This chapter, firstly, will cover the conclusions of the study; secondly, will present implications, limitations and recommendations for management and future research.
Conclusions
The purpose of this particular study was to examine whether leader mindfulness would influence employee engagement, and also explore how the moderating effect of leader-follower social capital (goal congruence and social interaction) would influence the relationship between leader mindfulness and employee engagement. The goal of this study was to enhance employee engagement and benefit organizations by rethinking the leader-follower relation. The results of the data analysis of the previous chapter shows that: First, leader mindfulness actually had a positive relationship with employee engagement; Second, goal congruence in fact had a strengthen influence on the relationship between leader mindfulness and employee engagement. Finally, social interaction also showed a strengthen effect on the relationship between leader mindfulness and employee engagement.
Implications Theoretical Implications
In the perspective of previous literature regarding employee engagement, almost none is known about its leader mindfulness-related antecedents. Moreover, most studies on workplace mindfulness has only concentrated on intrapersonal influences of how employee mindfulness benefits him or herself while interpersonal interactions and relations are the center matters of organizational issues. To the present time, the connection between leader mindfulness and positive employee outcomes have only been examined in three studies, according to Reb et al. (2014), Reb et al. (2018), and Schuh et al. (2019). Through a series of data analysis, this study pointed out the positive relationship between leader mindfulness and employee engagement, and the moderating effect of goal congruence and social interaction in that relationship. These results could enhance the understanding of the current literature regarding the relationships among these four variables.
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Practical Implications
This study offers essential recommendations for companies in Food and Beverage Industry in Vietnam with regards to the demand to develop an engaged workforce. The expansion of an engaged workforce gradually has become a main concern for human resource practitioners, who acknowledge the useful contributions of high engagement to improved customer satisfaction assessments and excellent financial accomplishment. Obviously, significant advice for HRD professionals must be founded in authentic experimental proof (Shuck & Wollard, 2010). While various corporations attempt to boost engagement among their employees, a lack of theory-driven researches advises companies about how to achieve this goal (Shuck, Reio Jr, et al., 2011). This research illuminates two crucial factors boosting work engagement: leader mindfulness and leader-follower social capital (goal congruence and social interaction).
Specifically, with the aim of increasing organizations’ employee engagement, management board and human resource practitioners may focus more on investing in enhancing the leaders’
mindfulness. Firstly, recruitment policies can take into consideration to hire leaders with this characteristic to ensure the engagement of their employees. More importantly, systematic endeavors can put in the first priority such as mindfulness training, especially programs designed for the workplace. Mindfulness meditation is a good example of employee development methods used by several Fortune 500 organizations including Google, General Mills, Apple and Nike.
Executing so, this research recommends, will bring about variety of benefits for both leaders and employees, with regards to physical conditions as well as psychological well-being.
Similarly essential, this research discloses that to gain the complete advantages of fostering leader mindfulness, human resource professionals must contemplate the social capital of their leader–follower relationships including goal congruence and social interaction. A leader with higher mindfulness offers abundant foundations for a more engaged workforce, but this procedure may confront challenges before it has the final result. Therefore, human resource professionals need to acknowledge that several employees might not realize how mindful leaders could really support their personal duties. This challenge is most noticeable when leaders and followers have varying goals, or their exchanges are restricted to formal backgrounds. On the contrary, companies may gain most from mindful leaders when they promote both devotion to mutual objectives and casual exchanges across hierarchical levels. Consequently, an imperative role for human resource professionals may lie in the expansion of socialization ideas that encourage newcomers’ learning
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about organizational standards and objectives as well as arouse their casual interactions with supervisors, for instance, by establishing such discussion outside the usual workplace.
In principle, Food and Beverage organizations in Vietnam should combine leader mindfulness with an emphasis on improving goal congruence between leaders and followers.
Leaders are supposed to be instructed to not only be mindful but also to boost orientation of follower objectives with their own objectives and those of their company; or else, the impacts of leader mindfulness are not so noticeable. This result may be accomplished through the apparent communication of key targets, during official training and development programs as well as through everyday decision making. Additionally, when combined with casual social interactions, the possibility of reaching high levels of engagement will improve much more.
Nonetheless, it is advisable for human resource professionals to understand that such social interactions can in fact backfire in the lack of consistent objectives. When the two parties involve in casual communications and recognize each other on a personal level, nervousness could increase in the existence of substantial objective variances, such that employees fail to acknowledge the attempts mindful leaders execute, in which situation leader mindfulness is unlikely to lead to helpful work manners. If employees and supervisors cannot solve their core disputes about which objectives would be followed, the negative attitudes may increase even more in the existence of solid social interactions. Therefore, when improving platforms that boost internal communication, human resource professionals should understand that in some circumstances - such as when significant variations in the organization’s strategies prevent perceptions of goal congruence between leader and follower - it may be better to discourage informal interactions between employees and their supervisors, to prevent the escalation of unfavorable feelings that lead to personal animosity and ultimately undermine the potential of leader mindfulness to create positive work attitudes. For example, open workplace designs developed to promote social interactions should be used with great caution in the presence of limited congruence among organizational members so that they do not compromise the benefits of leader mindfulness. Instead, human resource professionals should proactively assess whether employees and supervisors hold different goals for their organization and ensure that any associated personal animosity does not escalate when employees are forced to interact with their leaders in informal settings.
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Limitations and Future Research Suggestions
Despite the contribution made to the literature, this study still has some limitations. First, due to the time constraints, the authors only employed the quantitative method. It notably brought about a limitation that it would be hard to inspect the participants’ full ideas and recommendations.
Second, this study used a cross-sectional design which means the data were collected at the same single point time. Therefore, the author needed to treat causal judgement with caution with four variables. Third, this present research only tested on a small group of 256 valid respondents in Food and Beverage industry in Vietnam because of the researchers’ distance difficulty, which could lead to sample bias relating to generalizability. Finally, this current examination might only provide a glance into the complication of leader–follower connections. For instance, the authors merely concentrated on employee’s awareness of their leader mindfulness.
Based on above limitations, the author hereafter provides some suggestions that can be considered as references for future researchers. First, it is vital to take into consideration the demand for more qualitative studies about mindfulness at work. In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research put more close considerations to specific explanations and processes which trigger the conceptual constructs. Second, a longitudinal design could be better distinguish between short- and long-term effects of leader mindfulness, as well as elucidate the underlying mechanisms that connect such leader mindfulness with employee engagement. Third, cross-country studies could provide additional insights into the relative importance of leader–follower relationships for leveraging servant leadership into positive employee attitudes across different cultural contexts. Last but not least, future studies may supplement this research by assessing leader mindfulness from the leader’s perception.
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