Exploring the past, present, and future of the mindfulness field: A multitechnique bibliometric review.

This paper provides an overview of the mindfulness literature up until the end of 2020 by (a) uncovering its underlying intellectual structure, (b) identifying the most influential and popular themes, and (c) presenting new directions for future research on mindfulness. To this end, a systematic quantitative review based on bibliometric methods was conducted, which is perhaps less prone to researcher bias and can complement existing meta-analyses and qualitative (narrative) structured reviews as an objective approach. Three bibliometric techniques-document co-citation analysis, co-word (co-occurrence and content) analysis, and bibliographic coupling-were applied to explore the past, present, and future of mindfulness research. The co-citation analysis showed that measurement, mechanisms, mindfulness-based interventions, and examinations of the efficacy of mindfulness interventions are among the key theoretical knowledge bases from which the field of mindfulness is derived. The content analysis demonstrated the beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation for physical and mental health conditions. The bibliographic coupling revealed novel directions in cognitive behavioral therapy, emotion regulation, the application of mindfulness practice to children and adolescents, mindfulness at work, and the role of mindfulness in positive psychology. The large sample of articles that was analyzed allowed us to provide a broader and more objective overview than possible with other forms of literature reviews. The combination of the three bibliometric techniques granted deeper insights into the complex multidisciplinary field of mindfulness, along with specific suggestions for future research.

Identity Leadership, Employee Burnout and the Mediating Role of Team Identification: Evidence from the Global Identity Leadership Development Project.

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burnout. We tested this model with unique datasets from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project with participants from all inhabited continents. We compared two datasets from 2016/2017 (n = 5290; 20 countries) and 2020/2021 (n = 7294; 28 countries) and found very similar levels of identity leadership, team identification and burnout across the five years. An inspection of the 2020/2021 data at the onset of and later in the COVID-19 pandemic showed stable identity leadership levels and slightly higher levels of both burnout and team identification. Supporting our hypotheses, we found almost identical indirect effects (2016/2017, b = -0.132; 2020/2021, b = -0.133) across the five-year span in both datasets. Using a subset of n = 111 German participants surveyed over two waves, we found the indirect effect confirmed over time with identity leadership (at T1) predicting team identification and, in turn, burnout, three months later. Finally, we explored whether there could be a "too-much-of-a-good-thing" effect for identity leadership. Speaking against this, we found a u-shaped quadratic effect whereby ratings of identity leadership at the upper end of the distribution were related to even stronger team identification and a stronger indirect effect on reduced burnout.

Mindfulness - The Missing Link in the Relationship Between Leader-Follower Strategic Optimism (Mis)match and Work Engagement.

Assuming a followership perspective and building on implicit leadership theory, this study examines the mediating role of followers' mindfulness in the relationship between leader-follower strategic optimism (mis)match and work engagement. Specifically, we propose that a discrepancy between the respective levels of leaders' and followers' strategic optimism correlates with low levels of mindfulness and work engagement. A field study of 291 working professionals, using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, supports the (mis)match hypotheses. The results demonstrate that followers' mindfulness mediates the relationship between leaders' and followers' matching levels of strategic optimism (whether at high-high and low-low leader-follower strategic optimism conditions) and work engagement. These findings have important implications for training and the extent to which interventions based on personal resources, such as strategic optimism and therefore mindfulness, foster higher work engagement.