Toward Mindful Project Organizing: Tim Vogus on Reliability, Adaptation, and Collective Mindfulness

This insight interview article engages Tim Vogus, Professor at Vanderbilt University and a leading scholar of mindful organizing and high reliability, in a dialogue on how mindfulness research may inform project organizing and project management scholarship. The interview explores five interconnected topics related to project organizing: mindful organizing in temporary, dynamic, and multi-organizational project settings; the strategic importance of attention to weak signals and everyday operational details; the interplay between individual mindfulness and collective mindful organizing in project teams; mindfulness, innovation, flexibility, and adaptation in projects; and promising future research directions at the intersection of mindfulness and project organizing. Vogus argues that project contexts provide a fertile setting for advancing theorizing on mindful organizing, particularly regarding the management of the unexpected, the sequencing of collective mindfulness processes, and the reciprocal dynamics between individual and collective forms of mindfulness. The interview also advances emerging debates raised in prior work by challenging assumptions regarding the limitations of mindful organizing in less regulated project settings and emphasizing the complementarity between individual mindfulness and collective mindful organizing. The interview highlights opportunities for longitudinal, multilevel, and practice-oriented research that can enrich understanding of project organizing under uncertainty.