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Purpose Organizations increasingly operate under volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. Traditional command-and-control leadership can be ineffective in such chaotic environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline an alternative model to help leaders and organizations navigate effectively through VUCA environments. By developing three fundamental capacities (absorptive, adaptive and generative), leaders can cultivate organizations capable of continuous synchronization with their fitness landscapes. Central tenets of the framework include diversity, slack, learning, humility, reflection in action and abductive logic. Design/methodology/approach This framework is designed based on literature insights, conceptual analysis and experts’ judgment. The paper integrates knowledge from a variety of disciplines and interprets them through the lens of complex adaptive systems. Findings This paper argues for a process centered, contemplative approach to organizational leadership and development. By providing the underlying rationale for the proposed interventions (e.g. Ashby’s law of requisite variety), the paper also reorients busy leaders’ mental models to show why these time investments are worth implementing. Practical implications This actionable framework can help leaders and organizations be more effective operating in a VUCA context. Originality/value This paper provides a historic context as to why prediction and certainty are favored leadership strategies, why these approaches are no longer suitable and specific steps leaders can take to develop absorptive, adaptive and generative capacities to transform their organizations. Its scholarly contribution is the synthesis of disparate bodies of literature, weaving those multiple academic perspectives into a practical roadmap to enhance organizational leadership.

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Fundraisers play a vital role in the success of nonprofit organizations, yet relatively little is known about the experiences, motivations, and thought processes that inform their career choice and development. This exploratory, cross-comparative case study of 3 fundraisers addresses this gap in the literature by examining some formative influences on fundraisers' careers, their professional growth aspirations and opportunities, and how, if at all, they engage in personal philanthropy. Results suggest that fundraisers' aptitudes, skills, and abilities may influence their career choice more than a sense of connection to the nonprofit sector or organizational mission. Further, fundraisers seek opportunities to exercise leadership at the individual, organizational, and community levels. Additionally, their personal philanthropy and social embeddedness play integral roles in their professional development. Although not large enough for generalization, these results suggest the need to study fundraisers holistically, including their psychological development and social embeddedness over time. We argue for the need to move beyond traditional marketing and public relations perspectives to explain fundraising. Instead, future studies should adopt a service-dominant logic framing that considers fundraisers as part of a larger philanthropic ecosystem. We conclude with several questions to guide future studies toward this line of inquiry.

In this paper, we integrate Eastern and Western perspectives of practical wisdom to answer the question, how can practical wisdom transfer across cultural boundaries in a world of increasing interconnection? We describe key properties of practical wisdom in early Western and Eastern schools of thoughts and explain how the concept of practical wisdom in ancient philosophy aligns with modern-day complex system science. We identify seven qualities of complex adaptive systems as a universal pattern that underlies both Eastern and Western perspectives. From these qualities, we develop an integrated conceptual framework of practical wisdom as factors both internal and external to the self that promote continuous coupling with the broader operating environment. We propose that practical wisdom functions as an adaptive algorithm capable of continuously evaluating its processing rules to maintain fit with the operating environment while generating ongoing novelty. This generativity expands developmental potential across multiple levels and fosters open-endedness, evolvability, and antifragility. With this functional understanding, ethics can no longer be marginalized-it must be recognized as the foundation for sustainable organizing because it reliably creates a network topology that makes innovation and long-term success possible. We close with actions leaders can take to foster practical wisdom.