Manufacturing flexibility is a critical soruce of competitive advantage yet there are no guidelines as to what kind of infrastructure facilitates implementation of flexibility. This paper identifies the 'congruent' managerial practices that facilitate implementation of manufacutring flexibility. A conceptual model is first developed to link manufacutring flexibility, managerial practices, and managerial effectiveness. The managerial practices under study are mainly the workforce management practices, such as Team Building, Networking, Delegating, Planning, etc. The comgruence is achieved by theoretically matching the key manufacturing tasks - specific to implementing flexibility - with the workforce management practices generally adopted by manufacturing managers. Hypotheses are tested using data from manufaturing companies in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The results confirm most of the a priori hypotheses advanced with respect to implementation of the volume/mix flexibility. Managerial implications of the results are presented and the directions for future research are identified.
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