The Human Capacity to Adapt in the Workplace & Continuous Organizational Change
Author: Ammie Sims
Published by Intersecting Visions Foundation
Research Publication HI-RP-2026-003
Human Integration™ Research Library
Exploring Resilience, Flexibility, Identity, and Human Development as People and Organizations Learn Together
Publication Information
Publication | HI-RP-2026-003 |
Research Area | Human Development & Organizational Adaptation |
Author | Ammie Sims |
Publisher | Intersecting Visions Foundation |
Publication Date | September 2026 |
Reading Time | 20 minutes |
Version | 1.0 |
Publication Type | Research Publication |
Executive Summary
Humans live in a world of change. We have to constantly learn and adapt to new technology, tasks, and information. Learning to adapt to changing relationships and situations is never easy. Let's take a closer look at Human Development and Organizational Adaptation.
Change can be both positive and challenging. For instance, we may find ourselves changing to adapt to circumstances beyond our control. Most of the time, when discussing human change, we focus on the human side of those changes.
What can humans do to be more resilient?
What can we do to adapt as employees in the workplace?
As humans, what do we need to help create a successful adaptation environment?
As those are great questions, we are also part of many different ripple effects.
Our family.
Our community.
Organization(s) involved.
Or places we go to learn and develop ourselves.
These environments shape our experience of change. Whether there are resources to help or if we are expected to learn and adapt on our own.
Psychological research identifies flexibility, coping strategies, and social resources as important factors in resilience (American Psychological Association, 2022). Organizational research also examines how change occurs through both distinct transitions and ongoing adjustments to everyday activities (Weick & Quinn, 1999).
This research always poses an interesting question for society, especially in today's modern world:
How can humans and organizations both work to learn and develop as they are changing?
This publication explores factors that can help humans build resilience and adapt. As well as helping an organization be resilient and adaptable with its people. It touches on identity, learning, and helping each other through these ongoing processes.
I believe we need to explore not only how people adapt, but also what helps them regain a sense of stability as their workplace continues to change.
What are they adapting to?
Who are they adapting alongside?
And how can both employees and organizations recognize the benefits of what they are learning along the way?
From a Human Integration™ perspective, the goal is not simply to teach people how to keep up with change. It is also important to consider what helps them regain a sense of stability, recognize the value of their existing knowledge, and develop new capacities alongside the organizations in which they work.
The goal is not to establish one correct way to respond to change. It explores how people and organizations might develop the capacity to navigate changing circumstances by considering the relationships, experiences, and values involved, and by working together to create a seamless workflow.
Human Integration™ brings these ideas together by asking people and organizations to examine change from both sides. Rather than focusing only on what employees must learn, we also consider what the organization must learn from them, what existing knowledge should be preserved, and what support people need as they develop new capacities.
Keywords: Human adaptation, continuous organizational change, resilience, psychological flexibility, organizational learning, organizational socialization, identity, leadership, human development, human integration
1. Starting At The Starting Point
For example, when you start a new job, you may notice many things that are different from your previous job.
New coworkers, new expectations.
New technology
New procedures.
You may have been excited about your new position and have learned some of what you need to know to educate yourself before starting. Or you may not have had time to prepare. Either way, when you walked into your new job, there were many things that you needed to learn.
It's inevitable you will have to learn all of this and much more upon starting any new job/career position.
They probably told you that when you got hired.....
Now, there are probably some new tasks you know you will have to learn and some old ways of doing things you may need to unlearn. Depending on the complexity of the task, some things may take longer to learn than others. This is adaptation in action.
But change doesn't stop once you start your new job.
There will be new employees joining your workplace, new projects, and maybe new products or services the organization will offer. All these things will change what you have learned and how to adapt. Because you have to continue learning as your job and workplace change. In which both new and older employees are experiencing in real time as new hires come aboard. In management, this ongoing process is known as continuous organizational change (Weick & Quinn, 1999).
So what is the best way to maintain a seamless workflow?
Weick and Quinn (1999) distinguish episodic change from continuous change. Their framework supports your broader point that organizational change can emerge through ongoing adjustments to everyday activities.
2. So what makes an effective workflow effective?
I think we would say that when our workplace functions in a way that allows tasks to get done.
Everyone knows their job.
Information gets distributed properly.
Jobs get completed on time.
Employees can go to someone for assistance.
An effective workflow may not mean there will never be issues.
Perhaps you have implemented a new program or system, and people are unfamiliar with it. A newly hired employee may have questions that your long-term employee forgot about because it's been years since they were new to the position. You may receive a new client/project and learn that your existing procedure doesn't fulfill your needs.
All of these examples can interrupt what we are accustomed to.
However, it can provide insight into something we need to learn. Let's assume an organization has been doing a task the same way for many years. They hire a new employee, and that employee has questions about one step they need to take. Maybe your long-term employee knows why that step is involved in the process. They may tell you about what was happening in the past and why this step became necessary. That step may be beneficial. Or it may no longer be necessary.
Now we can learn about what we are currently doing and why we are doing it.
This is where the concept of organizational learning becomes relevant.
Argyris and Schön (1978) distinguished between forms of organizational learning that involve correcting problems within existing assumptions and those that involve reconsidering the assumptions themselves.
For our example:
The team might decide that the existing procedure simply needs to be explained more clearly.
Or it might discover that the procedure itself should be reconsidered.
Each of these scenarios answers the same question in different ways. They allow humans and organizations to teach others. Which is huge!
I think that when we keep our workflow functioning, we want to teach our employees and organizations what they may need to learn. Having an effective workflow can be seen when we teach others, when changes are occurring.
3. New Employees and Experienced Employees Have Something to Learn From One Another
Wait, how is this possible, especially with more established employees?
When we think about new employees, we tend to assume they know nothing about the "new workplace." But we forget that they have life experience. Maybe from their previous jobs or schooling. That doesn't mean our experienced employees have nothing to teach them, either. They have learned about customers and procedures your organization may follow throughout their tenure.
In the grand scheme of things, nobody knows everything. And just because someone has been an employee for a long time doesn't mean their information is more useful.
Your new employee may learn a skill applicable to your current work environment. Your old employee may learn why their method isn't applicable to your work environment.
They have both now just gained information from each other.
Research on organizational socialization helps explain the newcomer's side of this process. Bauer et al. (2007) found that newcomer adjustment was related to important workplace outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance, intentions to remain, and turnover.
Of course, a newly hired employee cannot control all of these variables while acclimating to a work environment. There are many aspects they will need to become accustomed to when joining a new organization.
What about your old employees?
Maybe they will need to learn about new ways of working with one another.
Another aspect I believe we should share with a new employee walking into an organization is that adaptation is key. They will be contributing to how the organization adapts.
As mentioned above, your organization has things to teach as well. Everyone can benefit from teaching and learning from one another.
Not that you should throw away everything you currently know.
But when you learn to integrate, you will better understand yourself and your organization during that process.
4. Resilience: What Helps Us Find Stability While Things Keep Changing?
When we think of someone who is resilient, we think of someone who can withstand the bad. Maybe it's a natural disaster or a difficult life event. We believe they can push through it and continue.
Perhaps resilience isn't about how long someone can tolerate something bad.....
According to the APA (2022), people are described as resilient when they demonstrate mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility in the face of adversity. COPING skills and social resources also play a factor when people exhibit resiliency.
So what helps people adapt to something new?
Let's assume you and your coworker need to learn a new program. Maybe one of you is provided more information on how to use the program and given time to learn it.
While the other person may have received minimal instructions.
Both employees may be equally intelligent and capable of learning.
Just that one has been allowed to adapt to the situation they are in. Which leads me back to my statement about reaching a baseline.
Baseline, in everyday terms, is used to describe that you've reached some sort of homeostasis in life. Maybe it's recovering from trauma. Or becoming used to something you didn't know before.
Your job may not allow you to return to your old job if you add new variables to your job. Perhaps your new job no longer requires you to do what you once did. And you will become accustomed to your new responsibilities.
How do you teach people to return to their "baseline"?
If we assume the job won't stay the same. We may need to focus on how to stabilize when things change.
When applying to Human Integration™, I believe that we need to teach people how to be resilient. While also providing them with information that will help them reach a state of stability.
5. What can we learn when something changes?
Let's suppose your organization has been doing something for 20 years.
It's helpful to you, your clients, and customers. Then something new comes along that could make your job easier.
Should you change?
Maybe or maybe not. That new technology could help you better serve your client. Help you complete repetitive tasks. Allow your customer to experience your service more quickly.
Or it could cost you money. Create more stress or new variables that weren't previously there.
We have to think about what it is we are trying to accomplish when we learn to be adaptable.
Weick and Quinn (1999) described the concept of organizational change. Episodic vs continuous change. Both can apply to this.
Your organization may need to drastically change what they are currently doing.
They may learn to be more flexible when completing tasks.
Or your organization may continue to do what it's currently doing because it's helping it achieve what it wants.
This concept can be applied to people as well. You may need to learn something new. Or you may learn to re-evaluate what you're doing.
Learning to adapt can be beneficial to you and your organization. As long as you know what you're learning.
When applying Human Integration™, we want to know what we are teaching people and organizations to do when something changes.
We want them to understand the difference between conforming and adapting.
I believe the question to ask is how our organizations and we can become adaptive.
6. What Happens When People Feel Comfortable Asking Questions?
What if you noticed that your organization didn't cover something when implementing change?
Maybe the new process will lead to more work for your department. You could mention that it may be difficult for your customer to meet your expectations. Or you could come up with a new idea.
Would you feel comfortable bringing this up to your employer?
How would you feel if no one listened?
This brings me to psychological safety. In a study of 51 work teams at a manufacturing company. Edmondson (1999) looked at psychological safety and team learning. It was found that psychological safety was related to learning behavior, and that learning behavior mediated the effect of psychological safety on team learning.
If you feel psychologically safe, you can take risks when interacting with others.
Such as learning from others, voicing your opinions, and knowing that others will listen to your concerns.
People will still have jobs to get done. Not all changes will be accepted. Some ideas may be better than others.
But what if your employees knew that you would hear their concerns? Your organization may proceed with the changes it needs to implement. And unknowingly cause harm to your organization. Because your employees aren't letting you know how these changes are affecting them.
Maybe your employee knows how to teach others and wants to share that information with you. We need to learn to ask questions and allow others to ask us questions.
Someone could have worked there for 20 years and wants to learn how to be adaptive. Not all questions will be harmful to your organization. They may want to better understand why your organization is learning something.
Allowing people to teach you will help your organization learn more efficiently.
7. Organizational Learning: When Experience Becomes Shared Knowledge
Think about all of the information an old employee knows about their job. They may know why you do certain tasks, why you respond to your customers in certain ways, and know which steps you need to complete when completing a task.
Some of that information may be documented, and some may not.
If that employee left your organization, what happened to the information they gathered over the years?
When organizations learn. It's not just teaching their employees how to do their job. It can also help your organization grow. That is part of the heart of Human Integration.
Argyris and Schön (1978) discussed organizational learning by examining errors and how to correct them. When your organization can teach each other about their mistakes and learn from them. They can become more adaptive.
Maybe someone on your team figures out a faster way to complete a task. But they never inform your organization and continue to work alone.
They will still complete their job efficiently.
But if that lesson wasn't shared it could help others work faster as well.
The same can be said about your new employees. If your training does not reflect what they are actually learning, you may miss opportunities to improve how you introduce new employees to your organization.
We need to continue to educate ourselves and our employees. By allowing our employees to teach us about their work and why they may want to learn something new. Your organization can become more efficient when completing its work.
Individual learning can contribute to organizational development when people have opportunities to share, examine, and apply what they have learned.
8. New Technology, Same Humans
Technology has taken over many aspects of our lives. When implementing a change, such as adding new technology to your organization. You have to remember that people will be working in those jobs.
Once you purchase the program, your leadership has likely determined what it can do for your business. Your employees will need to learn about it as well.
What will it help them with?
Are there any jobs that may be taken away from them?
What do they need to know in order to operate the system?
We need to ensure our employees know how to use these programs and are comfortable working with them. An OECD Working Paper discussed the importance of consulting with workers when implementing an Algorithmic Management System. Milanez (2025) conducted a lab experiment using workers from three German manufacturing companies to study worker consultation. Milanez found that when participants are allowed to consult on the design of a technology, they believe it can maximize productivity while improving job quality. Of course, this was limited to a specific technology and used in a lab setting. Participants came from three different factories in Germany and could possibly benefit other countries as well. But we can still learn from the data they collected.
What if your employees were allowed to have input when implementing new changes?
They may know what will and won't work. What your organization could improve or change to make their jobs easier. This will allow you and your employees to learn how to better utilize the technology you've added.
9. Identity: What Happens to the Experience We Already Have?
I've been wondering about what happens to people that we ask to adapt.
What are they giving up when we ask them to change?..
Maybe they will learn a new skill or way of doing things.
What about the skills they already know.
What about the relationships they've built.
Maybe someone has worked in their career field for 20 years. They know their job. They may even know things about their customers that you don't.
You implement a program that they need to learn. They may be able to learn that technology just as fast as their newly hired counterparts.
But what about all of the things they know from past experience?
When we think about organizational learning, we also need to think about what they were doing before. Research has been done on organizational identity. Gioia et al. (2013) reviewed articles examining organizational identity and how organizations form. Some researchers examined how organizations can remain the same even as they change.
We don't want to assume that everyone will have the same experience when learning something new. Some may enjoy learning, while others may fear it or lack the capacity for it.....
Some may feel happy, and others may be afraid. These emotions can change over the course of someone's learning.
From a Human Integration™ perspective, I believe we can explore how people and organizations develop the capacity to adapt while continuing to value what they already know.
This can be applied when someone joins your organization. Not only do they need to learn new information. They can also bring new information to your organization.
We don't have to tell our employees that when something new happens, they have to throw everything out. We can continue to grow our organizations and teach our employees that they have value in what they already know.
Teach them to add instead of replace.
10. When the Organization Needs to Adapt, Too
When we implement change, we expect people to learn to be adaptive.
What if your change doesn't go as planned?
Maybe your employees will discover something you didn't know when creating your plan. What if your customers aren't happy with your changes?
Should everyone continue to work off the original plan?
We also need to learn how to adapt as we implement changes within our organization.
As previously stated, your organization may discover new ways to carry out its work. Or they may decide to stay the same because it works for them.
When teaching our employees to be adaptive. We should remember that change can happen in small ways as well. Weick and Quinn (1999) reviewed research that focused on continuous change in organizations. They stated that you can continuously change your organization by changing its activities.
Maybe you learned that your employees will struggle when implementing the change you decided to add. Now that you're aware, you can continue to work on how your organization will change.
By adding variables that you may not have thought of when deciding to change your organization. Remember that change will continue to occur once we implement it.
Many factors come into play when someone learns something new. But if your employee knows how to learn. They can help you become more efficient at teaching others.
11. Leadership Is Part of the Adaptation Process
Leaders play an important role when implementing change. There are many aspects that your leader will need to be mindful of when your organization makes a change.
Your leader will need to know why the change is needed.
How can it affect your employees?
Make sure your employees have what they need to learn how to be adaptive and know what to expect when implementing change.
Your employees will also need to be aware of changes that may occur in the workplace. They may need to learn new skills or change how they work.
Leaders and employees have similar responsibilities when learning to be adaptive. Some people may be able to do what we ask of them.
We need to make sure that our employees are able to learn and continue to learn about becoming adaptive.
We have discussed how learning can occur between teammates. Edmondson (1999) discussed psychological safety in teams. Milanez (2025) discussed how consulting with employees can benefit an organization when introducing new technology.
We can use these theories to teach our leaders how to help others become adaptive. By allowing our leaders to continue to ask questions. What we can provide to our employees as they learn to become adaptive.
Ask your leaders what they can learn from their employees. And how can they allow others to teach them?
12. What Might Shared Adaptation Look Like?
Let's put all of these pieces together.
Say you have decided to implement a change in your organization.
Maybe you learned something that you want to share with your team.
How can you help them become adaptive?
5 Things to Ask When Learning to Become Adaptive
The following questions reflect my developing perspective on how people and organizations can learn through change. They are intended to encourage discussion and further exploration.
What are you trying to learn? Why are you learning this?
Who will be affected when learning this? Can your change affect more people than you know of?
What do you need to learn? What can you continue to do that will help you? Are there new skills you'll need to learn?
Who will teach you? What information can they share with you that others may not know?
What can you learn after teaching yourself and others about this change? What can your organization do if your change doesn't go as planned?
Remember that everyone and every organization will learn differently from each other. These are questions you can start with when teaching yourself and your employees how to become adaptive in today's modern workforce.
Conclusion: Learning to Adapt Together
Let's use the example of starting a new job; it applies to any situation in life.
You have to learn who all the people are.
What your job duties are and what your new company expects of you.
Once you are used to your job, you will still be learning.
There will be new people at your job. New projects you may be asked to complete. New technology, and maybe something your company finds out it should change about something it has been doing for years.
New and old employees may be learning as well.
How can we continue to adapt as a person and as an organization?
While still being able to flow.
I think it comes down to us learning different directions.
Our organization can teach us something.
Our experienced employees can teach those who have just arrived. Those that just arrived can teach us something we didn't know about our job.
And maybe our leader can learn something by listening to those who are actually doing the work.
We must also allow ourselves to find comfort as change continues. Maybe it's about allowing yourself to go back to how things were or to create something new. But remember where you came from.
As humans, we can always learn something new.
We don't always have to forget everything we know and adapt to new changes.
Learn what we need to change, what we can still use, and what we can gain more of.
More capacity.
Maybe having a flow that no one interrupts by learning is not possible.
Maybe we can just allow each other to learn. Teach others and grow.
And that leaves us with a question worth carrying forward:
What could people and organizations learn from one another if we treated adaptation as an ongoing process rather than something employees are expected to complete on their own?
Human Integration™ Research Posture
Human Integration™ approaches every emerging field with humility, curiosity, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
We do not claim to have all the answers. Instead, we seek to listen, learn, research, collaborate, and contribute responsibly as our understanding grows.
Our publications are intended to encourage thoughtful discussion, integrate diverse perspectives, and support practical understanding in service to human flourishing.
References
American Psychological Association. (2022). Resilience. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Addison-Wesley.
Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M., & Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 707–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.707
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Gioia, D. A., Patvardhan, S. D., Hamilton, A. L., & Corley, K. G. (2013). Organizational identity formation and change. Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), 123–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2013.762225
Milanez, A. (2025). Exploring win-win outcomes of algorithmic management: Lessons from a laboratory experiment on worker consultation (OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers No. 43). OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/84b59397-en
Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 361–386. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.361
Suggested Citation
Sims, A. (2026). The human capacity to adapt in the workplace & continuous organizational change: Exploring resilience, flexibility, identity, and human development as people and organizations learn together (Research Publication HI-RP-2026-003, Version 1.0). Intersecting Visions Foundation.
Copyright and Publication Information
© 2026 Intersecting Visions Foundation. All rights reserved.
Human Integration™ Research Library
Published by Intersecting Visions Foundation
Human progress without losing our humanity.™
Since Im in college and have a job I feel that this article could apply to me. From school to work to life you are constantly learning how to adjust to new situations.
When adjusting you dont have to forget all of your past experience. You can take what you know from your job and apply it to your school work and visa versa.
Another thing that caught my eye was that we should learn from others. When I'm in a group project at school or working with others at my job we all have different background to learn from one another.
I liked this article very much. Even though its about work life I feel as if we use this in our everyday lives. We always have things that we are learning about in our lives. Family life relationships etc. Some things we will have to learn and some we will just remember why its important.
Another thing I liked about this article is we don't have to learn all of these things ourselves. There are people around us who we can learn from and help others learn. Something we should all do in life.
HR deals with these concepts everyday. We help new employees learn about the company, current employees as well. We train and collaborate with management on how the workplace is evolving.
I liked that there are ways for employees to learn but also for companies to learn from their employees. They have knowledge and experiences as well.
As HR and management and employees all come together we can better our processes. Helping new employees understand their position, improving communication, learn from older employees and help them transition through change. Help find areas we need to better educate and resolve those issues.
This was good because it showed how we learn as humans and apply that to the workplace. Learning from others…
I have been with my company for 23 years as a stylist. I felt that this article was very relevant to me. My company has good retention but also have stylists coming into our salon who bring new ideas and methods of doing things.
I feel like after 23 years I know many things that can help others. But there are also new stylists that have taught me things I haven't known.
This reminded me that when you learn new methods it doesn't mean that what you know isn't useful. Just open to learn from each other and learn what others know.
Being the CEO I felt this was very insightful. Many times we think about how we need to help our employees transition when we implement changes in our business. But what can we learn from our employees when implementing change?
I think about the older employees and new employees passing down their knowledge to each other. We can always learn something from others.
How can we better enable this type of learning as we transition into the future.