Managing Flexibility

Managing flexibility in modern organizations is becoming an area of great interest at the levels of people, process, technology, and business. The chapter is intended to bring out the key issues of managing flexibility through a review of relevant literature and managerial interviews. It then presents an integrative view of these issues in the form of a framework of a flexibility maturity model. Various organizations have different levels of maturity in managing flexibility on the fronts of people, process, technology, and business. The chapter describes a six-level framework of the flexibility maturity model. The lower four levels are linked to managing flexibility internally in the organization, viz. managing flexibility in individual processes, at the interfaces of processes, at people or actor level, and finally strategic flexibility. The two higher levels are related to managing flexibility beyond the organization, that is, operational flexibility in the value chain and strategic flexibility in the ecosystem of the organization. The elements of various flexibility maturity levels have been outlined and a process is described for assessing these elements to ascertain the flexibility maturity of an organization. Finally, future directions for the development of the model are portrayed.

The challenge of enabling successful new services has been an increasingly important research topic as more countries move toward service-based economies. While considerable effort has been put into service quality measurement and control, research on factors that contribute to the success of services such as people, process, and technology is still lacking. In this chapter, the authors share their research on a set of critical elements that service innovators and providers could leverage in designing new services or improving the existing ones.

The chapter focuses on definitions and measurements of this set of critical elements based on product design critical elements and best practices from service industries. Surveys with service professionals were conducted to validate the relevance and comprehensiveness of the critical elements, and refine them where applicable.

These proposed critical elements are “service quality and performance,” “pricing of service,” “convenience and usability of services,” “availability of service-related information for consumers,” “ambience of service environment,” “branding and reputation perception by consumers,” “uniqueness of services,” and “consideration of constraints in designing the services.”

This chapter attempts to present a framework that business managers can use to determine where and how much flexibility is needed. Implementation of flexibility is cost, time and resource intensive, and I hope this simple framework will help you in analyzing and then implementing flexibility in your various business segments and in their appropriate dimensions that I discuss later in this chapter.

Total quality management (TQM) principles have been practiced for more than five decades, using various models. It has been demonstrated by many of the Global Fortune 100 companies and a few emerging Indian multinational companies that the interplay of factors of competitiveness in an organization translates into sustainable advantage, only when the people dimension, which enables “flexibility of competitive quality practices,” is closely nurtured and allowed freedom to manifest itself through an engaged leadership driven process.

This chapter is based on experience of practitioners, who represent community of ASQ in India, involved in facilitating the capability development of organizational processes and people dimension in various global organizations including many Fortune companies. Flexi-quality capability based on flexible systems management practices has been integrated with TQM practices through a structured focus on human capital development, the ultimate source of differentiation that leads to adaptive capability at all layers of the organization to deal proactively and successfully with accelerated change. This chapter gives a high level view of this approach and practices with some learning’s in context of Indian companies.

The benefits of e-governance are well acknowledged by different governments all over the world. However, many e-governance projects have reportedly failed to deliver as per expectations. In the recent past, the Government of India has been vigorously working to improve service delivery by sanctioning mega e-governance projects. The massive allocation of funds being made for such projects despite being aware of the challenges likely to be faced during implementation has provided the motivation for studying e-governance from strategic management perspective. This study attempts to examine strategy formulation and performance in the context of e-governance projects. The study is based on a survey of planners belonging to six national/multistate agriculture-related projects in India. Statistically validated constructs have been used to conduct the analysis. ‘Comprehensiveness of strategy formulation’ has been measured in terms of ‘environment scanning’, ‘provision for stakeholders concerns’, ‘processes re-engineering’, ‘redefining of roles and responsibilities’ and ‘provision for obtaining feedback’. E-governance performance is viewed in terms of intended outcomes of the projects studied as part of this research. The study findings are expected to be useful for both scholars and government officials involved in project planning.

The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory has been researched widely, but what has consistently been observed is that most studies of this nature have looked at leaders’ and members’ perspective while determining members’ outcomes. Some studies have addressed the issue of the match or congruence of perception in leader member dyads. Limited studies have tried to establish the relationship between LMX congruence and leaders’ assessment of the subordinates. In quest of analyzing LMX quality, a lot of researchers ignored the fact that a match or congruence between the leaders’ and members’ perception is significant to determine the leaders’ assessment of subordinates Cogliser et al. (Leadersh Q 10:63–113, 1999). Perceptions of individuals tend to be flexible and vary from one to another. A leader varies his style of interaction and communication in a flexible manner and tends to form different relationships with different subordinates. Based on balance theory (Heider, The psychology of interpersonal relations, 1958), we propose that a mismatch may have more negative impact on subordinate outcomes than poor LMX. A sample of 100 matched dyads of leaders and members is studied to assess the congruence, in leader and member LMX ratings; and its relationship with leaders’ assessment of the subordinates. LMX congruence is assessed through the framework given by Cogliser et al. (Leadersh Q 10:63–113, 1999) which conceptualizes four types of congruence; balance high (high leader and subordinate LMX), balance low (low leader and subordinate LMX), follower overestimation (low leader but high subordinate LMX), and follower underestimation (high leader but low subordinate LMX). The four types of LMX congruence are hypothesized to be the predictors of job performance (measured from leader perspective) and promotability (measured from leader perspective) of the members. For this first multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted on the entire model which was followed by analysis of covariance (ANOVA) for each one of the three independent variables. As anticipated, balance high (low) relationships correlated with higher (lower) levels of performance and promotability as perceived by the leader. Follower underestimation resulted in highest levels of job performance and high balance resulted in highest level of promotability as perceived by the leader. Results support our assertion that a mismatch in leaders’ and members’ perceptions predicts different outcomes. Results are discussed for theoretical and practical implications.

Diversity and cultural-based behaviors are known to have a major impact for projects to succeed. To learn more about challenges and success factors, a qualitative study using semistructured interviews inquired experts around the globe about their experiences in cross-cultural information and communication technology (ICT) teams. The study confirmed the importance and complexity of diversity aspects to international ICT projects from a practitioners’ perspective. In particular, the participating experts found social aspects such as communication, experience, trust, or involvement to have significant influence whether projects succeed or fail. Moreover, a high variety of different approaches and techniques used for managing diversity in practice were examined, and no standard method was identified. Hence, the study exposed a clear need for a comprehensive, yet flexible and adaptive framework for managing diversity in complex ICT environments.

The chapter presents a review of the prominent research on leadership and leadership development to highlight the need for a holistic view of leadership development; taking into account the selection of potential leaders, development of leadership capabilities, evaluation of the leadership development process and its outcomes, as per the leadership philosophy, culture and requirement of an organization. We propose a holistic model and approach for leadership development, which can help organizations to design and implement systematic and customizable interventions to develop effective leadership and leaders flexibly.

In the present chapter, author(s) have put their efforts to broaden the causal inventory of an important managerial construct, i.e., people flexibility. Role efficacy and its dimensions were examined as antecedents of people flexibility. Literature on role efficacy and people flexibility is discussed and preliminary thoughts on their interrelationships are noted. In order to equip the proposed hypotheses with empirical validation a primary survey was conducted among 348 Indian managers. Thereafter, multiple hierarchical regression was applied. As assumed role-efficacy dimensions were found significant and positive predictors of people flexibility. Further, to ascertain whether demographic characteristics of managers (gender, managerial levels, and organization type) moderate the relationships of role-efficacy dimensions and people flexibility, bootstrapping (through structural equation modeling) was employed. The results of bootstrapping have confirmed the significant moderating effect of demographic factors.

As collaborations in supply chains increase, governance of relationships and profit sharing between supply-chain members emerges as a critical issue. Different supply-chain members have different incentives: a retailer who incurs inventory costs would focus on order quantity, while a supplier who incurs production and scheduling costs would focus more on shipment schedules. Without proper incentives, members may be willing to withhold critical information. Information-sharing systems that reduce either lead-time uncertainty or variability in shipment quantity benefit downstream members, but may not necessarily benefit the supplier, and thus create uneven incentives to adopt such systems. In this work, we discuss two-tier supply chains and determine channel profit and members’ profit under different information sharing and inventory locations. We further discuss the case when the supplier tends to be more informed than the downstream members. In this case, the supplier may purposely choose to only partially resolve demand uncertainty or to share information only with select downstream members.

In a competitive world of business, procurement decisions made by a business organization play a vital role in its success. Flexibility is one of the key aspects of overall success of a business organization and thus procurement of items in an organization is considered as an important functional area of business. Hence, modeling a flexible procurement problem can ensure a great success to a business organization. Therefore, this chapter addresses a flexible procurement problem by integrating supplier selection, lot-sizing, and carrier selection by considering dynamic demand, cost fluctuations and varying capacities of suppliers and carriers. The problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear program (MILP). Numerical illustrations are provided to demonstrate the proposed MILP and are solved for randomly generated data. LINGO 10 is used to solve the proposed MILP of flexible procurement problem.

Coordination among the supply chain (SC) members provides great benefits in meeting the customers’ needs. It helps to reduce the bullwhip effect and improve the SC profitability. Though there are many coordination mechanisms, also known as enablers, available to improve the SC coordination, but understanding the hierarchical relationship among them would provide great insights to the organizations. In this chapter, the hierarchical relationship among these elements using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is presented. Dependence and driving power, obtained from MICMAC analysis, are taken as a base to categorize the enablers into four clusters. The enablers with high driving power and low dependence should be the focus of the management.

Interest in global logistics and supply chain management (GLSCM), both in industry and academia, has grown over past two decades. Many of the firms have discovered the magnitude of savings through planning and managing logistics networks more efficiently as logistics has emerged as “big business” (Lambert and Stock, strategic logistics management, 1993). In many organizations, supply chain management is started as “bare minimum necessary function” but later on turned out to be a function which helps in significant cost saving, impacts customer satisfaction, and in long run provides sustainable competitive advantage. It is therefore not surprising that many firms are involved in the analysis of their logistics networks. Logistics play a very important role in today’s cost-sensitive organizations. If we take the case of soft drink industry in India, transportation of goods across various distributors plays a very important role. The logistic strategy formulation requires proper planning of logistic, its implementation, and controlling of the same. In the overall logistic planning the key area is transportation as it needs to be highly efficient with minimal cost. In order to make transportation efficient, optimized route determination plays a major role and with the help of technology it can facilitate better decision-making (Fang et al., Dynamic transport planning in logistics of sports tour resource based on MAS and GIS, 2011). In fact, industry and academia is focused more on reducing the transportation cost, making it highly efficient. This chapter focuses on similar challenge of soft drink industry in India. It requires change in the transportation strategy keeping the existing retailers, vehicles, and people in place. This chapter brings out the enablers of flexibility in managing the transportation with the Indian soft drink industry. The chapter is concluded with action plans and scope for future work.

This chapter examines the applicability of real options in improving the robustness of the research and development (R&D) continuity of biotech start-ups during the valley of deficits or against the systemic risk as the financial crisis, because they have to endure more than 10 years to get an approval of a medicine on the market subject to the resource constrains, if they could raise enough financial resources. The organization of this chapter is consists of four sections excluding introduction and conclusion. The first section mentions an analysis on the present investment environment for R&D continuity of biotech start-ups. The second section examines the existing basic theories on the decision-reserving functions of real options. The third section attempts to figure out the flexibility value of a sequential compound switching option that is designed to select the optimal mode between an assumed drug development process as benchmark and a cooperative development in strategic partnership on the way. The fourth section is trying to map the selective decisions made at the market and cooperative development risks (or potential) based on these data. Moreover, its aim is to support decision making by creating 3-D graphs between the net present value (NPV) and both risks and also among these indices with market volatility.

To implement innovation in an organization, it is essential to get the buy in from respective stakeholders. There are various stakeholders who will be involved in every phase of the innovation life cycle. Hence, there is a need for us to apply stakeholder engagement methodology (SEM) in each of those phases to ensure that the innovation process is complete and that the end users are benefitted as a result of innovation. This chapter describes the use of SEM for successful implementation of competence development framework (CDFW) during innovation diffusion phase in the organization. The authors of this chapter have used an innovation offering called CDFW to induct freshers into the project. CDFW will help freshers learn fast in less time, thus making them productive sooner. This chapter describes SEM and its phases in detail, while implementing CDFW is considered for case illustration. The chapter elaborates in detail various activities being carried out as part of CDFW implementation with the aid of SEM. The chapter focused on CDFW implementation during idea diffusion phase only. The advantages of SEM and CDFW are also presented as part of this chapter.

Compelling vision, bold leadership, decisive action, great strategies all these prerequisites of success, more often than not, are also almost always the ingredients of failure, too. The dominant reason is the managers generally base their decisions on predictable future which is more often than not ‘not-predictable’. The collision of thought between commitment and uncertainty gives rise to the term ‘strategic paradox’ which means that the strategies with greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of failure. As it is witnessed here in the business world that to cope with the underlining uncertainties, ‘strategic flexibility’ comes very handy, which is nothing but ushering in of new real options required to implement, fresh, effective, different and unique commitments-based strategies, which fulfils the gaps and spaces beyond the constraints. In the present chapter, few case studies has been cited in brief, because of limitations, set in by the organizers for length of the chapter.

National technological competitiveness can be understood as the collective capacity of firms and other key actors in a country to deliver superior technological capabilities and better performance matrices needed to be competitive for the country to ensure not only its survival but also a sustainable growth. Technological innovation is one of the key pillars of economic competitiveness of a nation. Due to this, many countries have been focusing on a number of measures to enhance their technological competitiveness. It is important to not only figure out what these measures are but also understand the interplay of these measures to achieve the overall superior performance. This becomes a key issue especially for the developing countries, such as India, to propel their growth through technological means and thereby improve their overall competitiveness as well.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the literature and identify the key measures and frameworks related to the technological competitiveness. Literature has been reviewed under the topics, such as views of strategic thinking for managing competitiveness, globalization of technology, importance of technology development, innovation, national innovation system and sectoral innovation system, measuring technological competitiveness and strength of national innovation system, policy interventions and strategies to enhance technological competitiveness, and role of industry and business associations. Finally, a synthesis of the literature findings has been carried out to conceptualize a framework for understanding the dynamics of the national technological competitiveness. The chapter provides thought-provoking insightful views for key stakeholders to align their strategies to propel their technological as well as overall competitiveness.

In e-commerce where products and services are offered and purchased through the Internet, the use of mobile devices has been increasingly spread because of its flexibility. While the traditional fixed-PC access to the Internet continues to be important, the mobile access allows one to have accesses to the Internet in a ubiquitous manner, opening the door for rapid growth of m-commerce. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the optimal strategy concerning how to allocate the promotion budget between the PC promotion and the mobile promotion based on the most extended model by Yoshii and Sumita. The optimal budget allocation is numerically determined so as to maximize the expected number of products to be sold within a fixed period [0, t], or to minimize the time required to sell K products. Associated risk control measures are also considered, where, for each of the two random variables above, the probability of its value being greater (or less) than a certain threshold is maximized (minimized), subject to its expectation staying above 90 % (or 110 %) of the maximum (minimum) case. It turns out that the expected value optimization and the risk control optimization yield the same optimal budget allocation for both of the two random variables. A conjecture is presented based on these numerical results.

This chapter aims to explore the significance of people management in the context of a radical change situation of post-merger integration. The concept of emotional balancing of employees by middle-level managers has been studied and applied to uncover its effect on projected change outcomes. To illustrate the purpose of the chapter, an extensive review of literature has been undertaken to identify the variables of emotional balancing and change outcomes. This is further validated by analyzing the case of Hindalco–Novelis merger and conducting a preliminary discussion with middle-level managers involved in it. The outcome of the chapter will be research propositions, hypothesizing the relationship between the research constructs, emotional balancing, and change outcomes. However, the research variables are verified in case of one organization, that is, Hindalco–Novelis merger, and hence generalization of the findings would be limited. A conceptual understanding can be developed, which can help middle managers predict what kind of emotional capability they should build up and identify employees’ emotions that should be taken care of to reduce the resistance to change.

In addition to the major changes experienced through the economic revolution in India, there have been certain major landscape changes in the cities of this country as well. One of the sectors that has maximum dynamism and vigor, adding life to this country’s movement is tourism. A lot of tourism-related activities and developments are happening in the country. The present study tries to reflect on the aspects of tourism, and how different kinds of strategic technology integrations, in terms of banking, insurance and other services sector industries are trying to integrate with tourism to provide a better, wholesome, and integrated service convenience to its end users. This is illustrated by a case study using SAP–LAP framework.

Reduction of “demand variability” (DV) over the weekdays can help Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies improve return on investment by reducing inventory at the wholesale distributors. The DV for wholesale distributors and stock keeping units (SKU) combinations is high at present in the FMCG company that was taken up as a case study. This, in turn, leads to a high component of safety stocks of SKUs resulting in high capital blocked in inventory. In addition, it causes imbalance of shipment loads to wholesale distributors across weekdays and thereby impacts money flow of the customers. In this chapter, we try to provide an insight into the factors responsible for sales peak during weekdays categorized by channel wise, beat wise, SKU wise, and SKU category wise analysis. We propose a heuristic based route balancing approach for a wholesale distributor to minimize the variations in demand and thereby help reduce the safety stock inventory. We illustrate the proposed heuristic through a case study in a FMCG company with two category groups in food and personal care. The corresponding reduction in inventory for the different categories is suggested.