Adaptive performance in the work environment refers to adjusting to and understanding change in the workplace. An employee who is versatile is valued and important in the success of an organization. Employers seek employees with high adaptability, due to the positive outcomes that follow, such as excellent work performance, work attitude, and ability to handle stress. Employees, who display high adaptive performance in an organization, tend to have more advantages in career opportunities unlike employees who are not adaptable to change. In previous literature, Pulakos and colleagues established eight dimensions of adaptive performance.
Dimensions
Pulakos et al. proposed the following dimensions for adaptive performance: Handling emergencies and crisis situations: making quick decisions when faced with an emergency. Handling stress in the workforce: keeping composed and focused on task at hand when dealing with high demand tasks Creative problem solving: thinking outside the boundary limits, and innovatively to solve a problem. Dealing with uncertain and unpredictable work situations: able to become productive despite the occurrence of unknown situations. Learning and manipulating new technology, task, and procedures: approach new methods and technological constructs in order to accomplish a work task. Demonstrating interpersonal adaptability: being considerate of other people's points of view when working in a team to accomplish a certain goal. Demonstrating cultural adaptability: being respectful and considerate of different cultural backgrounds. Demonstrating physically oriented adaptability: physically adjusting one's self to better fit the surrounding environment.
Measurement
Pulakos et al. developed a scale for adaptive performance based on their eight-dimension model. This scale, the Job Adaptability Inventory (JAI), contains 132 questions (15 – 18 questions per dimension). Another similar tool is the I-ADAPT measure (I-ADAPT-M) developed by Ployhart and Bliese, based on their I-ADAPT theory. They focused on adaptability as a personality-like trait which describes individual's ability to adapt to organizational changes. Therefore, there is a difference between I-ADAPT-M and the JAI which measures adaptive performance as behaviors. The I-ADAPT-M also has eight dimensions (crisis adaptability, stress adaptability, creative adaptability, uncertain adaptability, learning adaptability, interpersonal adaptability, cultural adaptability, and physical adaptability), with 5 items for every dimension.
Predictors
Several predictors of adaptive performance have been examined systematically, including cognitive abilities, Big Five personality traits, and goal orientation. According to the meta-analytic evidence, cognitive abilities promote adaptive performance. Cognitive abilities are particularly important when dealing with complex dynamic tasks. Other examined antecedences of adaptive performance seem to be less important than cognitive abilities. To illustrate, personality traits like Big Five are weakly related to adaptive performance. Only emotional stability and conscientiousness seem to be somewhat relevant. Motivational predictors have been examined too. However, goal orientation (e.g., learning goal orientation) is only relevant when predicting subjective (e.g., self-reported) adaptive performance. Thus, goal orientation is not useful when predicting objective adaptive performance (e.g., task outcomes).
Work stress
Work stress has been considered as a major factor of many work outcomes, like performance, nonproductive behavior and turnover. An employee being able to adapt to change within an organization is more focused, and able to deal with stressful situations. An employee who is unable to [absolve their strain] is unable to focus on what is occurring in the organization, such as organizational change. Not only can work stress predict adaptive performance to a considerable extent, there are also a lot of overlaps between adaptive performance and stress coping.