Adaptive performance

Adaptive performance in the work environment refers to adjusting to and understanding change in the workplace. An employee who is versatile is valued and important in the success of an organization. Employers seek employees with high adaptability, due to the positive outcomes that follow, such as excellent work performance, work attitude, and ability to handle stress. Employees, who display high adaptive performance in an organization, tend to have more advantages in career opportunities unlike employees who are not adaptable to change. In previous literature, Pulakos and colleagues established eight dimensions of adaptive performance.

Pulakos et al. proposed the following dimensions for adaptive performance:

Pulakos et al. developed a scale for adaptive performance based on their eight-dimension model. This scale, the Job Adaptability Inventory (JAI), contains 132 questions (15 – 18 questions per dimension). Another similar tool is the I-ADAPT measure (I-ADAPT-M) developed by Ployhart and Bliese, based on their I-ADAPT theory. They focused on adaptability as a personality-like trait which describes individual’s ability to adapt to organizational changes. Therefore, there is a difference between I-ADAPT-M and the JAI which measures adaptive performance as behaviors. The I-ADAPT-M also has eight dimensions (crisis adaptability, stress adaptability, creative adaptability, uncertain adaptability, learning adaptability, interpersonal adaptability, cultural adaptability, and physical adaptability), with 5 items for every dimension.

Work stress has been considered as a major factor of many work outcomes, like performance, nonproductive behavior and turnover. An employee being able to adapt to change within an organization is more focused, and able to deal with stressful situations. An employee who is unable to absolve their strain is unable to focus on what is occurring in the organization, such as organizational change. Not only can work stress predict adaptive performance to a considerable extent, there are also a lot of overlaps between adaptive performance and stress coping.

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