Thresholds of Behavioral Flexibility in Turbulent Environments for Individual and Group Success
b ) City or suburb : A person who loves the city might be willing to pay more and more to stay there . However , at a certain point the city may become so expensive , or crowded , that he deems it too costly to stay . Thus , the actor might change types to one who prefers to live somewhere more rural . The actor will now maximize over a different set of constraints .
c ) Specialist or generalist : In a spatial representation of areas of expertise , a person might choose to specialize in one particular subject , field , or line of work , or they might become a person who spreads across many interests . As the labor market changes , one strategy may be more advantageous . Behavioral flexibility is about when you should make that switch and how willing you should be to do it .
d ) Diversify or concentrate : The same tension is at work in investment in the stock market : do you pick a stock that you expect will do great or minimize risk by spreading your resources across a variety of options ? Adaptability might refer to this diversification , but behavioral flexibility is specifically about altering your goals if what you have been doing is not working .
e ) Cluster or spread resources : To make populations better off , does it make sense to put resources we value ( like teachers and doctors ) all in one place , or to spread them out across a state or country ? Adaptability could refer to a number of different configurations , while behavioral flexibility refers to switching between spreading or clustering strategies .
f ) Stay in a career or change : Suppose you are in an industry that looks like it is shrinking . Is it better to become the best version of a person in that field , or to switch before it becomes too difficult to change later ? Either choice could look “ adaptive ” in retrospect if it turned out to be the “ right ” one .
g ) Stay in a market or change : Building from the career choice in ( f ), suppose you run a firm in an industry that is shrinking . Do you try to hold fast and be the best firm in that industry — perhaps counting on continuing to offer the best version of the product in this field ? Alternatively , do you re-orient your business to a new goal altogether ? One example of this is the field of print journalism , where many papers faced the challenge of : Do I make a much better newspaper , or do I change my mission or product ?
There is no shortage of ways to conceptualize and measure adaptability . To summarize the above , much of the varieties of adaptability can be distilled down into three broad categories . They are not fully comprehensive , but are representative of the broad classes of types of ways individuals or groups might be adaptive .
115