A Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Approach to Measuring Organizational Adaptation in Organizations and Investigating its Relationship with R&D Performance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a scale for measuring organizational adaptation and investigating its relationship with R&D performance. For this purpose, the items were developed in accordance with the dimensions of organization design, and the scale was tested first in a pilot study, and after making revisions and modifications, it was employed in the main study on two different samples, one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and the other for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The final scale consists of 17 items categorized under 4 dimensions labeled as contextual factors, tasks and roles, labor and labor division, and rules and regulations. The results indicate that except for rules and regulations, all dimensions of organizational adaptation bear higher values in high R&D performance cluster. The organizations who enforce adaptation in all the other three dimensions yield more innovation which will help them in their decisions regarding their adaptive responses.