Jochen REB

Jochen REB serves as the Lee Kong Chian Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources at Singapore Management University's Lee Kong Chian School of Business, where he also directs the Mindfulness Initiative since 2014. His academic progression at SMU spans from Associate Professor (2009-2021) to Professor (2021-2025) and finally to his current endowed Chair position (2025-present), reflecting sustained scholarly impact in organizational behavior.

His educational foundation includes a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Arizona (2005) and a Master's in Business Management from Berlin University of Technology (2000), establishing interdisciplinary expertise bridging cognitive psychology and management science.

REB's research pioneers mindfulness applications in organizational contexts, examining how mindful awareness transforms leadership effectiveness, decision quality, and employee well-being. His work demonstrates that mindfulness training reduces burnout by reshaping perceptions of job demands while enhancing negotiation cooperation and entrepreneurial resilience. Current investigations extend to sustainable business practices, including chemical recycling adoption in megacities and mindfulness-based strategic awareness training for non-clinical populations.

His publication trajectory reveals increasing interdisciplinary integration, connecting organizational behavior with environmental sustainability, positive psychology, and computational methods. Recent work applies fast-and-frugal heuristics to managerial decision-making while developing holistic mindfulness frameworks for business education and systems change.

Scientific recognition includes:

• Lee Kong Chian Fellow at SMU (2020, 2024)
• Rupe Chisolm Award for Best Theory-to-Practice Paper (Academy of Management, 2018)
• Outstanding Reviewer for Academy of Management Discoveries (2018)

As mentor, REB guides doctoral researchers like G. Maistry and E. K. Peters in mindfulness-intervention studies, while leading the Mindfulness Initiative to develop evidence-based organizational training programs. His directorship focuses on translating mindfulness science into practical leadership tools through field experiments and longitudinal assessments.

The Mindfulness Initiative functions as SMU's central hub for organizational mindfulness research, conducting randomized field trials on leadership training effectiveness while building corporate partnerships for real-world implementation across Singaporean enterprises.