Purpose–Purpose of this work is to investigate how organizations, intended as CAS (complex adaptive systems), today meet and react to the changing conditions of their specific contexts, in terms of change and adaptation, with particular reference to: i) the decision making processes in complex contexts; ii) the leverages that should be activated by the decision maker in order to respond to change and adaptation solicitations iii) how organizations reacts to these solicitations and implement them in their behaviors, in order to make the identified solutions more scalable.

Design/Methodology/approach–Starting from the theoretical frameworks of vSa, after defining the evolving concepts of change and adaptation, we will investigate how organizations translate complex decisions into behaviors, when referring to change ad adaptation. The applicability of this proposal will be verified by analyzing the transformations that occur within organizations for what concerns the definition of their procedures, organizational models, standards, routines, and how they vary/adapt according to external and internal solicitations.

Findings–The ability of organizations to adapt to external contingences and internal stimuli does not necessarily imply a loss of identity; by identifying the ‘levels’ to which change and adaptation refer, in fact, organizations learn how to interpret the surrounding environment and its complexity with the aim to understand how to change, when to change and why; this process, called of fitting can, then, foster their systemic viability.

Research limitations/implications–Analyze how CASs evolve, change and adapt according to external and internal solicitations.

Originality/value–The research implications will regard the possibility to verify at what stage of completion of a system the concepts of change and adaptation relate and act.