Seminar – Organisational adaptation in a goal-framing perspective

Professor Nicolai Foss, Copenhagen Business School

Research increasingly focuses on how organisations may develop the resilience that allows them to adapt to major adverse and unforeseen events and highlights how different resources and capabilities, organisational designs, and cultures may support such adaptation. However, the microfoundations of organisational adaptation have received less attention. We argue that organisational resilience requires the mobilisation of a kind of collective motivation among organisational members that motivates them towards effective and sustained adaptation. A necessary condition for the emergence of such motivation is that members are in a normative mindset that is oriented towards collective goals; if they are not, other mindsets that are oriented towards individual-level goals will dominate. To overcome this social dilemma, organisations need to install rules that make the normative mindset salient. However, the normative mindset may also lead to a rigid adherence to rules that may not be functional in adaptation. Therefore, organisations also need to formulate rules so that rigid rule-following is avoided and adaptive actions flexibly oriented towards collective goals are promoted.

Speaker bio

Nicolai J. Foss (born 1964) is a Professor of Strategy at the Department of Strategy and Innovation, CBS, Honorary Adjunct Professor, Department of Marketing & Management, Southern Denmark University, and External Chair, Danish Institute for Advanced Studies, 2020-2025. He is a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.

Foss founded the Center (later Department) of Strategic Management and Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School in 2005, and served as its Director/HoD until 1 April, 2015. He managed two CBS “World Class Environment” programs at CBS (2008-2015; 2014-2016). Foss has served as a panel member of the European Research Council and on the Board of Directors of the Strategic Management Society. Foss is a member of Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society. He is the 2020 Chairperson of the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group.

His work has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and several other leading journals.

For more information, please contact Luke Slater.