The motivational underpinnings of adaptability

The past few decades have seen dramatic changes in the nature of work that individuals and teams carry out in work organizations, as well as in the composition of the workforce itself (e.g., Ilgen and Pulakos, 1999). For example, employees are now expected to transition effectively across multiple projects, work assignments, and even organizations throughout their career. They are also expected to work in more interdependent team environments, often with members from different cultural backgrounds. As noted by Schmitt and Chan (this volume), such changes have placed greater importance on the concept of employee adaptability or adaptivity, which can be defid as “the degree to which individuals cope with, respond to, and/or support changes that affect their roles as individuals (Griffin Neal, and Parker, 2007, p. 331). In this chapter we conceptualize employee adaptability broadly to include cognitive, affective, and behavioral components, including learning and transfer of new skills, psychological adjustment (e.g., in response to organizational or career changes), and effective behavior following changes to task requirements. We concur with Schmitt and Chan that adaptability-particularly demonstrated adaptive behavior or adaptive performance is a function of individuals’ ability (i.e., “can do”) and motivation (i.e., “will do”). We focus on the latter, specfically examining employee adaptability through the lens of work motivation theories. Our main aims are to explain the motivational underpinnings of employees’ adaptive behavior, and to propose future research directions directed at enhancing further our understanding of motivational processes as drivers of employee adaptability.