Fit for functional differentiation: new directions for personnel management and organizational change bridging the fit theory and social systems theory

Augusto Sales is a professor, researcher and head of professional masters programmes at Fundação Getúlio Vargas Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas (FGV EBAPE). He holds a doctorate degree in business administration from Rennes School of Business (France) and masters from FGV EBAPE and Georgetown University (USA) in management and international business, respectively. Before joining FGV EBAPE, he had a career in major international consulting firms (Deloitte and KPMG International Limited), including 12 years as the lead partner of KPMG's Global Strategy Group in Brazil and Latin America, in addition to two years as a strategy consultant for the Cities Lab of Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) working on the issue of affordable housing for the Ministry of Economy of the Brazilian Federal Government. Augusto also participates as a researcher and chairman of the Next Society Institute (NSI), a European think tank maintained by Kazimieras Simonavičius University (KSU), Lithuania, which investigates practical applications of the social systems theory, especially the ideas developed by the German philosopher Niklas Luhmann, in management. A professional strategist, Augusto, worked with multicultural teams in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East assisting large corporations, family businesses, investment funds, multilateral organizations, governments and the development sector in their most pressing challenges. At FGV EBAPE, he develops research in the fields of strategy, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and in the practical application of Niklas Luhmann's ideas, particularly the theory of social systems, in management sciences. Augusto has published articles in international and domestic scientific journals, including the Journal of Organizational Change Management (JOCM), Systems Research and Behavioral Science (SRBS) and RAUSP Management Journal, being the co-author of the award-winning article “Government.com? Multifunctional cabinet portfolio analysis of 201 national governments” that received the Emerald Literati Award in 2020.

Juliana Mansur is a professor of psychology and organizational behaviour at the Brazilian School of Public Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation, focussing on leadership and the P–O relationships. She is the author of articles published in national and international journals, in addition to various technical works in the areas of organizational behaviour (OB) organizational psychology and people management. She has professional experience in human resources and business consulting, accumulating knowledge and practice in recruitment and selection, training and development, career and performance management, process mapping and redesign, and project structuring and implementation.

Steffen Roth is a full professor of management at the Excelia Business School, France, a full professor of social sciences and a member of the Senate at the Kazimieras Simonavičius University, Lithuania and a visiting professor of management and organization at the University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany. He holds the title of Adjunct Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Turku, a Habilitation in Economic and Environmental Sociology awarded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research, a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Geneva and a Ph.D. in Economics and Management from the Chemnitz University of Technology. He is the field editor for the social systems theory of Systems Research and Behavioral Science. The journals his research has been published in include Journal of Business Ethics, Ecological Economics, Administration and Society, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, European Management Journal, Journal of Cleaner Production and Futures. His ORCID profile is available at orcid.org/0000-0002-8502-601X.