Management Innovation in a VUCA World: Challenges and Recommendations

What is it about?

Our Call for Papers focused on breaking established patterns and models and showcasing management innovation in a world in which Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) reign. VUCA is both an outcome of disruptive innovation and a driver of it; and frequently VUCA is used as an excuse to avoid planning and action. While research has pursued the four elements independently, interaction and integration have been lacking. This article introduces three papers and offers 15 challenges as well as implicit and explicit recommendations to manage in the unpredictable and challenging VUCA world.

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Why is it important?

------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- Bennett & Lemoine's 2014 paper on understanding threats to performance in a VUCA world puts the four words of the acronym into a matrix, analyzing both the distinctiveness and interaction of the phenomena, yet it needed to be further researched and developed into models that are actionable for practitioners. Although prior research emphasizes the importance of pursuing management innovation, both as a complement to technological innovation (Damanpour et al., 2009) and as an independent phenomenon (Mol & Birkinshaw, 2009), a better understanding of how VUCA environments lead to management innovation in different organizational settings was needed. Equally, attention needed to be given to the effects of management innovation in different settings - both on an individual (e.g. well-being, creativity, purpose, agility, etc.) and on an organizational level (financial and operational firm performance, organizational commitment and employee involvement, capability ambidexterity, etc.). This paper and the rest of the Special Section of "Management Innovation in an Uncertain World" address some of these issues. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- The rationale for the Special Section springs from the growing interest in how decision makers across the breadth of institutions in society are facing up to the disrupted and arguably unforecastable environment brought about by a number of interrelated phenomena o the disruptive effect of very rapid changes to the global business environment, driven both in the product market arena and as a result of governmental, regulatory and social actions o disruptive technologically driven product and business model innovation in industries o the disruptive effect of new modes of applying and benefiting from technology in business and society. We focus on breaking established patterns and models and showcasing management innovation in a world in which Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity reign. While research has pursued the four elements independently, the interaction, integration and dynamics that were lacking are showcased here. As such, we provide new, relevant and actionable insights to management practitioners and management students alike as they fine-tune their thinking on VUCA. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- The internet boom that started almost 20 years ago demonstrated the promise of disruptive technology in a speculative bubble. Although it subsequently appeared to have been unjustifiably hyped and been put in its place by more rational business fundamentals, the frenzy over innovations proved to lay the digital foundations for much bigger structural change: today, many of these technologies are becoming mainstream, interconnected and mission-critical. Meanwhile they are being overlaid, potentiated and re-purposed by other potentially even more disruptive technologies, for example quantum computing, artificial intelligence, the 'internet of things', cyber currencies, gamification, virtual reality, neuro-technology, multi-sided digital platforms and innovations like robotics, drones and driverless cars. We responded to our conviction that these challenges need not lead to despair and inaction but should be addressed constructively, and that by curating and analyzing a collection of recent work in this area we could make a significant contribution.