Waking Up! Mindfulness in the Face of Bandwagons

Abstract

Economic and sociological theories explaining bandwagon behaviors, along with cognitive and behavioral theories of decision making, do not fully address the process whereby decision makers choose whether or not to jump on bandwagons. In this article we model the interactions between mindfulness as a decision-maker characteristic and the decision-making context, and we show the impact of those interactions on managers' ability to discriminate In the lace of bandwagons. We illustrate the framework by applying it to recent integration and disintegration bandwagon behaviors in the U.S. health care market.