Framework for a Flexibility Maturity Model

This paper examines the concept of flexibility from a practitioner's point of view to seek the essence of the concept and to address certain fundamental questions often arising in the minds of the practitioners, such as: what is flexibility; Why do we need it How does it matter for business performance? How it is created and exploited? In an earlier paper, we examined various notions, definitions, objectives and needs, the fundamental beliefs underlying the concept and the conceptual models proposed in the literature. Based on this, we proposed a proactive flexibility management view. The second part of this paper focuses on the operational issues and the role of a Flexibility Maturity Model to provide a useful direction to practitioners’ to build and exploit flexibility towards performance enhancement. This part discusses three important issues related to the operational use of flexibility, namely, how flexibility helps in resolving conflicts between organizational objectives, how the practitioners can identify types, dimensions and measures of flexibility? And usefulness of a flexibility maturity model in providing direction to practitioners to build and exploit flexibility towards organizational performance.