Purpose The study filled a critical research gap by empirically validating individual mindfulness as an antecedent to mindful organizing (a novel contribution) and its subsequent impact to observe how this can lead to fostering innovative behaviors for the academicians. The study also validated emotional intelligence as a novel predictor of mindful organizing as well as its moderating role between individual mindfulness and mindful organizing. Methods The study employed a hypothetico-deductive method to evaluate multi-level constructs using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) with a 5,000 bootstrapping technique. Overall, 425 samples were utilized to verify the proposed structural model through the CB-SEM technique. The study employed a cross-sectional approach and used a non-probabilistic purposive sampling technique to collect responses. Due to the usage of mindful organizing as a team-level construct, aggregation analysis was also carried out to report group agreement. Findings The results confirmed that individual mindfulness had a positive and statistically significant impact on mindful organizing, and the subsequent effect of mindful organizing on innovative behavior was also positive and statistically significant. Additionally, mindful organizing had a statistically significant moderating role between individual mindfulness and creative behavior. Furthermore, emotional intelligence positively correlated with mindful organizing. Lastly, the emotional intelligence strengthened the individual's mindfulness relationship with mindful organizing (positive moderation). Conclusions The findings suggest that individual mindfulness can be transformed into mindful organizing, meaning the personal benefits of mindfulness can be leveraged to foster innovation for academicians. The study extended the high-reliability organization (HRO) research paradigm to the Higher-educational context, stating that mindful organizing processes can enable individual mindfulness to propagate innovative behaviors. The study contributes to the Social Cognitive Theory and Emotion Regulation theory by validating their lens-based view to understand and relate individual and collective constructs in the educational context.
Saleem et al. (Fri,) studied this question.