Definition of Mindfullness

Choi et al (2021) defined mindfulness. According to Psychological theories, mindfulness is a

form of awareness in which accepting the presence of stressful thoughts and feelings
facilitates engaged exploration and identification of adaptive responses. Critics of
mindfulness' popularization suggest that lay people misconstrue acceptance as a passive
endorsement of experience, undermining engaged problem-solving. Mindfulness is a practice
of intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment. It involves
bringing awareness to one's thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding
environment. This practice originates from Buddhist traditions but has been adapted and
integrated into various secular contexts, including psychology and workplace settings.
Eisenbeiss and van Knippenberg (2015) defined trait mindfulness as a “receptive attention to
and awareness of present events and experience”. They suggested that trait mindfulness is a
prototypical individual difference that can make followers more sensitive to the information
conveyed to them through leader behaviors. Although conceptualizations of mindfulness vary
according to discipline, mindfulness can often be cultivated through meditation, which
includes focusing attention and broadening awareness. Mindfulness can be conceptualized as
a state that fluctuates throughout the day, or as a disposition that varies naturally between
people. Mindfulness becomes important when there is abusive supervision which has been
empirically associated with many negative outcomes for employees such as diminished job
satisfaction, workplace deviance, emotional exhaustion, lower commitment, well-being, and
increased psychological distress. Their work highlighted that mindfulness moderates the
relationship between abusive supervisory leadership style and employee well-being. They
found that transformational leadership positively predicted psychological well-being and
abusive supervision negatively predicted well-being. Employee mindfulness boosted the
positive impact of transformational leadership on psychological well-being. Employee
mindfulness moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and psychological well-
being; however, employee mindfulness unexpectedly amplified abusive supervision’s already
negative effect on well-being.
Impact of Mindfulness on Work place bullying
Yang & Xu (2023) examined the relationships among an abusive work environment,
mindfulness, employee well-being, and turnover intentions. The findings reveal the joint
impacts of abusive supervision, abusive coworker treatment, and mindfulness on employee
well-being and turnover intention. Specifically, the results show that mindfulness exacerbates
the relation between abusive behaviors and employee well-being, providing evidence of a
moderated mediation effect in the relationship between abusive supervision/coworker
treatment and turnover intentions through employee well-being.
Anasori et al (2023) investigated the role of resilience and psychological distress as potential
mediators of the relationship between workplace bullying and employee well being. The
study contended that workplace bullying affects employee creativity negatively, and
psychological distress positively. While psychological distress has a negative effect on
employee creativity, the latter exerts a significantly positive effect on job performance.
Resilience moderates the relationships between workplace bullying and employee creativity,
and psychological distress and employee creativity. This study makes a significant, original
contribution to the hospitality literature as it is the first to investigate the moderator role of
psychological resilience on employee creativity and performance in reaction to bullying
behavior. The results were in line with the Nielsen and Einarsen (2012) pointed that limited
studies investigated the intrinsic mechanisms explaining the ‘how’ and ‘when’ bullying and
its outcomes are related, and subsequently urged for theoretical explanations and empirical
assessment of mediating and moderating variables that may explain the effect of bullying.
Anasori et al (2020) considered the moderating effect of mindfulness in their proposed
model. The study discussed the potential for mindfulness as a personality trait to alleviate the
negative effect of bullying on emotional exhaustion. Mindfulness was found to decrease
turnover intentions and to have a positive impact on employee performance) and resilience.
According to the COR theory, individuals strive to keep their existing resources
(conservation) and obtain new resources (acquisition) which are objects, conditions or other
things that are valuable for people. The study contended that within burnout, emotional
exhaustion is the response to job-related stressors and is the premise of depersonalization
which further diminishes the personal accomplishment. Hotel employees will first experience
exhaustion under a stressful environment before the symptoms begin to show and thus this
provides the rationale for our focus on emotional exhaustion rather than burnout. The authors
stated that bullying works as a stressor would result in psychological stress, which is an
individual’s response where one perceives threats to resources in a certain setting. Under the
framework of the COR theory, we refer to bullying as a mechanism draining staffs’
psychological assets and influencing employees’ feelings of higher levels of PD and
Emotional exhaustion. In addition, mindfulness moderates the relationship between bullying
and Emotional exhaustion. Thus, we expect to generate an understanding of the role of
bullying on individuals’ Emotional exhaustion, and to further extend the body of knowledge
by assessing the role of other potential interplaying factors.
Murtaza et al (2022) analyzed the moderating effects of mindfulness on the relationships
between work stressors (perceived organisational politics [POP] and effort–reward imbalance
[ERI]) and work outcomes (job burnout [JBO] and job satisfaction [JS]). The results
concluded that mindfulness moderates the relationship between work stressors and work
outcomes. Mindfulness serves as a personal resource for employees: it mitigates the negative
influence that POP and ERI have on JBO and JS.
Yan et al (2023) analyzed the impact of family incivility (FI) on in-role performance (IRP)
and proactive customer service performance (PCSP) via the mediating effect of emotional
exhaustion (EE) and the moderating roles of emotional intelligence (EI) and mindfulness.
The results showed that mindfulness moderated the direct influence of FI on EE, IRP and
PCSP and moderated the indirect influence of FI on the two aforementioned outcomes
through EE. They further stated that literature lacks an understanding of the underlying
process through which FI affects FLEs’ job outcomes. This study incorporates that EI and
mindfulness moderate the direct impact of FI on IRP and PCSP.
Yang & Jo (2022) proposed and tested the mediating effect of work-life balance (WLB) in the
relationship between recovery experiences and subjective well-being (SWB) as well as the
moderating role of trait mindfulness in the proposed relationships. Results illustrated that trait
mindfulness showed a partial moderating role in the mediated relationships among recovery
experiences, work-life balance, and subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, two dimensions of
recovery experiences, mastery experiences and control, were positively related to work-life
balance. Control recovery dimension and work-life balance were positively associated with
subjective well-being.
Bayighomog et al (2023) examined the indirect relationship between mindfulness and
emotional exhaustion through psychological distress, and the moderating role of workplace
bullying. The results of both studies indicated that mindfulness could significantly reduce
psychological distress and subsequently emotional exhaustion when workplace bullying was
low to moderate. This work extends the extant mindfulness and occupational wellbeing
literature by shedding more light on the underlying and conditional mechanisms explaining
the salutary role of mindfulness on wellbeing.
Farley et al (2023) stated that earlier researchers have consistently shown the detrimental
effects that workplace bullying has on employee well-being. While there have been many
studies examining moderating factors that worsen or mitigate bullying’s effects, the field
lacks a common theoretical framework to integrate and explain these diverse moderators.
Their study identified, categorised, and evaluated variables that have been tested as
moderators of the relationship between workplace bullying and well-being using the job
demands resources model. Results of the study revealed that social resources, such as co-
worker support, and organisational resources, such as supportive organisational climates,
consistently buffered the harmful effects of bullying. In contrast, personal resources had little
influence as moderators. Further cross-cultural and longitudinal research is needed to
understand whether the influence of these moderators extends across time and different
cultural contexts.
Walsh & Arnold (2020) found that found that transformational leadership positively predicted
psychological well-being and abusive supervision negatively predicted well-being. Employee
mindfulness boosted the positive impact of transformational leadership on psychological
well-being. Employee mindfulness moderated the relationship between abusive supervision
and psychological well-being; however, employee mindfulness unexpectedly amplified
abusive supervision’s already negative effect on well-being. They concluded that abusive
supervision is a source of negative information, which impairs employee well-being. Abusive
supervision occurs when followers perceive leaders to “engage in the sustained display of
hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact”. Examples of abusive
behavior include giving employees the silent treatment and putting them down in front of
others. Abusive behavior from a leader sends negative information to followers that could
have detrimental impacts on their psychological well-being. For example, putting an
employee down in front of others sends negative information an employee about their level of
respect and value within the organization. Their study discussed that employee mindfulness
will boost the positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee well-
being and will amplify the negative relationship between abusive supervision and employee
well-being. The study concluded that employee mindfulness strengthened the positive
relationship between transformational leadership and psychological well-being. Furthermore,
employee mindfulness intensified the relationship between abusive supervision and employee
psychological well-being. This study shows the benefits of employee mindfulness in certain
contexts and reveals one potential dark side of mindfulness at work. They stated that very few
studies, however, have examined how individual employee differences interact with
leadership style to influence employee well-being. This an important research gap to fill
given that followers are not merely passive recipients of leadership behavior; rather, they are
active participants in receiving and reacting to their leaders’ behaviors.
References
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Farley, S., Mokhtar, D., Ng, K., & Niven, K. (2023). What influences the relationship
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Anasori, E., De Vita, G., & Gürkan Küçükergin, K. (2023). Workplace bullying,
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