Building the Flexible Firm: How to Remain Competitive

How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? How can we measure a firm's flexibility? Can a more flexible firm be created? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award winning study, Henk Volberda's Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Although traditional organizational forms have worked well in the relatively stable environments of the past, theglobalization of markets, rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles, and increasing aggressiveness of competitors have radically altered the ground rules for competing in the 1990s and beyond. Increased competition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly than before, and toexperiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. This book offers a wealth of insights into the way firms can increase their flexibility. It is based on extensive interviews with practitioners and supported by many longitudinal case studies on flexibility improvement within large corporations. The author provides a strategic framework whichexplains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness. The Igor Ansoff Award The Igor Ansoff Strategy Award is an international award given to a person who has distinguished himself by making an outstanding theoretical or practical contribution to the development of strategic management and strategic thinking. The award was established in The Netherlands jointly by Coopersand Lybrand and the Faculty of Technical Business Administration of the University of Twente. Igor Ansoff was professor at the Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels and Stockholm, and the US International University, San Diego. He has been appointed Fellow by both the American Academyof Management and the International Academy of Management, and is also Honorary Chairman of the Strategic Management Society of Japan.