Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques can be used for the spectral efficiency enhancement of the cellular systems, which can be categorized into spatial multiplexing (SM) and spatial diversity schemes. MIMO systems suffer a severe performance degradation due to the intercell interference from the adjacent cells as the mobile terminal moves toward the cell boundary. Therefore for the spectral efficiency enhancement, an appropriate transmission scheme for the given channel environment and reception scheme which can mitigate the intercell interference are required. In this paper, we propose an adaptive signal transmission/reception scheme for the spectral efficiency improvement of $M_R{ imes}M_T$ MIMO systems, present the decision criteria for the adaptive operation of the proposed scheme, and demonstrate the performance gain. The proposed scheme performs adaptive transmission using spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity, and adaptive reception using maximal ratio combining (MRC) and intercell spatial demultiplexing (ISD) when the spatial diversity transmission is used at the transmitter. Spatial multiplexing/demultiplexing is performed at the high signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) range, and the transmit diversity in conjunction with the adaptive reception uses either conventional MRC or ISD which can mitigate the $M_R-1$ interference signals, based on the mobile location. For the performance evaluation of the proposed adaptive scheme, the probability density function (pdf) of the effective SIR for the transmission/reception methods in consideration are derived for $M_R{ imes}M_T$ MIMO systems. Using the results, the average effective SIR and spectral efficiency are presented and compared with simulation results.