George, B.P. (2016). Employee Adaptiveness, Workplace Diversity, and Organizational Performance. 32th Annual Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity, held in the Honolulu, HI, USA, during 25-26 April, 2016. www.pacrim.hawaii.edu

1. EMPLOYEE ADAPTIVENESS,
WORKPLACE DIVERSITY,
AND ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
Babu P George, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
Fort Hays State University, USA
bpgeorge@fhsu.edu

2. Adaptive Competence
• Adaptive competence is the extent to which an individual can adapt to changes in a
work system
• Measures of adaptive competence include:
• Solving problems creatively, dealing with uncertain or unpredictable work situations, learning new
tasks, technologies, and procedures, and adapting to other individuals, cultures, or physical
surroundings (Coopmans, et al., 2011).
• The praxeology of adaptive learning provides the foundation for creating an adaptive
workforce.
• “Learning is enhanced not just by bringing people together, but by moving them around to
confront different sorts of clues, gather different kinds of data, use different kinds of tools, and
experience different pressures relevant to a given problem” (Tyre, 1997).
• However, adaptive learning theory has a history of errors.
• “We spent more time tweaking our technologies to the learner (‘Ubiquitous Learning’), but so much
less in tweaking the learner to his environment” (Brusilovsky, 1999)

3. Cross-Cultural Competence
• The ability to understand cultural cues and to behave in culturally appropriate
ways
• Inter-cultural sensitivity, adaptiveness to other cultures
• The capacity to interact effectively with systems and people of culturally diverse
backgrounds
• Probably, the most important form of adaptive competence
• Different cultural contexts (1) contain different kinds of clues about the underlying
issues, (2) offer different resources for generating and analyzing information, and
(3) evoke different assumptions on the part of problem solvers (Tyre, 1997)
• Knowing the cultural context is vital in finding situated solutions and gaining acceptance
• Linkages between cross-cultural knowledge and competitive advantage of
individuals and organizations have been extensively studied (Hall, 1993; Meehan,
Gadiesh, & Hori, 2006; Fiol, 1991; Barney, 1986).
• Overall, positive relationship.

4. The Study
• In-depth case studies of individual business leaders in international
contexts
• Analysis of leadership behavior in various realms, based on the analysis of
biographies and autobiographies
• Organizational studies
• Community organizations, business organizations
• Preliminary results available

5. Key Findings
• There is a silver lining
• “Chronic unemployment” may have become a thing of the past
• It could be true that no train could take you all the way up to your retirement
• But, if you miss a train, the next train may be coming sooner than you expect
• Also, increased global mobility means that you could move to a place where your skills are
still needed
• There is always a home somewhere for you –You just need to find it out.
• Skill learning is not enough
• Given the shortened lifecycle of technologies and skill requirements, quick skill
learning is important.
• But, skill learning doesn’t sufficiently help non-adaptive employment seekers
• Skill development should be built on the cross-cultural adaptive learning platform
• The primary success factor for individuals in the global economy is to become adaptive

6. Key Findings
• Adaptiveness helps with resolving the apparent differences between
conceptual and experiential knowledge.
• Conceptual knowledge imparted in the form of universal ideas
confound with localized experiential knowledge
• There is widespread “confusion” between the two forms of knowledge
• Especially for “emotional laborers”, resolving this is the key to success
• Professional education often prepared students only to become
competent in one or a few core skills
• This trains them to become overly exploitative (of the present)
• Development of adaptive competence is the recipe for exploration (of the
future)
• Acquirement of wider adaptive skills is still largely by means of self-
initiatives

7. Key Findings
• The Uncertainty Principle
• One cannot focus both on position and momentum simultaneously
• Change oriented individuals and organizations cannot simultaneously reap the
maximum benefits from the current “position”
• Winning over the current competition is not everything!
• High adaptive competence might result in short term inefficiencies in individual
and organizational performance
• Certain degree of “foolishness” cannot be avoided when new things are tried
and tested
• Imperfections in learning while exploring future pathways, however, are
generally great investments
• Long term organizational success depends upon balancing investments in the
exploitation of known capabilities and the exploration of new possibilities.
• Even the latter should not be allowed to have a constant free run.
• Some known capabilities could be the result of previous exploration.

8. Key Findings
• Self awareness of adaptive competence helps identify new problems /
opportunities
• Both in individuals and in organizations
• Problems that can be solved by the adaptive competence
• The value of capabilities remain unnoticed, until adaptive
competence is developed
• Adaptive competence transforms static capabilities into dynamic
capabilities
• Specialization is an enemy of adaptive competence
• Yet, specialization has its advantages
• Maybe, the traditional notion that professional skills should be built on a
broad liberal arts foundation is still very valid.
• Adaptive individuals and organizations are found to be capable of
absorbing complexity without analyzing and reducing it.
• They use an emic approach to making sense of data

9. Key Findings
• The State is a barrier to individual adaptiveness
• It was noted that traditionally held values like nationalism and patriotism (or,
ethnocentrism in general) have built barriers to global adaptiveness of
individuals
• Reference to case studies in China and India
• These values are strongly held, but not deeply rooted
• In a few years after getting exposed to foreign cultures, most employees seemed to
downplay the hegemonic operationalization of these values
• But, States too realize that their economic futures depend upon their individual
citizens adapting to global values and the States themselves projecting to the
outside world an adaptive destination image
• This explains laxity in the application of sedition and related charges

10. In Summary
• The new homeless are the chronically unemployed ones whose once valuable
skills have become obsolete, thanks to globalization and the onslaught of
technologies
• Remaining adaptive to the changing work environment has become more difficult, as a
result of increasing uncertainty and chaos in the environment.
• The human resource development profession is still catching up with the
complexities of our interconnected and interdependent world.
• Understanding the conflicting expectations of a global stakeholder-base is a constant
challenge.
• Developing adaptive competence in the workforce is the way to go.

11. Thank you!