Mindfulness, authentic functioning, and work engagement: A growth modeling approach

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the relationship between mindfulness, authentic functioning, and work engagement, both statically and dynamically, both cross-sectionally and dynamically as they change over training.

About: This article is published in Journal of Vocational Behavior.The article was published on 2013-06-01 and is currently open access. It has received 256 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Mindfulness & Work engagement.

Summary

Introduction

• Previous research has demonstrated that mindfulness helps reduce symptoms of work stress but research has yet to clarify whether and how mindfulness is linked to work engagement.
• Using self-determination theory the authors hypothesize that mindfulness is positively related to work engagement and that this relationship can be better understood through authentic functioning.
• The authors collected survey data on these variables in the context of six mindfulness trainings at three points in time: before the training, directly after the training, and four months after training.
• The authors examined the relationships between mindfulness, authentic functioning, and work engagement, both statically (cross-sectionally) and dynamically as they change over training.
• Mindfulness, authentic functioning, work engagement, growth modeling, also known as Keywords.

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• Mindfulness, Authentic Functioning, and Work Engagement: A Growth Modeling Approach Engaged employees have been shown to be more happy and productive (e.g. Rich, LePine, & Crawford, 2010).
• Work engagement can be defined as “a positive, fulfilling, workrelated state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002b, p. 74).
• Mindfulness can be defined as a receptive attention to and awareness of external (e.g., sounds) and internal (e.g. emotions) present-moment states, events and experiences (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Dane, 2011).
• Whereas awareness involves experiencing and perceiving reality, attention guides awareness to specific elements of the experienced reality (Bishop, Lau, Shapiro, Carlson, Anderson, Carmody, et al, 2004).
• Receptiveness refers to remaining experientially open (Bishop et al., 2004) by being non-evaluative and non-defensive (KabatZinn, 2003).

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• An individual’s mindfulness can be developed and enhanced through mindfulness training, a method involving the use of meditation exercises (Kabat-Zinn, 2003).
• Moreover, mindfulness training has been found to reduce illness symptoms (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008), experienced negative affect, rumination (e.g., Chiesa & Serretti, 2009), and burnout (Geller, Krasner, & Korones, 2010; Hülsheger, Alberts, Feinholdt, & Lang, 2012).
• The authors know very little about whether mindfulness is positively related to work engagement, the antipode of burnout (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; González-Romá, Schaufeli, Bakker, & Lloret, 2006).
• Nonetheless, the empirical studies looking into mediating factors remain scarce (Allen & Kiburz, 2012; Shapiro et al., 2006).
• The authors study answers this call for research by looking at the mediating role of authentic functioning: “the unobstructed operation of one’s true, or core, self in one’s daily enterprise” (Kernis, 2003, p. 13).

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• The authors use self-determination theory to predict that mindfulness enhances work engagement in two ways: 1) directly, by making people more attentive and focused, and 2) indirectly, by enhancing people’s internal awareness, which generates higher levels of authentic functioning (Brown & Ryan, 2003).
• First, mindfulness may directly support workengagement through a sharpened attention to activities.
• Flow, however, is a short-term and more fleeting experience of being fully there in the present moment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), whereas work engagement reflects more stable or eudaimonic well-being.
• Internal awareness supports being aware of and acting in accordance with one’s core or true self (Kernis & Goldman, 2006).
• In fact, SDT suggests that people become more autonomously motivated when they internalize external role demands into a core sense of self.

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• Mindfulness has been studied both on the inter- as well as on the intra-individual level (Brown et al., 2007).
• Similarly to mindfulness, authentic functioning can also be seen as an individual-difference psychological construct (Kernis & Goldman, 2006) as well as a changeable intra-individual construct (Novicevic, Harvey, Buckley, Brown, & Evans, 2006).
• Finally, although work engagement was initially depicted as a mostly stable trait (e.g., Kahn, 1990), recent research suggests that it can change over time, thus it exhibits both inter- as well as intra-individual properties (e.g, Sonnentag, Dormann, & Demerouti, 2010).
• The mindfulness training provides us with the opportunity to study both the static and the dynamic relationships between the variables under investigation.
• The dynamic relationships look at how the variables change over time.

Mindfulness and Work Engagement

• According to Rich et al. (2010) engaged individuals can be described as being fully immersed in the activities they are doing.
• The authors expect that mindfulness is positively related to work engagement by enhancing this experience of being immersed and attentive.
• Receptive attention enhances the clarity and vividness of one’s experiences such that individuals become more engulfed and positively engaged in the activities (Brown & Ryan, 2003).
• Psychological presence is positively related to work engagement in that individuals who are more present in their work roles experience more personal engagement (Kahn, 1990).
• To understand how this may work, imagine engaging in what you consider to be a work-related activity, but approach it as though it was the first time: receptive and attentive to see what this activity has to offer.

Mindfulness and Authentic Functioning

• Authentic functioning is being aware of oneself and regulating oneself accordingly (Avolio & Gardner, 2005).
• Interestingly, mindfulness did not promote increase in one’s self-worth, it just helped people align their implicit and explicit self-esteem.
• As self-awareness and self-acceptance increase, individuals will be more open to express the self in a manner that is in accordance with one’s true self (Illies et al., 2005).
• In addition to value clarification and self-management, mindfulness has also been argued and shown to be related to being open and non-defensive (Kernis & Goldman, 2006).
• Accordingly the authors hypothesize: Hypothesis 2a: Mindfulness and authentic functioning are positively related.

Authentic Functioning and Work Engagement

• Kahn (1990) suggests that one’s engagement in work-related tasks is a function of whether one invests one’s personal or “true” self at work.
• Similarly to Kahn (1990), self-determination theory (SDT) offers that autonomous motivation is positively related to work engagement (Gagné & Deci, 2005).
• Individuals cannot however always express their true selves in the workplace and some behavior will be more extrinsically motivated (Gagné & Deci, 2005).
• SDT argues, however, that there may still be differences in the extent to which this behavior is internalized into a core sense of self such that it becomes more self-determined.
• Increases in authentic functioning lead to increases in work engagement, also known as Hypothesis 3b.

Mindfulness, Authentic Functioning and Work Engagement

• Mindfulness helps individuals become more attentive and openly aware (Brown & Ryan, 2003) and makes it possible for them to tune in to their true self (self-awareness) and to be their true self (self-regulation).
• Adapting this to the work context, mindfulness helps individuals to make the conscious decision to engage in work-related activities, thus internalizing external role demands into their core sense of self (Weinstein, Brown, & Ryan, 2009).
• Being mindful while writing a report at work may increase the likelihood of being more engaged or absorbed in the writing process (similar to a state of flow), without internalization of the activity itself.
• For the dynamic relationship, however, the authors expect full mediation.
• Accordingly, the authors hypothesize that: Hypothesis 4a: Authentic functioning partially mediates the relationship between mindfulness and work engagement.

Participants and Procedure

• The authors collected the data in collaboration with a training institute for mindfulness.
• This institute employed several mindfulness trainers who provide in-company mindfulness training.
• The present research incorporates data at six distinct organizations in the area of telecommunication, consulting, and architecture (for-profit) and parliamentary services, public services, and health insurance (not-for-profit).
• Previous research has typically used a waiting-list control group to estimate whether the change in the study variables that can naturally be observed is meaningful (see for example Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, Schumacher, Rosenkranz, Muller, Santorelli, et al., 2003; Fredrickson et al., 2008).
• At Time 3, (four months after the training) 68 respondents (75 % of initial sample) completed their survey to look at further growth after the training.

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• Out of the training because they were sick or on vacation leave.
• Fifty-three percent had received a graduate degree and 75% of respondents were women.
• 68% of participants to the training were professionals, 24% occupied positions in management and 8% occupied administrative positions.
• The training groups were divided as follows: 12% in health insurance, 22% in public services, 13% in consulting, 15% in telecommunications, 25% parliamentary services and 13% architecture.

Mindfulness Training

• The mindfulness training was modeled after the well-established and manualized mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) programs developed by Kabat-Zinn (2003).
• The training took eight consecutive weeks, with weekly sessions of about three hours.
• Trainers would ask participants to practice mindfulness informally through mindful coffee or lunch breaks, mindful conversations with boss or colleagues, and mindful concentration on specific work tasks.
• The mindfulness training was highly standardized in both content and format of delivery.
• Communication in the training was restricted to the sharing of experiences related to the meditations during the sessions or the practice of these meditations outside of.

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• Participants were given the personal responsibility to cultivate their own awareness during and after training.
• The MAAS consists of 15 items asking respondents to indicate when they lack mindfulness in thoughts, feelings or behavior.
• “I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.” and “It seems I am running on automatic without much awareness of what I’m doing.”, also known as Example items are.
• Items were scaled on a 5 point-Likert-scale ranging from completely agree to completely disagree.
• Schaufeli, Martinez, Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker (2002a) validated a three-component measure of work engagement consisting of vigor, dedication and absorption.

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• Purpose.”, and “Time flies when I am working.”.
• At Time 2, directly after the training, the authors asked respondents to report how much they meditated, ranging from never to six days in the week (excluding the day of the training session).
• To avoid recall bias, the authors asked respondents to go back to their training manual where they were required to write down the amount of practice each week.

Analyses

• The authors analyzed the data using structural equation modeling using the Mplus statistical package in two steps (McDonald & Ho, 2002).
• In a first step, the authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis on their measurement model to assure that their variables were empirically distinct.
• In addition, the authors tested for measurement invariance over time to assure that changes in variables do not reflect changes in how measures are perceived over time periods (Vandenberg, 2002).
• In a second step, the authors tested their hypotheses with a growth model analysis (e.g., Ng, Feldman, & Lam, 2010).
• The authors tested the dynamic relationships by specifying equally spaced loadings between different measurement periods on a rate of change factor, thus demonstrating a linear growth trajectory (e.g. Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2009).

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• The authors used random item parcels to validate the overall measurement model to maintain a favorable indicator-to-sample-size ratio.
• Following the suggestions of Little, Cunningham, Shahar, and Widaman (2002) the authors applied a domain-representative approach that constructs parcels using items from sub-dimensions of each construct.
• When the authors alternately constrained each pairwise factor correlation to unity, they found that, in each case, constraining the factor correlation significantly worsened model fit (p < 0.05), suggesting that their study variables are distinct.
• Table 1 displays significant correlations in the direction of their hypotheses.
• The authors conducted a multivariate repeated measure analysis to investigate whether these differences are significant.

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• To provide more evidence for the meaningfulness of their change variables, the authors also compared changes over time between respondents from the training groups and the waitinglist groups.
• Thus, there seemed to be no differences between the training and waiting list group in initial level of the focal variables, supporting random assignment.
• The authors found a significant interaction effect between time and type of group, suggesting that changes over time were dependent on actual participation in the training, Wilks Lambda = 0.47; F(6, 61) = 11.30; p < .05.
• This was the case for each of the dependent variables.

Growth Model

• The growth model adds to previous analyses in that it specifies and tests the static and dynamic relationships between the study variables.
• First, from a model excluding authentic functioning, the authors established support for Hypothesis 1a and 1b.
• Hypothesis 4a and Hypothesis 4b predicted that authentic functioning would mediate the static and dynamic relationship between mindfulness and work engagement.
• The authors tested these indirect effects with 5000 bootstrap iterations.
• Finally, initial status was significantly correlated with change in mindfulness (r = -.10, p = .05), suggesting that increases in mindfulness are smaller for higher initial scores.

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• This study set out to investigate whether the mindset of mindfulness (a receptive attention and awareness to the present moment) would be linked to feelings of engagement (vigor, dedication, absorption) in one’s daily work.
• The authors further hypothesized that the behavioral mechanism of authentic functioning (being more open and non-defensive) would mediate those relationships.
• This is in line with the central tenets of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) that posits that individuals become more engaged in activities because they are happily immersed and intrinsically motivated in them (Brown & Ryan, 2003; Kahn, 1992).
• The authors tested these relationships both statically and dynamically, demonstrating that they work both cross-sectionally as well as that the variables change over the course of a mindfulness training.
• The only difference between the static and dynamic results is that for the dynamic process authentic functioning fully mediates the effects of mindfulness on work engagement: to become more engaged in your work you need to internalize work-related activities, consciously choosing to engage in them for self-determined reasons.

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• These findings make several contributions to previous research.
• First, they suggest mindfulness is important not only for reduction of negative symptoms of burnout (Geller et al., 2010; Hülsheger et al., 2012), but also for strengthening the personal resources of work engagement.
• Second, their findings provide evidence that mindfulness is a meaningful antecedent of authentic functioning (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005; Illies et al., 2005).
• Third, their results provide empirical evidence for the assumption that authentic functioning is an antecedent of work engagement (Gardner et al., 2005; Ilies et al., 2005; Leroy et al., in press).

Future Research

• Grounded in the theory and research reported in this paper, the authors would expect that mindfulness training will initially induce positive and short term peak experiences of flow during the training.
• Near the end of the training however, increased self-awareness and self-regulated functioning should have increased personal resiliency and should thus provide more stability in overall feelings of work engagement.
• A second avenue for research is to see how mindfulness interacts with existing job demands and job resources in predicting work engagement.

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• Psychological capital on the experience of positive emotions (Avey, Wernsing, & Luthans, 2008).
• A substantial amount of literature has confirmed the positive effects of mindfulness on clinical outcomes (for an overview see Brown et al., 2007).
• Mindfulness may be particularly relevant to foster measures of resilient performance in a dynamic work environment (Dane, 2011; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001).
• Unlike training that focuses on avoidance and distraction, mindfulness requires being aware and attentive to one's experiences, even if those are negative (e.g., pain).

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• Associated with some discomfort as people learn how to be aware and attentive without being overwhelmed by their emotions and thoughts about their experiences (e.g., Frederickson et al., 2008).
• Given attention to and accepting these painful experiences requires a lot of personal resiliency and social support.

Limitations

• First, drawing any conclusions regarding the effectiveness of mindfulness training should be done with caution.
• There is no definite way to rule out trainer demands, the creation of expectations, or non-specific effects regarding delivery format (see also Fredrickson et al., 2008).
• Measures of authentic leadership are similar to the measure of authentic.

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• Functioning but are typically measured as a direct report from followers (Walumbwa et al., 2008).
• Previous research has found that mindfulness is related to perceptions of leader authenticity (Kawakami, White, & Langer, 2000) and that leader authenticity may translate into leader and follower well-being (Macik-Frey, Quick, & Cooper, 2009).
• Third, because the authors focused on how an individual can play a proactive role in increasing their own work engagement, this paper took a relatively individualistic view of work engagement, independently of the surrounding environment (e.g., job demands and resources).
• By directing attention to the role the individual plays in creating their own work engagement the authors contribute to the literature by addressing an understudied aspect.

Conclusion

• The findings reported in this study suggest that mindfulness and meditation practices support the positive and work-related outcome of work engagement.
• Furthermore, the authors found that these relationships can be better understood by considering employee authentic functioning, the extent to which employees are aware of and behave in accordance with one’s core or true sense of self.
• This is important as staying true to one’s core sense of self clarifies how mindful employees attain more stable work-related well-being.
• Overall, their findings contribute to their understanding of the positive role of mindfulness at work.

Figures

Figure 1. Proposed model.

Table 1 Means, Standard Deviations, Cronbach Alpha’s and Correlations Among Study Variables

Figure 2. Results of latent growth model.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

The authors examined the relationships between mindfulness, authentic functioning, and work engagement, both statically ( cross-sectionally ) and dynamically as they change over training. The authors discuss how these findings further clarify the role of mindfulness in the workplace and highlight the implications for the literature on authentic functioning and work engagement. 

Q2. What are the future works in this paper?

In this section the authors offer how future research can build on the findings in this study. For example, future research could use a diary-method ( e. g. Ohly, Sonnentag, Niessem, & Zapf, 2010 ) and ask training participants to report on random intervals during the training period about their positive experiences of flow and authentic functioning. 

Q3. What does Heppner et al. (2008) show?

Heppner et al. (2008) demonstrated that mindfulness, both statistically and dynamically, helps to reduce aggressive behavior in response to social exclusion feedback (e.g., “Nobody wants to work with you”). 

Q4. What is the role of mindfulness in promoting engagement in work?

Mindfulness can be instrumental in shifting one’s perspective or “reperceiving” what is already known (Carmody, Baer, Lykins & Olendzki, 2009; Shapiro et al., 2006), thus keeping employees interested, attentive, and involved in their work. 

Q5. What effect did the authors find between time and meditation practice after training?

The authors found no significant interaction effect between time and meditation practice after training, Wilks Lambda = .97; F(6, 50) = .25; p = .96, suggesting that changes cannot be attributed to amount of meditation practice after training. 

Q6. What does Shapiro et al. (2006) say about mindfulness?

Shapiro et al. (2006) summarized that mindfulness training operates through the clarification of one’s personal values and related increases in self-management. 

Q7. What is the importance of staying true to one’s core sense of self?

This is important as staying true to one’s core sense of self clarifies how mindful employees attain more stable work-related well-being. 

Q8. What did the authors find when the authors constrained the factor correlation to unity?

When the authors alternately constrained each pairwise factor correlation to unity, the authors found that, in each case, constraining the factor correlation significantly worsened model fit (p < 0.05), suggesting that their study variables are distinct. 

Q9. What is the difference between flow and work engagement?

however, is a short-term and more fleeting experience of being fully there in the present moment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), whereas work engagement reflects more stable or eudaimonic well-being. 

Q10. What did the authors find when the authors constrained the factor loadings from the different time periods to be?

In addition, when the authors constrained the factor loadings from the different time periods to be equal, the authors found no significant drop in model fit. 

Q11. What is the relationship between mindfulness and authentic functioning?

The authors predict that mindfulness is related to authentic functioning in that a receptive internal awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors helps individuals to become more aware of one’s “true” self (Brown & Ryan, 2003).