DEVELOPMENT

4 The Afd2025 scenarios
Box 15
Is a “culture of mindfulness” entering organizations?
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
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The dynamic of an increasing awareness of the challenges and risks associated with the
environmental transition has gradually led to shifts towards more responsible behaviors.
Meanwhile, new leadership and management styles, which are more horizontal, transparent,
collaborative and fully empower individuals, have grown and encouraged the search for
meaning in business and society. One illustration of this trend is the growing popularity of
“mindfulness” (11) in the Western world and its potentially positive impact on the pertinence
of action. This trend is based partly on greater recognition of the limiting nature of the tools
that support current decision-making and of the problems created by the frenetic race that
operates under the illusion of control and which leads, for example, to an over-production of
procedures. Once set in motion, creativity and complex thinking give organizations a
greater capacity to innovate. These changes are easier when the frameworks for accountability
are relaxed and a more flexible approach is adopted. Since the early 21st century,
employees in large companies have placed a growing importance on ethics and the meaning
of their actions. This has been part of a worldwide movement that has helped
propel these companies towards a more sober form of capitalism with a medium- and
long-term societal impact. (12)
11/ See works by Ellen Langler, notably her article “Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity,” Harvard Business Review,
October 2014; Matthieu Ricard’s “La méditation face à la science,” in Question No.1; Kabat-Zinn, creator of the
Mindfulness approach.
12/ The multiple information leaks in the 2000s are another illustration of this change, with the need for transparency
rendering the widespread disclosure of confidential data acceptable.
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