ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Psychology in Education
Transformation of Mindfulness To Collective Minds: Fostering Innovation Through Mindful Organising And Emotional Intelligence, A Multi-Level Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1INTI International University, Nilai, Malaysia
- 2Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi, Pakistan
- 3College of Health Science Qatar University, Qatar University College of Health Sciences, Doha, Qatar
- 4Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia, USM,, Universiti Sains Malaysia Pusat Pengajian Sains Matematik, George Town, Malaysia
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Purpose: The study filled a critical research gap by empirically validating individual mindfulness as an antecedent to mindful organising (a novel contribution) and its subsequent impact to observe how this can lead to fostering innovative behaviours for the academicians. The study also validated emotional intelligence as a novel predictor of mindful organising as well as its moderating role between individual mindfulness and mindful organising. Methods: The study employed a hypothetico-deductive method to evaluate multi-level constructs using covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) with a 5000 bootstrapping technique. Overall, 425 samples were utilised to verify the proposed structural model through the CB-SEM technique. The study employed a cross-sectional approach and used a non-probabilistic purposive sampling technique to collect responses. Due to the usage of mindful organising as a team-level construct, aggregation analysis was also carried out to report group agreement. Findings: The results confirmed that individual mindfulness had a positive and statistically significant impact on mindful organizing, and the subsequent effect of mindful organizing on innovative behavior was also positive and statistically significant. Additionally, mindful organizing had a statistically significant moderating role between individual mindfulness and creative behavior. Furthermore, emotional intelligence positively correlated with mindful organising. Lastly, the emotional intelligence strengthened the individual's mindfulness relationship with mindful organising (positive moderation). Conclusions: The findings suggest that individual mindfulness can be transformed into mindful organising, meaning the personal benefits of mindfulness can be leveraged to foster innovation for academicians. The study extended the high-reliability organisation (HRO) research paradigm to the Higher-educational context, stating that mindful organising processes can enable individual mindfulness to propagate innovative behaviours. The study contributes to the Social Cognitive Theory and Emotion Regulation theory by validating their lens-based view to understand and relate individual and collective constructs in the educational context.
Keywords: Decent work and economic growth, Educational Environment, Emotional Intelligence, innovative behaviours, Mindful organising, mindfulness, Quality education, sustainable growth
Received: 03 Nov 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Saleem, Awan, Moeen and Naji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Muhammad Shoaib Saleem
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.