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Innovating in a VUCA World: The Six Contexts Model
How Haier innovates in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world
In Management Innovation Made in China — Haier’s Rendanheyi, researchers Jedrzej George Frynas, Michael J. Mol, and Kamel Mellahi make a strong case for Haier’s Rendanheyi as being particularly well-suited to the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world we live in today.
As the authors state,
In this article, we show how companies such as Haier create management innovations in a high VUCA context. Management innovation involves the creation of new management practices. Under the leadership of Zhang Ruimin, the Haier Group developed “Rendanheyi” (in Chinese: 人单合一), which can be loosely translated as “integration of people and goals” or “the win-win model of individual-goal combination.” Rendanheyi is a platform made up of a bundle of management practices, rather than a single new practice.
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Rendanheyi is intended to be an integrated and all-encompassing management model with the overall goal to create “zero distance to the user” and unleash entrepreneurial autonomy within the organization. Specific elements of the Rendanheyi platform include autonomous micro-enterprises, performance-based…
