Progress-focused

Mary Murphy , professor of psychology at Indiana University, has published the book Cultures of Growth . In 2006, she was a student of Carol Dweck , the founder of mindset theory. Dweck's previous work showed that people with a growth mindset are more likely to take on challenges, learn from mistakes, and achieve more in the long run than people with a fixed mindset. Murphy suggested that not only individuals but also environments embody a mindset. Nearly two decades later, Murphy and her colleagues have conducted extensive research in numerous organizations. Cultures of Growth reports on this.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to think about the malleability of our traits and capabilities. When we have a growth mindset , we see traits and abilities as developable. In a fixed mindset we see them as not or hardly capable of development. In addition to individual mindsets, there are also mindset cultures . Researchers Wallace et al. (2023) explored the impacts of these cultures, uncovering three findings about growth mindset cultures in organizations and classrooms.