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7 - Improving decision making through mindfulness

from Part II - Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2015

By
Natalia Karelaia  and
Jochen Reb
Edited by
Jochen Reb  and
Paul W. B. Atkins
Natalia Karelaia
Affiliation:
INSEAD
Jochen Reb
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University
Jochen Reb
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University
Paul W. B. Atkins
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

“Most men's awareness doesn's extend past their dinner plates.”

Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan

Introduction

With perhaps a few exceptions per day, we are seldom fully aware of our thoughts, actions, emotions, and what is happening around us. Even when it comes to making decisions, an activity that is often quite conscious, deliberate, and intentional, people are typically not as aware as they could be. We argue that as a result, decision quality may suffer. Consequently, mindfulness, most often defined as the state of being openly attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present, both internally and externally (e.g., Brown and Ryan 2003; Kabat-Zinn 1982; 1990), can help people make better decisions. Making judgments and decisions is a fundamental human activity in both personal and organizational contexts. Decisions hold the potential for great gains: marrying the right person, accepting a job that fits well, putting one's savings into the right investments, or choosing the appropriate strategy for an organization. Decisions also hold the potential for great loss, pain, and suffering. Wrong decisions can destroy people, families, and organizations. People are haunted by rumination, even depression, looking back with regret at some of the decisions they made. Organizations are also a place of great decision blunders, such as the “merger” between Daimler Benz and Chrysler, or Coca Cola's decision to introduce New Coke.

Decision research has generally painted a rather bleak picture of individual and organizational decision-making capabilities, compiling a long list of biases (i.e. systematic errors) and problems such as overconfidence, confirmation bias, or the sunk cost bias (Kahneman 2011). Arguably, errors are partly due to the daunting difficulty of decision making: the need to process large amounts of information with limited capacity and time, the need to be clear about one's values and objectives, and the need to make difficult trade-offs. We believe that if mindfulness helps even to a small extent to improve decision making, individuals and organizations stand to gain considerable accumulated benefits.

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Mindfulness in Organizations
Foundations, Research, and Applications
 , pp. 163 - 189
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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