Strategic Alignment and Work-System Analysis

Introduction

Job analysis is often presented as the systematic study of tasks, duties, responsibilities, knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics associated with work. That definition is necessary but incomplete. At graduate level, job analysis must also be understood as an organizational design activity. Jobs are not isolated containers of tasks; they are components of a broader work system shaped by strategy, structure, technology, processes, customers, regulation, and employment relationships.

Strategic alignment asks whether the way work is divided, coordinated, supported, and evaluated helps the organization achieve its objectives. Work-system analysis examines how people, technologies, information, tasks, and organizational arrangements interact to produce outcomes. Together, these perspectives prevent a common error: designing jobs around historical practices rather than around the organization’s present and future requirements.

For example, a firm pursuing rapid innovation may undermine its strategy if jobs are narrowly specialized, approvals are highly centralized, and performance measures reward short-term individual output. Conversely, a firm competing on reliability and cost control may need standardized procedures, clear accountability, and tightly designed interfaces. The appropriate job is therefore contingent on the operating model and strategic context.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Explain the relationship among organizational strategy, structure, operating model, work systems, and jobs.
2. Apply systems, contingency, sociotechnical, and strategic work-design perspectives.
3. Diagnose vertical and horizontal alignment problems in work systems.
4. Translate strategic capabilities into job and role requirements.
5. Evaluate the effects of technology, interdependence, and governance on job design.
6. Recommend evidence-based improvements while recognizing ethical and practical constraints.

1. From Organizational Strategy to Individual Work

1.1 A hierarchy of alignment

A useful analytical sequence is:

Strategy → capabilities → operating model → organizational structure → processes → work systems → jobs → individual competencies and behaviors.

Strategy specifies how an organization intends to create and capture value. Capabilities are repeatable organizational abilities required to execute that strategy, such as rapid product development, clinical safety, customer intimacy, or low-cost logistics. The operating model describes how capabilities are delivered through choices about standardization, integration, decision rights, geographic distribution, and technology. Structure allocates authority and accountability, while processes describe the flow of activities and information. Work systems connect people, tools, tasks, and rules. Jobs are the formal and informal bundles of responsibilities performed within those systems.

Alignment is not simple duplication across levels. A strategic priority such as customer responsiveness should be translated into decision authority, information access, staffing, skills, coordination routines, and performance measures. If employees are held accountable for customer outcomes but cannot access relevant information or authorize reasonable solutions, the system is misaligned.

1.2 Vertical and horizontal alignment

Vertical alignment concerns consistency between strategy and lower-level design. A hospital claiming patient-centered care, for example, requires jobs that include communication, coordination, and clinical judgment—not only isolated technical tasks.

Horizontal alignment concerns consistency among jobs, processes, technology, rewards, leadership, and human-resource practices. A team-based production system is unlikely to work if jobs are individually evaluated, information is restricted, and supervisors retain every operational decision.

Misalignment can be classified as:

2. The Work System as the Unit of Analysis

A job can be analyzed descriptively, but many performance problems originate outside the jobholder. Work-system analysis therefore examines the configuration in which work occurs.

A practical work-system model includes:

• Inputs: customer requirements, materials, data, labor, capital, regulations, and time.
• Transformation activities: physical, cognitive, social, and emotional work.
• Outputs: products, services, decisions, experiences, quality, safety, and learning.
• Feedback: performance information from customers, supervisors, peers, systems, and regulators.
• Context: strategy, structure, culture, labor market, technology, and institutional environment.
• Actors: employees, managers, contractors, customers, suppliers, and automated systems.

The central question is not merely “What does this employee do?” but “How does this work contribute to a value-creating process, and what conditions enable or obstruct effective performance?”

Figure: A work-system perspective on inputs, transformation, outputs, and feedback.

2.1 Interdependence

Interdependence describes how the performance of one role depends on other roles, resources, or stages of work. Thompson’s classic typology distinguishes:

• Pooled interdependence: units share resources or outcomes but work relatively independently.
• Sequential interdependence: one unit’s output becomes another’s input.
• Reciprocal interdependence: units exchange inputs and outputs repeatedly.

As interdependence increases, job analysis must examine interfaces, communication, coordination, and collective accountability. A job description that lists only individual tasks is inadequate for reciprocal work such as emergency medicine, consulting, software development, and complex customer service.

2.2 Boundaries and interfaces

Organizational boundaries determine where responsibility, information, and authority begin and end. Interfaces may exist between departments, shifts, professional groups, organizational partners, or humans and algorithms. Many failures occur at these interfaces rather than within a single job. A sound analysis therefore documents:

• upstream inputs and their quality;
• downstream customers and their requirements;
• decision rights and escalation rules;
• information dependencies;
• handoff standards;
• timing and workload constraints; and
• accountability when outcomes cross job or departmental boundaries.

3. Theoretical Perspectives on Work Design

3.1 Systems perspective

Systems theory views organizations as open systems that exchange resources, information, and legitimacy with their environments. A job is a subsystem whose performance depends on inputs, transformation processes, outputs, and feedback. This perspective encourages analysts to search for systemic causes rather than blaming individuals prematurely.

A systems diagnosis asks:

1. What outcome is the system intended to produce?
2. Which activities transform inputs into that outcome?
3. Where are bottlenecks, delays, defects, or feedback failures?
4. Which roles control critical resources or decisions?
5. What unintended effects result from local optimization?

Local optimization occurs when one unit improves its own metric while harming the total process—for example, a purchasing department reducing unit price by choosing a supplier that increases production defects.

3.2 Contingency perspective

Contingency theory rejects the idea that one universally superior job design exists. Effectiveness depends on fit among environmental uncertainty, technology, strategy, structure, and human needs. Mechanistic designs—formalized, specialized, and centralized—may fit stable environments requiring consistency. Organic designs—decentralized, flexible, and collaborative—may fit uncertain environments requiring innovation and rapid adaptation.

The contingency question is not whether a job is “empowered” or “specialized” in the abstract. It is whether the degree of discretion, standardization, specialization, and coordination fits the work’s demands. Excessive discretion can create variation and risk in safety-critical work; excessive control can suppress judgment where exceptions are frequent.

3.3 Sociotechnical systems perspective

Sociotechnical systems theory holds that social and technical elements should be designed jointly. Technology is not merely an instrument added to an existing job. It changes task content, skill requirements, authority, monitoring, coordination, and sometimes the meaning of performance.

A technically efficient design may fail socially if it removes meaningful discretion, overloads workers with alerts, or creates opaque accountability. A socially attractive design may fail operationally if it lacks reliable data or process control. Joint optimization seeks an acceptable balance between technical performance, human well-being, adaptability, and governance.

Important sociotechnical principles include:

• Minimal critical specification: specify essential outcomes and constraints, while preserving local discretion where expertise is valuable.
• Boundary management: give teams authority over a meaningful, identifiable segment of work.
• Variance control at source: enable problems to be detected and resolved near where they arise.
• Compatibility: align technology, social relationships, skills, incentives, and information.

3.4 Strategic work design and the high-performance perspective

Strategic work design treats jobs as mechanisms for developing and deploying organizational capabilities. It asks which behaviors and knowledge create competitive or mission-related value and how work practices can make those capabilities reliable.

High-performance work systems commonly emphasize selective staffing, training, information sharing, participation, supportive leadership, performance feedback, and coherent rewards. However, these practices are not automatically beneficial. Participation without authority is symbolic; training without opportunity to apply skills is wasteful; variable pay can damage cooperation when results are interdependent.

A strategic analysis should distinguish:

• Value-creating activities: directly or indirectly improve outcomes valued by stakeholders.
• Enabling activities: provide infrastructure, coordination, compliance, or learning.
• Necessary constraints: activities required for safety, law, ethics, or risk control.
• Non-value-adding activities: avoidable duplication, waiting, rework, and unnecessary approvals.

4. Translating Strategy into Job Requirements

4.1 The capability-to-job translation

The translation process should proceed through several explicit steps.

Step 1: Clarify strategic intent. Identify the organization’s priorities, such as cost efficiency, innovation, resilience, growth, quality, safety, or social impact.

Step 2: Identify critical capabilities. Ask what the organization must be able to do consistently. “Customer focus” is too broad unless expressed as capabilities such as rapid issue resolution, personalized advice, or proactive retention.

Step 3: Map value streams and processes. Identify where capabilities are performed, supported, or constrained.

Step 4: Determine role contributions. Specify which roles create, coordinate, decide, monitor, or learn within the process.

Step 5: Define job architecture. Establish boundaries among jobs, levels, teams, and professions; define accountabilities and interfaces.

Step 6: Specify KSAOs and behavioral requirements. Knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics should be derived from actual work demands rather than copied from generic competency dictionaries.

Step 7: Align HR practices. Recruitment, selection, training, appraisal, rewards, career paths, and workforce planning should reinforce the intended design.

4.2 A strategic job-analysis matrix

The matrix prevents strategic language from remaining rhetorical. Each priority must have observable process and job consequences.

5. Diagnosing Work-System Misalignment

A graduate-level diagnosis should combine multiple methods because no single source captures the whole system. Useful evidence includes strategy documents, organization charts, process maps, performance data, structured interviews, observation, critical incidents, employee surveys, customer feedback, and technology logs.

5.1 A diagnostic sequence

1. Define the focal outcome. Specify quality, speed, cost, safety, service, innovation, or another outcome.
2. Map the work. Document activities, decisions, inputs, outputs, dependencies, and handoffs.
3. Locate variance. Identify where actual work differs from formal procedures.
4. Test constraints. Examine staffing, tools, information, authority, workload, skills, and incentives.
5. Assess alignment. Compare requirements with job design and HR systems.
6. Generate alternatives. Consider redesigning tasks, teams, technology, authority, or measures.
7. Pilot and evaluate. Test changes using relevant outcome and employee indicators.

5.2 Formal work versus performed work

The distinction between prescribed work and performed work is central. Prescribed work is what procedures, job descriptions, and policies say should occur. Performed work is what employees actually do to manage variability, exceptions, interruptions, and competing demands. The gap may reveal resilience and expertise, but it may also reveal unsafe workarounds or unrealistic procedures.

Analysts should avoid treating every deviation as noncompliance. In complex settings, adaptation may be necessary. The appropriate question is whether the deviation is authorized, safe, effective, and learnable. If experienced employees repeatedly create workarounds, the system may need redesign rather than discipline.

5.3 Quantitative indicators

Although much work-system analysis is qualitative, basic operational measures can strengthen diagnosis. For a process with total elapsed time T and active processing time P, the process-cycle efficiency ratio is:

Here, E is dimensionless, and P and T must be measured in the same time units. The ratio is applicable when elapsed time and active processing time are clearly defined. A low value suggests substantial waiting, queueing, handoff, or approval time, but it does not by itself identify the cause or prove that all waiting is wasteful.

For example, if a customer request spends 18 minutes in active work and 90 minutes in total elapsed time:

The result indicates that 80% of elapsed time is outside active processing. It does not mean that the employee is productive only 20% of the time; the measure concerns the request’s process time, not necessarily an individual’s utilization.

Other useful indicators include first-pass yield, defect rate, response time, rework volume, absence, turnover, safety incidents, customer resolution, and learning-cycle time. Metrics should be interpreted jointly because improving one can damage another.

6. Designing Jobs for Strategy and Human Sustainability

Job design decisions commonly concern specialization, scope, autonomy, interdependence, feedback, temporal flexibility, physical and cognitive demands, and identity.

6.1 Specialization and enlargement

Specialization can improve efficiency, training speed, and quality in repetitive or high-risk activities. Its costs may include boredom, limited learning, fragility when employees are absent, and weak understanding of the whole process. Enlargement adds task variety horizontally; enrichment adds responsibility, discretion, and vertical control. Rotation can broaden capability but may reduce short-term efficiency and create repeated learning costs.

The appropriate choice depends on technology, risk, skill scarcity, employee preferences, and strategic goals. Rotation is not a substitute for a coherent capability strategy, and enrichment is not appropriate when employees lack information, competence, or authority.

6.2 Autonomy, accountability, and psychological demands

Autonomy can improve motivation, learning, and responsiveness when employees possess the information and competence required for judgment. Accountability should be matched to controllable factors. Holding an employee responsible for outcomes determined primarily by system capacity, demand volatility, or managerial decisions is ethically and analytically weak.

Job design must also address workload, emotional labor, cognitive interruptions, surveillance, recovery time, and psychological safety. A design that produces high output through chronic overload may be operationally unsustainable and legally or ethically unacceptable.

6.3 Team and network-based work

Teams are appropriate when work requires diverse expertise, mutual adjustment, or collective problem solving. Team design should clarify purpose, membership, decision rights, coordination routines, conflict processes, and collective versus individual accountability. Merely placing employees in a team does not create teamwork.

In networked and platform-based work, boundaries may be fluid. Some contributors are employees, others contractors, partners, customers, or algorithmically allocated workers. Job analysis must then examine access to information, bargaining power, algorithmic control, training, safety, and responsibility for outcomes.

7. Technology, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence

Technology changes work through substitution, augmentation, coordination, monitoring, and creation of new tasks. Automation may remove routine steps while increasing exception handling, system supervision, judgment, and accountability. AI systems can support prediction, classification, drafting, scheduling, and decision recommendations, but they do not eliminate the need for human governance.

A responsible job analysis of AI-enabled work should ask:

• What decision or task is automated, assisted, or merely accelerated?
• What data does the system require, and who verifies its quality?
• Who can challenge, override, or appeal an output?
• What skills are needed to interpret errors and edge cases?
• How are privacy, security, bias, explainability, and accessibility addressed?
• Are performance expectations being increased without corresponding resources?

AI-related redesign should preserve meaningful human accountability. A worker should not be blamed for an opaque recommendation when the organization denies access to relevant evidence or override authority. Conversely, human review must be substantive rather than a ceremonial approval step.

8. Governance, Ethics, and Legal Considerations

Strategic work-system analysis affects employment opportunities, workload, status, pay, privacy, and health. Ethical practice therefore requires more than efficiency.

First, analysts should use job-related and evidence-based criteria. Selection or evaluation requirements should be demonstrably connected to essential work and should avoid unnecessary barriers. Second, employee participation should be meaningful, especially where redesign changes discretion, monitoring, work intensity, or job security. Third, confidential information gathered through interviews, observations, or system logs must be protected and used for legitimate purposes.

Fourth, organizations should assess disparate effects. A new schedule, physical requirement, automated screen, or productivity target may disadvantage protected groups even when it appears neutral. Fifth, safety and well-being should be treated as design requirements, not as optional outcomes traded away for short-term performance. Finally, governance should define who owns decisions, data, models, and consequences.

9. Illustrative Case: Redesigning a Digital Claims Operation

Background

This fictional case concerns Northstar Mutual, an insurance company that introduced a digital claims platform. Its strategy emphasized rapid, trustworthy claims resolution. Claims adjusters were organized in specialized units: intake, document verification, liability assessment, and settlement. Each unit had separate targets.

Problem

Average customer resolution time increased despite investment in automation. Customers repeated information, adjusters escalated routine cases, and employees reported that performance targets encouraged them to close their assigned queue rather than resolve the claim. Quality audits showed inconsistent decisions at handoffs.

Analysis

The work-system analysis mapped the claim from first notice of loss to settlement. It found sequential and reciprocal interdependence. Intake agents lacked authority to correct some data fields, verification staff could not see all customer communications, and liability assessors were measured partly on individual case volume. The platform flagged exceptions but provided limited explanation. Consequently, employees created informal spreadsheets and messaging groups to coordinate work.

The strategic misalignment was vertical and horizontal. The strategy required trustworthy, end-to-end resolution, but the structure and metrics rewarded local throughput. The technology supported automation but not transparent exception management. Jobs were narrowly defined even though effective performance required cross-functional judgment.

Approach and solution

Northstar piloted end-to-end claims pods containing intake, verification, and assessment expertise. The pilot retained specialist consultation for complex legal or technical issues but gave the pod authority over routine cases. Measures were revised to include resolution time, first-pass quality, customer communication, appropriate escalation, and team learning. The AI triage tool remained in use, but employees received explanation cues, documented override rights, and regular error reviews.

Job analysis identified new requirements: cross-functional knowledge, structured customer communication, evidence evaluation, digital-system literacy, and escalation judgment. Training used real cases and focused on exceptions rather than merely teaching button sequences.

Outcome

In the illustrative pilot, handoffs declined, repeated customer contacts fell, and employees reported greater clarity about ownership. The organization also discovered that some improvements depended on correcting data definitions and system permissions rather than changing employee behavior. The pilot was not treated as proof that pods were universally superior; complex claims still required specialist pathways.

Learning points

1. Strategy must be translated into processes, authority, measures, and capabilities.
2. Narrow jobs can be inefficient when work is reciprocally interdependent.
3. Technology redesign requires social and governance redesign.
4. Metrics should reflect the complete outcome rather than local activity.
5. Pilots and evidence are preferable to organization-wide assumptions.

10. Best-Practice Principles

Effective strategic work-system analysis follows several principles:

• Begin with outcomes and value streams, not existing job descriptions.
• Analyze performed work as well as prescribed work.
• Match authority, information, competence, and accountability.
• Design interfaces explicitly; do not assume coordination will occur naturally.
• Treat technology and social arrangements as a joint design problem.
• Use multiple evidence sources and distinguish correlation from causation.
• Include employees and relevant stakeholders in diagnosis and experimentation.
• Evaluate performance, quality, equity, safety, learning, and sustainability together.
• Pilot significant changes and define how results will be judged.
• Revisit job requirements when strategy, technology, regulation, or customer expectations change.

Challenges and Limitations

Strategic alignment is difficult because strategy may be ambiguous, inconsistent, or changing. Organizations may also claim multiple priorities that compete in practice. Causal attribution is challenging: improved performance may reflect market conditions, leadership, technology, or workforce changes rather than job redesign alone. Formal models can oversimplify informal power, professional identity, and emotional experience. Employee participation can be constrained by fear of retaliation or unequal voice. Finally, alignment itself is not always desirable if the strategy is unethical; HR professionals should not optimize jobs for harmful goals merely because those goals are strategically stated.

Chapter Summary

Strategic job analysis connects organizational purpose to the detailed design of work. Strategy must be translated into capabilities, operating-model choices, processes, work systems, jobs, and competencies. Vertical alignment links jobs to strategic priorities; horizontal alignment connects jobs with structure, technology, metrics, rewards, and coordination.

Work-system analysis treats jobs as components of open systems involving inputs, transformations, outputs, feedback, actors, and context. Interdependence and interfaces are especially important because performance failures often occur between jobs rather than within them. Systems theory encourages whole-process diagnosis; contingency theory emphasizes fit; sociotechnical theory requires joint optimization of social and technical elements; and strategic work-design perspectives connect jobs with organizational capabilities.

Effective redesign considers specialization, autonomy, teamwork, workload, information, authority, technology, and human sustainability. AI and automation require explicit attention to accountability, explainability, privacy, bias, and human review. Ethical analysis must address fairness, participation, safety, surveillance, and the relationship between responsibility and control. The central managerial lesson is that jobs should be designed as purposeful elements of a coherent, adaptable, and responsible work system.

Key Terms

Strategic alignment: Consistency between organizational intent and the design of structures, processes, jobs, and HR practices.

Operating model: The way an organization configures processes, decision rights, technology, and relationships to deliver its strategy.

Work system: An arrangement of people, tasks, technology, information, resources, and rules that produces outcomes.

Capability: A repeatable organizational ability that supports strategic execution.

Vertical alignment: Consistency between strategy and lower-level organizational or job design.

Horizontal alignment: Consistency among jobs, processes, technology, rewards, leadership, and HR practices.

Interdependence: The extent to which work units or roles depend on one another.

Pooled interdependence: A condition in which units share resources or outcomes but operate relatively independently.

Sequential interdependence: A condition in which one unit’s output becomes another unit’s input.

Reciprocal interdependence: Repeated two-way exchange of work, information, or resources among units.

Sociotechnical system: A work arrangement in which social and technical elements are designed jointly.

Contingency theory: The view that effective design depends on fit with environmental and organizational conditions.

Job enrichment: Increasing a job’s responsibility, discretion, and control over work.

Prescribed work: Work defined by formal procedures, policies, or job descriptions.

Performed work: Work as actually carried out, including adaptations and workarounds.

Interface: A point at which roles, units, technologies, or processes exchange information or outputs.

Local optimization: Improving one part of a system while reducing total-system performance.

Human capital: The knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that contribute to productive activity.

Algorithmic management: The use of computational systems to allocate, monitor, evaluate, or direct work.

Joint optimization: Designing technical performance and social conditions to support one another.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the difference between vertical and horizontal alignment?
2. Distinguish prescribed work from performed work.
3. Define reciprocal interdependence and give one example.
4. Why does sociotechnical theory require joint consideration of technology and people?
5. What is local optimization, and why can it harm an organization?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how organizational strategy can be translated into job requirements through capabilities, processes, and operating-model choices.
2. Compare systems theory, contingency theory, sociotechnical systems theory, and strategic work-design perspectives.
3. Discuss how authority, information, competence, and accountability should be aligned in job design.
4. Explain how technology and AI can alter task content, skills, monitoring, and responsibility.
5. Develop a method for diagnosing misalignment between a firm’s customer strategy and its work system.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A hospital rewards nurses for the number of patients processed per shift but claims that patient continuity is a strategic priority. Diagnose the likely alignment problems and recommend changes to jobs, measures, and coordination.
2. A software company introduces cross-functional teams but retains individual utilization targets and centralized approval of technical decisions. Use contingency and sociotechnical perspectives to evaluate the design.
3. Select an organization you know and map one value stream from input to output. Identify its interdependencies, critical interfaces, likely workarounds, and two evidence-based redesign options.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best describes vertical alignment?

A. Consistency among rewards, technology, and team processes

B. Consistency between organizational strategy and lower-level work design

C. Agreement between two employees about task allocation

D. Standardization of tasks across unrelated organizations

Correct Answer: B. Consistency between organizational strategy and lower-level work design

Question 2

A process has 24 minutes of active processing time and 120 minutes of total elapsed time. Using E = P / T, what is its process-cycle efficiency?

A. 5%

B. 20%

C. 24%

D. 50%

Correct Answer: B. 20%

Question 3

Which type of interdependence involves repeated two-way exchanges among units?

A. Pooled

B. Sequential

C. Reciprocal

D. Independent

Correct Answer: C. Reciprocal

Question 4

What is the central claim of the sociotechnical perspective?

A. Technology should replace social coordination wherever possible

B. Social and technical elements should be designed jointly

C. Jobs should always be narrowly specialized

D. Employee preferences should determine all technical decisions

Correct Answer: B. Social and technical elements should be designed jointly

Question 5

Which example best illustrates local optimization?

A. A team improves total customer resolution time

B. A purchasing unit lowers unit price but increases production defects

C. A company pilots a redesigned work system

D. A supervisor aligns authority with accountability

Correct Answer: B. A purchasing unit lowers unit price but increases production defects

Question 6

What is a primary purpose of mapping a value stream during job analysis?

A. To eliminate all employee discretion

B. To identify how activities and roles contribute to outcomes

C. To replace performance evidence with opinions

D. To guarantee that one job performs every activity

Correct Answer: B. To identify how activities and roles contribute to outcomes

Question 7

Which condition most strongly supports a mechanistic job design?

A. Stable work with high need for consistency and formal control

B. Rapidly changing work requiring continuous experimentation

C. Highly reciprocal work requiring frequent mutual adjustment

D. Uncertain work in which exceptions dominate routine procedures

Correct Answer: A. Stable work with high need for consistency and formal control

Question 8

In AI-enabled work, which governance practice is most appropriate?

A. Remove all human review to maximize efficiency

B. Hold employees accountable without giving them access to system evidence

C. Define override, appeal, and accountability arrangements

D. Treat algorithmic outputs as automatically objective

Correct Answer: C. Define override, appeal, and accountability arrangements

Question 9

Which statement correctly distinguishes job enlargement from job enrichment?

A. Enlargement adds horizontal task variety; enrichment adds responsibility and discretion

B. Enlargement adds authority; enrichment removes task variety

C. Enlargement concerns technology; enrichment concerns pay only

D. They are identical terms for employee rotation

Correct Answer: A. Enlargement adds horizontal task variety; enrichment adds responsibility and discretion

Question 10

Why should performed work be examined in addition to prescribed work?

A. Formal procedures are always irrelevant

B. Employees’ adaptations may reveal system constraints, risks, or necessary flexibility

C. Performed work provides no evidence about job requirements

D. Workarounds should automatically be treated as misconduct

Correct Answer: B. Employees’ adaptations may reveal system constraints, risks, or necessary flexibility