Resilience and Coping for the Healthcare Community: A Post-disaster Group Work Intervention for Healthcare and Social Service Providers

Healthcare and social service providers play a critical role in supporting children, families and communities immediately after a disaster and throughout the recovery process. These providers, who may have also experienced the disaster and related losses, are among the least likely to receive mental health or psychological support which can result in burnout, secondary traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. Accessible psychosocial interventions designed for healthcare and social service providers in the aftermath of a disaster are therefore critical to recovery and to ensure providers are available to support families after future disasters. The purpose of this article is to describe Resilience and Coping for the Healthcare Community (RCHC), a manualized group work intervention for social service and health care providers who have provided care to children, families, and communities after a natural disaster. RCHC is currently being delivered in response to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, storms that struck the gulf coast of the United States and the island of Puerto Rico in 2017. RCHC has also been used in the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy (New York and New Jersey), in Shreveport, Louisiana following severe flooding and in Saipan after a Typhoon devastated the island. Healthcare and social service providers who have received RCHC include the staff of Federally Qualified Health Centers and other community clinics, Disaster Case Managers, Child Care Providers, Mental Health Providers and First Responders. The health and wellbeing of these providers directly impacts their ability to provide quality care to families in their communities. This article presents the theoretical foundations of the RCHC intervention, describes the intervention in detail, provides a description of early and ongoing evaluation studies, and discusses the conditions for both implementation of RCHC and training of RCHC providers. The RCHC psychoeducational intervention provides education on, and strategies for, acute, chronic and post-traumatic stress, coping, and resilience, tailored for the needs of the helping professions. Through the use of individual and collective processing, healthcare and social service providers participating in RCHC develop both individual and collective coping plans. Considering the short and long-term impacts of disasters on communities’ essential healthcare and social service workforce, interventions like RCHC stand to provide essential benefits, including retention and wellbeing of providers of family services

The Role of Scanning, Evaluation, and Mindfulness in the Assimilation of Information Technology: The Case of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) are commercial software packages that enable integration of information and business processes throughout the organization. Realizing the business value of information technology (IT) requires its successful assimilation by the firm. ERP assimilation refers to the effective application of this type of IT in supporting a firm's business strategies and value-chain activities. To succeed at this, the IS function must continuously manage the adaptation between the organization and the ERP system, even after initial deployment. For this purpose, the IS function must continuously scan both the firm's internal and external environment to identify new ERP adaptation opportunities that will allow the effective application of new ERP technologies to support the firm's objectives. Also, it is important for the IS function to engage in evaluation activities to analyze and select those ERP adaptation opportunities with the greatest potential for impact on ERP assimilation. It is posited here that ERP scanning will have a direct positive effect on the firm's level of ERP assimilation, and that this effect will be moderated by the extent of ERP evaluation activities. IS mindfulness, the degree of collective mindfulness present in the IS function, is also posited to moderate the relationship between ERP scanning and ERP assimilation. Collective mindfulness is an elevated state of alertness toward expectations, in the face of new and unprecedented situations or changes, with a nuanced appreciation of the specific context. IS mindfulness makes more likely the identification and realization of unexpected ERP adaptation opportunities leading to a higher level of ERP assimilation for the firm. A model is proposed to describe the relations among IS mindfulness, ERP scanning, ERP evaluation, and ERP assimilation. This model has been tested by collecting survey data from 113 firms. The results suggest that first, collective mindfulness is a construct with two dimensions: alertness/attention, a state of vigilant alertness, and change/situation, an awareness or knowledge of an unprecedented situation or change in the firm's environment; second, scanning of the internal environment (scanning of needs) has a main effect on ERP assimilation, and this effect is moderated by the presence of IS mindfulness ("alertness" dimension), as predicted by the model; and third, ERP evaluation has rather a direct effect on ERP assimilation and does not moderate the scanning-assimilation relationship as expected

Soulfulness as an Orientation to Contemplative Practice: Culture, Liberation, and Mindful Awareness

Soulfulness is introduced here as an orientation to contemplative practice that centers a synergistic integration of the psychological, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of soul (deepness, aliveness, authenticity, and a healing/transformative resource) to inform the design and implementation of culturally attuned methods. Soulfulness is characterized by themes emerging from diasporic African cultural influences and inspired by an African American cultural sensibility. These themes include an ethos of interconnectedness, a relational/communal sensibility, the centrality of spirituality, creativity and improvisation, a holistic orientation to human experience, emotional expressiveness, resilience and overcoming adversity, and struggles for liberation in the context of historical and ongoing dehumanization and oppression. The “SOUL” (Soulfulness-Oriented, Unitive, and Liberatory) approach is offered as an example of innovation and adaptation that meaningfully considers cultural and contextual factors in order to maximize the effectiveness of contemplative practices with culturally diverse groups. The SOUL-Centered Practice (SCP) framework describes foundational elements to guide the development of practices grounded in mindful awareness processes and infused with qualities of soulfulness. The SOUL approach is hypothesized to be particularly resonant with historically oppressed and marginalized people of color who experience the transgenerational impact of collective traumas such as genocide, slavery, and colonization as well as the dehumanizing soul-assaults of ongoing racism and intersectional oppression. The ultimate goal of the emerging practice is to contribute to the utilization of contemplative practice for the elevation our collective well-being as an interconnected human community in the context of ongoing struggles for liberation and social justice. Implications for research, further conceptual development, and the design of culturally syntonic contemplative practices are discussed

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Mindful Organizing for the CIO: Towards a Conceptual Model for Transformational Leadership

Considered invaluable to corporate entities, CIOs are relied upon for the strategic oversight of technological infrastructure as well as the articulation of a business case for IT resources. How can CIOs prepare for and respond to dynamic, and often uncertain changes, which challenge organizational resources, processes, and strategies? Research continues to indicate that technological transformation and integration of newer, faster IT capabilities have become a critical focus for the CIO. Extant literature on mindfulness suggests that mindful organizing (MO) can facilitate and enhance the effectiveness of strategic level decision makers. Integrating insights from MO, we present and analyze the literature to build an action orientated framework to support the CIO in leveraging the dynamic capabilities under his/her purview. Our objective is to examine key attributes of mindful organizing which are especially critical to building a level of awareness that cultivates an environment for reliability under transformational leaders

Top Management Support, Collective Mindfulness, and Information Systems Performance

Mindfulness is a cognitive process that facilitates the discovery and correction of errors that might escalate. This study applies mindfulness theory to examine the impact of top management support for information systems on collective mindfulness, and that of collective mindfulness on IS performance. It treated such mindfulness in five dimensions, and top management support and IS performance as uni-dimensional. Forty-seven chief executive officers responded to a survey asking their perceptions of the constructs. Top management support predicted four of the dimensions with the strongest effect on sensitivity to IS operations. A negative path from support to commitment to IS resilience suggests a management predilection for planning over improvisation and adaptation. Sensitivity to IS operations alone predicted performance

Building sustainability on deep values through mindfulness nurturing

To effectively pursue sustainability, companies need to develop an awareness of the importance of social and environmental objectives in addition to economic. To achieve this, they need to promote a set of shared values in their strategy and cultural change which align global sustainability with organisational performance. To assist organisations with this process and thus identify and nurture their members&rsquo; underpinning values, we present the Organisational Presence Model including a Real Dialogue Methodology. We draw on Lewin&rsquo;s participative approach to change and the deep concept of Mindfulness related to Buddhist precepts, while contributing with a way to initiate Mindfulness nurturing in business context, facilitating its acceptance and practice by organizational members. In our study case we find signs of positive effects of the model in sustainability pursuing. The new strategy has been built aligned with resulting values, that are also perceived by organizational members as inspirational, generating motivation and helping the effective communication that integrates the strategic objectives in the economic, social and environmental aspects

IS Continuance, Team Ambidexterity and Team Performance: A Multilevel Approach

Information systems and teams are essential for organizations achieve competitive advantages. In fact, the team’s ability to adapt to continuous changes in the organizational environment may depend on IS and consequently in their usage. In the post-adoption stage, user behavior can assume a routine or an innovative nature. In routine usage, IS is used in a standardized way with small variations whereas in innovative usage, the user search for novel ways to perform work tasks. These distinctive usage behaviors may have different effects on task and team performance. Also, may affect the ability of a team to be aligned and be adaptable to organizational context. This paper proposes a multilevel conceptual model for IS usage behavior and the role of team ambidexterity in the usage-performance relationship. This multilevel perspective opens new research areas and guides organizations to focus on different approaches to deal with IS use, team ambidexterity and performance

Relativity of Mindfulness: Team Collaboration in Digital and Physical Educational Escape Rooms

This study focuses on collaboration among team members in educational escape rooms in higher education. The objective of this study was to understand how collective mindfulness and less mindful behavior unfold in physical and digital game-based learning. The video data were collected from three different courses comprising 107 students on 28 teams, totaling more than 16 hours of material. The qualitative analysis revealed both collectively mindful and less mindful behaviors in team interactions. This paper contributes to collective mindfulness literature in understanding team collaboration by observing that mindfulness may be relative depending on the observation perspective. It also presents factors that affect member equality in both digital and physical escape rooms. Last, a nuanced description of how team collaboration occurred in a short-term problem-solving situation is developed

Enterprise Information Systems as Objects and Carriers of Institutional Forces: The New Iron Cage?

This paper draws upon the institutional theory lens to examine enterprise information systems. We propose that these information systems engender a duality. On one hand, these systems are subject to institutional forces and institutional processes that set the rules of rationality. On the other hand, they are an important embodiment of institutional commitments and serve to preserve these rules by constraining the actions of human agents. The complexity inherent to enterprise technologies renders them an equivoque. This, when combined with the propensity toward lack of mindfulness in organizations, is likely to lead to acquiescence to institutional pressures. Enterprise information systems bind organizations to fundamental choices about how their activities should be organized; unquestioned choices that tend to appear natural. We suggest implications of this view and develop propositions examining: (1) enterprise information systems as objects of institutional forces in the chartering and project phases, (2) the resolution of institutional misalignments caused by the introduction of new systems, and (3) enterprise information systems as carriers of institutional logics in the shakeout and onward & upward phases