Understanding Organizational Adaptation to Change: The Case of Work-Family Issues

Abstract

The last 10–15 years have seen dramatic changes in the nature of the U.S. workforce and in the structure of family life in the United States. Organizational managers face the difficult task of interpreting these changes and of deciding how to adapt the organization's human resource policies to these changes. In this paper, we examine the processes that underlie organizational adaptation to environmental changes, focusing particular attention on describing the processes by which changes are noticed, interpreted, and elicit action. We argue that the same demographic facts are likely to get different amounts of organizational attention and may be interpreted quite differently, depending on the characteristics of the organizational context and on how work-family issues are framed. Human resource professionals have an extremely important role to play in determining both the likelihood and nature of an organization's actions with respect to work-family changes by shaping the interpretation process.