Abstract:

Acquiring the ability to adapt has been one of the most important challenges since the very beginning of history. Evolutionarily always important to an individual, it has now become equally crucial for many business organizations. The business and social environment is turbulent and less predictable. In the age of global economy, mass connectivity, and ubiquitous computing, there is a need to better understand the nature of this change, in both organizational and technological terms. There is also a need to reconsider the approach to understanding adaptability as an organizational quality, and as a result, instead of just adjusting to the change, be able to truly embrace it and gain a real, sustainable advantage. This paper attempts to analyze the intrinsic ideas behind the concept of systemic and organizational adaptability, with a particular focus on attaining this quality of organization as an implementable feature of its information system. Based on Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction, a revised approach to understanding adaptability is presented and discussed. In this context, Process-Aware Information System (PAIS) is being examined as an architectural and technological reference point in establishing the premises and objectives for ‘synthetic adaptability’, i.e. the proposed theoretically-revised view on the concept under consideration.