ICC Advance Access published online on May 28, 2009
Industrial and Corporate Change, doi:10.1093/icc/dtp027
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Information technology and mindfulness in organizations
Correspondence: Mikko Valorinta, Helsinki University of Technology, Institute of Strategy and International Business, FIN-02015 HUT, Espoo, Finland. e-mail: mikko_valorinta{at}yahoo.com
The concept of mindfulness has lately been applied to organizations that are increasingly attentive to their environment and adaptive to unanticipated events. This article analyzes how information technology impacts mindfulness in organizations. Information technology is proposed to promote mindfulness by engaging organizations in more extensive search processes and by fuelling organizational innovations with a repertoire of routines. However, information technology is also found to decrease mindfulness and impede organizational adoption by promoting cognitive inertia and making the enactment of change more challenging. The article also identifies the practices IT-intensive organizations apply to promote more mindful behavior.