How does strategic flexibility make a difference for companies? An example of the Hungarian food industry

  • Received July 5, 2022;
    Accepted August 25, 2022;
    Published September 19, 2022
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.20(3).2022.30
  • Article Info
    Volume 20 2022, Issue #3, pp. 374-386
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Nowadays, strategic flexibility and its effect on organizational performance are crucial to discuss. Moreover, organizations, especially industrial companies, should estimate how flexibility as a mechanism can improve organizational performance. The Hungarian food industry is highly significant in the industrial sector of the Hungarian economy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to evaluate how the performance of the Hungarian food industry is affected by strategic flexibility, using supply and demand uncertainty as moderators. It is a quantitative and causal study. A survey was conducted to collect the primary data from a proposed sample of managers at the target companies. As a result, 301 valid responses have been analyzed in SPSS. Regression analysis, correlation, and moderation analysis are used as well. The results indicated that strategic flexibility generally enhances the performance of the target companies, and 20.3% of changes in companies’ performance are related to strategic flexibility. The flexibility of resources affects only the operational performance, while the flexibility of coordination positively affects company performance; it has a 44.2% influence. The findings also showed that uncertainty does not moderate the relationship between strategic flexibility and target firms’ performance. Thus, strategic flexibility is considered as one-effect mechanism in a stable business environment. In all cases, strategic flexibility should be applied in addition to other managerial techniques to enhance company performance.

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    • Table 1. Descriptive analysis
    • Table 2. Correlation results
    • Table 3. Regression results of different SF dimensions: Total performance
    • Table 4. Regression analysis of different SF dimensions: Performance dimensions
    • Table 5. Regression analysis of total SF: Performance dimensions
    • Table 6. Moderated regression analysis (uncertainty as a criterion)
    • Table A1. Reliability test
    • Conceptualization
      Allam Yousuf, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Janos Felfoldi
    • Formal Analysis
      Allam Yousuf
    • Funding acquisition
      Allam Yousuf
    • Investigation
      Allam Yousuf, Jomana Mahfod Leroux
    • Methodology
      Allam Yousuf, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Abdul Rauf
    • Resources
      Allam Yousuf, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Software
      Allam Yousuf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Validation
      Allam Yousuf, Serhii Kozlovskyi, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Visualization
      Allam Yousuf, Serhii Kozlovskyi, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Writing – original draft
      Allam Yousuf, Serhii Kozlovskyi, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Writing – review & editing
      Allam Yousuf, Serhii Kozlovskyi, Jomana Mahfod Leroux, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Project administration
      Serhii Kozlovskyi, Abdul Rauf
    • Supervision
      Serhii Kozlovskyi, Abdul Rauf, Janos Felfoldi
    • Data curation
      Janos Felfoldi