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On the path to accomplishing task work, teams may face disruptive events like budget issues, equipment failures, and membership change that trigger adaptation. While recently researchers have clarified the team adaptation nomological network, our objective is to extend theory by providing a roadmap about various ways in which temporal considerations may complicate the impact of adaptation triggers on team adaptation and in turn adaptive outcomes.

We present three adaptation temporal considerations (i.e., timing, duration, and frequency) that may change the way team adaptation unfolds in response to a given adaptation trigger. We further explore and offer propositions about how the impact of adaptation timing, adaptation duration, and adaptation frequency differ by the type of adaptation trigger (i.e., task-based or team-based) experienced by the team.

By examining adaptation to task-based or team-based triggers from a temporal perspective researchers may better explain why the timing of when the team adapts across its lifecycle (adaptation timing), how long the team takes to adapt (adaptation duration), and the recurrent need to adapt (adaptation frequency) is more or less likely to lead to positive adaptive performance outcomes.

Organizations may benefit from setting up teams for success by helping members understand that there are inherent differences in the adaptation triggers they face including temporal expectations. Organizations may see value in providing initial and on-going support to teams so they are better able to adapt when needed and mitigate negative effects due to adaptation timing, adaptation duration, and adaption frequency.

We describe some recent contingent capital securities (CoCos) and explore the issues that confront their development. We take the view that bank CoCos should be designed to maintain confidence in a bank before a crisis begins because once a crisis commences it is difficult to see how a bank can assure the capital market without the support of state aid. With this overriding objective in mind we find that, in at least some respects, existing examples of bank CoCos have got the ‘right’ design. Existing bank CoCos are unfunded as they should be as there is no need to structure these securities to provide additional liquidity. If funding turns out to be necessary then a liquidity crisis is already underway and the CoCo has already failed in its attempt to maintain confidence in the bank. Moreover, existing CoCos use the simpler single trigger that we favour rather than dual trigger structure recommended by some.

Customer experience is increasingly recognized as a source of competitive advantage. Customer experience refers to customers' responses and reactions to cues within touchpoints along customer journeys. Nowadays, customers often interact with online touchpoints – such as social media, websites, or e-commerce – in their customer journeys. Given that customer experience is multidimensional, this chapter addresses the following question: How can sensorial experiences be triggered in online touchpoints? Based on a review of the literature on customer experience and sensory marketing, four challenges in triggering sensorial experiences in online touchpoints are identified: (1) limited sensorial cues, (2) lack of thematic congruence between online and offline touchpoints, (3) sensory overload, and (4) lesser control over sensorial cues. Then, two routes through which organizations can trigger sensorial experiences in online touchpoints are proposed: (1) directly influencing sensations through sensory-enabling technologies, and (2) indirectly influencing sensorial perceptions through the use of sensory and nonsensory cues. The chapter closes with a presentation of a model that describes the process of triggering sensorial experiences in online touchpoints as well as a checklist of relevant questions for practitioners who wish to do so.

Although the term “trigger event” is commonly accepted and frequently mentioned by many disciplines in conjunction with sensemaking, research attention on the trigger event construct is sorely lacking. We chose to examine this construct within a specific setting that global leaders have to master – the intercultural context. After reviewing the relevant literature, we created an original model of trigger events and sensemaking in the intercultural context, which is accompanied by propositions that determine the likelihood of an event rising to the level of a trigger. It is our hope that this theoretical model will lead to a better understanding of how trigger events function in general. The chapter contributes to a greater understanding of the cognitive element of global leadership effectiveness. Finally, the model has practical implications for intercultural and global leadership training and executive coaching.

In the field of global leadership, much of the research has focused on uncovering competencies and methods for assessing competencies. The process of developing global leaders has been researched less frequently; however, it is widely accepted that this process involves learning on the part of the leader. Mezirow’s (1978, 1991) transformative learning is a special type of learning in the domain of adult education and a useful lens to better understand the disorienting triggers that are thought to induce global leadership development (GLD). In simple terms, a disorienting experience occurs when we discover that something we thought was certain is now uncertain. Conducting business in another country or merely navigating to a grocery store or restaurant there can be a disorienting experience. In these situations, people are exposed to new information that does not fit their current meaning structures or thought paradigms, and at this juncture, people have a choice: to transform their perspective or remain unchanged. When individuals transform their perspective, they are experiencing transformative learning. The first section of this chapter reviews the concept of disorienting experiences across disciplines and within the domain of learning and education. The second section explains three GLD process models with a special focus on the role played by disorienting trigger events in each one. The final section explains the Disorientation Index (Ensign, 2019), which articulates dimensions of trigger events. The chapter concludes with future research directions and practical implications.

Students of organizations are beginning to recognize the importance of continuous learning in organizations, but to date the concept is not well understood, particularly in terms of how the learning of individuals is related to the learning that takes place in groups, which is related to the learning that occurs in organizations (and all other combinations). To further our understanding, we offer the idea of continuous learning in organizations from a living system's perspective. We view individuals, groups, and organizations as living systems nested in a hierarchy. We propose that living systems can learn in three ways: they can adapt, they can generate, and they can transform. Learning triggers from the environment spark learning, and this relationship is moderated by the system's readiness to learn. Readiness to learn is a function of the permeability of the system's boundaries, the system's stage of development, and the system's meta-systems perspective. Additional research questions are presented to explore learning flow between levels and to determine how the match between one system's pressure for change and another system's readiness to learn affects the emergence of adaptive, generative, and transformative learning. In addition, research questions are offered as a means to test these ideas and build grounded theory. Finally, using this model, the chapter presents three case studies and suggests diagnostic questions to analyze and facilitate continuous learning from a multi-level perspective.

Given widespread digital transformations in all sorts of organizations, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the role of digital technologies in institutional change. In this essay, we characterize existing scholarship in terms of whether it emphasizes how digital technologies are either “triggers” or “carriers” of institutional change. As triggers, digital technologies serve as catalysts that afford novel structuring as they are enacted in practice. As carriers, digital technologies can shape those practices in ways that are consistent with the structuring of other fields. We propose a view of institutionally embedded affordances, where digital technologies are both triggers and carriers that afford institutional change. We conclude with a reflection on how digital technologies are implicated in the convergence of previously distinct industrial fields.

In this study, we explore what incites anger in business executives when making organizational decisions. In an inductive analysis of interviews with business executives about decisions where they experienced anger, six different triggers of anger – all related to behavioral-ethics issues – emerged. Two distinct attitudes toward anger – “negative” and “integrated” – also emerged as a significant theme. Based on our findings, we argue that anger may operate like an “ethical barometer” that informs an individual of potential ethical violations at any point in a decision-making process. The implications of these emergent findings for organizational practice and research on affect and decision-making are discussed.

Successful teams tend to be highly cohesive and team cohesion to be particularly helpful in allowing teams and their members to sustain their success even in the most challenging times. One disillusioning consequence of this reciprocity between cohesion and performance would suggest that failures made by teams and/or their members likely jeopardize their success by preventing them from capitalizing on such virtuous circles associated with team cohesion. Yet, many teams uphold their performance despite the failures they have to cope with, suggesting that the potential vicious circles can be overcome. This chapter aims at illuminating the vicious and virtuous circles associated with team cohesion that are induced by either collective failures of teams or individual failures of their members. It therefore offers a multilevel perspective not only on the emergence and diffusion of failures at the individual and team levels, but also on the critical role that team cohesion plays for a team’s (dys)functional coping across these levels. It is theorized that collective failures triggered exogenously can help build team cohesion, and that whether endogenously-triggered collective failures bring about the vicious or the virtuous circles of team cohesion depends on whether the individual failures developing into collective failures are triggered endogenously or exogenously. The implications of this conceptual work are discussed in light of the literatures on error/failure management and group cohesiveness.

Identity exploration is a central mechanism for identity formation that has been found to be associated with intense engagement, positive coping, openness to change, flexible cognition, and meaningful learning. Moreover, identity exploration in school has been associated with adaptive motivation for learning the academic material. Particularly in the fast-changing environment of contemporary society, confidence and skills in identity exploration and self-construction seems to be increasingly important. Therefore, promoting students’ identity exploration in school within the curriculum and in relation to the academic content should be adopted as an important educational goal. The purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual framework for interventions to promote students’ identity exploration within the curriculum. The framework involves the application of four interrelated principles: (1) promoting self-relevance; (2) triggering exploration; (3) facilitating a sense of safety; and (4) scaffolding exploratory actions.

We begin the paper with a conceptual review of identity exploration. We follow by specifying the conceptual framework for interventions. We then present a methodological-intervention approach for applying this framework and describe three such interventions in middle-school contexts, in the domains of environmental education, literature, and mathematics.

In each intervention, applying the principles contributed to students’ adaptive motivation and engagement in the academic material and also contributed to students’ identity exploration, though not among all students. The findings highlight the contextual, dynamic, and indeterminate nature of identity exploration among early adolescents in educational settings, and the utility of the conceptual framework and approach for conceptualizing and intervening to promote identity exploration among students.

This paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of identity exploration in educational settings, highlights the benefits and the challenges in intervening to promote identity exploration among students, and discusses the future directions in theory, research, and practice concerned with the promotion of identity exploration in educational settings.