Auditing Crisis Management at Work: A Toolkit Including Individual and Contextual Predictors

Abstract

Crisis management at work refers to how organizational members handle unexpected or unwanted critical events in their current operational (e.g., employees) and strategic (e.g., management) tasks and represents a key factor for the system’s effectiveness and success. The present research aimed to (1) develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Crisis Management at Work Scale (CMWS), including employees’ mastery of five crisis-related facets (preparedness, prevention, problem solving, achievement and helping others), and (2) examine individual-level dispositional mindfulness (i.e., describe, aware, non-judging, and non-reacting) and contextual-level mindful organizing factors (i.e., preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience, and deference to expertise) as predictors of crisis management. Data (Study 1) from 791 employees in Italy supported the CMWS’s construct validity and reliability. Data (Study 2) from a two-wave design (N = 414) involving 84 Italian organizations and structural equation model results suggest that both employees’ (Time 1) mindfulness traits and mindful organizing contextual factors predict (Time 2) crisis management dimensions, with mindfulness traits exerting stronger effects. Furthermore, crisis management showed the highest association with the “aware” sub-dimension of mindfulness traits and the least association with the “deference to expertise” sub-dimension of mindful organizing. Overall, our multi-wave findings support the CMWS’s validity and provide an overarching conceptual framework for an organizational audit on both individual and contextual factors underpinning multi-faceted crisis management. Results are discussed in light of the relevance of crisis management for sustainable organizational effectiveness as well as thriving and survival in increasingly unstable and uncertain environments.

1. Introduction

Organizations are currently dealing with an increasingly volatile and unstable environment triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical turmoil (e.g., Ukraine war) and thus are forced to cope with abrupt and non-routine issues that may fuel significant consequences requiring containment or the need for recovery (i.e., crisis management; [1,2]). While most crisis management research (e.g., [3,4]) is concerned with how systems deal with societal and natural threats (e.g., public relations, health institutions) or maintain stable/reliable performance under trying conditions (e.g., High-Reliability Organizations; HROs), less is known on how people contribute to overall organizational functioning by handling critical events in their ongoing work activity. Moreover, given the complexity of the factors at stake proposed by multiple disciplines (e.g., strategic management and public relations), there is still limited knowledge and much debate on the theoretical mechanisms at work regarding the relevant antecedents of crises and crisis management (e.g., [4]).

The current paper focuses on crisis management at work understood as a set of organizational members’ characteristics and behaviors displayed in their ongoing working activities and associated with preparedness as well as efforts made to enable an effective response to critical situations. Furthermore, given the relevance of members’ attention and concentration to detect relevant signals that may enable wise action and effective coping with unusual situations (e.g., [5]), we examine the role of crisis management predictors associated with mindful action stratified at multiple levels of organizational functioning. Specifically, we investigate as predictors the context-related processes that are capable of creating a collective state of heightened attention to details (i.e., mindful organizing), which may help the correction of unexpected events capable of escalation (e.g., [6]). Moreover, we examine the person-related disposition to act with awareness of the present moment (i.e., dispositional mindfulness; [7,8]).

While the majority of the existing crisis management literature tends to focus on large-scale extraordinary situations and includes transboundary issues across disciplines (e.g., disaster management and public relations; [9]), there is relatively little research on how crises are handled within organizations and during ongoing work activities. More importantly, little is known on the individual and collective mechanisms through which organizational behavior might lead a worker to effectively manage critical events they might experience during daily operations. The present study fills this gap and aims to propose a new tool aimed at assessing workers’ mastery of the crises they experience during their ongoing job activities as well as investigate simultaneously individual and contextual factors that underpin effective crisis management within daily work processes.

As such, the goal of the present research was threefold. First, we sought to include a workplace perspective in crisis management theory and aimed to complement existing crisis management models by focusing on the individual’s behavior and psychological mechanisms underlying the perception and processing of a crisis situation. Specifically, we propose a Crisis Management at Work (CMW) model of crisis management gauging organizational members’ mastery of multiple domains in dealing with pre-crisis and during-crisis stages of critical events in their current operational or managerial tasks. The newly developed Crisis Management at Work model shifts the focus from exceptional events managed by a few key agents (e.g., leaders, PR officers) towards emerging adversities and performance failures faced by any organizational member in their ongoing working activities (i.e., a person-focused perspective) with the potential to threaten organizational functioning. In so doing, we contribute to extending the literature on crisis management by focusing on workplace crises and incorporating the role of any internal stakeholders in the effective handling of critical events or any dangerous anomaly in their daily tasks at work. In so doing, the newly proposed model of Crisis Management at Work complements existing crisis management approaches which are generally concerned with large-scale extraordinary situations and from the perspective of disaster management or public relations at the societal level, as opposed to our model of crisis management which is on a small scale and enacted by each worker during their daily operations within an organization.

Second, we aimed to develop a new Crisis Management at Work Scale rooted in the proposed CMW model and examine its psychometric properties in organizations from different occupational settings. The tool was developed in order to assist organizations in mapping their internal stakeholders’ expertise in crisis management and thus become aware of the role that any incumbent (e.g., employees, supervisors) may play in mastering critical events capable of jeopardizing organizational functioning. In so doing, we contribute to extending the study of crisis management in non-HRO organizations, or rather, any type of occupational sector beyond the more restricted application within organizations particularly concerned with stability and high reliability (e.g., [10]).

Third, the current research aimed to propose an overarching conceptual framework including the stratified role of both person-related (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) and context-related (i.e., mindful organizing) factors as indicators of members’ mindful action in predicting their crisis management expertise (see Figure 1 for a nomological network among the study constructs). Indeed, the literature (e.g., [11]) suggests that understanding the genesis of crises plays a central role in their effective prevention and management, and organizational members’ rich awareness of relevant situational details may help them focus on where to intervene in order to de-escalate critical circumstances. In so doing, the proposed overarching CMW framework, including the assessment of its individual and contextual mindfulness predictors, may serve as a springboard to understanding the overall organizational functioning in the face of unexpected situations. As such, it may contribute to advancing crisis management and mindfulness theory by broadening mindful action in organizations to a stratified and multilevel perspective. Arguably, the CMW framework and accompanying scales may provide organizations with a tool for the internal auditing of the crisis management expertise of organizational members and the multilevel factors facilitating its genesis.

We thereby contribute to the literature on crisis management by specifically examining crisis management within organizations and related to daily working activities. Moreover, the present multi-wave research uniquely adds to this literature by specifically testing the impact of individual- (i.e., mindfulness traits) and collective-level (i.e., mindful organizing) cognitive processes on workers’ mastery of crisis management. As such, the proposed Crisis Management at Work framework contributes to bridging the literature in the areas of crisis management, organizational behavior, mindfulness and mindful organizing. From a practical standpoint, our findings can provide scholars and practitioners with an overarching conceptual framework for an organizational audit on both individual and contextual factors underpinning multi-faceted crisis management at work, or rather, a key factor to sustain the system’s effectiveness in its daily functioning.

Below we initially provide an overview of the literature underpinning our approach to crisis management in the workplace that supports the development of the new Crisis Management at Work Scale. Next, we briefly present the theoretical foundations of dispositional mindfulness and mindful organizing processes and provide arguments in order to develop hypotheses of their effects on the crisis management dimensions. Finally, we present a validation study of the new CMW scale and a multi-wave study assessing our overarching crisis management framework including predictors of crisis management at work.

Crisis Management at Work

While the term “crisis”, from the Greek “krisis”, generally signifies the preference of one alternative over another and the reaching of a “decisive point” in a crucial situation, the literature tends to define a crisis as an adverse significant event with an unpredictable outcome [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20], thus emphasizing its conceptualization as an event which escalated up to an extremely difficult or dangerous point against a background of unstable or uncertain conditions (e.g., [21,22]). Crises understood as extraordinary events with potentially undesired consequences could be categorized [23] as natural (e.g., floods, earthquakes), human-made (e.g., building collapse, aircraft accidents) or nation-related (e.g., civil disorder, terrorism). An additional distinction [24] is between crises that are “internal” (e.g., organizational culture conflict, failure to act in time or appropriately) or “external” (e.g., hostile events, natural disasters) to a system. Whether classified by forms or types or causes, crises are unwanted and threatening events that negatively impact a system’s functioning [23,25]. Moreover, causes are often interrelated, thus increasing the complexity of crises and the severity of impacts [26].

As such, people experience crises as situations of danger and insecurity requiring urgent action, practical activity to be contained and immediate recovery to be achieved [27]. Relatedly, crisis management refers to “a coordinated effort to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from a crisis” ([2] p. 22) and reflects the strategies to protect a system from the damaging effects of a crisis [1]. Indeed, crisis management is an interdisciplinary field including transboundary issues and builds on contributions from multiple disciplines including risk management, disaster management, finance, and public relations as well as social sciences such as strategic management and organizational behavior [9].

The current paper engages a workplace perspective on crises defined as unexpected contingencies with potentially hampering consequences that organizational members may encounter in their current operational (e.g., employees) and strategical (e.g., managers) tasks and that require effective coping in order to control potential damage to the system. Coherently, we focus on crisis management understood as a set of organizational members’ characteristics and behaviors, displayed in their ongoing working activity, associated with preparedness for more effective action against the impact of a crisis and efforts made to enable an effective response to an actual crisis (e.g., [28]). While crisis management and leadership are commonly viewed as intertwined in that people tend to turn to leaders and expect them to do something under grave predicaments requiring urgent actions [27], crises have an inherently participative and collective nature [29]. As such, they can be better coped with by considering effective contributions and action from all actors involved in the situation. Consistently, crisis management implies the action of any member to get control over the situation and can be considered at all levels of the organization and in relation to any type of task, whether operational or managerial.

On the one hand, we build on the crisis management literature from a macro-level perspective in the areas of High Reliability Organizations (e.g., [6]) as adaptive organizational forms for an increasingly complex environment as well as system crisis strategies (e.g., [1,30]), as they provide a systemic approach concerned with different stages of critical events and domains of action for effective coping with crises. On the other hand, we build on person-centered perspectives as proposed by the people’s crisis self-efficacy literature (e.g., [31,32]) that focuses on the individual’s behavior and psychological mechanisms underlying the perception and processing of a crisis situation.

For example, the crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) systemic approach suggests a model of crisis aimed at assisting in managing complex societal threats and “seeking to limit, contain, mitigate, and reduce harm” ([33], p. 48), which entails five different stages of critical events: pre-crisis, initial event, maintenance, resolution and evaluation (e.g., [29]). In a similar vein, Rosenthal and Pijnenburg ([28], p. 3) propose a crisis management model including the areas of “efforts to prevent crises from occurring, to prepare for better protection against the impact of a crisis agent, to make for an effective response to an actual crisis, to provide plans and resources for recovery and rehabilitation in the aftermath of a crisis”. Relatedly, a crisis management model proposed by Singh and Nazki [25] covers six main areas of action aimed at containing the negative impact of disasters on the image of destinations in the tourism industry: media communication, promotional measures, partnering with multiple stakeholders of destination management (e.g., government agencies, practitioners, and locals), security and leveraging awareness on the measures undertaken, innovative marketing to advertise a back-to-pre-crisis situation, and finance initiatives that boost market demand and recover from the crisis. Building on the CERC framework, the self-efficacy model proposed by Park and Avery [31] focuses on three of its five stages, which include self-efficacy, such as (a) effective changes in behavior to reduce the likelihood of harm in the pre-crisis, (b) understanding of self-efficacy and personal response activities in the initial event stage, and (c) ongoing explanation and reiteration during the maintenance stage of self-efficacy and personal response activities begun in the initial stage ([33], p. 52). The model addresses an individual’s belief to possess a set of abilities to cope with a crisis and entails the following four areas of perceived expertise in the face of difficulties: action efficacy (i.e., focus on action and doing), preventive efficacy (i.e., preparedness before a crisis based on knowledge and resources), achievement efficacy (i.e., endurance in accomplishment during crises despite the challenges imposed by difficult situations), and uncertainty management efficacy (i.e., mastery of ambiguity and the unexpected during a crisis that increases the likelihood of implementing appropriate safeguards).

Drawing upon the above literature review, we propose a Crisis Management at Work (CMW) model of crisis management gauging organizational members’ mastery of the following five domains in dealing with pre-crisis and during-crisis stages of critical events in their current operational or managerial tasks: (a) prevention, (b) preparedness, (c) problem solving, (d) achievement and (e) helping others.

Specifically, prevention captures members’ attention to weak signals of potentially escalating problems, thinking on how to avoid their explosive escalation or foreseeing possible developments, especially before critical events occur. Indeed, crisis prevention relies on anticipatory actions (e.g., [31]). Organizations concerned with the lack of unwanted variance in performance and the capacity to produce reliable collective outcomes of a certain minimum quality repeatedly [34,35] make efforts to prevent and contain crises. While successful crisis prevention and mitigation are non-events that draw little attention and popularity [4], the literature demonstrates that adaptive and proficient organizations rely on members’ preparedness and actions aimed at detecting weak signals of anomalies in current operations and deviant fluctuations capable of escalation [6].

Preparedness gauges members’ initiative in the face of the unexpected and feelings of calmness and fearlessness during difficult times or unforeseen events. The literature maintains that critical events are inherently ambiguous [4] and a primary characteristic of crises is that they are sources of uncertainty and disruption [36,37,38]. As such, dealing with the unexpected entails an alert reaction and the necessity to cope with feelings of fear and/or anxiety (e.g., [39]). Hence, it is crucial for effective crisis management that alertness is driven towards an actual use of one’s energies for constructive and mastery preparedness rather than avoidant anxiety reactions (e.g., [40]). To this end, acting may help individuals to feel they have control over the situation and thereby contribute to decreasing the perceived uncertainty of the situation and anxiety [29].

Problem solving entails effective coping with tasks under difficult conditions by reaching available resources and identifying solutions. Crisis management is inherently concerned with finding and correcting the underlying problems of disruptive events because crisis response strategies are more likely to be successful when members devote their sincere efforts to remedy the issues that led to the crisis [41,42,43,44]. The higher the organization’s acceptance of their causal role in a crisis, the more accommodative the crisis strategies engaged by their members [36]. Indeed, organizational survival is a critical tangible outcome [45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52] heavily relying on members’ ability to adapt to events through continuous development of original strategies and learning from experience, especially in increasingly complex environments [5,53].

Achievement captures members’ awareness of critical situations and the ability to protect themselves as well as focus on reaching their goals under ripple conditions. As noted, the stability of organizational outcomes is a function of members’ ability to perform under fluctuating and unstable contingencies. As such, situation awareness and environment management are key factors in successful performance (e.g., [32]) in that they help members to identify the resources at hand in addition to the inevitable constraints. Moreover, being mindful may assist in mastering contingencies and their specific features in order to focus one’s attention on relevant information during dramatic events [6] and find the strategies that help to reach one’s goals or continue efforts in performing the expected work task.

Finally, helping others entails behaviors aimed at reassuring and supporting others in making decisions or reaching their goals under difficult circumstances as well as talking with them about signals of potentially escalating problems. According to social research, the desire to help others comes forth in times of crisis [54]. Indeed, the literature suggests that crises are not depersonalized factors of an objective external environment but behavioral phenomena socially constructed by the actors involved [55,56]. Moreover, crises have an inherent participatory nature [29] and the collective pooling of ideas and resources may help to resolve immediate difficulties as well as encourage individual and collective learning from the experience [53,57].

2. Individual and Collective Mindful Action

The literature (e.g., [11]) suggests that understanding the genesis of crises plays a central role in their effective management and prevention. When people detect more signs of a developing crisis, they should be better able to focus on where to intervene and actually change the situation. To that end, people’s awareness plays a central role in their ability to understand a crisis and act on it [29]. According to Weick [11], the more people are mindful of their actions and abilities, as well as the fact that voluntary activity may create circumstances that exacerbate or de-escalate situations, the more they are able to clearly recognize a developing crisis thanks to this enriched awareness. Indeed, crises are complex phenomena and crisis management involves both an individual-level (e.g., employee and manager) and a collective-level (e.g., team, organization) experience, or rather, a dynamic and multilevel practice across stakeholders and levels of analysis [53]. As such, multilevel indicators of organizational members’ mindful action underpinning crisis management should be considered both at the individual- and organizational-level.

In the present paper we propose an overarching conceptual framework including both personal and contextual factors of members’ mindful action in predicting crisis management (see Figure 1 for an overview of the conceptual framework). Specifically, at the individual level, we examine the role of dispositional mindfulness, defined as the individual’s general tendency to be attentive to and aware of present-moment experiences in daily life (e.g., [7,58]). At the organizational level, we take into account the role of mindful organizing understood as a set of five different and interrelated organizational processes that induce a rich state of collective awareness and attention to detail that facilitate the members’ widespread detection of unusual events capable of escalation [10].

While individual mindfulness refers to a personal, cognitive state of focused awareness that trains an individual to develop concentration and attention to different types of inputs in the situations they experience, organizational mindfulness (or mindful organizing) is a collective capability that is widespread among workers sharing the same context to detect, manage, and respond to unexpected events. Moreover, while personal mindfulness is an intrapsychic process concerned with a heightened perception of reality, organizational mindfulness refers to a set of social processes shared among collectivities that induce workers to influence each other to pay attention to key information and details in ongoing operations, thus reaching a widespread and collective awareness of discriminatory details in working situations.

Despite the differential nature of mindfulness (i.e., as an intrapsychic process) and mindful organizing (i.e., a set of organizational processes), both constructs capture people’s awareness of present situations and their attention to situational inputs, thus diversely contributing to disarming the dangers of thoughtlessness as well as faulty and uncontrolled thinking at work (e.g., [5]). As such, we argue that the dispositional mindfulness of individuals and mindful organizing of organizational systems differently contribute to heightening workers’ orientation to see the liabilities of swift thinking, notice changes in events, pay more attention to what is happening and jointly contribute to improve workers’ mastery of unwanted critical events that require action readiness and resilience in emergencies (i.e., crisis management).

Below we describe each construct in detail and their association with crisis management.

2.1. Dispositional Mindfulness Facets as Individual-Level Predictors of Crisis Management

Despite heterogeneity in the theoretical conceptualization of mindfulness, a convergent view summarizes it as an individual process of attention regulation aimed at experiencing situations with open and non-judgmental awareness, while simultaneously acknowledging the emotional, cognitive, proprioceptive and environmental inputs entering into this awareness and diverting the person from being fully present in the moment [59,60,61]. Indeed, the concept of mindfulness originally refers to meditation practices aimed at training the individual’s mental ability to focus their complete attention on the experiences occurring in a given moment and disarm distracting stimuli [62]. However, scholarly mindfulness further brought to the forefront the existence of different types of human mental functioning diversely structured around two foci. The first mode is grounded into a routinized and habitual processing of inputs from the present-moment experience (i.e., mindless or mind-wandering functioning). The second mode is conversely centered on attentive and insightful processing of information (i.e., mindful functioning) that renders available a larger pool of information and allows a richer understanding of the situation at hand (e.g., [59,63]). The relevance of this distinction is at least threefold. First, people are generally able to act both mindlessly and mindfully and the two ways of mentally processing information may be dispositional factors of the individual. It is noteworthy that despite an individual’s dispositional preponderance of one way of functioning over another, the state of awareness can be trained and, therefore, a mindful way of functioning can be developed and a mindless state overcome [59]. Second, while people are able to act mindfully, the heuristic functioning of the mind tends to orient towards saving mental energy and, therefore, the use of standard categories and ways of interpreting ones’ experience, which allows for faster processing of the inputs at hand (e.g., [10,63]). As such, an immediate consequence of mindlessness and automatic functioning is the lack of attention to potentially relevant signals in a situation just because they fall outside of the standard and habitual configuration of familiar stimuli. In other words, mind wandering may be associated with an underuse of information and underestimation of unusual and potentially relevant contextual inputs. Third, in addition to the fact that people tend to frequently respond in their current experience in a routinized and mindless way, this standard way of structuring situations generates a mental frame around fixed categories that become the usual and rigid set of mental classifications automatically used by the individual to interpret signals and respond to a situation [63]. As such, mindless mental functioning may rely on the use of minimal information and fixed categories. Conversely, being mindful in a situation may underpin the creation of new categories for the interpretation of the stream of events that flow through activities and a more nuanced understanding of the context and of alternative ways to cope with it [63].

Research on the components and mechanism of dispositional mindfulness has brought together conceptual and methodological efforts from multiple theoretical perspectives and reached a converging four-facet description of mindfulness characteristics. Specifically, a study performed by Baer and colleagues [7] combined the items of five existing mindfulness questionnaires measuring partially overlapping mindfulness components and extracted an overall structure of four latent factors across such existing dispositional mindfulness conceptualizations and accompanying measures: (a) describing, (b) acting with awareness, (c) non-judging of the inner experience, and (d) non-reactivity to the inner experience. Describing refers to the disposition to clearly label with words what is experienced internally, thus indicating awareness and attention devoted to linking one’s experience to conventional language categories that help to communicate to others one’s experience of reality. Acting with awareness captures the individual’s attending to their activities of the moment with a mindful attention to the situation, and stands as the opposite state of acting on automatic pilot and following the mindless wandering flow of the experience. Non-judging of the inner experience refers to a non-evaluative stance toward the thoughts and feelings experienced in the present moment and thus reflect the individual’s openness toward reality and its stimuli. Finally, non-reactivity to the inner experience is the mindfulness component gauging the individual’s disposition to let one’s thoughts and feelings come and go in the present moment of awareness without being carried away by them or getting trapped in them. Overall, while describing and acting with awareness refer to what one does when being mindful, non-judging and non-reacting involve how one does it [64]. A fifth dimension, observe, initially did not emerge as a latent factor and turned out to be problematic in Baer and colleagues’ [7] study. Hence, it will not be considered in the present research.

While the current study is the first to examine dispositional mindfulness predictors of crisis management at work, given the above literature in the area of mindfulness and crisis management, we may speculate that organizational members who are mindful (i.e., aware, richly describing, non-reacting, and non-judging) of the ongoing work situation and the task at hand have a more expanded perception and understanding of situations. Specifically, building on the reviewed theoretical contributions, we expect that workers with an intrapsychic orientation to stay focused on situational inputs and keep a heightened concentration against the dangers of uncontrolled thinking are more capable of detecting and mastering sudden changes or unwanted course of events, including unexpected and unusual inputs that may adversely impact goal achievement and task performance. As such, they are potentially more enable to forecast potential problems and possible solutions as well as communicate relevant information and “compassionately” help others in collaborative coping with critical events.

Based on the above arguments, we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1.

Dispositional mindfulness will positively predict (a) preparedness, (b) prevention, (c) problem solving, (d) achievement and (e) helping others sub-dimensions of crisis management at work.

2.2. Mindful Organizing Factors as Organizational-Level Predictors of Crisis Management

Mindful organizing is the extension to the group level of the individual’s awareness of all facets of the experience in the present moment and thus refers to the collective (i.e., shared) processes that jointly induce a rich awareness of discriminatory details and a capacity for action among members operating in the same working context [10]. Within the theoretical framework proposed by Weick and colleagues [6], the state of enriched awareness induced by the different processes of mindful organizing facilitates members’ attention to weak signals and the discovery and correction of unexpected events capable of escalation ([65], pp. 164–165). As such, they are proposed as collective antecedents of organizational resilience and mastery of disruptive events and crisis management. On the one hand, collective mindfulness calls attention to mindfulness as a socially construed construct, or rather, a phenomenon not only shaped by top–down organizational practices and processes but also enacted through a bottom–up process of social interactions [10,66]. Indeed, mindfulness involves interpretive work directed at weak signals that may increase what is known about what was noticed [67], also based on members’ shared worldviews or mindsets that orient collective sensemaking [11]. On the other hand, collective organizational awareness is not simply about the members’ activity of noticing itself: it is as much about what people do with what they notice. Moreover, being mindful takes into account the quality of attention as well as the conservation of attention [68], which underpins the collective ability to anticipate, detect and respond to critical and unexpected events [6].

Mindful organizing entails five interrelated dimensions [10]: (a) preoccupation with failure, (b) reluctance to simplify interpretations, (c) sensitivity to operations, (d) commitment to resilience and (e) deference to expertise. According to LaPorte and Consolini [69], preoccupation with failure refers to the ongoing organizational members’ awareness that their system might experience a failure in its functioning and the belief that any lapse or near miss could be indicative of more serious issues. This MO factor highlights the importance of paying attention to near misses as well as errors, which are thought to be weak indicators of possible malfunctions in a particular area of the organization. Failure, then, refers to any “dysfunctional response” to success rather than necessarily a lack of accomplishment. Employees should first understand the possibility for surprises in technology systems and be cognizant of causal chains, system interdependencies, and event sequences in order to become more sensitive to failures. Moreover, members could more rapidly identify if the system is functioning unexpectedly by deliberately seeking out and responding to weak signals that appear minor [70].

Reluctance to simplify interpretations highlights how individuals of an organization manage difficult tasks and their propensity to simplify their framing of an actual situation. Worldviews or mindsets known as simplifications encourage members to disregard information and keep going, thus letting irregularities mount and unintended effects worsen. As such, simplifications make eventual surprises more likely [71]. Reluctance to simplify interpretations, on the other hand, refers to the organizational mindset that continuously evaluates whether the actual and likely future situation is diagnosed accurately enough to achieve organizational goals without running into unforeseen problems that could result in disaster. As such, organizations should contrast employees’ propensity to make simplistic cause-and-effect assumptions and look for alternative viewpoints to broaden the present set of assumptions in order to prevent conceptual simplifications of how a system operates. Socializing people to notice more and fostering the necessary variety of viewpoints could specifically develop a system’s reluctance to simplify [10,70].

Sensitivity to operations is defined as the ability of members to create and, more crucially, preserve an overall picture of ongoing activities, or rather, a cognitive map that allows members to integrate multiple inputs and be attuned to any variation or anomaly during current operations [10]. Members can identify minor issues in real time before they become more serious by keeping a careful eye on what is happening here and in the present moment. Similarly to situational awareness, members’ sensitivity to “misinterpretation,” “distraction,” “mixed signals,” “surprises,” “near misses” and “anomalies” conveys the concern for identifying mistakes in real time as well as the risks associated with losing this sensitivity [72]. Organizations with high operational sensitivity are more mindful when facing operational pressures and more aware of their effects on people’s discernment and standard of performance. As such, they demonstrate remarkable vigilance of initial overloading that any member might experience. When members of an organization work together to share information and develop a current understanding of the distributed tasks and expertise, they become more sensitive to operations and can make appropriate use of them during everyday activities [73]. Such collective acts include shared story building, operations monitoring, and ongoing scenario formulation [6].

Resilience is considered both as the capacity to recover from mistakes and deal with unforeseen circumstances in real time. Commitment to resilience in the mindful organizing model refers to members’ capacity to deal with unforeseen circumstances by improvising and adapting to contingencies [74]. Expanding an organization’s capacity to improvise, learn from, and adjust to the unexpected is a key component of resilience [75]. The ability to respond quickly and improvise is thought to be essential for sustaining the task at hand in a chaotic setting. More importantly, the ongoing learning from actions (and reactions) and the ability to incorporate them into more expanded action patterns and develop applicable solutions is crucial for a post-crisis aftermath. Organizations’ commitment to resilience builds on learning from feedback and quick network rearrangement that enables quick sharing and structuring of cognitive knowledge by members to deal with unpredictability and improve the body of knowledge [10,70].

Deference to expertise is the process of shifting decisions to the people who know the most about a contingent issue, irrespective of their formal role and rank [76]. The majority of organizations are well-organized systems grounded in plain procedures and routines that specify the roles of organizational members and help them stay focused on their work. Determining who has access to what and who makes decisions based on hierarchical position is a hallmark of orderly systems. Routines and procedures, however, might serve as error amplifiers if the structure is inflexible and unable to adapt to unforeseen issues. Conversely, a greater range of problems could be solved by a wider range of skills since expertise takes precedence over hierarchical rank when prompt decision-making is required [70]. It is noteworthy that the collective agency that underpins the decentralized approach to crisis management is rooted in a socially shared and cultural conviction that the required capabilities are somewhere in the system and that migrant problems would locate them.

Overall, preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify interpretations and sensitivity to operations underpin the collective capacity to identify discriminatory details regarding potentially escalating problems (e.g., identifying blind spots and threats). Deference to expertise and commitment to resilience gauge members’ collective ability to use internal network and social resources to contain unexpected events and incidents once they occur. Given the impossibility to completely eliminate uncertainty and foresee every scenario, the interplay among all five mindful organizing processes determines the organization’s success in mastering error containment as well as error prevention and effectively dealing with crisis prevention and coping. Indeed, the literature suggests that mindful organizing processes may impact a system’s ability to manage crises [6]. Based on the above literature review, we hypothesize that the more workers socialize and share systematic attention to key information and details in ongoing operations, the more they reach a widespread and collective awareness of details in ongoing operations that enables them to detect diverging progress of the situation or risky conditions in the flow of events. In turn, such organizational mindfulness of discriminatory details generated by social processes may impact workers’ effective mastery of unwanted critical events that require action readiness and resilience from emergencies (i.e., crisis management).

Consistent with the above arguments, we expect to find:

Hypothesis 2.

Mindful organizing will positively predict (a) preparedness, (b) prevention, (c) problem solving, (d) achievement and (e) helping others sub-dimensions of crisis management at work.

3. Study 1

3.1. Method

3.1.1. Sample and Procedure

The sample included 791 employees from 86 Italian organizations. Fifty-two percent of respondents were female. The mean age of participants was 42.9 years (SD = 13.0) and 52.6% had a college or higher level of education while 37% completed high school. The mean organizational tenure was 13.3 years (SD = 10.77). Sixty percent of the sample worked for a private company and most participants (68.1%) held a non-managerial position. Regarding the type of contract, 74.6% of the sample had a permanent position while 24.4% had a temporary position. Organizations were recruited from the following industry sectors: health care (13.5%); education (11.6%); manufacturing (5.3%); commerce (14.9%); transportation (2.7%); communication and technology (6.7%); military (3.4); artistic (1.4%); construction (2.9%); agriculture (1.1%); services and finance (5.7%). Approximately thirty percent did not specify the sector.

We collected anonymous survey data via Qualtrics. The research team approached administrators within each organization. Upon reaching agreement on participation, the research team provided information sessions to describe the project, encourage participation and address concerns from potential participants. Participation was voluntary, anonymous and not rewarded by any incentive. The study followed the guidelines of research ethics in compliance with the Ethical Principles of the Helsinki Declaration of 1964, in order to protect individual participants from any form of potential physical and/or emotional harm. Participants were provided with informed consent that explained the anonymous nature of the data collection and their rights as research participants.

3.1.2. Transparency and Openness

The covariance matrix and analysis code are available upon request from the first author. Row data for this study are not available as we do not have permission from participants for row data sharing.

3.1.3. Measures

Below is a description of the newly developed Crisis Management at Work Scale.

Crisis Management at Work Scale. The development of the Crisis Management at Work Scale (CMWS) is theoretically grounded in the above review of the crisis management literature. The scale was developed in order to capture organizational members’ characteristics and behaviors expressed during their ongoing working activity and associated with preparedness for more effective action to prevent the unfolding of a disruptive event and efforts made to enable an effective response to an actual crisis. The CMWS is a 26-item measure and includes five subscales assessing different facets of the members’ mastery of crises at work (see Appendix A): (a) four items of the prevention sub-dimension, which capture members’ attention to weak signals of potentially escalating problems, especially before critical events occur, and ability to think about how to avoid their explosive escalation (a sample item is “I am able to notice the signals of a potentially escalating problem or emergency in situations”); (b) seven items of the preparedness sub-dimension, which measure members’ initiative in the face of the unexpected and feelings of calmness and fearlessness during difficult times or unforeseen events (a sample item is “During a crisis/emergency, I manage to keep calm in the face of difficulties”); (c) four items of the problem solving sub-dimension, which measure the extent to which members effectively cope with work tasks under difficult conditions by using available resources and identifying solutions (a sample item is “When facing a problem during a crisis, I usually manage to find different solutions”); (d) six items of the achievement sub-dimension, which aim at examining members’ awareness of critical situations and their ability to protect themselves as well as focus on reaching their goals under ripple conditions (a sample item is “During a crisis, I still manage to achieve my goals”); and (e) five items of the helping others sub-dimension, which measure members’ behaviors aimed at supporting others in making decisions or reaching their goals under difficult circumstances as well as talking with them about signals of potentially escalating problems. Items were randomized in order to avoid response set and were rated on a 7-point agreement scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree).

3.1.4. Analytical Strategy

In order to examine the dimensionality of the CMWS, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using Mplus 8 [77] and IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 26 (SPSS) software to explore the number of factors underlying the new 26-item scale. To determine the factors to be retained, we consider the eigenvalues higher than 1 (one), the scree plot and validity construct [78]. We then examined the resulting factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The following graded criteria were used to evaluate the quality of each examined model: root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ≤ 0.08, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) ≤ 0.10, and Bentler Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≥ 0.90 for acceptable fit [79,80]. The Mplus robust maximum likelihood estimation procedure (i.e., MLR estimation) was used for the analyses.

3.2. Results

Regarding EFA,

Table 1. Model fit indices from exploratory factor analysis in Study 1.

	N	df	χ2	χ2/df	CFI	TLI	RMSEA	SRMR
Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA)
1-factor EFA CMWS	771	299	1543.279	5.16	0.84	0.83	0.073	0.055
2-factor EFA CMWS	771	274	1043.201	3.80	0.90	0.89	0.060	0.039
3-factor EFA CMWS	771	250	861.008	3.44	0.92	0.90	0.056	0.031
4-factor EFA CMWS	771	227	606.356	2.67	0.95	0.93	0.047	0.024
5-factor EFA CMWS	771	205	473.424	2.30	0.97	0.95	0.041	0.020

Note: CFI = comparative fit index; TLI = Tucker–Lewis index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation; SRMR = standardized root mean square residual.

shows the results of EFA comparing the fit indices for the single-factor, two-factor, three-factor, four-factor and five-factor models. As can be seen, the five-factor model provided a good fit to the data (χ² [205] = 473.424, SRMR = 0.02, RMSEA = 0.041 [0.036–0.046], CFI = 0.97 and TLI = 0.95; [80]) and fit the data significantly better than any other alterative models. That is, the five-factor model emerged as significantly better than any alternative factor solution. Five factors were consistently extracted, which together accounted for 68% of the variability. While the solution showed three eigenvalues > 1, the scree-test slope pointed to the retention of five factors, which also corresponds to the validity construct. Factor 1, designated preparedness, was composed of items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. All loadings were significant and above 0.30 [81] and were retained as the factor was defined solely by appropriate marker items. Factor 2, designated helping others, was composed of items 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, whose loadings were significant and above 0.30. Factor 3, designated prevention, was composed of items 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, whose loadings were significant and above 0.30. Factor 4, designated problem solving, was composed of items 18, 19, 20, and 21, whose loadings were significant and above 0.30. Factor 5, designated achievement, was composed of items 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26, whose loadings were significant and above 0.30. Overall, each item loading on the intended factor was substantial and significant.

To evaluate the quality of adjustment of the measurement model and further corroborate the CMWS factor structure and based on the results from the EFA, we proceeded to CFA. The CFA of the CMWS indicated that the five-factor model had a good fit to the data (χ² [289] = 663.341, SRMR = 0.039, RMSEA = 0.041 [0.037–0.045], CFI = 0.953, and TLI = 0.947).

Finally,

Table 2. Mean, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities of the CMWS in Study 1.

	M	SD	α	1	2	3	4
1. Prevention	4.90	0.81	0.83
2. Preparedness	4.75	0.90	0.91	0.69 **
3. Problem Solving	4.94	0.86	0.88	0.70 **	0.73 **
4. Achievement	4.90	0.83	0.88	0.73 **	0.79 **	0.76 **
5. Helping Others	4.94	0.85	0.85	0.64 **	0.61 **	0.67 **	0.66 **

Note: ** p < 0.01.

shows the descriptive statistics, reliabilities and correlations among the five dimensions of the CMWS. Internal consistency for all five CMWS subscales shows excellent Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.84 to 0.91. Moreover, corrected item–total correlations were above 0.64 for preparedness, above 0.49 for helping others, above 0.62 for prevention, above 0.66 for problem solving, and above 0.56 for achievement.

4. Study 2

4.1. Method

4.1.1. Sample and Procedure

The data collection procedure was the same as described in Study 1.

In order to test our hypotheses, we collected anonymous survey data via Qualtrics. Data were collected at two time points (baseline and a one-month follow-up). The intent of the 1-month interval between waves was to mitigate concerns regarding common method variance as an alternative explanation for any observed relationships [82] rather than strictly establishing temporal directionality (which could be better accomplished by a fully cross-lagged panel design). The initial sample consisted of N = 852 individuals at Time 1 from 86 organizations. Of these, N = 414 from 84 Italian organizations completed the second survey, resulting in a 49% retention rate. About ten percent (10.8%) of the respondents had experience of mindfulness practice, while the remaining (23.4%) practiced yoga or similar activities, or had no experience of mindfulness (65.8%). The final sample was predominantly female (58.4%). The mean age of participants was 43.2 years (SD = 12.66) and 57.6% had a college or higher level of education while 40% completed high school. The mean organizational tenure was 13.2 years (SD = 10.57). Sixty-four percent of the sample worked for a private company and most participants (78.1%) held a non-managerial position. Regarding the type of contract, 80.3% of the sample had a permanent position while 19.7% had a temporary position. Organizations were recruited from the following industry sectors: health care (14.2%); education (13.5%); manufacturing (7.7%); commerce (16.4%); transportation (1.5%); communication and technology (6.7%); military (1.7); artistic (1.7%); construction (3.2%); agriculture (1.7%); and services and finance (5%). Approximately twenty-seven percent did not specify the sector.

4.1.2. Measures

Below is a description of the measures used for the research data collection. Items from the mindful organizing measures were translated into Italian using the standard translation–back-translation procedure recommended by Brislin [83]. The correspondence between the original and the back-translated items was then verified by the authors.

Crisis Management at Work Scale (Time 2). The version of the scale is the same as previously described in Study 1.

Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (Time 1). Dispositional mindfulness was measured using thirty-one items of the self-report Italian version [84] of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; [7]). Specifically, we included the following four facets of the scale: (1) describe (8 items), labeling internal experiences with words; (2) act with awareness (8 items), an ongoing attention to and awareness of the present activity and experience; (3) non-judge (8 items), having a non-evaluative attitude towards one’s thoughts and emotional processes while focusing on inner experiences, rather than taking on a critical stance; and (4) non-react (7 items), assuming a stance that implies being able to perceive thoughts and feelings, especially when they are distressing, without feeling compelled to react or being overwhelmed. Items were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (never or very rarely true) to 5 (very often or always true), with higher total scores reflecting a greater degree of mindfulness disposition.

Mindful Organizing (Time 1). Mindful organizing was measured using 24 items from Weick and Sutcliffe’s [85] Organizational Mindfulness scale and Vogus and Sutcliffe’s [86] Mindfulness Organizing scale and required participants to assess the extent to which the situations presented reflected organizational processes aimed at creating awareness of the ongoing operations. Specifically, we assessed the following five dimensions of mindful organizing: (a) preoccupation with failure (5 items), which focuses on awareness of near-miss weak signals and reasoning for errors in order to avoid repeating them (a sample item is “When something unexpected occurs, we always try to figure out why our expectations were not met”); (b) reluctance to simplify interpretations (4 items), which measures attention to details and anomalies in order to avoid them escalating (a sample item is “People around here take nothing for granted”); (c) sensitivity to operations (5 items), which focuses on both attention to details and on maintaining a broad operational awareness by sharing information with others and their interpretation (a sample item is “People are always looking for feedback about things that aren’t going right”); (d) commitment to resilience (5 items), which focuses on improvising and adapting to contingencies (a sample item is “We talk about mistakes and ways to learn from them”); and (e) deference to expertise (5 items), which focuses on avoiding the trap of a rigid hierarchical authority mindset when problem solving may rely on turning to experts regardless of their formal role (a sample item is “If something out of the ordinary happens, people know who has the expertise to respond”). Items were assessed on a 5-point frequency Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Always), with higher total scores reflecting a greater degree of mindful organizing processes.

4.1.3. Analytical Strategy

We preliminarily grouped into three parcels the initial pool of items for the three latent constructs (CMWS, FFMQ, and mindful organizing), in an attempt to reduce sources of sampling error and maximize the reliability and parsimony of our structural equation model [87]. Specifically, considering all the sub-dimensions of the three research constructs, our model required the examination of a 14-variable factor structure. However, given the number of parameters we needed to estimate, our sample size (N = 414) was relatively small, violating Bentler and Chou’s [88] recommended five-to-one ratio of sample size to number of free parameters. To tackle this issue and reduce the estimated parameters, we used item parceling for the CMWS, FFMQ, and mindful organizing scales because of their significantly high number of items. Consistent with the literature’s recommendations [89], items were sequentially assigned to parcels based on their item–total corrected correlation. Apart from improving fit factor structures to smaller samples, research shows that parceling may also diminish the chance of Type II errors and sampling errors [90].

In order to initially assess the distinctiveness among the study constructs, we tested a seven-factor CFA model in which: (a) the items that referred to the four sub-dimensions of dispositional mindfulness loaded onto a unidimensional second-order dispositional mindfulness factor; (b) the items that referred to the five sub-dimensions of mindful organizing loaded onto a unidimensional second-order mindful organizing factor; and (c) each item that referred to preparedness, prevention, problem solving, achievement and helping others loaded onto the additional five unique latent factors. Next, we tested a structural equation model wherein second-order dispositional mindfulness components and second-order mindful organizing factors predict the five facets of crisis management at work (see Figure 1 for a nomological network). Finally, given the multilevel and hierarchical structure of our data wherein individuals are nested within organizations, we used the Mplus “TYPE = COMPLEX” procedure of Mplus [77]. This Mplus command produces corrected parameter estimates, standard errors, and test statistics in the presence of interdependency. All models were tested on the covariance matrix, using the weighted least squares mean- and variance-adjusted (WLSMV) estimator with Mplus 8.0.

4.2. Results

Table 3. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and reliabilities in Study 2.

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
1. Prevention T2	4.89	0.77	0.83
2. Preparedness T2	4.74	0.87	0.65 **	0.91
3. Problem Solving T2	4.93	0.81	0.70 **	0.77 **	0.87
4. Achievement T2	4.88	0.77	0.71 **	0.82 **	0.80 **	0.88
5. Helping Others T2	4.90	0.81	0.58 **	0.58 **	0.60 **	0.61 **	0.84
6. Describing T1	3.41	0.69	0.16 **	0.24 **	0.18 **	0.19 **	0.21 **	0.86
7. Aware T1	3.67	0.78	0.25 **	0.33 **	0.26 **	0.28 **	0.18 **	0.33 **	0.90
8. Non-judging T1	3.45	0.73	0.10 **	0.24 **	0.15 **	0.17 **	0.01	0.22 **	0.50 **	0.86
9. Non-reacting T1	3.03	0.54	0.18 **	0.20 **	0.21 **	0.24 **	0.14 **	0.36 **	0.14 **	0.10 *	0.70
10. Preoccupation Failure T1	3.37	0.64	0.15 **	0.12 *	0.14 **	0.12 *	0.15 **	0.05	0.01	−0.09	0.14 **	0.70
11. Reluctance Simplify T1	3.17	0.65	0.12 *	0.13 **	0.13 **	0.15 **	0.17 **	0.07	0.07	0.01	0.16 **	0.66 **	0.63
12. Sensitivity Operations T1	3.13	0.71	0.13 **	0.12 *	0.14 **	0.12 *	0.16 **	0.00	0.01	−0.03	0.10 *	0.63 **	0.64 **	0.83
13. Resilience T1	3.22	0.69	0.10	0.13 *	0.16 **	0.12 *	0.14 **	0.04	−0.01	−0.10	0.10 *	0.59 **	0.58 **	0.73 **	0.79
14. Deference Expertise T1	3.52	0.70	0.12 *	0.12 *	0.10 *	0.08	0.14 **	0.07	0.08	−0.00	0.15 **	0.60 **	0.55 **	0.71 **	0.66 **	0.81

Note: Reliabilities are along the diagonal. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

shows the descriptive statistics, reliabilities and correlations among the study variables.

4.2.1. Measurement Model

Results from the seven-factor CFA showed good fit indices—χ² (789, N = 413) = 1267.089, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.038 (0.034; 0.042), CFI = 0.94, and TLI = 0.93—thus supporting the appropriateness of the seven hypothesized latent factors and the distinctiveness among the study variables. As such, the CMWS showed discriminant validity from other mindfulness-related scales and crisis management at work demonstrated conceptual distinctiveness from mindful action constructs.

4.2.2. Structural Model for Hypotheses Testing

The structural equation model positing Time 1 (T1) dispositional mindfulness facets and Time 1 mindful organizing factors as predictors of Time 2 (T2) crisis management at work fit the data well (χ² [789] = 1267.091, SRMR = 0.058, RMSEA = 0.038 [0.034–0.042], CFI = 0.94, and TLI = 0.93).

As can be seen in Figure 2, dispositional mindfulness (T1) exerted a positive effect on (T2) preparedness (0.46, p < 0.001), prevention (0.33, p < 0.001), problem solving (0.35, p < 0.001), achievement (0.40, p < 0.001) and helping others (0.20, p < 0.05), thus providing support for Hypothesis 1. Furthermore, mindful organizing (T1) exerted a positive effect on (T2) preparedness (0.14, p < 0.05), prevention (0.15, p < 0.05), problem solving (0.16, p < 0.01), achievement (0.13, p < 0.05) and helping others (0.19, p < 0.01), thus supporting Hypothesis 2.

Finally, the model explained 24% of the variance in preparedness, 14% in prevention, 16% in problem solving, 18% in achievement and 8% in helping others.

5. Discussion

The majority of the existing crisis management literature tends to focus on extraordinary situations in the domains of natural (e.g., outbreaks), human-made (e.g., nuclear accidents) or nation-related (e.g., wars) events [23]. The present research engaged a workplace perspective on unexpected contingencies and aimed to complement existing crisis management approaches by proposing a Crisis Management at Work (CMW) model gauging organizational members’ mastery of five domains in dealing with pre-crisis and during-crisis stages of critical events (i.e., prevention, preparedness, problem solving, achievement, and helping others). Relatedly, the current project aimed to study the psychometric properties of the accompanying Crisis Management at Work Scale (CMWS). Moreover, it aimed to test an overarching conceptual framework including personal (i.e., dispositional mindfulness facets) and contextual (i.e., mindful organizing factors) indicators of employees’ mindful action in predicting crisis management dimensions. Our findings from the two studies suggest several conclusions.

First, results from the first study demonstrated that all items loaded on the intended latent factor and provided support for the internal validity and reliability of the newly developed five-dimension CMW scale. Second, the combined results from our first and second study on the CMWS’s dimensionality support the multifaceted conceptualization of crisis management in workplaces and its distinctiveness from other mindful-related constructs. Third, and more importantly, results from our two-wave study reveal that both dispositional mindfulness dimensions and mindful organizing factors predict all five facets of crisis management behaviors at work. It is noteworthy that dispositional mindfulness (i.e., personal factors) exerts the highest effects in comparison to mindful organizing (i.e., contextual factors). Overall, our time-lagged findings reveal that organizational members’ disposition to being aware of the situation, communicate what they notice, and avoid judging and reacting immediately to what they experience (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) is the primary factor that increases their mastery of surprising contingencies. As such, they are better able to prevent potentially escalating problems, keep calm in the face of the unexpected, find solutions by lucidly reaching available resources under difficult conditions, keep a focus on their goals despite ripple conditions, and help others in facing emergencies (i.e., CMW). It is noteworthy that members’ mastery of uncertainty and its prediction, problem solving, achievement and social support in case of variations/surprises in their ongoing tasks (i.e., CMW) also depend, albeit to a lesser extent, on contextual factors. That is, competent crisis management also relies on a widespread and shared organizational mindset sensitized towards acknowledging errors (rather than ignoring or hiding them), to delving into anomalies rather than superficially discounting rich information, to developing a large-scale operational network around the sharing of information, to adapting to and recovering from difficult contingencies, and to turning to experts for problem solving regardless of their formal role (i.e., mindful organizing processes). Below we delve into the discussion of these manifold findings.

5.1. Theoretical Implications

Our findings have implications for the extant literature in the areas of crisis management, mindful organizing and mindfulness. First, our research adds to the crisis management literature and complements existing models by examining a set of members’ characteristics and behaviors as indicators of their mastery of work task variations and/or unexpected workplace events. Moreover, it advances crisis management theory by placing coping with emergencies within the framework of ongoing activities at work, whether operational or strategic. Our findings from the study of the CMWS’s psychometric properties support its hypothesized latent five-factor structure and difference from non-crisis constructs (i.e., mindful organizing and dispositional mindfulness). Overall, the combined results from our first and second multi-wave study on the CMWS’s dimensionality support the multifaceted conceptualization of crisis management in workplaces and its distinctiveness from other mindful-related constructs. While the proposed crisis management dimensions (i.e., prevention, preparedness, problem solving, achievement, and helping others) partially overlap with the person-centered model from Park and Avery [31], we extend previous areas of investigation by examining problem solving and social support factors (i.e., helping others) as additional domains of mastery when dealing with unpredictable or low-probability events that may jeopardize organizational functioning. Moreover, by focusing on behavioral (e.g., helping others in deciding) and personal characteristics (e.g., not getting scared in the case of unexpected events) as indicators of crisis management facets, we go beyond more narrow skill- or belief-related approaches. Specifically, we include social- and emotion-related indicators of organizational members’ positioning with regard to the unpredictable nature of crises (e.g., [91]) examined at the individual level and with regard to internal organizational stakeholders as opposed to the public or society involved in more common crisis management theories and models (e.g., [92,93]).

Relatedly, our findings clearly show that each crisis management facet is more highly correlated with dispositional mindfulness sub-dimensions rather than with mindful organizing factors. Specifically, results from the SEM analysis support the hypothesized nomological network and suggest that both dispositional mindfulness dimensions and mindful organizing factors predict all five facets of crisis management behaviors at work; yet, dispositional mindfulness (i.e., personal factors) exerts the highest effects in comparison to mindful organizing (i.e., contextual factors). Indeed, both crisis management and dispositional mindfulness are conceptualized at the individual level and operationalized using direct consensus (i.e., “I”). Conversely, mindful organizing reflects a collective level construct (e.g., [10]) coherently operationalized using a referent shift approach (i.e., “people”), thus capturing contextual factors that are arguably more conceptually distant from personal factors. Interestingly, crisis management facets showed the highest association with the “aware” sub-dimension of mindfulness traits and the least association with the “deference to expertise” sub-dimension of mindful organizing. On the one hand, our findings suggest that organizational members who tend to act with awareness (e.g., attention to the situation rather than behaving automatically and mindlessly) are likely to be more equipped to cope with crises in terms of preparedness, social resourcefulness and task fulfillment under ripple conditions. This comports with, and extends to the individual level, the literature stressing the key role of awareness and mindful action for effective crisis management at the collective level in organizations (e.g., [5,73]). On the other hand, deference to expertise being the contextual process that is least likely to be associated with members’ crisis management appears to be a counterintuitive finding. Arguably, when someone notices an anomaly, a subtle loosening of hierarchy in favor of expertise allows operations to be shaped more fluidly on problem solving rather than rank-based decision-making [6]. One may argue that collective mindfulness reflects members’ mindset and deference to expertise is the most hierarchy-related process among the five mindful organizing processes. Given that Italy scores appreciably high on the culture dimension of Power Distance [94], this might result in a deference to hierarchy, as opposed to a more meritocratic logic focused on expertise, that permeates the organizational mindset in our sample, thus possibly conditioning mindfulness processes and their links with crisis management.

Additionally, consistent with crisis management models emphasizing the relevance of being proactive in building organizational capacity to anticipate and handle crises (e.g., [1,95], the overarching framework of the CMW model validated in the present study extends the literature on the predictors of crisis management (e.g., [36,96]) by simultaneously investigating both individual (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) and contextual (i.e., mindful organizing) factors that affect crisis management. As such, it contributes to the ongoing efforts to develop more balanced and comprehensive conceptual frameworks of crisis management incorporating personal and collective leverages for its development.

Finally, the CMW model advances the crisis management literature by integrating crisis management into current workplace processes and taking into account the handling of emergencies/anomalies in ongoing work situations from the perspective of both employees’ (i.e., operational) and managers’ (i.e., strategic) contributions. As noted, the crisis management literature tends to emphasize the role of leaders in taking charge of urgent actions under unexpected contingencies [4,27]. While managers or supervisors undoubtedly play a primary role, the CMW model extends more leader-centric views of crisis management and provides a framework consistent with an inherently collective and participatory approach (e.g., [29]) to the organizational capacity to anticipate and cope with crises that allows for the auditing of effective contributions and action from all actors (i.e., employees, supervisors, and managers) involved in workplace situations and potential threats to their flow.

Second, our findings add to the mindful organizing literature by demonstrating its role as a predictor of multiple facets of crisis management. Specifically, we found that organizational mindfulness has an impact on all the five facets of crisis management at work. Indeed, the literature (e.g., [6]) suggests conceptual models positing mindful organizing processes as antecedents of crisis management from a theoretical standpoint and the results from the current research add knowledge by empirically demonstrating the proposed nomological network. Moreover, consistent with the literature’s (e.g., [5,6]) call for the extension of the benefits of mindful organizing models to the functioning of all types of organizations, the proposed CMW model generalizes to all organizational members from any type of occupational setting. Furthermore, it contributes to extending knowledge on its links with mindful organizing factors beyond the more restricted application within organizations particularly concerned with stability and high-reliability (i.e., HROs) outcomes (e.g., nuclear plants and air companies).

Third, our research also contributes to bridging the gap between crisis management and the mindfulness literature. Indeed, our results showed that both dispositional mindfulness and organizational mindfulness exert their effects on all five sub-dimensions of crisis management at work. While the link between crisis management and mindfulness at the collective level (i.e., mindful organizing) is well established, our findings add knowledge by demonstrating in organizational settings the role of mindful functioning and mindful action of the individual (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) in predicting subsequent management of critical situations. Moreover, we add to the mindfulness literature by contextualizing mindfulness disposition in the less-studied domain of work settings and their outcomes (e.g., crisis management) as opposed to the more extensively investigated area of general life in the general population [97].

Overall, the theoretical contribution of our research to the ongoing conversation around crisis management is at least threefold. First, we add to the literature by positioning crisis management as a daily work practice and developing a crisis management at work model contextualized to organizational systems and their internal functioning. In so doing, we integrate existing crisis management approaches which are generally concerned with large-scale extraordinary situations and from the perspective of disaster management or public relations at the societal level. Second, we contribute to the literature by integrating individual and collective mindfulness within a single framework and demonstrating their conjoint and differential effects on crisis management. Third, we add to the literature by introducing an auditing perspective of crisis management in organizations through a new valid and reliable measure of multifaceted crisis management (i.e., the CMWS).

5.2. Implications for Practice

From a practical standpoint, the findings from the current study have several implications. Our results support the validity of the CMWS and the auditing model assessing individual and collective mindful action in organizations. The new Crisis Management at Work Scale is a tool developed in order to assist organizations in mapping their internal stakeholders’ expertise in crisis management and thus become aware of the role that any incumbent (e.g., employees and supervisors) may play in mastering critical events capable of jeopardizing organizational functioning. Moreover, the proposed CMW model, including the assessment of individual (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) and contextual (i.e., organizational mindfulness) factors predicting mastery of crisis management provides organizations with a tool that allows for the auditing of the system regarding its strengths and weaknesses in crisis management during daily operations. Below we detail how the proposed tool and accompanying auditing framework can be applied in different areas of organizational functioning, such as HR practices (e.g., training and human resource management) and risk management.

First, our time-lagged results unfold how mindful action in workplaces both at the individual (i.e., dispositional mindfulness) and collective (i.e., mindful organizing) level may diversely increase members’ mastery of critical situations. The proposed CMW framework offers a multilevel and integrated approach to the study of factors underpinning crisis management contextualized in current working situations. Coherently, it allows for an awareness of the contributions that both individual members of any rank (e.g., employees and supervisors) and organizational practices may play in boosting workers’ ability to cope with the unexpected and threatening anomalies. Hence, a primary area of application is the organizations’ internal audit of crisis management and underpinning factors as a preliminary mapping of the organizational system. Consistent with recommendations to scrutinize organizational systems to detect flaws in mindful functioning and enable the institutionalization of more aware operations [85], the newly developed CMW scale and overarching CMW framework including dispositional mindfulness and mindful organizing questionnaires may provide a tool for this preliminary assessment. On the one hand, charting the territory may help identify where to focus interventions in order to move towards a more mindful and alert system. On the other hand, organizations aiming to monitor their mindful functioning and crisis management abilities may set in place internal auditing on an ongoing basis.

Second, results on the new crisis management scale contextualized to the ongoing work activities support the multifaceted nature of crisis management when dealing with one’s daily work, in addition to CM qualities measured in other external or society/public oriented domains of CM (e.g., communication; [29]). Indeed, the literature [53] suggests that organizations may cope with crises using defensive strategies that attempt to disengage from criticalities and accept less responsibility (e.g., scapegoating, denial). Conversely, they could use accommodative strategies (e.g., apologies, promises of corrective actions) that acknowledge the organization’s causal role in crises. From a practical standpoint, results from the CMWS aggregated at the organizational level may help in profiling the degree of preparedness of the system [98] and assist in focusing intervention on areas of improvement that may diversely involve production-related issues (e.g., achievement) or social-related issues (e.g., helping others).

Third, the ultimate goal of any organization is to survive and stably perform in the face of adversities, not only for HROs but also for any system wanting to avoid serious failure that may create serious harm [65,99]. Our findings on the relevance of mindful organizing processes for effective crisis management comport with the literature suggesting that performing stably and reliably requires diversity, confrontation and a varied response [100], and interpersonal skills are just as important as technical skills in order to build a social texture of widespread awareness of the situational non-standard inputs that may alert individuals of unwanted events [6]. Indeed, in the era of hybrid workplaces, employees’ disconnectedness from their community and detachment from the organizational social context are taxing on both the individuals and organizations [101] and represent additional threats to mindful action in organizations. Interventions aimed at contrasting isolation and building favorable social environments in order to develop organizational mindfulness that occurs through social interactions could reap benefits from the mapping methodology described herein, particularly with regard to pivotal relational factors such as “helping others” assessed by the CMWS.

At the organizational level, upper management’s willingness to promote incumbents’ mastery of crisis management may rely on context-specific information from the CMW framework in order to strategize on how to strengthen the multiple mindful organizing processes through effective training aimed at: (a) sensitizing workers to the relevance of acknowledging making errors as conspicuous as possible to avoid concealment and self-deception [102], (b) framing anomalous events as outcomes rather than accidents to encourage the search for causes [103], and (c) framing the expectation of surprise and the unexpected as organizational resources because they promote real-time attentiveness and discovery [104]. Moreover, management should be made aware that these collective factors (e.g., deference to expertise and preoccupation with failure) depend on the concurrent culture type that is prevalent in their context and, therefore, require macro-level executive decisions on organizational rules and policies synergistic with a mindful action approach [105]. Finally, the auditing methodology based on the technique used in our research could be applied to HR practices like human resource management and leadership, which are crucial to bridge and align people strategies with organizational functioning. Specifically, while managers or supervisors undoubtedly play a primary role, the CMW model extends more leader-centric views of crisis management and provides a framework consistent with an inherently collective and participatory approach (e.g., [29]) to the organizational capacity to anticipate and cope with crises. As such, given the intrinsic participative nature of crises and mindful action in organizations [10,29], interventions aiming to promote crisis management expertise may include the open exchange of information between employees and management and positive managerial communication practices targeting multiple levels of the stratified influence of leadership in organizations (i.e., top management and supervisors; [106]) that reach different social layers (i.e., the whole organization and work groups) and likely contribute to boosting the effects of conjoint collective action. Fourth, results from our person–environment balanced approach bring to the forefront the role of dispositional mindfulness factors in promoting crisis management at work. At the individual level of intervention, organizations are advised to increase training for incumbents in order to help them further develop their propensity for mindful action. Indeed, mindfulness has both trait-like and state-like qualities [58,107] and the individual’s ability to stay focused on the present moment builds on a set of skills that can be developed with training in meditation practice [108,109]. Mindfulness practice (i.e., the individual’s ability to experience an aware state of mind grounded in what the person is experiencing in the present moment and to stay present when inputs arise) may represent a way of functioning that disarms distractions [110]. Such practice helps attention to remain in the present moment when distractions of a wandering mind and mindlessness state come across the situation, as is the case of past- or future-related stimuli [111]. As such, the practice of meditation qualifies as a powerful tool to train the human mind to gain awareness and focus attention on the present [58,112,113] that ultimately enhances the process of increased practitioner insight and “integration” of subjective experience as opposed to mind wandering and “fragmentation” of attention. To facilitate the implementation of mindfulness practice among workers in organizational settings, some tools may assist both skilled as well as naïve practitioners to increase their awareness of different types of distracting inputs potentially undermining the mind in the present. Specifically, practitioners may be provided a personal profile of their idiosyncratic tendencies for mind wandering with regard to specific types of stimuli (e.g., environmental, emotional, and thought-related; [97]). In other words, employees could be equipped with a tailor-made fine-grained assessment of multiple types of distracting stimuli more recurrently experienced by the person that may ultimately facilitate mindfulness training and the development of mental skills supporting crisis management in ongoing work.

Finally, risk management refers to all the activities engaged in by organizations in order to eliminate or reduce to an acceptable level the probability of risk occurring (i.e., the likelihood of a danger) or its effect [114]. Risk analysis within risk management is a structured process requiring one to identify, assess, and prioritize potential dangers to an organization, thus enabling informed decisions to reduce adverse effects. Despite the multiple frameworks and approaches to the topic, effective risk management actions commonly consist of a blend of “anticipatory” strategies (e.g., avoiding, alleviating, shifting, or accepting risks). It is noteworthy that they are underpinned by ongoing monitoring and a robust mindset of risk “awareness”, widespread among organizational members (i.e., a contextual factor). Main activities involve establishing internal controls, providing employee training, and employing a risk register to monitor and address possible risks (e.g., [115]). The auditing framework proposed in our research might be useful here. Risk awareness is a key factor in successful risk (and crisis) management and organizational interventions could provide employees with: (1) feedback on their dispositional mindfulness profile and how the individual traits may intersect and support risk management requirements (e.g., risk awareness); (2) a map of their competence in the different crisis management facets (e.g., preparedness and prevention, as pivotal anticipatory factors) that are associated with effective risk management; (3) training occasions to develop self-awareness and recognize one’s own talents and areas of improvement in competences underpinning risk management; (4) educational programs or on-the-job training to help constructively deal with emotional reactions to threats and situational awareness when facing typical task requirements; (5) team-building experiences to develop conjoint action and social connections that may foster collective awareness grounded in crucial factors mapped by the CMW framework, such as “helping others”; and (6) training on risk strategies and techniques, also based on the personal gap to fill in one’s own profile of crisis management and mindfulness traits.

5.3. Strengths, Limitations and Future Directions

Despite the strength of demonstrating the differential effects of individual- and contextual-level mindfulness-related factors on crisis management at work, the current research also suffers from some limitations. First, all of the variables from the current research were measured through self-reporting, which arguably introduces the potential for common method variance associated with single-source data collection [82]. While collecting all of the current research variables through self-reporting makes sense since the individual is the best informant of mindful experience and mastery of situations, future research could address this limitation by incorporating hetero-assessment of crisis management behaviors from alternative sources (e.g., supervisors, colleagues) to mitigate common method bias.

Second, and relatedly, the current research focused on an overarching framework concerned with predictors of crisis management and, therefore, lacks the study of CMW criterion validity. Future studies may extend the nomological network examined in the current research by assessing production- (e.g., performance; [53]), safety- (e.g., accidents and injuries; [10]) or health-related (e.g., burnout; [116]) consequences of members’ crisis management as well as objective indicators of organizational outcomes (e.g., turnover; [53]).

Third, an additional strength of the current research is the two-wave design; yet, this prevents us from drawing causal conclusions about the relationships between CMW and its predictors, which would ideally require three (or more) waves of data. Future longitudinal designs may examine dispositional mindfulness and mindful organizing recorded at Time 1 and CMW measured at Time 2, while also including additional long-term outcomes (e.g., performance, health, and accidents) measured at Time 3. Additionally, future latent growth curve models applied to three-wave data could fruitfully evaluate via a parallel process model whether concomitant increases or decreases in dispositional mindfulness and mindful organizing processes are associated with similar trends in CMW over time and subsequent changes in CM outcomes.

Fourth, an arguable limitation would be the need to assess the convergent validity of the newly developed CMWS with other CM scales. While the literature mainly provides CM operationalization from the perspective of how crises are handled regarding society or public health (e.g., [29]), future studies may examine the CMWS’s convergence with CM scales, providing a proxy assessment of individual qualities in CM (e.g., CM communication self-efficacy; [31]). In addition to strengthening convergent validity with existing proxy measures of crisis management at the individual level, future studies may provide the assessment of criterion validity that we could not provide in the current research. For example, using objective measures as indicators of crisis management efficacy (e.g., accident and injury rates provided by organizational records), research targeting samples of organizations from different occupational settings may assess the criterion validity of the CMWS and examine the extent to which its sub-dimensions predict objective outcomes, such as safety-related indicators.

Finally, while we drew our conclusions on large samples and data from a high number of organizations from different occupational settings, the current data are from one country (i.e., Italy). An arguable limitation would be the extent to which our research findings are applicable to different national contexts. On the one hand, the development of our CMWS is rooted into well-established theoretical models (e.g., CERC framework; [33]) and the item creation partially builds on contents from Park and Avery’s [31] research conducted in the USA. On the other hand, future research may attempt to generalize our findings to different cultural settings [94] and extend the ecological validity [117] of our results by testing the hypothesized nomological network in different national contexts.

6. Conclusions

The present study is the first to propose crisis management contextualized to daily working activities and to examine how organizational members handle unexpected or unwanted critical events in their current operational (e.g., employees) and strategic (e.g., management) tasks. Specifically, we found the results supported the validity and reliability of the newly developed Crisis Management at Work Scale (CMWS) including employees’ mastery of five crisis-related facets (preparedness, prevention, problem solving, achievement and helping others). Moreover, we proposed individual-level dispositional mindfulness and contextual-level mindful organizing factors as predictors of crisis management. It is noteworthy that our findings from multi-wave data involving 84 organizations suggest that both employees’ (Time 1) mindfulness disposition and mindful organizing contextual factors predict (Time 2) crisis management dimensions, with mindfulness traits exerting the strongest effects. For scholars and practitioners alike, our findings provide an overarching conceptual framework for an organizational audit on both the individual and contextual factors underpinning multi-faceted crisis management at work, or rather, a key factor to sustaining the system’s effectiveness and success.