The role of organizational mindfulness on Covid-19 crisis management: A case study of health tourism SMEs

The COVID-19 pandemic has created enormous challenges for many businesses, specifically small and medium-sized enterprises. This research investigates how organizational mindfulness can enable small and medium-sized enterprises which are engaged in health tourism in an emerging market to manage the crises they have faced during Covid-19. Organizational mindfulness involves noting changes in the environment, understanding them, and adapting to them. It is built upon the two key concepts of anticipation and containment. ‘Anticipation’ has three aspects: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, and sensitivity to operations; ‘containment’ involves a commitment to resilience and deference to expertise. This research has employed a qualitative, multiple-case study approach. Interviews were carried out with 11 top managers. Our findings illustrate the benefits of "increasing organizational reliability through pre-crisis preparation and capacity-building", "creating a learning culture, "change management and inspirational leadership", "prioritizing innovation and making the best use of the organization's capacity”, and “the need to maintain organizational agility in responding efficiently to environmental turbulence”.