Over the last few decades, research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that adaptation is required for success across all types of organizations - corporate, government, military, and at all levels - individual, team, organizational. While the extant literature has led to many critical advances that have pushed the field forward significantly over the last few decades, substantial gaps still exist in our understanding of the adaptation phenomenon. The current study begins to address three of these critical limitations, which include: (1) an over-reliance on static conceptualizations and empirical examinations of adaptation; (2) a lack of attention to the nature of the changes or adaptive events to which individuals are responding in the real world; and (3) a limited understanding about how cognitive, motivational, and affective processes and reactions influence the adaptation process. Specifically, to address these gaps, the current study presents a conceptual model of the adaptation process, which posits that individuals move through three phases of adaptation (situation assessment, planning and strategy selection, and execution and evaluation) as they adapt to a new or changing situation. To track the behaviors that individuals are actually engaging in during each phase, several theoretically-relevant variables (e.g., contingency planning behaviors) were identified and assessed during the study. Additionally, the adaptive events reported by study participants were carefully coded using three existing frameworks (i.e., task complexity type [Wood, 1986]; adaptive performance dimension [Pulakos et al., 2000]; reactive versus proactive change [e.g., Ployhart & Bliese, 2006]). Together, these frameworks allowed for reported events to be meaningfully categorized based on the nature of the change being encountered and the type of adaptation that was required. Several hypotheses were explored to determine the extent to which the type of event impacts the adaptation process. Furthermore, individuals reported their cognitive, affective, and motivational reactions to the events, which were analyzed to understand how these states may impact, or be impacted by, the adaptation process. Finally, several individual differences factors, including goal orientation, openness to experience, trait adaptability, and perceived autonomy, were examined to determine the extent to which characteristics about the individual may help or hinder individuals during the adaptation process. Using an event-based sampling methodology, data were collected on 218 adaptive events from 51 employees at a small research and development company. A wide-range of event types was collected, with findings supporting the hypothesis that the nature of the event does impact an individual's behaviors and effectiveness when adapting to that event. Specifically, the most challenging event types tended to be those that were reactive in nature and that resulted in an increased workload (i.e., do more in less (or the same amount) of time). When responding to these events, individuals often reported more challenged and threatened appraisals, higher levels of anxiety and frustration, less contingency planning, and different, often less effective, behavioral strategies. Individual differences also impacted the adaptation process to some degree, although performance avoid goal orientation and trait adaptability tended to have the most impact (negative and positive, respectively) on behaviors and effectiveness. Together, the findings highlight the importance of looking at the process of adaptation, as well as carefully assessing the type of adaptive event. The failure to do so could mask critical patterns that provide insight into the conditions under which individuals may be more or less successful adapting.
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