Influences of change strategies to achieve organizational flexibility: a system dynamics approach.

Abstract

This thesis has illustrated how organisations understand and use organisational flexibility evaluating the time path of organisational change strategies as well as the main barriers that arise when those processes are implemented along the enterprise lifecycle. The reviewed theoretical and empirical approaches can be divided into two broad categories: static analysis of the consequences of organisational change in organisational flexibility and isolated evaluation of the interactions between some dimensions of organisational flexibility. In order to address such challenges, the Organisational Flexibility is extended in this research through the use of Systems Dynamics. A more robust Organisational Flexibility theory results from this extension. System Dynamics, as a simulation technique, allows the outcomes of the interactions among multiple underlying organisational and strategic processes to be revealed, especially as they unfold over time. The research documents the process of design of two Dynamic Models of Organisational Flexibility. Such a design process leads to the development of the Extended Dynamic Model of Organisational Flexibility. The baseline for the development of the base case model representing Volberda¿s theory is documented as well as an exploratory study and related theoretical insights that lead to the creation of the Extended Model are described. The research concludes with the evaluation of the Extended Dynamic model against a number of dynamic propositions.