Editorial

Abstract

Organizational plasticity: what is it? How does it work and why does it matter? The entire management enterprise has been built on efforts directed towards efficiency (with varying emphases over the decades; see Scott, 2003). This can be defined as the appropriate disposal of resources such that either the least possible inputs are used to produce an output or more output comes from the exploitation of a given amount of inputs (e.g. Simon, 1997Simon, [1947). This approach has provided tremendous support to the development of management as a discipline and it still contributes to the way management is practiced. As a result of this, we know a great deal about how to structure, plan, create, organize, maintain and improve processes, procedures and routines (Abrahamson, 2002). Instead, we know very little about how to disorganize, create simpler structures from complex structures, isolate and deconstruct/ debunk unnecessary routines, reduce bureaucracy to functional levels, for example, (Abrahamson and Freeman, 2013). And this information would have come at great use to face the constraints to organizational actions imposed by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Some have categorized all these aspects under the umbrella of disorganization management (Herath et al., 2016(Herath et al., , 2017 Herath, 2019a, b). However, present day organizations are sometimes required to move towards more flexible and adaptive forms (Fioretti, 2012) due to an ever-changing environment and workforce (Myerson et al., 2010;Raguseo et al., 2016). Especially in the domain of human resource management (HRM) (Ngoc et al., 2021), this need for flexibility has been increasingly evident in the past year, when businesses have had to find different ways to manage the workforce due to unprecedented circumstances arising from the COVID-19 pandemic (Gigauri, 2020;Carnevale and Hatak, 2020).A combination of flexibility and adaptability that makes internal organizational processes malleable and open to change is summarized here with the word plasticity. One of the challenges of this area of study is that it is both costly and difficult to study. It is so because it is usually practiced by trial-and-error in a fluid process where decisions are either unplanned or only partially planned (in a way reminding of what Magnani calls cognizing "through doing"; see Magnani, 2007;Secchi, 2011). This happens because organizational plasticity is motivated (or based), on the one hand, and practiced (or implemented), on the other, under conditions of ambiguity and uncertainty. In the former case, pressures to respond to what could be a temporary condition of the market or to adapt to an ever-changing technological environment are generally difficult to interpret. This, in turn, determines uncertainty in the way in which plasticity is implemented, generating a working solution rather than a recipe. This is not it. Organizational plasticity can be observed at multiple operational levels. While the individual could adopt plastic actions (micro), organi...

Burnt to a crisp? Understanding drivers of burnout amongst New Zealand workers

“…While other countries still grapple with COVID-19 including continuing lockdowns, the current study does initial arguments about the changing situation facing organizations dealing with COVID-19 (e.g. Herath and Secchi, 2021).…”

“…This can then able researchers to calculate odds ratios (see Haar, 2021), “to compare the relative odds of the occurrence” (Szumilas, 2010, p. 227). However, while researchers have well explored job burnout (see Pradhan and Jena, 2018; Pradhan, 2021), there have been calls for more attention to situations since the COVID-19 outbreak (Herath and Secchi, 2021). This study adds to the international literature because while the BAT has been established, there is a lack of studies exploring determinants of high burnt-out risk.…”

Flexibility out of standardization

“…In evolutionary theory, phenotypes exhibit a certain degree of plasticity in spite of genotypes being fixed (Miner et al, 2005). By extension, evolutionary organization science makes use of the term "plasticity" in order to denote adaptations that can be made in spite of certain organizational routines, culture and norms being fixed (Levinthal and Marino, 2015;Herath and Secchi, 2021). Now, consider an organization standardizing boundaries in order to enable creative exploration, while at a slower time scale upgrading those very boundaries from time to time.…”