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A global pandemic, broken supply chains, workforce constraints, technological advancements in artificial intelligence, etc. illustrate the continual threats that SMEs face. Extending the dynamic capability concepts of sensing, seizing and transforming, this research investigates practices by which SMEs successfully adapt over time.

A comparative case study method was employed using a purposive sample of SMEs, consisting of three American firms and one Canadian firm.

Three sets of organizational practices, termed adaptive practices, that underlie dynamic capabilities for successful adaptation were identified: (1) continuous learning and process improvement, (2) leveraging reciprocal relationships and (3) communicating effectively.

The selected cases are from two countries in North America. Using a qualitative, inductive process, the authors are able to identify patterns of actions within various organizations; however, they are not able to establish causality.

This study provides practical guidance for leaders to take action to improve their SME's dynamic capabilities for adaptation through creating coherent bundles of specified adaptive practices.

Better understanding of how SMEs successfully adapt to high uncertainty and business viability threats can result in multidimensional (e.g. financial, emotional) and multi-level (individual, family, community), positive outcomes for societal stakeholders.

The findings of this study build on the literature of dynamic capabilities and organizational practices and provide a practical foundation for effective adaptation, labeled as adaptive practices.

This paper aims to explore the empirical literature on organizational resilience. The goal consists of identifying and understanding the indicators used to evaluate organizational resilience and instigating the development of indicators to assess resilience in other areas, such as project management and critical infrastructure.

A review of recent empirical studies is conducted to collect information on the indicators used to assess organizational resilience.

A range of interrelated indicators aiming to measure organizational resilience in two dimensions is shown in this literature review: awareness and adaptive capacity. Awareness is the ability of an organization to assess its environment and interpret the changes in its surroundings, both now and in the future, to be proactive and better manage possible disruptive events. On the other hand, adaptive capacity is the organization’s capacity to transform its structure, processes, culture, etc. for recovering once faced with a disruptive event. Awareness forms the main base of the organization’s adaptive capacity.

Organizational resilience contributes to the safe development of the built environment. This concept helps organizations to cope with disruptions. However, little research has been conducted on the indicators to assess organizational resilience, in different fields. Moreover, these indicators’ credibility is based on empirical studies.

This paper aims to determine what leader‐leading competencies enable management of turbulent, uncertain change and what principles from a complex adaptive systems perspective constitute it.

The paper is a qualitative research case study.

It is found that there are three leading‐ship competencies: administrative, adaptive and enabling.

The paper illustrates that complex adaptive organizations oblige leaders to view differently organizational networks and their role within such networks.

The purpose of this paper is to present a meaning‐based framework to understand the motivation of knowledge workers and an effective leadership model that suits that framework.

Definitions of knowledge worker, meaning, complex adaptive systems and leadership are provided. The concept of meaning in work is explored through the constructs of work orientation and identity. Based on that, a global meaning framework for knowledge workers is outlined. Additionally, the servant leadership model is detailed and analyzed in light of the global meaning framework for knowledge workers and the need for complex adaptive behavior in successful knowledge‐based organizations.

The motivation of knowledge workers can be well understood from a meaning perspective, taking two constructs into account: work orientation and identity. The global meaning framework of knowledge workers is based on three main characteristics: work as a calling, need for a strong membership association with peers, and need for autonomy. Servant leadership is a model that fits well with those characteristics, potentially enabling the creation of a sense of meaning and purpose and consequently inducing the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers. As a side‐effect, complex adaptive behavior will emerge, leading to both organizational and social performance.

The proposed model combines a meaning perspective with servant leadership theory to provide insight into the motivation of knowledge workers. This is posited in the context of complex adaptive behavior.

The authors incorporated leadership and gender theories with research on trust to propose a model relating interpersonal emotion management (IEM, a type of relational leadership) and task-oriented (T-O) leadership to follower adaptive performance. The authors also examine the indirect effect of IEM and T-O on adaptive performance via trust and the possible moderating role of gender on these relationships.

The authors tested this model using a sample of 314 workers who rated their direct leaders (supervisors).

Overall, results supported the model for IEM as it was directly and indirectly related (via trust) to adaptive job performance (even after controlling for transformational leadership) and these relationships were more positive for women leaders. T-O leadership was related to adaptive job performance as expected but was unrelated to trust or, via trust, to adaptive performance. Findings also suggest that women direct leaders may garner more trust and adaptive performance from followers by engaging in higher levels of IEM, while also not experiencing backlash for engaging in the more agentic T-O behaviors during a crisis.

Despite an emphasis on women's relational leadership during a crisis, the authors findings show organizations are best served by ambidextrous leaders who can manage the emotions and tasks of their followers and that both women and men can engage in these leadership styles without penalty.

Much research regarding women's leadership advantage during a crisis is based on political leaders or has been conducted in lab settings. Further, it has focused on attitudes toward the women leaders rather than their performance. Research has also not considered both IEM along with the possible backlash women may experience for engaging in T-O leadership.

Organizations today operate in highly dynamic environments and are becoming more complex. Helping their organizations master this complexity is a major leadership challenge. To better understand how managers’ behaviors aggravate or reduce complexity, we reviewed 1,400 responses to a proprietary organizational complexity survey. Analysis identified specific managers’ behaviors that contribute to perceived complexity. We draw from these findings, literature on complex adaptive systems, and our consulting experiences to identify specific strategies managers can use to make it simpler for people to get things done, and even to “master” complexity by turning it into a source of strategic advantage.

Over the past few years, mathematical and computational models of organizations have attracted a great deal of interest in various fields of scientific research (see Lin & Carley, 1993 for review). The mathematical models have focused on the problem of quantifying the structural (mis)match between organizations and their tasks. The notion of structural congruence has been generalized from the problem of optimizing distributed decision-making in structured decision networks (Pete, Pattipati, Levchuk, & Kleinman, 1998) to the multi-objective optimization problem of designing optimal organizational structures to complete a mission, while minimizing a set of criteria (Levchuk, Pattipati, Curry, & Shakeri, 1996, 1997, 1998). As computational models of decision-making in organizations began to emerge (see Carley & Svoboda, 1996; Carley, 1998; Vincke, 1992), the study of social networks (SSN) continued to focus on examining a network structure and its impact on individual, group, and organizational behavior (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). Most models, developed under the SSN, combined formal and informal structures when representing organizations as architectures (e.g., see Levitt et al., 1994; Carley & Svoboda, 1996). In addition, a large number of measures of structure and of the individual positions within the structure have been developed (Roberts, 1979; Scott, 1981; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Wellman, 1991).

There is currently a proliferation of digital analytics and machine/artificial intelligence productivity tools for creating and sustaining competitive advantage through strategic flexibility. Transformational e-HRM enables organizations to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through exploitation of these new productivity tools and approaches. However, it has been observed that many organizations have not been able to realize this. Using findings from an empirical exploration of e-HRM’s contribution to sustaining business performance, derived through an interpretative phenomenological analysis of a single case study, we propose in this chapter that for organizations to leverage the productivity gains of implementing Transformational e-HRM, HR and frontline managers require access to readily available artificial intelligence productivity tools. For e-HRM to contribute to sustaining business performance, we add to strategic flexibility theory that this can be realized by using e-HRM to enable strategic flexibility and adaptive capability. As we propose that it will be about organizations using the strategic capability derived by using Transformational e-HRM to create flexible and adaptive organizations. Its implications for practice are stated.

Traditionally, organizational evolution has been forgotten and only recently has it been analyzed by evolutionary theories: evolutionary economics and organizational ecology. According to the evolutionary economics the evolution of the firm is drawn as a process of individual adaptation running parallel to the evolution of environment. However, population ecology suggested that organizations have not the ability to adapt themselves and the process of organizational evolution is out of the organizational field. So, the adjustment to changed environmental conditions is achieved largely by the death of old organizations and the birth of new ones. We propose a model of organizational evolution combining the adaptation perspective ‐‐ evolutionary economics ‐‐ and the selection one ‐‐ population ecology of organizations. The adaptative ability lies in the endowment resource and capabilities that managers build using organizational capabilities.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The results were consistent with adaptive organization and organization learning being significant in facilitating business model transformation and minimizing technology disruption.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.