The Interaction Among Organizational Flexibility, Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage: A Path Analytic Study¹

Abstract

Decisions about strategies to be implemented and organization design are important in having competitive advantage for companies. Although this statement widely takes place in management literature, very little research has been done on this subject in Turkey. The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of competitive strategies in the impact of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage in order to extend about empirical literature of the structure-strategy-competitive advantage paradigm based on the resource-based view (RBV). In this context, the data were collected from the top 500 industrial enterprises in Turkey. The data were tested via structural equation model. The findings of our research show that the direct effect of organizational flexibility on competitive superiority was marginally significant and when three different competitive strategies were included between these two variables in the model, the marginally significant effect of organizational flexibility on the competitive advantage disappeared. In other words, the full mediating role of applied competition strategies in the effect of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage has been identified. Our findings are similar to the findings of other studies that consider organizational structure as a valuable resource and examine the relationship between the structure and the strategy according to the RBV.

Citation

Koçyiğit, Y. and Tabak, A. (2020), "The Interaction Among Organizational Flexibility, Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage: A Path Analytic Study¹", Akkaya, B. (Ed.) Agile Business Leadership Methods for Industry 4.0, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 303-326. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-380-920201017