Organizational Flexibility: A dynamic evaluation of Volberda's theory

摘要

Many scholars have focused on redefining the balance between exploitation and exploration of new competitive advantage in terms of organizational flexibility without offering a comprehensive modelling which explains the relationships between its key variables and consequent side effects of such iterations. Exploring these interactions and the dynamic adaptation processes towards the desired adjustment is the main motivation of the present research. In order to improve our understanding of organizational flexibility, we examine Volberda's theory (Volberda, 1998) in detail in terms of its causal explanation of organizational adaptation to changing environments along the enterprise lifecycle. To accomplish with this objective, this paper presents the identification of the relationships between key constructs of Volberda's framework, a causal model to understand the dynamic processes implied on the transformation strategies and, the dynamic hypothesis developed to explain some constraints that will be tested by means of the formalization of the causal model and its dynamic simulation accordingly. The first results of this prior causal model have allowed improving our understanding about organizational flexibility as a dynamic adjustment process and, particularly, about the consequences of decision policies concerning flexible capabilities management and organizational responsiveness while the firm is wrestling with the environmental turbulence.