Operationalizing mindfulness in the workplace

Abstract

Mindfulness, generally characterized as a state of receptive attention and awareness, is a well-studied construct in psychology, but has yet to be widely accepted in the organizational and behavioral sciences. Some of this can be attributed to lack of conceptual clarity due to numerous definitions and proposed factor structures. To assist with advancing the usefulness of the construct of mindfulness in the workplace, a global definition is proposed along with a four-dimension structure that predicts global workplace mindfulness. Three studies were conducted to develop initial support for convergent and discriminant validity. This paper offers theoretical and empirical contributions by conceptualizing and operationalizing the mindfulness construct for the behavioral sciences in the context of a workplace.