Scholars have long called for research on how organizations operating in extreme contexts might provide insights into effective organizing in everyday contexts. High-reliability organizations—such as aircraft carrier flight decks, air traffic control towers, and nuclear power control rooms—provide quintessential examples. These organizations maintain nearly error-free performance through a set of discursive practices known as mindful organizing, whereby team members communicate in ways that enable them to pool and integrate diverse information and develop a more complete understanding of situations.

Scholars have suggested that mindful organizing may benefit teams in more traditional settings; however, empirical evidence remains scant. Understanding these benefits is increasingly important as organizations assemble teams with diverse information to solve complex problems. We provide the first systematic examination of whether, when, and how mindful organizing enhances problem solving in everyday teams.

We propose that mindful organizing enhances both team performance and individual team member satisfaction. We further identify a boundary condition under which its performance benefits are more likely to hold (i.e., when information is distributed across team members rather than commonly held) and a mechanism through which it enhances satisfaction (i.e., by inducing individual states of mindfulness). The proposed theoretical model is tested and supported across a series of studies encompassing 1,630 participants in 487 teams. These findings illuminate the benefits and potential downsides of mindful organizing for everyday problem-solving teams.