Historical Development
Studies of organization adaptation are mainly concerned with the evolution of organizations in conjunction with the environments in which they are situated. Early works emphasized a notion that managers possessed the ability to determine the optimal means by which organizations could be structured. Aspects of adaptation began with a focus inside organizations and the adapting of internal structures to achieve the highest rates of success (seeContrarian Views
Beginning in the 1970s, scholars became skeptical of the emphasis on the capacity for managers to influence their environments. Sociological perspectives emerged as a result, emphasizing the role and strength of the environment in restraining the ability for managers to influence the success of organizations. Particularly prominent in this regard was the work of organizational ecologists that leveraged ideas from evolutionary biology to explain the natural selection of organizations. For ecologists, managers had little agency and organizational survival was determined primarily by the environment itself.The Interrelationship between Adaptation and Selection
Broader ecological views emerged from early works that emphasized managers and subsequent works that emphasized environmental forces. Frameworks were developed that focused on the interplay between organizations and environments. Hrebeniak and Joyce (1985) specifically elaborated upon the interplay between strategic choice and environmental determinism, suggesting that both resided along a continuum that distinguished various forms of adaptation. Adaptation could, therefore, exist in multiple modes. Subsequent work by Levinthal (1997) entitled ''Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes'' further elaborated upon the notion that both adaptive and selective forces were simultaneously at play for organizations depending upon how "tightly coupled" (or interdependent) organizational structures were in relation to their environments. Environments were determined to be ''rugged'' because there are several local optimum points that related specifically to the intricacies of each organization's design. Given such broad historical roots and biological connotations, organizational adaptation is often studied alongside related concepts to expose its presence. As a result, several concepts are closely related to adaptation.Core Concepts Related to Adaptation
Adaptation is often contrasted with inertia and selection (see organizational ecology) and reflected as survival, growth, or performance. The attributes that reflect the concept of adaptation do not fully reflect either survival nor success for organizations, however, as biological notions of adaptation do not easily translate to organizations. Adaptation, as a standalone concept, does have distinguishable attributes from its related concepts. More specifically, organizational adaptation is premised on organizational decision-making that is ''intentional,'' whereby decision-makers are aware of their environment; ''relational,'' in that organizations and environments influence one another; ''conditioned,'' in that environmental characteristics evolved with other organizations’ actions; and ''convergent'', in that organizations attempt to move closer to a set of environmental characteristics.Progression of Adaptation Research
The widespread use of adaptation and its relationships to many theoretical perspectives has led to a diverse body of literature that spans multiple levels of analysis and multiple topics of study.The Pursuit of Adaptation
Pursuits of adaptation primarily follow the traditions that emphasize how managers influence the adaptation process and, therefore, focus mainly on decision-making. Organizations that recognize environmental change and make decisions to reconfigure resources or enter new markets are viewed as adapting accordingly. In this way, psychological perspectives that emphasize the cognition of managers play a strong role in explaining adaptation. Strategic perspectives that emphasize the capabilities of organizations also feature prominently in pursuits of adaptation.Internal Factors that Constrain or Enable Adaptation
Drawing from perspectives that restrict the abilities of managers to fully influence or align to their environments, constraints (or conditions) on adaptation are also broadly studied. Organizations either needed to account for the internal relationships between core strengths that evolve with environments over time to achieve success or they needed to account for the fact that regulations may impose restrictions on organizations as they adjusted to their environments. The set of studies focused on the factors that condition adaptation, therefore, tend to focus on the outcomes of performance, survival, or legitimacy for organizations.The Influence of Environments on Adaptation
A relatively smaller set of academic articles highlights that environments can initiate (or impose, in some cases) adaptation. The perspectives drawn upon to make the case for environments are evolutionary in nature and focus on variation, selection, and retention models that were popularized by Campbell (1965). Prominent works in this area of adaptation research highlight the interplay between organizations and environments whereby environmental forces are relatively stronger than strategic decisions, although adaptation remained present as Haveman and Rao demonstrated in their 1997 study of the early thrift industryIssues in Adaptation Research
The three areas in which adaptation has been studied has led to some conceptual challenges that stem from the various levels and perspectives from which organizational adaptation has been studied. A systematic review identified 11 difficulties in adaptation research, which is summarized broadly in the following table. {, class="wikitable" , Difficulty Area , Difficulty Description , - , rowspan="3" , Adaptation is Studied as both a Factor Leading to Convergence and an Outcome of Convergence , ''Functionalist Adaptation Fallacy:'' decisions are assumed to be effective means of converging with environments , - , ''Adaptation without Strong Performance:'' organizations may converge with an environmental characteristic and not reap the benefits of strong performance , - , ''Adaptation Depends on Competition:'' peer organizations may respond to decisions made that negate the benefits of an adaptive decision , - , rowspan="4" , Adaptation is Difficult to Observe , ''Continuous Change:'' organizations frequently make changes that may reduce the need for subsequent changes , - , ''Asymmetric Causality:'' the presence of a condition that leads to inertia does not necessarily imply that its absence leads to adaptation , - , ''Strategic Non-Adaptation:'' organizations may intentionally choose to avoid adaptation if it does not align with organizational aspirations , - , ''Unobservable Adaptive Ability:'' organizations may possess the ability to adapt without an environmental opportunity to do so , - , rowspan="4" , Adaptation Occurs at Multiple Interdependent Levels , ''Adaptation Depends on Environments:'' environments may move in the direction of organizations just as much as organizations move in the direction of environments , - , ''Environmental Multiplicity:'' organizations plausibly adapt to multiple environments at multiple levels simultaneously , - , ''Co-evolution Across Levels:'' decisions made by the organizations plausibly change the environmental conditions and vice versa , - , ''Adaptation as Transitory:'' adaptation does not occur at points in time but over periods of timeSee also
*References
Further reading
* Aldrich, H. 1979. Organizations and Environments. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. * Aldrich, H. E., Ruef, M., & Lippmann, S. 2020. Organizations Evolving: Third Edition. Edward Elgar Publishing. * Ansari, S. M., Fiss, P. C., & Zajac, E. J. 2010. Made to Fit: How Practices Vary As They Diffuse. Academy of Management Review, 35(1): 67–92. * Baum, J. A. C., & Singh, J. V. 1994. Evolutionary Dynamics of Organizations. Oxford University Press. * Chakravarthy, B. S. 1982. Adaptation: A Promising Metaphor for Strategic Management. Academy of Management Review, 7(1): 35–44. * Eggers, J. P., & Park, K. F. 2018. Incumbent Adaptation to Technological Change: The Past, Present, and Future of Research on Heterogeneous Incumbent Response. Academy of Management Annals, 12(1): 357–389. * Hannan, M.T. and J. Freeman (1989) ''Organizational Ecology.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. * Levinthal, D. A. 1997. Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes. Management Science, 43(7): 934–950. * March, J. G. 1991. Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning. Organization Science, 2(1): 71–87. * Ocasio, W. 1997. Towards an Attention Based View of the Firm. Strategic Management Journal, 18(S1): 187–206. * Teece, D. J. 2007. Explicating Dynamic Capabilities: The Nature and Microfoundations of (Sustainable) Enterprise Performance. Strategic Management Journal, 28(13): 1319–1350. * Tripsas, M., & Gavetti, G. 2000. Capabilities, Cognition, and Inertia: Evidence from Digital Imaging. Strategic Management Journal, 21(10–11): 1147–1161. * Uzzi, B. 1997. Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1): 35. Management theory