Public administrations have to deal with an increasing dynamic of global crises. Can public administrations react quickly to more or less sudden and unforeseeable events in order to remain efficient? What role does digital transformation play? To what extent can digitalisation increase the ability to change? This article analyses how German public administrations dealt with the refugee crisis of 2015. The focus is on the extent to which the measures taken in response to the refugee crisis can be assigned to characteristics of adaptable systems. The project will bring together approaches from economics and administrative sciences that describe and analyse how organisations deal with the challenging influences of a complex and dynamic environment. Using a case study, it will be shown to what extent the measures taken can be assigned to such approaches. As a result, it becomes clear that the bureaucratic organisation only had a limited capacity for change in dealing with the refugee crisis, as the authority was always in a conflict of objectives between adaptable action on the one hand and conformity with the law on the other.