Search results

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on organizational performance through the mediating role of human resources (HR) flexibility (expressed by functional flexibility, skills malleability and behavioural flexibility).

The study examines theoretical relationships in the Greek context, which reflects changing economic and financial crisis, based on multilevel structural equation modelling estimation, using three waves of sample data collected in years 2014, 2016 and 2018 from organizations operating in the private sector.

The study finds that although HPWS positively influences all three HR flexibility dimensions, this positive effect is not transferred equally to organizational performance. The dominant effect on organizational performance is attributed to skills malleability, a smaller effect to behavioural flexibility and a negligible effect to functional flexibility.

Although the data collected refer to three different years, most of the companies and individuals responded to sampling were different. As such, the study does not allow for dynamic causal inferences due to its quasi-longitudinal nature.

The findings of this study may influence managerial decisions in developing bundles of HPWS policies and practices in relation to HR flexibility attributes.

Since most studies consider HR flexibility as an aggregated construct, this study is possibly one of the very few studies that is examining the differential impact of the HR flexibility dimensions on organizational performance in turbulent times.

Human resource (HR) flexibility is a firm-level capability that consists of employee skill flexibility, employee behavior flexibility, and HR practice flexibility. HR flexibility allows organizations to adapt and be responsive to changes in their environments. Findings from this paper indicate that if the organization is highly innovative and has flexible HR policies, then that influences organizational culture, risk-taking and experimentation within a firm. This paper has also revealed that process innovation mediates between adaptability culture and product innovation. It also revealed that managers should emphasize processes to improve efficiency for resource exploitation. The lessons learned from process innovation activities indicated that having a strong knowledge base assists a firm in developing innovative technology such as automation for manufacturing, handling and testing or simply smart manufacturing.

Questionnaires were sent to employees at 23 Taiwanese companies in high-tech industries, where innovation is the key to their survival, and 293 valid surveys were collected. Structural equation modeling, (SEM) using IBM SPSS Amos, was used to test the hypotheses.

The results fully support the hypotheses that HR flexibility positively influences adaptability culture and contributes to organizational innovation. Furthermore, it was found that adaptability culture has a direct impact on process innovation and an indirect impact on product innovation through process innovation.

The critical role of HR flexibility and adaptability culture on organizational innovation in the high-tech sector were highlighted. The importance of HR flexibility is emphasized to provide managerial hints to top managers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial flexibility and analyse its relationship to the organizational responsiveness of firms. This paper seeks to measure responsiveness by determining the fit between contextual and organizational variables.

Using an empirical approach and data drawn from a wide range of countries and different industries this paper obtains a sufficiently validated multidimensional scale.

The research proposes a measurement scale of organizational responsiveness through four types of managerial flexibility: internal and external, structural and strategic.

Whereas researchers can benefit from the development of a methodology that integrates different perspectives on fit, practitioners can identify the organizational responsiveness in their organizations.

This paper contributes to the literature by proposing a method to identify the organizational responsiveness of firms and developing a measurement scale.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if human resource (HR) flexibility facilitates the development of organizational ambidexterity, which in turn has positive effects on firm performance.

The research hypotheses are tested by partial least squares with data from a sample of 100 Spanish hotels.

The results confirm a total mediator effect of organizational ambidexterity on the relationship between HR flexibility and performance. However, it was not possible to check that such flexibility directly influences performance. This may be due to the fact that HR flexibility has a gradual effect on the development of organizational ambidexterity.

The results of this study contribute to the knowledge on the impact of HR flexibility on performance. This paper, thus, stresses the strategic role that HRs play within organizations, insofar as their flexibility makes it possible to develop a highly relevant organizational capability such as ambidexterity. The study’s limitations are the analysis technique utilized (it assumes linearity between latent variables) and that the research only explores the hotel industry.

HR managers need to consider that HR flexibility contributes to developing organizational ambidexterity and the ability to combine the learning of exploration and exploitation, which affects the firm’s performance and, therefore its competitiveness.

The results of this study can contribute to broaden the knowledge about the impact of HR flexibility on performance. In fact, the studies on HR flexibility performed so far have focused on analysing the role played by that flexibility as a mediator variable between high performance work system and performance. This work goes one step further, trying to examine the extent to which HR flexibility influences the ability to undertake exploitation and exploration processes at the same time. This paper, thus, stresses the strategic role that HRs play within organizations, insofar as their flexibility makes it possible to develop a highly relevant organizational capability as is ambidexterity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the use of flexible budgets may influence different institutional logics (organizational inertia and flexibility).

A qualitative research based on a single case study in a multinational subsidiary company was carried out. The data were mainly collected using the dialog technique through open-ended and semi-structured interviews and complemented with direct observation in informal and formal meetings and the analysis of internal documents. Content analysis was used for the analysis of the findings.

The use of flexible budgets, which isolates the negative variations due to the decrease in sales volume, may contribute to organizational inertia. However, this can be counterbalanced if the managers try to minimize the decline in performance through initiatives that promote organizational flexibility. In this case study, it was found that the alignment between the production director and the controller, who frequently work under different institutional logics, was important to stimulate organizational flexibility particularly in continuous improvement projects.

The findings of this paper are based on only one in-depth case study. Hence, the results cannot be generalized, but a theoretical contribution can be made. Furthermore, the findings are constrained by the constructs used and the specific managerial and theoretical perspectives that have supported the analysis.

These results can be useful particularly for companies that are dealing with the abrupt drop in the sales volume and use the flexible budget as a performance assessment technique. These firms must pay attention because this combination can stimulate organizational inertia. To counteract this problem, it is necessary that controllers and the managers work by understanding the initiatives that promote organizational flexibility, mainly by Kaizen projects, which can minimize performance decline.

The main contribution may be how to deal with the different managers’ behaviors, given the decrease in sales volume, and it can help an organization survives in times of economic recession and fierce competition environments.

This paper contributes to both practical and academic dimensions. Indeed, despite being widely used, flexible budgeting is not a widely researched topic.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential process through which leadership exerts impacts on organizational innovation. A thorough analysis was conducted by highlighting the contribution of ambidextrous leadership to organizational innovation.

Data were collected from companies located in mainland China. A total of 200 cases were included in the final sample. Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses in this study.

The results showed that exploitation knowledge search and exploration knowledge search partly mediated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and organizational innovation, respectively. Strategic flexibility could positively moderate the relationship between exploitation knowledge search and organizational innovation and had no significant impacts on moderating the relationship between exploration knowledge search and organizational innovation.

In this study, not only were managers provided with a sophisticated understanding of how and when ambidextrous leadership could influence organizational innovation but also concrete strategies were given for enhancing organizational innovation.

In this study, the interaction among ambidextrous leadership, knowledge search and organizational innovation were elucidated and the moderating impacts of strategic flexibility on the relationship between knowledge search and organizational innovation were explored. The findings of this study enriched the literature on leadership, knowledge management and innovation.

Strategic flexibility is an increasingly sought‐after competitive element in today’s fast‐paced and changing world. Theoretical discussion on how to achieve flexibility includes, among other things, building dynamic capabilities, maintaining multiple options, and supporting horizontal communication and teamwork among employees. These and other aspects of flexibility can, in part, be supported through the organizational structure. Organizational theory offers a number of combinations of options for the designer. With a variety of choices, and a need to have both control of execution and flexibility for change, a two‐level structure may support the combination of benefits that is a source of advantage. Proposes that organizations can maintain their operational structure at one level, while experimenting with a loosely bounded developmental organizational layer. Suggests that this complementary organizational tier provides space and support for a combination of self‐development and self‐organized efforts consistent with established incentives and values.

In the era of multiple global disruptions, firms are finding it to continue their business. MSMEs are impacted more as they have constrained resources. Organizational flexibility has emerged as an organizational and management principle that would help firms stay competitive even in volatile markets. This study aims to present a set of guidelines and insights for MSME managers to implement organizational flexibility in their organizations.

This study uses total interpretive structural modelling to study how the various factors contributing to organizational flexibility behave together. Behavioural theory is used to explain why organizations need to incorporate flexibility, and systems theory of organization is used to explain why an organization needs to have open boundaries.

Organizational flexibility is a principle that may be supported by the systems theory of organization. The study has shown that it is important for MSMEs to have supply chain collaborations to be more flexible. The study also shows pressure from competitors as the key driver that would make a firm more flexible, and that adequate support from management and technological skills are required to drive flexibility in an organization.

Single respondent bias may have occurred in this study. This can be eliminated by interviewing multiple people from the same organization. Further research around the reasoning for linkages can be explored with theory-driven grounded studies.

This study attempts to use a multi-criteria decision-making technique to present insights to managers to help them make their organizations flexible.

This paper aims to explore the ways to solve the dilemma of balancing between efficiency and flexibility in project-oriented organizations (POOs). It investigates the characteristic of the relationship between efficiency and flexibility in the context of POOs. Based on the framework of organizational design, this study tries to open the “black box” of how POOs make a balance between efficiency and flexibility, and examines the influence of organizational design in this process.

This study is a comparative multiple case study based on four project-oriented enterprises, whose relationships between efficiency and flexibility are diverse from one another. It follows the process of building theory from case study, applying within-case and cross-case analysis and replication logic in shaping hypotheses.

The results show that the relationship between efficiency and flexibility in POOs can be divided into four different situations. The contradictory factors are identified as functional structure and project structure, standardized process and temporary plan, as well as strategic-level centralization and project-level decentralization. It is found that the key to achieve a balance between efficiency and flexibility is to coordinate the relationship of contradictory factors through the effective integration of organizational level and project level.

This study introduces the framework of organizational design in solving the dilemma of balancing between efficiency and flexibility, responding to the call for developing the project management theory from a strategic perspective. It provides theoretical support for POOs to achieve balancing between efficiency and flexibility, and suggests an effective synergy of organizational design in both organizational and project level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that drive the adoption of cloud-based services and further understand the impact of this adoption on the organizational flexibility. This study presents information technology executive’s perspective and discovers new constructs of organizational flexibility that can be achieved due to the adoption of cloud-based services, which is the main contribution of this paper.

This study uses in-depth interview approach. Total 21 Indian cases were studied by interacting with respondents having similar profiles (i.e. CIOs, CTOs, technology heads, and systems managers). Based on the literature review a semi-structured questionnaire was prepared and administered through in-depth interviews.

Analysis of data reveals that cloud-based services provide relative advantage in terms of scalability, accessibility, and on-demand deployment of services within no time. Easy to use interface, experience, and expertise of the cloud service provider as well as support from top management plays important role in the cloud adoption decision. Further the study also identifies that no matter which model of cloud-based services (software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)) is used; cloud-based services’ adoption impacts organizational flexibility, which can be divided into four categories, namely, economic flexibility, process flexibility, performance flexibility, and market flexibility.

This is an exploratory study conducted through in-depth interviews hence the results can further be verified through a quantitative research. The study does not explore negative factors that may discourage adoption of cloud-based services. Though two factors vendor lock-in and security emerged as a concern very prominently in the in-depth interviews but this issue can further be explored in detail.

This study bridge the gap in the research by identifying the factors that drive the adoption of cloud-based services in different forms (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS) as well exploring the impact of cloud adoption on the organizational flexibility in case of Indian organizations.