Strategic agility through improvisational capabilities: Implications for a paradox-sensitive HRM

Organizations, especially, multinationals, inevitably confront contradictory challenges. One crucial challenge is the value of strategic consistency versus the value of rapid change related to unexpected problems, opportunities and fast moving trends. Accentuating the previously planned strategy can...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHuman resource management review Vol. 30; no. 1; p. 100695
Main Authors Cunha, Miguel Pina e, Gomes, Emanuel, Mellahi, Kamel, Miner, Anne S., Rego, Arménio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Inc 01.03.2020
Subjects
Improvisation
MNCs
Paradox
Paradoxical human resource management
Strategic agility
Strategy
Paradox
Strategy
Paradoxical human resource management
Improvisation
Strategic agility
MNCs
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Summary:Organizations, especially, multinationals, inevitably confront contradictory challenges. One crucial challenge is the value of strategic consistency versus the value of rapid change related to unexpected problems, opportunities and fast moving trends. Accentuating the previously planned strategy can reduce temporal responsiveness; accentuating the immediate problems/opportunities can harm overall consistency. Strategic agility offers a potential path to resolve this paradoxical situation. In this article we advance a vision in which firms nourish improvisational capabilities in order to enhance strategic agility. We develop six HRM domains of action that can enhance effective improvisation and can inform the practice of a paradox-informed HRM. We discuss their implications for HRM-based strategic agility, paradoxical HR, and improvisation.
ISSN:1053-4822
1873-7889
DOI:10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100695