Scientific Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning

Finalist Emerald Best Symposium Award Social and environmental crises are apparent around the globe. Disparity in living conditions, concerns over global warming, disruption of our eco systems and irresponsible care for our natural resources are evident, and for the most part these crises have been caused by consumerism, commercialization and industrial development. While business schools cannot, and should not, take direct responsibility, we do have an indirect relationship with these outcomes – our graduates populate the business workforce. Therefore, we have a role to play in creating solutions as well, or at least reducing the likelihood that our graduates continue to promote decisions and actions that make matters worse. In this paper, we suggest that business education would benefit from what Jonsen and his colleagues (2010) call “scientific mindfulness” and define as “taking thoughtful approaches that are holistic, contextual and cross-disciplinary” (Jonsen et al., 2010: 58). While these authors describe scientific mindfulness as a mindset for conducting research, we extend the concept to business teaching and learning.