What is an Adaptive Organisational Culture?

By definition, an Adaptive Culture is simply a way of operating where change is expected and adapting to those changes is smooth, routine and seamless. With an Adaptive Culture in place, change, growth, and innovation are a "given" part of the business environment.

Attributes of an Adaptive Culture include: The ability for all employees, departments and groups within an organization to collaborate effectively; The ability for all employees at all levels to network with others outside the organization, gaining new sources of useful information and helpful perspectives in the process. This includes networking with customers and other stakeholders, external industry experts, even with competitors or rivals; The ability for all employees at all levels to innovate and experiment without fear of reprisal or marginalization. Indeed, where the culture of the organization is to reward those who think innovatively, participants saw the greatest success in adapting to solve the pressing issues the organization faces.

2. What is a dynamic external environment?

A dynamic business environment is one where the environment is constantly changing in nature. Due to the many and varied influences operating, there is dynamism in the environment causing it to continuously change its shape and character (Holdkunal September 2011).

Industries which have a dynamic environment include: Manufacturing/Technology

3. How can an adaptive culture help Hewlett Packard manage a dynamic environment.
Hewlett Packard (HP) is a global organization with a corporate culture that is spread to employees around the world. Whether at HPs Far East distribution center in Singapore or at research labs in Cupertino, California, employees live by five well-established values known as The HP Way: These values include trust and respect for individuals, a focus on achievement and contribution, the conduct of business with uncompromising integrity, achievement of common objectives through teamwork, and encouragement of flexibility and innovation. [Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard]

An Adaptive Culture could help Hewlett Packard manage a dynamic environment as this type of culture facilitates responsiveness to changes in the business environment in order to gain competitive advantage. Employees willingly accept the change and seeks to develop new strategies for dealing with the changes as they occur.

4. Strategies used by Hewlett Packard to develop an adaptive culture.

The strategy utilized by HP to develop an adaptive culture was the nurturing of a customer-centric environment. The valuing of their customers, developing talent, encouraging innovation,

transformational leadership and reward and recognition.

5. Challenges in building an Adaptive Culture Adapting to change can be very painful, therefore an organization may face many challenges when it comes to building an adaptive culture. organization may encounter: It generates losses. Learning (new things) is often painful. One persons innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant. Change is not easily embraced by many people. Adapting takes time (time consuming). The following are some challenges the

These challenges can be eliminated by the leaderships ability to diagnostically recognize the losses coupled with individuals responses to change at a systemic level. As such, employees must be mobilized to meet the short-term challenges (Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky 2009).

References:
Cooke, R. A. & Lafferty, J. C. (1987). The Organizational Culture Inventory. Plymouth, MI: Human Synergistics, Inc. [Accessed on 16 July 2013]

Douglas N and Wykowski T. ( ),From Belief to Knowledge: Achieving and Sustaining an Adaptive Culture in Organisations [Accessed on 16 July 2013] Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky (2009) Harvard Business Press: The Theory Behind the Practice: A Brief Introduction to the Adaptive Leadership Framework: pp 6 [Online] Available at http://www.faithformationlearningexchange.net/uploads/5/2/4/6/5246709/theory_behind_practice.pdf;: (Accessed 16th July, 2013) Holdkunal (September 2011) Bizcovering: Characteristics of Business Environment Available from: http://bizcovering.com/business/characteristics-of-business-environment-2/#ixzz2ZICZAwc3. [Accessed on 16 July 2013] Kotter, J. P. & Heskett, J. L. (1992). Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: The Free Press. [Accessed on 16 July 2013] Romero E. J. (2005) Complete Outside the Box: Leading to an Adaptive Culture. Accessed from: www.CompeteOutsideTheBox.com. [Accessed on 16 July 2013] The Bloom Institute: Centre for Professional Development and Leadership [Accessed on 16 July 2013]