The Practice of Mindfulness for Managers in the Marketplace

This paper explores the practice of mindfulness, both formal and informal, in the context of the systems sciences. The systems sciences have given great importance to scientific research, almost to the exclusion of intuitive/spiritual search. However, with the recent worldwide interest in intuitive/spiritual search in general, and mindfulness and mindfulness meditation in particular, the doors have opened for a more balanced combination of these two enterprises. This balanced approach will not only help us to know how and why things happen the way they do, but will also tell us something about how to manage our own selves, particularly in difficult times. Mindfulness, which is the opposite of mindlessness, is our capacity for awareness and for self-knowing. It can be further refined through the practice of mindfulness meditation. The practice of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation has rapidly spread around the world and in the mainstream of Western culture in the past thirty years, thanks in part to an increasing number of scientific and medical studies, proving its abundant beneficial effects.