The adaptive cycle of resilience: Indicators for
organizational movements
Marc van Rossum - 12120499
11
Supervised by Emoke Takacs & Toon Abcouwer
Abstract— More and more organizations find themselves operating in high velocity environments that change at a rapid pace. In this research a look is taken at organizations and how they act in times of prosperity and at how they acts in times of crisis with regards to the adaptive cycle of resilience (ACoR cycle). The intention is to find whether there are indicators that could indicate that a movement from either a stable point to a crisis or that an movement from a crisis back to a stable point is about to happen. To do this a set of case studies will be assessed and indicators will be extracted from them. The found indicators will then be validated by means of a survey. Results suggest that there are indicators to be found for both movements. This research is of an exploratory nature and offers various topics for potential future research regarding the indicators.
I. INTRODUCTION
There are many examples of companies that once were successful but at one point failed to innovate enough to survive. [Carroll et al.2009] An example of such a company is Kodak whose managers were not able to see digital photogra-phy as a disruptive technology, even as its re-searchers extended the boundaries of the tech-nology. Which eventually led to Kodak going bankrupt [Mui2012]. However there are also com-panies that were able to innovate and survived a critical phase. An example of such an com-pany is Apple, which today is one of the most valuable organizations in the world [Feiner2019]. However after the departure of Steve Jobs their popularity and innovation stagnated. When Steve Jobs got rehired the organization was operating at loss. After a successful re-branding campaign, Apple turned itself around and started making money again [Shontell2010]. What is illustrated in
these two examples is that every organization goes through different phases. At a given point organi-zations must innovate in order to survive. These examples also illustrate a certain flow, namely from an equilibrium to a crisis point and from a crisis to a new equilibrium. These movements in itself are not new and have been well documented. The adaptive cycle of resilience captures these elements and describes the characteristics of each phase an organizations goes through. This cycle will be explained in more detail later in the report. But roughly it states that an organization goes through cyclic development that follows a standard path that never stops. This model suggests that an organization moves from an presumed equilibrium to crisis to new combinations to operationalize to equilibrium.[Abcouwer et al.2019] While each of these phases have been well defined little to no research exists that gives possible causes for an organization to move from a equilibrium to a crisis or from a crisis to a new equilibrium.
The main objective of this research is to find out what indicators can influence or cause both these movements. To achieve this goal the fol-lowing research question is asked: ”When look-ing at the Adaptive Cycle of Resilience(ACoR), what are the (possible) indicators of an impending movement from the right side (equilibrium) to the left side(crisis) and from the left side (crisis) to the right side (new equilibrium) of the adaptive cycle?”. With the second movement, namely from crisis to equilibrium, is meant that an organization in a crisis situation innovates enough to reach the operalization phase which eventually leads them to a new equilibrium. To provide an answer to the research question an exploratory research will be conducted. In order to have a better structure whilst
researching three sub questions will be answered. The first sub-question is about the indicators that could indicate an organizational movement from an equilibrium to a crisis. The second question is about the indicators that could indicate a move-ment from a crisis back to an equilibrium. The final question is whether the indicators that have been found can be validated by experts in the field. The structure of this research paper will be as follows. First, in section two the related work of this topic will be elaborated upon. Secondly, the methods used will be discussed in the third section. Third, the results from the used method will be discussed in section four. Fourth, a conclusion and discussion will be written and finally recommendations for future work will be given.
II. RELATED WORK
A lot of research has been done on organizations and how they act. As a conceptual framework three underlying principles of organizations and their sustainability over time will be discussed. Then the influence of the management will be discussed in the leadership section and finally an over coupling model introduced by A.W. Abcouwer will be dis-cussed in the uncertainty section & adaptive cycle section.
A. Forecasting
More and more organizations find themselves operating in high velocity environments that change at a rapid pace [Tsoukas2000]. This can cause issues when looking ahead, planning for the future and helping create the future. For an organization to be able to do this it must face certain issues. These issues can be divided into three categories, namely how organizational foresight can be conceptualized, how organizations make sense of themselves and their environments and how the capability for strategic foresight can be developed [Tsoukas2000]. When trying to conceptualize foresight it becomes visible that it is essentially about the reeducation of attention [Chia2004]. The reeducation of attention is about the shift from an objectifying, abstract and passive look at the world to a furtive movement sensitive and interactive look at the world. The second
look is much more sensitive to event happenings and allows someone have better information to base his/her decision on. When looking at organizations, decisions are an important factor concerning the future. When an organizations builds its strategy for example it should do this with the future in mind. In reality this is often not the case, often a grasp of the future is used, which in is based on the organizations resources. Also organizations and businesses have the tendency to be overly concerned with short term results in stead of long range planning [Narayanan and Fahey2004]. For organizations to forecast it is important that they understand themselves and the environment they operate in. When eventually something happens the questions that are often asked are ”what happened? what went wrong? what can we do better next time?”. This illustrates that when something has occurred the interest is in both the past and present. Humans tend to asses a past phenomena and then tend to draw lessons for the future. [Tsoukas2000]. In an organization however there is not a single person that makes a forecast, usually it are groups of people. Research suggests that when dealing with groups of people the social dynamics associated with collective sense making prevented the conversion of external information into useful information. This also prevents the making of critical judgments about the plausibility of the data which in the ends results in failure. For a team of people to succeed or at least have a better chance of making successful forecasts it is essential that they develop the skill of critical inquiry and that the roles are explicitly defined[Schwandt and Gorman], [Tsoukas2000]. Forecasts have a personal and reflective character but need organizational agility to be effective in affording sustainability. Also, literature suggests that foresight should understand how the past, present and future interact merge and constrain each other. This shows that the future may be impossible to understand unless the future has roots in the past learning and present action. [Cunha2006]
B. Leadership
Leadership is an important aspect in keeping an organization running. In an organization context
this leadership is often distributed to managers who often rely on common leadership approaches [Snowden, David J. and Boone, Mary E.]. The only problem with these approaches is that they work well in one scenario but fall short in others. This is because a certain level of predictability exists in the world this causes an encouragement for simplifications. However, these simplifications tend to fail when a more complex situation arises. An issue is that there is not a single way of leadership that fits for every problem [Snowden, David J. and Boone, Mary E.]. To tackle this issue the Cynefin framework has been developed which helps managers to sense in which context an issue arises. With this knowledge they can then make better decisions and avoid the problems that could arise when their preferred management style is used. The Cynefin has five possible contexts for issues leaders might face. These are simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and disorder. Issues regarding simple and complicated contexts consist out cause and effect relationships and the right answers can be determined based on facts. With the complex and chaotic contexts there is no distinct order and no relation between the cause and the effect. In this context answers can be determined by discovering patterns. In the disorder context it is particularly harder to find an answer. The first step would be to know that an issue resides in this context and then proceed in breaking the issue down in parts. These parts should then be divided among the other four categories. [Snowden, David J. and Boone, Mary E.]
C. Uncertainty & adaptive cycle
As stated before organization are continually confronted with environments that change in a rapid pace [Tsoukas2000]. This can cause all kinds of problems generally these problems can be cat-egorized as well and ill defined problems. Well defined problems have a defined initial state a defined goal and a known procedure for solving the problem. On the other hand there are ill defined problems that lack a clearly initial state and the answers are not predictable or convergent [Abcouwer et al.2019]. After deciding the type of challenge a company is facing, a solution must be
found. For this a distinction is made between the possible types of solutions. It is either a certain situation, a situation of risk or a situation of uncertainty. When dealing with the search for a solution, managers should have access to knowl-edge, have means of communication and in the end participate in co-creation to solve the problem. When for example dealing with a certain situation it is logical to start with finding knowledge, com-municate with specialists and finally facilitate co-creation. However when dealing with a situation of risk or uncertainty it does not have to be in this order. So dependent of the type of problem that is being faced different ways of solving it are also introduced [Abcouwer et al.2019]. When an organization is not able to cope with problems or fails to make good forecasting it might very well be that the organization enters a troubled phase. This is where the Adaptive Cycle Of Resilience (ACoR model) comes in which can be seen in figure one.
Fig. 1. The ACoR cycle orgin:adaptivecycle.nl
This model states that every organization goes through cyclic development. This cycle is as follows, it starts at a presumed point of equilibrium where the organization is in balance. Here the goals and methods are clear. When the organization faces problems they tend to solve it, but when their approach no longer works they move into the crisis phase. In this phase there are uncertainties about what the organization wants and can do, managerial intervention is
required to find new business opportunities. When these combinations are found, the organization moves to the new combination phase in which the solutions found in the crisis phase will be tested for reliability and viability. When a particular solution then comes up as best solution, the organization moves to the operationalization phase. Here the focus lies on cooperation and support. Then the goal is to move from the operationalization to a new equilibrium. If a organization then fails to reach this new equilibrium with the proposed solution they will move back towards the new combinations phase or when the problems are sufficient enough the organization can go fail entirely[Abcouwer et al.2019] .
III. METHODS
As stated before, the goal of this research paper is to find out what indicators can indicate that an organizational movement is about to happen. This research will have a theoretical and a practical side. Since the initial literature review did not result in research on this topic, this research will be an exploratory one. Qualitative research methods are used as primary research method. During the first phase literature about companies who succeed in their business, companies who survived a difficult phase and literature about companies that failed will be collected. In addition to this, literature about various business topics were collected. A subset of these are subjects like disruptive innova-tions, business continuity, disaster recovery, prod-uct development and innovation. These subjects were chosen because they are often linked to busi-ness failures and thus might prove useful in this research later on. This literature will be collected from scholarly search engines and literature posted on the adaptivecycle.nl[Abcouwer2016]. This ad-ditional site has been chosen because it contains a variety of company related case studies. For a quick overview of the general methodology figure 2 can be consulted.
A. Indicator extraction
To extract the indicators from the found litera-ture every case study will be analyzed for common and uncommon indicators that could have caused the problematic situation or the successful new
Fig. 2. Research methodology
equilibrium. The case studies used are mainly student work and are supplemented with published case studies. The indicators that can be found will be documented. This documentation is a very important step because it is the base of the re-search. The documentation will exist out of a list with each case study accompanied with the type of movement (eg. from equilibrium to crisis or vice versa) and the found indicators per transi-tion. The next step is to generalize and quantify the found indicators per movement. This would results in the indicators being split up into two lists, namely one list for indicators indicating a movement from equilibrium to crisis and one list for indicators indicating a movement from crisis to new equilibrium. The software used to create these lists is Excel, this application has been chosen because it offers high flexibility and is an industry
standard for creating lists. The quantification and generalization of the indicators will be done by hand and documented in excel.
B. Validation
When indicators are found they are ought to be validated. The validation of the indicators will be by means of a survey. The targeted audience of this survey are experts in the field of business management and are chosen using the availability sampling method. This survey will exist out of no more than ten questions and is aimed at validating the found indicators but will also offer the respondent the chance to state additional indicators out of his/her experience. So the survey does not only serve the goal of validation but it might also give new insights. The survey will be made using software from the site ”esurv.org/”. This site has been chosen because it is free to use and offers various standard printable templates for surveys. Moreover, the site supports a large variety of question types for example it offers support for questions were respondents can rank items. The survey will consist out of six functional questions that can contribute to the research and one not functional that allows the respondent to receive the research after completion. The first three questions will be of an open nature so that the respondents can answer freely. These questions will be aimed at finding out what sector they are active in and what kinds of threats and opportunities emerge in their sector and their current company. These questions were put first because it would not limit or guide their answers. Then the second set of questions were about validating the found indicators from the case studies. These were questions were the respondent could give each indicator a score from one (not very likely to indicate) to five (very likely to indicate) or they could say that they did not think the indicator in question was relevant. When the results from the survey gets back the answers of the respondents will be analyzed. The answers to the open questions will be quantified and generalized were possible. If this is not a possibility then a new indicator is most likely to be found. For the other ranking questions an average will be computed. If the average is higher
than 3.5 then the respective indicator will be ought to be validated.
IV. RESULTS
In this section the indicators that have been found will be discussed per movement. Then the relation between existing literature and the found indicators will be discussed. The results section will be ended by comparing the results of the survey with the found indicators.
A. From equilibrium to crisis
The case studies have resulted in a variety of indicators that could indicate a movement from an equilibrium to a crisis. The table containing the full list of indicators can be found in appendix I. In this section the most frequent indicators will be discussed. The ones that have a low appearance frequency will be left out for quality purposes and paper size constraints.
1) Indicators: The most frequent indicator that has been found is a change in the market land-scape, in a way that the market landscape changes because of new or strong competition. The com-petition eventually leads to loss of market share which can cause a whole range of other issues. The second most frequent indicator is a lack of innovation compared to the competition. This is often caused by the company not focusing on innovation but on other company segments. When the current solution of that company no longer works then they get into trouble because the competition is already ahead with their innova-tion. The third indicator is management induced crisis. This indicator is caused by management that decides there is need for change or it is caused by the management not being aware of changed conditions. Examples of changed condi-tions can be management not noticing changed customer behaviour, management not recognizing a crisis and management not recognizing disruptive change. Disruptive change is the fourth cause for a destabilizing movement. Disruptive innovations originate in low-end or new-market footholds and are often the cause of change in an industrys competitive pattern [Christensen et al.2015]. Over the last few years there have been a variety of
disruptive changes that have altered the indus-try. Examples of big disruptive changes are e-commerce, digitization and hardware commoditi-zation. A companies main product can also be the cause for issues. If a product is unsuccessful or becomes unsuccessful this can have major conse-quences, therefore this is the fifth indicator. Issues related to product can be due to recalls, hacking, account theft or piracy. The sixth indicator, namely change in customer behaviour can also prove to be quite a challenge for a company. This is often caused by changed opinions regarding a product or pieces of a product. An example of this is the current change to a more climate concerned civilian [Newman et al.2012]. These people have different wishes than its counterpart. This can prove challenging for an organization that relies on for example coal to produce power instead of nuclear. The seventh is bad management, while this does not necessarily lead to an existential crisis it can cause an internal challenge. The eight indi-cator is financial issues caused by inefficiencies, overcapacity and budget cuts. The ninth indicator is an financial crisis. This forces companies to manage their funds better en to keep liquid assets. The final indicator is a failed strategy where the organizations fails to adapt to the current market trends.
2) Validation: In this section a look will be taken at the results of the survey, these results include seven extra indicators that were not dis-cussed in the previous section but can be found in appendix I. When taking a closer look at the results it is visible that the respondents gave higher scores to external influences. Indicators like the change in market landscape, disruptive change, changed customer behaviour, lawsuits, economic crisis and changed regulations/laws all score sub-stantially higher than the other indicators. Which is rather peculiar because indicators like lawsuits and changed regulations did not appear that much in the case studies. However, in the open questions respondents did mark compliance and changed regulations as a threat. A company lacking a clear vision or mission can also cause a crisis. This could very well be because a company with a clear mission can benefit in various ways from having this clear. [Altiok2011]. Moreover, there is also
an indicator that is no external influence but still did rather well with the respondents. This is the indicator ”issues with the business model”. This is in line with existing literature where also is stated that the capability to move to a new business model is an important source of sustainable competitive advantage and a way to improve the organizations sustainability [Geissdoerfer et al.2018].
When looking at the indicators that did not reach the threshold (of higher than 3.5) but scored higher than three. There are a lot ”internal” is-sues, where internal means problems within the company that do not have to be visible to the outside world. In this sector the indicators that appeared were internal conflict, financial issues and a management induced crisis. It is strange that some of these indicators score lower than the first set. Because a lot of the respondents answered the open questions with experiences related to the internal indicators and not to the indicators that scored highest. A few examples of the responses are disagreement about development of the prod-uct, not enough time to develop prodprod-uct, new management, team not able to cooperate and that there were a lot of arguments on the work floor. Literature might give an explanation for this lower rank since the outcome of internal conflict is not predetermined. It can either escalate and lead to nonproductive results, or conflict can be benefi-cially resolved and lead to increased quality of the final product(s)[Dr.Digvijaysinh Thakore2013]. So it might be that the respondents had either a negative or positive experience regarding internal issues and this influenced the scores that were given. Then there are two more indicators that go hand in hand with each other namely the com-pany image and product related issues. Literature suggests that a brand image has more influence on the customers perception of a product and service quality while a companies reputation has a broad influence on perception of customer value and loyalty [Cretu and Brodie2007]. If a company distributes a bad product it can be that their image gets damaged as well. However these indicators can also be seen as two separate entities. For example when a product is designed that ignore the needs of its user or ignores the principles of cognitive psychology. [Carroll et al.2009]. This
product probably won’t be sold well and can cause trouble for the company. A company image can also be damaged due to a crisis event, a bad response to a crisis event and not taking responsibility for the event [Dean2004]. Another indicator that scored reasonable well but scored below the threshold with the respondents is a lack of innovation. It appears that they respondents believe it is important but not crucial to innovate in order to survive. This also has some conflicts with literature since it states that innovation is crucial in order to survive [Lendel et al.2017], [Teece2010], [Tohidi and Jabbari2012].
Finally there are two remaining indicators that scored below the score of three. These were bad management, failed strategy and company expansion. Neither of these are ought to cause a destabilizing movement in the opinion of the respondents. Other than bad management neither of the indicators in this category appeared in the top ten indicators.
3) Conclusion: In this section the results from the case studies and the survey were discussed and held next to each other. What can be seen is that external indicators take the lead in causing disrup-tions. This is supported by both the respondents and also it were the type of indicators that appeared most frequent in the case studies. In addition to these no clear mission or vision and issues with the business model are supported by frequency of appearance in the case studies, the respondents opinions and other scientific research. When look-ing at indicators that scored below the set threshold it becomes evident that these are mainly indicators concerning the internal organization. In the re-spondents opinions these were less likely to cause a destabilizing motion. However, indicators like company image and company product scored low but in literature it seems that these are indicators. So some of these have conflict with what literature says and what the respondents believe and have experienced.
B. From crisis to new equilibrium
As stated before the case studies have resulted in a variety of indicators that could indicate a movement. In this section the ten most frequent indicators for a movement from a crisis back to a new equilibrium will be discussed. The table
containing the full list of indicators can be found in appendix II. In this section the most frequent indicators will be discussed.
1) Indicators: The indicator that appeared most frequently in the case studies with regards to a movement from an crisis to a new equilibrium is innovation. Innovation can range from the devel-opment of a new product or service to innovation in the idea creation like for example creativity sessions. The second most frequent indicator is to adopt to the changed environment. In the previ-ous section indicators like disruptive innovations, changed customer behavior or changed laws could plummet a organization into a crisis. The case studies showed that adopting to the change as quick as possible could motivate a movement to a new equilibrium. The third indicator is a shift of company focus. Where the company first was active in market a few markets, it will either go back to its core business or focus on another mar-ket segment. The fourth indicator is cutting costs by different means. Closing unprofitable company sections, reducing the assets or even sell company parts in order to gain liquid assets are actions that are often taken. Other organizations when facing crisis chose to expand to new markets. This is also the fifth indicator. The expansion can either be a new market segment or can be entering a foreign market. A reorganization can also be considered an indicator and this is a step that few companies take when facing crisis. This is the sixth indicator and it usually goes hand in hand with the cutting cost indicator because a reorganization often includes a personnel lay-off [Coucke et al.2007]. However, a culture can also be changed during a reorga-nization. Another option is the seventh indicator namely to change the company strategy. With this indicator the business model of the company gets altered or the competitors strategy gets copied. The eighth indicator is about internal optimization where the company finds an alternative way of working. It can very well be that the current processes are redundant and take a lot of time, which in turn costs money. Finding a new more efficient way of working, automation of processes and using sustainable production methods might help a company back in finding a new equilib-rium. The ninth indicator is about the attracting
new personnel. It could be that an organization is missing knowledge to tackle certain problems, attracting new personnel can prove to be a solution to this. The final indicator from the top ten is customer aided product development. This is when an organization develops a service whilst working closely together with the target group for that product. It could even include compensating users for their effort, or experienced issues. Key in this indicator is the close communication between the consumer and the company.
2) Validation: In this section a look will be taken at the results of the survey, these results include eight extra indicators. The set of indicators that reached the threshold of a score higher than 3.5. What is noticeable in this set is that apart from the indicators adopt to changed environment, alternative way of working and attracting new personnel, neither of the other indicators in the top ten frequent indicators received a score above the threshold. The additional indicators scored fairly well compared to the frequency of them in the case studies. The extra indicators that scored well were attracting new customers, increasing quality man-agement and stakeholder communication. All of the indicators that scored well mainly are about the finding new ways to do business. in the opinions of the respondents finding a new way of working, communicating with stakeholders, the attracting of both personnel and new customers and being able to adopt to change are most important in indicating a movement back to a new equilibrium. The open questions also support their opinions about these indicators since it seems that the ability to learn fast, being flexible and having knowledge about a product is valued.
The indicators that scored higher than a three on average were innovation, customer aided prod-uct development, thorough problem analysis, shift to product leadership, expansion to new markets and acquire new assets (eg. buy a company). The results of the survey regarding these in-dicators were also mixed. Some saw value in product and process development and innovative initiatives while others saw more opportunities in customer relations and a good product. When looking at literature it seems that innovation is a very important element in being sustainable
as a company [Lendel et al.2017], [Teece2010], [Tohidi and Jabbari2012]. There is also a conflict between literature and the opinions regarding the customer aided product development. According to literature this is an important step in designing a successful product [Carroll et al.2009].
When looking at the entire sheet of results from the survey regarding the crisis to new equilibrium indicators, there is a bigger spread of the scores. About one-third of the indicators received a score below a three. As stated before there are only three indicators that reached above the threshold in the top ten. The respondents had little faith in the following indicators that scored below a three: a shift in the company focus, cutting costs, reorganization, change of strategy, reiteration of product and segregation of the company. This is also in line with the received answers to the open questions.
3) Conclusion: In this section the results from the case studies and the survey were discussed and held next to each other. What can be seen is that indicators that are about finding new ways to do business are scored higher. Respondents show that they attach value to the ability to learn fast, being flexible and having knowledge about a product. The answers of the respondents and the frequency do have some conflicts since the indicators with the highest frequency scored lower than the additional indicators. Looking at the indicators that scored higher than three but below 3.5. it is visible that some of them are supported by other scientific literature but that the respondents had different ideas about the indicators. Finally the indicators that scored below a three. Almost the entire top ten of indicators consists of low scored indicators. What in itself is peculiar because the frequency of these indicators in the case studies was high.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper examined the possible indicators that could indicate a movement from either a equilib-rium to a crisis or a crisis to new equilibequilib-rium. The main question of this research was ”When looking at the ACOR cycle, what are the (possible) indicators of an impending movement from the right side (equilibrium) to the left side(Crisis) and from the left side (Crisis) to the right side
(New equilibrium) of the adaptive cycle?” It has been found that for each movement at least a few indicators are present that could be validated by the respondents of the survey. Starting with the movement from equilibrium to crisis. Here it became visible that the indicators that could be labeled as external influences scored relatively high in both the appearance in the case studies as with the indicators. The indicators that thus can be considered validated (with regards to the conditions set for it to be validated) are a change in market landscape, disruptive change, changed customer behaviour, lawsuits, economic crisis and changed regulations/laws In addition to these no clear mission or vision and issues with the business model are also supported by frequency of appear-ance in the case studies, the respondents opinions and other scientific research. What is noticeable is that the respondents scored the indicators for the movement equilibrium to crisis substantially higher and that their open question answers talked a lot about this movement as well. The indicators that scored less were mainly indicators concerning the internal organization.
Looking at the movement from a crisis to a new equilibrium it is visible that the respondents are having doubts about a lot of the presented indicators. Six of them reached the threshold to be considered validated these are for an organization to adopt to the changed environment, attracting new personnel, finding an alternative way of work-ing, attracting new customers, increasing quality management and stakeholder communication. Out of these indicators only the indicators adopt to changed environment, new way of working and the attraction of personnel originated from the top ten for frequency in the case studies. What is noticeable in these results are that they could be given the label ”new ways to do business”. Respondents show that they attach value to the ability to learn fast, being flexible and having knowledge about a product.
VI. DISCUSSION
During the course of this investigation there have been some limitations. First off, the sam-pling of respondents, for this research availability sampling is used where subjects are chosen based
on who are available or easy to find. This sam-pling has been done by holding the survey at a small conference and within the leads professor’s network. Secondly there is a limit to the amount of case studies that were read and included into this research. Some well known published case studies were taken into consideration, for example from Kodak and Apple. The other case studies resulted from the website the adaptivecycle.nl and are mainly student work. Obviously there are a lot more companies that experienced a movement that could as well be included. However, due to the limit of time a smaller subset of case studies was chosen. For the validation of the found indicators a survey was used. The question asked were not thor-oughly validated for clarity and effectiveness but were based on best practises that could be found. It is unclear whether this influenced the responses given by the subjects, but it is at least important to take note of considering the results. Finally the limitation of the amount of survey responses and whether this can be considered enough to speak in terms of validated indicators. Sixteen responses came back from the survey. This low amount is due to a moved conference were the survey was supposed to be held. This conference however moved to a different date that is past the deadline of this research. Therefore different sources had to be contacted in order to obtain the survey results. Based on the current amount of responses the found indicators cannot said to be validated. However, it would give a heightened chance for a particular indicator to be an actual indicator. To thoroughly validate the found indicators a larger survey should be held. Other than the limitations there was a surprising results that the researcher did not expect. This results is about the low scored indicators that could be labelled as internal issues. The received survey responses seem to indicate that the respondents think that a movement into a crisis often originates from outside their company (eg. external indicators) but not from within.
VII. FUTURE WORK
This research offers multiple opportunities for future research. First the amount of case studies, in this research an attempt is made to extract the most common indicators. However the case studies
mainly originate from theadaptivecycle.nl. It could be interesting to repeat the research with other or a larger set of case studies and see whether the results and the conclusion still stand. The second opportunity is to find out more about specific indicators. Questions that could be asked about why a certain indicator exists, what the causes are and what effects it has on an organization. It could also be interesting to find out whether there are any sub-branches within certain indicators. Thirdly, it could also be interesting to see whether there is a relation between a branch and a certain subset of indicators. For example are there any indicators that appear more often in a specific sector? If so, why? Fourth, a re-validation, during this research a fairly small sample was used. The results of this research would be a lot more interesting if they were validated on a bigger scale or/and a properly sampled target group. Fifth, it could also be interesting to repeat this research from a qualitative approach where interviews with experts are used to obtain indicators/validation. The final topic for related work could be about why it is that the respondents think most of the destabilizing movement have an origin in external indicators and that there are no internal causes.
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APPENDIX I From equilibrium to crisis: Quantified and generalized indicators
Reason for destabilazation N# Additional information
Change in market landscape 27 Competition, Underestimating competition, loss of market share Lack of innovation
compared to competitiors
(CAM) 17 Lack of investment, focus on redefining product, faled to innovate Management induced crisis 15
Decide new system should be implemented, not aware of changed customer behaviour, sudden need for innovation, not recognizing change/crisis
Disruptive change 13 ecommerce, internet, digitalization, hardware commoditizing, management not noticing dc Product 12 Recalls, Hacking, unsuccesfull product launch, account theft, price increase, piracy of product Change in customer
behaviour 11 opinion regarding a product, unforeseen change in behaviour, declining demand, less sales, donors stop donating
Bad management 8 Failed reorganization, faulty implementation, management refusing to innovate Financial issues 6 Buget cuts, not noticing diminishing income,no efficient processes, overcapacity Economic crisis 6 market collapse,
Failed strategy 6 for dimishing sales, failed to adapt to customer behaviour, realization that strategy does not work anymore No clear mission/vision 5 uncertain about future,
Lawsuit 4 Fines for pollution, Bad company image 4
No profitable
businessmodel 4 No focus but diversive interest, no confidence in sustainability of model Company expansion 4 uncertainity, expansion, new markets
Change in laws 3 Prohibit use of main product,
Internal conflict 4 Personel dissatisfaction, closed culture, personell departure Disaster 2 Outbreak of war, plane crash
Change of company focus 2 Focus on other market segment, shift from re to etail Bad training program 2 fail to maintain competences,
Customer dissatifaction 2 not customer friendly, customer dissatisfaction Change in politics 1
Gestalt switch 1
Government subsidies 1 Lead to inefficiencies power by the customers 1
new way of distribution 1 slow response time 1 client network demands 1
APPENDIX II From crisis to new equilibrium: Quantified and generalized indicators
Reason for Stabilazation N# Additional information
Innovation 22
New product, new service, pilot team for new innovations, creativity sessions, continuous innovation, pilots for good ideas, invest in organization/new production, increase speed
adopt to changed
circumstance 16 introduce mandatory security updates, adopt to disruptive change Shift of company focus 12 to profitable businesses, to customer, service, to B2B, going back to core business, on international business Cutting costs 10 close unprofitable company sections, reduce fleet, reduce employee count, sell unprofitable stores Expand to new markets 10 expanding to new market as strategy?,
Reorganization 7 to open culture, culture change Change strategy 6
more innovative culture, copy competitior strategy, change business model, Sell package deals, dont use government alliances for
sustainability Develop alternate way
of working 6 sustainable production methods, more efficient ways of working, process automation Attract new personel 5
Customer aided product
development 5 Customer tests, listen to customer base, compensate consumers for issues *not applicable* 4
Gain understanding and
act on the situation 4 new market insights
Reiteration of product 4 changed pricing, fix bad product, expand product use Focus on product
leadership 3 focus on one product Buy a company 2
Bought by competition 2 privetazation Attract customers 2 Exclusive content,
quality management 2 Quality management commitee split the company in
components 2 stakeholder
communication 2 communicate about issues and problems Acquire assets 1 more efficient fleet
It program for change 1 prepare for future crisis situations-crisis
management plan 1 Merge with a company 1 increase connectivity
with environment 1
Gain liquid assets 1 Sell patents Cost leadership 1
upscaling 1
form an alliance 1
