The Adaptive Organization and Fast-Slow Systems
The Adaptive Organization and Fast-Slow Systems
- Torben Juul AndersenTorben Juul AndersenDepartment of International Economics and Management, Copenhagen Business School
- , and Carina Antonia HallinCarina Antonia HallinDepartment of International Economics and Management, Copenhagen Business School
Summary
Contemporary organizations operate under turbulent business conditions and must adapt their strategies to ongoing changes. Sustainable performance can be achieved when the organization engages in interactive processes that link emerging opportunities to forward-looking analytics. But few organizations are able to practice this consistently. Fast processes performed by managers at the frontline respond to ongoing environmental stimuli and slow processes initiated by managers at the center interpret events and reasons about updated strategic actions. Current experiential insights from the fast processes can be aggregated systematically to inform the slow processes of reasoning. When the fast and slow processes interact they can form a dynamic system that adapts organizational activities to changing conditions.
Keywords
Subjects
- Business Policy and Strategy
- Organization Theory
- Organizational Behavior