles are applicable by non-HROs. These require investments in organisational learning.

HRO studies fail to account for the antecedents of HRO principles. This study groups these antecedents of team behaviour into a mindful infrastructure. QCA has not been applied within the domain of HROs before and only scarcely within the domain of innovation teams.

The paper aims to present an approach to improve the organisation's productivity which is applicable in every industrial sector. The nucleus of the approach is to develop an optimal productivity strategy in an organization by the application of a uniform static model of productivity (Q4‐model), covering quantity and quality aspects and applicable to various sectors of industry, and a dynamic control cycle.

The study discusses the steps of the approach and presents three case studies from different industrial sectors where the approach has been applied.

The approach has proven to be uniformly applicable in all three cases from these different sectors, namely consultancy, health care and manufacturing. Across these applications highly different productivity‐related challenges, productivity strategies, and specific interventions are described in the perspective of the Q4‐model.

The approach is not made for measuring the quantity and quality input and output factors of productivity.

The approach succeeds in developing a productivity strategy which combines quantity and quality input and output factors and supports the transformation of a strategy analysis into a practical intervention.

The approach is unique in its uniform applicability to every industrial sector and is helpful to entrepreneurs, managers and innovators.

The effect of global integration of businesses and interchange of ideas and technology through internet has many facets. Increase in economic recessions and decrease in research funding has forced both private and public sector research organizations to introduce measures of self-sustainability. Enhancing research and development (R&D) productivity of researchers can be one of those measures. The purpose of this paper is to attempt toward identifying and analyzing those factors of productivity that may be related to the manpower in R&D.

Based upon the theoretical background and the nature of data available, this empirical study has been carried out as a case study for a public sector research laboratory. The extent of involvement in research projects have been analyzed with respect to the R&D outputs generated by the researchers, which if found to be positively related, may be focussed upon, for increasing productivity of manpower in R&D. Several other determinants of R&D productivity were identified from the literature review and were analyzed in association with the “involvement.” “Robust Regression” technique was used for the statistical analysis.

It was found that the R&D productivity of researchers has a positive correlation with their extent of involvement in the R&D projects.

The result may help in creation of the policies for enhancing organizational self-sustainability.

Several prior studies have been conducted with different determinants of R&D productivity but hardly any studies were found considering “extent of manpower involvement in research projects.” This study can be useful for public sector research organizations to relate the findings with their endeavors of enhancing R&D productivity.

This research highlights the ongoing concern about organizational productivity and the lack of focus on designing an optimal model. The authors aim to create a comprehensive model for managing organizational productivity, considering its impact on profitability, customer satisfaction, and employee morale. They use qualitative research methods, including Systematic Literature Review and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM).

In this research using the qualitative research method of Systematic Literature Review, 57 variables affecting productivity were identified. These variables were placed in 16 layers by using the ISM method, which were classified analytically in four sections: INPUTS, OUTPUTS, OUTCOMES and IMPACTS. By determining the relationship between the sections, the research model was designed.

The potential model for organizational productivity management provides a comprehensive framework addressing critical factors like technology adoption, employee empowerment, organizational culture, and more. It identifies Linkage, Dependent, and independent variables. The lower layers consist of INPUTS such as Technological Tools, Organizational Values, and more. In the highest layer, impactful variables like Enhanced competitiveness, Improved decision-making, and Improved organizational culture are labeled as IMPACTS. Middle layer variables are categorized as OUTPUTS and OUTCOMES.

In this study, the concept of productivity management was redefined for the first time, and a multi-layered model for productivity management was creatively explicated using the structural equation modeling method.

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.

The paper develops a model for enhancing R&D productivity for Indian public funded laboratories. The paper utilizes the productivity data of five Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories for analysis and to form the constructs of the model.

The weighted average method was employed for analyzing the rankings of survey respondents pertaining to the significant measures enhancing R&D involvement of researchers and significant non-R&D jobs. The authors have proposed a model of productivity. Various individual, organizational and environmental constructs related to the researchers working in the CSIR laboratories have been outlined that can enhance R&D productivity of researchers in Indian R&D laboratories. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to find the predictability of the productivity model.

The organizational factors have a crucial role in enhancing the R&D outputs of CSIR laboratories. The R&D productivity of researchers can be improved through implementing the constructs of the proposed model of productivity.

The R&D productivity model can be adapted by the R&D laboratories to enhance researchers’ R&D involvement, increased R&D outputs and achieving self-sustenance in long run.

The R&D laboratories can initiate exercises to explore the most relevant factors and measures to enhance R&D productivity of their researchers. The constructs of the model can function as a guideline to introduce the most preferable research policies in the laboratory for overall mutual growth of laboratory and the researchers.

Hardly any studies have been found that have focused on finding the measures of enhancing R&D involvement of researchers and the influence of significant time-intensive jobs on researchers’ productivity.

Literature is not consistent in discussing the implications of teleworking on work–life balance (WLB). Even though teleworking may enhance work arrangements’ flexibility, it blurs boundaries between life and work, endangering the individual WLB. The paper intends to illuminate this issue, moving forward our understanding of teleworking’s implications using the Social Exchange Theory framework.

Secondary data were collected from Eurofound’s sixth European Working Condition Survey. A large sample of Europeans (n = 16,473) was involved in this study. The authors designed a serial mediation analysis to investigate the direct and indirect effects of teleworking on WLB. The authors included employees’ job motivation and job satisfaction as intervening variables that mediate the relationship between teleworking and WLB.

The authors found teleworking to negatively affect WLB, putting under stress the teleworkers’ ability to handle the interplay between work and life. However, the serial mediation analysis pointed out that teleworking triggers an improvement of job motivation, which, in turn, boosts job satisfaction. Increased job motivation and job satisfaction nurture positive employees’ perception of WLB.

The study results invite us to pay attention to the complex interplay between teleworking and WLB, emphasizing the mediating role of job motivation and job satisfaction. As a flexible work arrangement, teleworking may increase the employees’ sense of control over their work, which leads to better perceived WLB. However, confounding the boundaries between work and daily life, it may nourish work-to-life and life-to-work conflicts.

This paper advances what is currently known about teleworking’s implications on WLB, envisioning avenues for further conceptual and empirical developments.

The purpose of this study is to examine what kinds of Dutch organisations offer their employees a choice in the composition of their benefits with the aid of a theoretical model that incorporates insights from rational choice theory, the theory of institutional pressures and the bundles of human resource management (HRM) theory.

To test the theoretical model data were collected from nearly 600 Dutch organisations in the market sector. Multivariate binary logistic regression analyses were used to analyse these data.

The research showed that flexible benefit plans (FBPs) are widespread and show a considerable degree of consistency in the options they offer. FBPs are most likely to be offered by organisations that have freedom to manoeuvre in their benefits, that witness other organisations around them offering such arrangements, and that offer HRM policies and practices that are strongly focussed on the combination of work and family, and on flexibility in working arrangements.

Attention to HRM policies in addition to a combination of rational choice and institutional theory proved valuable in explaining the uptake of a new arrangement, and this merits further exploration.

FPBs offer Dutch organisations the opportunity to give their employees more choice in the way they are paid, and to adjust this pay to their personal situation. Offering this choice fits in with a family‐friendly HRM structure and increases flexibility for both parties.

The paper provides useful information on FBPs.

This paper aims to contribute to the empirical literature on cafeteria systems within employment relations by analysing employees' decisions on whether or not to participate, which employees chose what options and how the factors vary over time.

The approach takes the form of a longitudinal case study involving 4,700 employees during a period of four years. The employees' choices are analysed by applying logistic regression.

The analyses show that use of this specific cafeteria system is not high, strongly in favour of one option and restricted to a subgroup of employees. Additionally, it is shown that the dynamics in use of the system is much more the result of changing participation decisions of individuals over the years and much less of changes in preferences of long‐term users.

A case study restricts generalizations, although some comparisons with other organizations are presented. Further extension of systematic analysis to different sets of cafeteria systems in different contexts would be interesting.

The analysis is particularly useful for HR managers/policymakers in this area to assist them systematically in evaluating new policies related to cafeteria systems or to adapting existing ones.

The participation decision as well as the chosen options are analysed in terms of an extensive set of individual employee characteristics.