Team adaptation and the changing nature of work: Lessons from practice, evidence from research, and challenges for the road ahead

Abstract

As the fabric of modern organizations, teams provide capacity to handle the ongoing adaptation demanded by contexts that characterize the future of work. While scholars have studied how team composition and structural characteristics facilitate team adaptation, both research and practice will benefit from also explicating the process of adapting—how a team’s active coping determines team adaptation over time. To move in this direction, we integrate perspectives on team adaptation which emphasize how teams understand complex environments and combine coordination processes to reach adaptive outcomes. This clarifies when, why, and how teams adapt, yielding performance benefits for organizations. Our goal is to offer evidence-based insights and theoretical reasoning to foster future research explaining the team adaptation–performance connection in current complex and changing work environments. JEL classification: L2