Revisiting Flexibility in Organizations: Exploring its Impact on Performance

Today's knowledge age organizations operate in more turbulent business and regulatory environments and managers need to take proactive stance in creating combating strategies for such environments and to adapt to such external turbulent environments. Incorporation of ‘Flexibility’ in strategic processes of any organization becomes very important at various levels in all the perspectives of the organization. This paper critically highlights the gap in flexibility research that flexibility is not merely related to technology but flexibility is more deeply rooted in strategic management processes of organizations. The paper reviews the developments in different types of flexibility studies such as organizational, technical, operational, strategic, marketing and financial flexibility. The area of flexibility and organization strategy is emerging and needs a lot of attention in order to understand its impact on various management processes within organization leading to enhanced competitiveness and better performance. This paper also emphasizes on how flexibility has evolved as a concept and taken a shape of strategic driver to improve organizational performance.