Allostasis and organizational excellence

Abstract

Organizational excellence is critical towards the development of organizations and, considering organizations’ role in the modern world, for societies’ economic and social development. The ability of organizations to adapt and adjust to the contingencies of the change and recover the stability of organizational systems through organizations’ own dynamic process is known as allostasis. This research focuses on the relationship between allostasis and organizational excellence. Based on a sample of 205 firms from Portugal and Spain, and resorting to fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA), this research reveals that there are different combinations (equifinality) of conditions inherent to allostasis (adaptive capacity, feedback capacity, stigmergy capacity and integration intensity) leading to sustainable high outcomes (employee satisfaction, stakeholder satisfaction and organizational performance, jointly selected as proxies for organizational excellence). The analysis also shows that organizations that match those combinations simultaneously achieve high employee satisfaction, stakeholder satisfaction and organizational performance (multifinality), which is aligned with the premises of organizational excellence. Finally, the results reveal that in the different contexts (countries) analyzed, the combinations leading to high outcomes differ, thus supporting the idea that the ability to adapt and adjust that characterizes allostasis is critical towards organizational excellence.