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Abstract
Reducing risk and averting crises are increasingly critical for organizations. This study was designed to identify strategies for workers to be mindful participants in their organization's attempts to maintain the safety and integrity of the food supply. After sequential explanatory and exploratory phases, multiple regression results indicated that sending information, influencing outcomes, receiving information, organizational openness, and foregrounding training explained a significant portion of the variance for organizational mindfulness. The findings suggest that participatory communication practices enact and sustain collective mindfulness and, thereby, reduce risk.
Acknowledgements
The research was supported in part by a food safety risk assessment grant from the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service. The first phase of the cumulative research was published in Food Protection Trends (Novak, Sellnow, Venette, & Nganje, Citation2006). The second phase was presented at CSCA's annual conference in 2006 and awarded top paper and top student paper. The cumulative phase was presented at NCA as the 2007 top paper in the Applied Communication Division.
Notes
1. Midwest Processing is a pseudonym used to protect the identification and interests of parties involved in this study. The plant consists of four operational areas: slaughter/evisceration, production, further processing, and shipping/receiving.
2. As of September 2008, the plant has still never experienced a recall based on a lapse of food safety or protection, or an associated food-borne illness outbreak.