Abstract
Problems in the modern world often display VUCA characteristics: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. An organization responding effectively to changes in its environment is a problem that exhibits VUCA characteristics. For an organization to stay competitive, having the ability to enact the right kind and magnitude of response to environmental changes is crucial. To enact such a response, an organization must balance what it does and how it thinks about what it does. What it thinks encompasses conceptual elements such as members' perceptions and beliefs, and what it does encompasses the concrete elements such as organizational structure, behaviors, and daily operations. When organizational thinking and doing are aligned, an organization is capable of following the intended trajectory from current state to future state without excessive expenditure of resources. However, when enacting the right kind and magnitude of response, it is often challenging to maintain alignment between thinking and doing while attempting to minimize disturbances to normal operations. Although current research has proposed various methods regarding organizational changes such as lean manufacturing, they often do not account for the holistic nature of the challenge at hand. In this manuscript, a conceptual framework that provides a holistic set of guiding propositions, by defining organizations as purposeful human activity systems, is introduced to help organizations achieve a balance between thinking and doing. This conceptual framework will help engineering managers better understand how to design purposeful human activity systems that enable organizations to enact the right kind and magnitude of response to environmental changes.