Search

Collective mindfulness enables organizational teams to overcome considerable challenges arising due to increasing uncertainties and complexities in the business environment. Surprisingly, there is a dearth of studies that explain the nuances of mindful functioning in teams. Our study explores how collective mindfulness may be relevant to service teams that are under the dual pressures of satisfying rapidly changing customer expectations, while also fulfilling organizational requirements. We interview 20 team leaders in Indian organizations and adopt a phenomenological approach to surface behavioral and relational aspects of collective mindfulness. We identify the essences of what it means to be collectively mindful in a service team, and unveil how such mindfulness facilitates internal alignment of diverse priorities and perspectives and enhances their agility to deal with quickly changing external situations. We highlight how mindfulness can be used to overcome some of the tensions and contradictions experienced in team functioning, and how it shapes future actions. Our core contribution is by way of demonstrating how collective mindfulness facilitates these teams to adapt and evolve as per fast changing situations. We present the potential implications for theory and practice, to advance the nascent field of research on collective mindfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do senior managers handle the operational challenges and personal growth opportunities in organizations experiencing rapid employee growth (defined as doubling employee strength within five years)? How does it impact their deployment and development processes? To address these under-researched questions, we develop various propositions, and argue that senior managers in rapid employee growth firms experience sudden expansion of work roles with lesser time to respond effectively; hence their deployment and development processes, such as job rotations, promotions, mentoring, coaching and multi-source feedback, depart significantly from those in normal employee growth organizations. We evaluate the propositions based on data from forty-three semi-structured interviews with senior managers in medium-sized Indian software services organizations, which offer a unique context of rapid growth. We use conceptually clustered matrices to analyze the data, and find many interesting instances of emergent, opportunistic and individual-driven deployment and leadership development practices, including out-of-turn promotions and rapid job rotations. This accelerated the career progression of senior managers, helping them to move faster into upper echelon positions. The managers also placed a great value on mentoring, coaching and feedback, both formal and informal, especially if it helped them to embed the learning in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senior managers face significant operational challenges as well as enjoy significant personal growth opportunities while managing rapid employee growth organizations (defined as doubling employee strength within five years on an initial strength of at least ten thousand employees). How do they impact and modify their rapidly growing organisations and their own development as managers while coping with rapid employee growth? How do they manage the enhanced expectations placed on them due to their expanding roles in these rapidly growing organisations? We draw on anecdotal evidence from medium sized firms in the rapid growth Indian software services industry to develop a set of propositions that address these under-researched questions. The chosen research context is unique as several Indian software services firms have doubled employee strength within five years from a minimum ten thousand base -- possibly unmatched in any industry worldwide. We formulate propositions that argue that, faced with rapid employee growth, leadership development practices for senior managers such as classroom programs, multi-source feedback, executive coaching, mentoring, networking, job assignments and action learning will depart significantly from those in normal employee growth firms. Senior managers will face rapidly growing demands and sudden expansion of work roles with lesser time to respond effectively -- leading to individual-driven, emergent or opportunistic leadership development. Rapid employee growth also creates an upper level leadership vacuum that provides senior managers opportunities for out-of-turn promotions and rapid job rotations. This accelerates their leadership development enabling them to move faster into upper echelon positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]