In recent years, research on mindfulness has burgeoned across several lines of scholarship. Nevertheless, very little empirical research has investigated mindfulness from a workplace perspective. In the study reported here, we address this oversight by examining workplace mindfulness – the degree to which individuals are mindful in their work setting. We hypothesize that, in a dynamic work environment, workplace mindfulness is positively related to job performance and negatively related to turnover intention, and that these relationships account for variance beyond the effects of constructs occupying a similar conceptual space – namely, the constituent dimensions of work engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption). Testing these claims in a dynamic service industry context, we find support for a positive relationship between workplace mindfulness and job performance that holds even when accounting for all three work engagement dimensions. We also find support for a negative relationship between workplace mindfulness and turnover intention, though this relationship becomes insignificant when accounting for the dimensions of work engagement. We consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and highlight a number of avenues for conducting research on mindfulness in the workplace.

We used univariate and multivariate relative weight analysis to assess the relative importance of a new job attitude (employee engagement), several longstanding job attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, perceived organizational support, and work centrality), and trait positive and negative affect as predictors of 3 important components of overall employee performance: task performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and counterproductive (or deviant) work behavior. The results indicate that the best predictors of overall employee performance were trait negative affect, employee engagement, and job satisfaction. Moreover, the results were unaffected by the removal of a few behavioral items (akin to OCB) from measures of employee engagement. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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This paper describes a model of self-perceptions about what is owed and what is deserved in society based on research on self-interest and other-orientation. Scales measuring obligation and entitlement were developed using the responses of over 10,000 participants from around the world. Results show that obligation and entitlement are not ends on the same self-interest continuum but are better conceptualised as independent constructs. Obligation and entitlement were also shown to predict prosocial behavior including interpersonal organisational citizenship behaviors, volunteering, and charitable giving. Geographical differences in obligation and entitlement suggest that these constructs may be useful for understanding cultural differences in social investment around the world. A second study of employees in the United States investigated the role of obligation and entitlement in predicting work engagement and effectiveness in the workplace. Obligation predicted engagement and organisational citizenship behaviors, while entitlement was generally less predictive of workplace attitudes and behaviors. This paper concludes with a number of future directions for the continued study of obligation and entitlement in the workplace.