Mindfulness as business
Vad några mindfulnessinstruktörer anser att mindfulness kan tilllföra arbetslivet
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and question the use of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness in the workplace can be understood as an organization recipe and is now a so called trend. We believe that there may be an issue of how mindfulness at work is advertised when it is described in such a way that it could be the solution to many organizational problems, such as reducing stress, increasing efficiency, creativity and productivity. To get a better understanding of what mindfulness is and what it can bring to a stressful work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four mindfulness instructors. We analyzed the interviews from a theoretical analytical framework consisting of both a constructivist perspective and a power perspective. We also examined the results against that mindfulness can be understood as a form of spirituality. The study showed that when mindfulness made its journey from Buddhism in the East to a new context in the West and been liberated from its religious elements, it has also changed in the process. Western science validates mindfulness' good effects and gives legitimacy, but one of the problems is that all uses of mindfulness is not equally explored, including the one for the workplace. Furthermore, some researchers points out that the studies available have issues with the quality and therefore mindfulness good effects may be questionable. We have reached the conclusion that mindfulness is adapted to work in a dialectical process between different actors. In that process there is a risk that mindfulness will be eviscerated. Mindfulness instructors emphasize mindfulness as "the right way", but at the same time they admit that one can use other relaxation methods as well, but these cannot be sold because they don?t have support in science. Mindfulness operates as a counterweight to stress that, like spirituality, provides respite and time for thought and reflection.