E-business's impact on organizational flexibility

Organizations are finding that their ability to respond to unpredicted changes in the market is becoming a key factor in survival. The ability to adjust e-business processes to customer preferences (flexibility) has become a necessity for online systems. Despite the interest in e-business flexibility the academic literature has not kept pace with industrial developments. This research study builds upon previous work through two investigations. First, the results of five case studies are used to develop a seven (alliance/joint decision management and intelligence, enterprise-wide change management, organizational learning, process oriented agility, network centric information management, leadership of transformation and knowledge exchange meetings) factor model that depicts the influences of flexibility on organizational effectiveness in e-business environments. Second, this paper illustrates how the model can be used as a benchmarking tool and has the potential to become a key learning mechanism. The authors discuss the conclusions and managerial implications of the findings. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.