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A Theoretical Review of Flexibility, Agility and Responsiveness in

the Operations Management Literature
Article in International Journal of Operations & Production Management · January 2009

DOI: 10.1108/01443570910925352
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IJOPM
29,1 A theoretical review of flexibility,
agility and responsiveness in the
operations management literature
30
Toward a conceptual definition
Received July 2007 of customer responsiveness
Revised July 2008
Accepted October 2008 Ednilson Santos Bernardes and Mark D. Hanna
Department of Finance and Quantitative Analysis,
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the often overlapping use of the related terms
flexibility, agility and responsiveness in the operations management literature to clarify differences
between the terms.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the notion of the ladder of abstraction, a conceptual
differentiation between the three terms is proposed.
Findings – Based on the most common associations of the terms in the literature, the paper proposes
a hierarchical interrelationship between the terms in that: flexibility is most commonly associated with
the inherent property of systems which allows them to change within pre-established parameters;
agility is predominantly used to describe an approach to organizing that provides for rapid system
reconfiguration in the face of unforeseeable changes; and responsiveness commonly refers to a system
behavior involving timely purposeful change in the presence of modulating stimuli.
Practical implications – As managers of manufacturing firms strive to improve the performance of
their organizations in a highly competitive environment, the paper provides a useful enhanced
understanding of the relative roles that flexibility, agility and responsiveness play in their operations
strategies. This in turn will enable them to better focus their competitive strategies and investments.
Originality/value – While confusion between the meanings of these terms has been noted by others,
the paper is believed to be the first to consider the three terms together and thereby propose
a differentiation between them.
Keywords Operations management, Consumer behaviour, Competitive advantage
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
The markets in which manufacturers and service firms compete are increasingly
influenced by intense foreign competition, rapid technological change, shorter product
life-cycles and customers increasingly unwilling to settle for mass-produced items or
services with limited value (Krause et al., 1998; Hitt et al., 1998; Zhang et al., 2003).
The “new breed of customer” (Handfield and Nichols, 2002), who demands greater
International Journal of Operations & responsiveness to a dynamic set of requirements, and a new competitive environment
Production Management (Bower and Hout, 1988; Stalk, 1988), which exposes local companies to competition
Vol. 29 No. 1, 2009
pp. 30-53 from companies around the globe, form a new scenario that has challenged firms in
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited most industries (Mehta, 2001; Monckza and Morgan, 2000; Pagell, 2004). In this new
0144-3577
DOI 10.1108/01443570910925352 scenario, responsiveness may be one of the most important capabilities needed for
firms to achieve competitive advantage (Matson and McFarlane, 1999; Meehan and A theoretical
Dawson, 2002; Holweg, 2005; Storey et al., 2005; Reichhart and Holweg, 2007). review of
A review of the operations management (OM) literature, however, indicates
inconsistency and ambiguity regarding the use of the responsiveness construct. This OM literature
term is often used interchangeably with the terms agility and flexibility. Therefore, it is
not clear whether agility, flexibility, and responsiveness are synonyms or distinct
concepts. In fact, the definition of responsiveness has not been consolidated in the 31
literature (Matson and McFarlane, 1999) and its meaning has been pointed out as
difficult to define or specify (Kritchanchai and MacCarthy, 1999). As such, progress
towards prescriptive theories with implications for managerial practice, such as factors
that lead to responsiveness, may be more difficult to achieve. As noted by Upton
(1995a, p. 205), “the confusion and ambiguity about a concept that often represents a
critical competitive capability seriously inhibits its effective management.” In addition,
the ability to develop and test specific hypotheses relies on valid and reliable measures
of a concept (Flynn et al., 1996; Bollen, 1989). However, the likelihood that an
instrument will have content validity, for instance, is dependent on how closely item
development follows, and is based on a careful definition of the construct, including
distinguishing it from related constructs (O’Leary-Kelly and Vokurka, 1998; Betz and
Weiss, 2001). In sum, the lack of common definitions and clarity in explaining the
interrelationships among constructs may lead to different conclusions without
advancing theory that can guide practice (Flynn and Flynn, 2004; Roth, 1996;
Rosenzweig and Roth, 2004).
This study seeks to contribute to the OM literature by proposing empirical
definitions and a conceptual differentiation among the responsiveness, flexibility and
agility constructs. As aforementioned, the ambiguity surrounding the phenomenon of
responsiveness may hamper the development of theory, and the consequent
prescriptions for practice, as “the operations management phenomenon for which
explanation is sought should be clearly defined” (Schmenner and Swink, 1998, p. 100).
This study addresses the recent call in the OM literature for development of formal
conceptual definitions before any traditional empirical statistical analysis (Wacker,
2004). In our attempt to achieve clarity and propose concepts that are amenable to
differentiation, we adopted the procedure described by Osigweh (1989) to bring the
target concepts to a higher level of abstraction, which involves extending the breadth
of a concept while reducing its properties. Therefore, it is beyond the scope of the paper
to differentiate the terms at the operational level. We attempt to better define the
meaning boundaries of the terms by not only specifying what our interpretation of the
literature indicates they are, but also, and importantly, by specifying what they are not.
This clarification of meaning forms the basis for our proposed conceptual definitions.
We also propose a conceptual definition for customer responsiveness, which is at lower
levels of abstraction according to our framework, to illustrate the traveling properties
of our proposed concepts, i.e. their applicability to a wide range of situations.
The next section describes our methodological approach and provides a literature
review, which addresses the theoretical use of the terms as they appear in the literature
in various contexts. This is followed by sections containing the insights gleaned from
literature review and content analysis, proposed conceptual definitions that allow for
differentiation of the three terms, an illustration of the concept’s traveling properties,
and finally discussion and concluding remarks.
IJOPM 2. Theoretical foundation and literature review
29,1 An examination of the OM literature reveals that the content of the terms
responsiveness, agility and flexibility have overlapping notions, which is reflected in
the interchangeable use of these terms. For instance, Barclay and Dann (1996)
explicitly equate agility to responsiveness in their investigation of the role played by
virtual enterprise and information technology in the improvement of overall
32 responsiveness. Scannell et al. (2000) refer to volume and modification flexibility as
short-term responsiveness, and mix and changeover flexibility as long-term
responsiveness. Zhang and Sharifi (2000) argue that a firm’s current level of agility
can be assessed through general factors such as how responsive the company is to
changes in its business environment and how effective the company is in proactively
capturing the market needs. Bessant et al. (2003) assert that competitive success in
manufacturing is strongly linked to the ability of a firm to respond quickly and flexibly
to its environment and meet the emerging challenges with innovative responses; they
call such abilities responsiveness. Upton (1995b) refers to flexibility as the ability to
adapt or change at the plant level, whereas Zhang et al. (2003) suggest that this ability
has the attributes of robustness (maintaining the status quo despite change) versus
agility (instigating change rather than reacting to it). Zaheer and Zaheer (1997) describe
responsiveness as the rapidity with which firms respond to environmental signals.
This description of responsiveness coincides with D’Aveni’s (1994) characterization of
agility.
As the aforementioned examples suggest, it is not clear whether these concepts are
distinct, as they are oftentimes used interchangeably. The existence of this concept
misinformation is supported by Matson and McFarlane (1999, p. 768), which indicates
that “currently there appears to be no generally accepted definition of responsiveness
in the manufacturing literature.” However, realizing that it would be an extremely
challenging task to isolate the different attributes of constructs that seem so
intertwined, we reviewed the terms as they were presented in the literature, but drew
on the notion of the ladder of abstraction (Sartori, 1970; Osigweh, 1989) to propose
more universal concepts that are amenable to differentiation.
The ladder of abstraction is a methodological framework for the systematic
conceptualization of terms. It is a conceptual structure wherein terms are vertically
disposed according to their level of abstraction, ranging from very specific operational
terms at lower levels to generalizable universal terms at higher levels of abstraction.
Climbing the ladder involves extending the breadth (extension) of a concept while
reducing its properties (depth) or connotation. Thus, in this taxonomic hierarchy,
concepts are ordered such that the more specific categories occupy a subordinate
position relative to the superordinate ranking of the more general categories (Collier
and Mahon, 1993). Particularly, the ladder of abstraction facilitates the classification of
terms at three different levels of abstraction: high-level categories that allow cross-area
comparisons among heterogeneous contexts; medium level categories that allow
intra-area comparisons among relatively homogeneous contexts; and low level that are
context-specific (Sartori, 1970).
Adopting the above methodology for our purposes, we make a concept more
abstract and more general by extending its breadth while lessening its properties or
attributes (Osigweh, 1989). For instance, in our analysis we see flexibility as an
overarching concept at a higher level of abstraction as opposed to volume flexibility,
a more specific and contextual term. Likewise, we see responsiveness in a higher rung A theoretical
in the ladder of abstraction whereas customer responsiveness is positioned at a lower review of
level of abstraction. This is not to say that responsiveness cannot itself travel between
lower and higher levels in the ladder of abstraction. The bottom rung of the ladder of OM literature
abstraction represents the most concrete meaning: this level describes a single entity.
Each higher rung represents some larger class containing the entity described at the
bottom rung, but encompassing other entities as well. By climbing the ladder of 33
abstraction, a precise generalization is achieved by having enough detail for clarity yet
not so much that the detail sacrifices usefulness for the purposes of our analyses.
Therefore, moving up the ladder of abstraction should make the task of differentiating
terms that seem so intertwined more feasible and yet useful for our purposes. We next
discuss the extant literature using the targeted terms to identify key attributes that will
allow us to conceptualize and differentiate them as proposed.
2.1 Flexibility
Of the terms involved in our study, we believe flexibility has by far the most developed
conceptualization. A plethora of scholarly work has advanced our understanding of the
topic, from seminal work proposing an initial domain (Gerwin, 1987; D’Souza and
Williams, 2000; Das, 2001) to specific dimensions and its drivers (Upton, 1997; Jack and
Raturi, 2002; Oke, 2005; Karuppan and Kepes, 2006) and their measures (van Hop, 2004;
Wahab, 2005), to enablers (Narasimhan and Das, 2000; Zhang et al., 2006), to
application in the service industries (Aranda, 2003), and, more recently, in the supply
chain context (Stevenson and Spring, 2007).
Some authors distinguish between internal and external flexibilities. For instance,
Swamidass (1988) distinguishes machine-level flexibility from plant-level flexibility.
The former being “predominantly technology based” and the latter being derived from
a combination of technology, infrastructure, design and engineering capabilities, and
the competitive goals and objectives of a firm. Upton (1994) defines internal flexibility
as the operations strategy and the set of capabilities a firm nurtures to respond to its
environment, and external flexibility as capabilities possessed by the firm and used to
accommodate sources of variability to which the firm must respond and which are seen
as flexible by the market. This external dimension fits the two major strategies
proposed by Hyun and Ahn (1992) for using flexibility: reactive and proactive. In the
same vein, Gerwin (1993) also suggests two major strategies for using flexibility:
adaptive and redefinition. The adaptive strategy refers to the defensive or reactive use
of flexible competencies to accommodate unknown uncertainty, while the redefinition
strategy refers to the proactive use of flexible competencies to raise customer
expectations, increase uncertainty for rivals and gain competitive edge.
The literature review on flexibility reveals that some OM scholars and practitioners
commonly perceive flexibility as reactive to change and that manufacturing
flexibility has been largely used to provide adaptive response (Gupta and Goyal,
1989). In other words, this literature typically characterizes strategic flexibility as a
buffer to increased environmental variability or solely as an adaptive response to
environmental uncertainty. This viewpoint is what Swamidass (1998) termed
“defensive strategic user.” Defensive firms react to changes after they have occurred
and try to minimize the impacts (Golden and Powell, 2000). Evans (1991) suggests that
this strategy provides the recuperative capability to return to a previously viable state.
IJOPM According to Gerwin (1993), this reactive notion is also shared by American managers,
29,1 who view flexibility in this way when they refer to customer responsiveness or
comment on adjusting to the changing needs of customers.
In terms of conceptualization, initially there was not much consistency in the
definition and utilization of the term flexibility (Upton, 1995b), which had caused
difficulties in developing valid and reliable measures for this concept (Zhang et al., 2003).
34 This problem was related to the lack of a well-defined theoretical domain (Koste and
Malhotra, 1999). However, conceptual and empirical literature addressing these issues
has been contributing to the clarification of the construct. Table I shows some typical
definitions identified in our literature review from those papers in the operations
literature that exhibit an explicit definition of flexibility. While the compilation of
definitions in Table I is not intended by any means to be exhaustive or comprehensive,
we chose them because we deem them to be sufficiently representative of what we found
in our review in terms of the progression in the understanding and scope of the concept.
Gerwin (1987) defines manufacturing flexibility as the ability to respond effectively
to changing circumstances. This seminal definition represents the earlier attempts to
conceptualize the term flexibility and, although it has great breadth (extension), it lacks
an explicit connotation. Thus, it is not very precise and may produce theoretical
misinformation. Conversely, Cox (1989) defines manufacturing flexibility as the
quickness and ease with which plants can respond to changes in market conditions.
Definition Reference
Ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances Gerwin (1987)

The quickness and ease with which plants can respond to changes in Cox (1989)
market conditions
The adaptability of a system to a wide range of possible environments Sethi and Sethi (1990)
that it may encounter
The ability of a manufacturing system to generate high net revenues Ramesesh and Maliyakal
consistently across all conceivable states of the nature in which it may (1991)
be called to function
The ability to cope with changing circumstances or instability caused Gupta and Somers (1992)
by the environment
The ability of the system to quickly adjust to any change in relevant Nagarur (1992)
factors like product, process, loads, and machine failure
A response to external uncertainty Newman et al. (1993)
A generic ability to adapt to internal and/or external influences Holweg (2005)
The ability of a manufacturing system to change states across an Upton (1994, 1995b)
increasing range of volume and/or variety, while adhering to stringent
time and cost metrics
The ability to respond quickly to changing customer needs at Small and Chen (1997)
reasonable price
The capability of an organization to move from one task to another Vokurka and Fliedner
quickly and as a routine procedure (1998)
Ability of a manufacturing system to change states across an Das (2001)
increasing range of volume and/or variety, while adhering to stringent
time and cost metrics
The organization’s ability to meet an increasing variety of customer Zhang et al. (2003)
Table I. expectations without excessive costs, time, organizational disruptions,
Definitions of flexibility or performance losses
This definition has a very limited breadth, but a reduced set of properties for the level A theoretical
of analysis adopted by those authors. Newman et al. (1993) characterize flexibility as a review of
competitive response to environmental uncertainty due to its accommodating nature.
Nagarur (1992) defines flexibility as the ability of the system to quickly adjust to any OM literature
change in relevant factors like product, process, loads and machine failure. This last
definition would be positioned in the lower rungs of the ladder of abstraction; yet, the
terms “any relevant factors” do little to limit the properties of the concept. Small and 35
Chen (1997) define flexibility as the ability to respond quickly to changing customer
needs at a reasonable price. Zhang et al. (2002) define flexibility as the firm’s ability to
meet an increasing variety of customer expectations while keeping costs, delays,
organizational disruptions and performance losses at or near zero. Vokurka and
Fliedner (1998) conceptualize flexibility as the capability of an organization to move
from one task to another quickly and as a routine procedure. They indicate that each
situation is defined ahead of time so that procedures needed to manage it are in place.
This conceptualization concurs with Wadhwa and Rao’s (2003) claim that flexibility is
a prerequisite to become agile. In general, these definitions contain the notion that
uncertainty should be accommodated or buffered within certain pre-determined
constraints, which concurs with Vokurka and Fliedner’s (1998) argument that the
situations needing buffer are defined ahead of time.
The conceptual literature indicates that the domain of any type of flexibility is defined
by four building blocks of range-number, range-variety, mobility, and uniformity (Slack,
1983; Gerwin, 1987; Upton, 1994; Koste and Malhotra, 1999). Recently, Koste et al. (2004)
empirically established that these four building blocks of flexibility could be represented
by two underlying factors, which they termed scope and achievability. Scope captures the
flexibility response in terms of the full range and diversity of options, while achievability
captures the short- and long-term penalties that the organization incurs involving the
flexible response. The inclusion of these underlying factors or properties on the more
recent definitions of flexibility presented on Table I has added more precision to the
conceptualization. For instance, Das (2001) defines flexibility as the ability of a
manufacturing system to change states across an increasing range of volume and/or
variety, while adhering to stringent time and cost metrics. The ability to change states
indicates the extension of the concept, while range and penalties indicate the connotation.
Furthermore, these properties contain the notions of change and limit. Thus, it seems that
in order for a system or process to be denoted flexible, it has to accommodate changes in
certain pre-defined parameters and within pre-established limits. Finally, our literature
review indicates that some of the latter definitions have attempted to include a link to
customers’ needs. However, most of the more traditional notions of flexibility seem to be
related to uncertainty and options, wherein a flexible ability does not directly provide
superior value to customers seeking to satisfy existing or latent needs. Flexibility seems to
be an enabler to providing superior value to the customer and seems to connote a potential,
as opposed to realized, ability. This concurs with Slack’s (1987) seminal findings that
managers perceive flexibility as a means rather than an end in itself.
2.2 Agility
Literature on agility has started to accumulate, most of it proposing agility as some
form of new manufacturing paradigm (Burgess, 1994; Yusuf et al., 1999; Zhang and
Sharifi, 2000; Sanchez and Nagi, 2001; Brown and Bessant, 2003). However, we believe
IJOPM this construct has yet to attain the same level of conceptual development that flexibility
29,1 has achieved. Goldman and Nagel (1993) suggest that agile manufacturing is a
synthesis of existing technologies and methods of organizing production systems,
while Burgess (1994) contends that this perspective is consonant with the
post-industrial stage put forward by Doll and Vonderembse (1991). Indeed, Burgess
(1994) suggests that agility is a new manufacturing paradigm, which is still ill defined
36 and without a clear domain due to its recent appearance. Goldman et al. (1995) asserts
that agility is a comprehensive response to the business challenges of profiting from
rapidly changing, continually fragmenting, global markets for high-quality,
high-performance, customer-configured goods and services.
Sharifi and Zhang (2001) suggest that agility conceptually encompasses two major
factors:
(1) responding to changes (anticipated and unexpected) in due time; and
(2) exploiting and taking advantage of changes as opportunities.
Some attempts have been made towards differentiating agility from flexibility and
responsiveness. For instance, Wadhwa and Rao (2003) contend that an agile firm
should be capable of coping with unpredictable changes in market or customer
demands. They argue that the major distinction between flexibility and agility is the
character of the situations requiring change. Flexible changes are responses to known
situations where the procedures are already in place to manage the change. Conversely,
agility subsumes the notion of flexibility by adding the ability to respond to
unpredictable changes in the market or in customer demands. This hierarchical
argument concurs with Backhouse and Burns (1999) conceptualization of agility. They
reason that agility is the ability of a firm to adapt to unforeseen changes in the external
environment, while flexibility is the ability of the firm to respond to a variety of
customer requirements, which exist within defined constraints.
Wadhwa and Rao (2003) contend that agility focuses more on innovative response,
as it addresses unpredictable changes. Sanchez and Nagi (2001) indicate that agility is
an overall strategy focused on thriving in an unpredictable environment and a
response to complexity brought about by constant change. Reflecting this notion,
Sanchez (1995) points out that some firms have responded more quickly than ever
before to changing technological and market opportunities by introducing a greater
number of new products, offering broader product lines, and upgrading products more
rapidly. The author calls companies of this type “product creators.” Richards (1996)
concurs with the aforementioned arguments by asserting that agility enables firms to
thrive in an environment of continuous and unanticipated change. Upton (1995b) refers
to agility as a plant’s ability to change nimbly from making one product to making
another. Sambamurthy et al. (2003) refer to agility as the ability to detect and seize
market opportunities with speed and surprise. They contend that agile firms
continually sense opportunities for competitive action in their product-market spaces
and marshal the necessary knowledge and assets for seizing those opportunities.
Sambamurthy et al. (2003) point out that agility encompasses both the exploration and
exploitation of opportunities. Goldman and Nagel (1993) discuss agile manufacturing
as a synthesis of existing technologies and methods of organizing production, wherein
flexibility and speed are key contributors to agility. There is some consensus in the
literature regarding the notion of reconfiguration to unpredictable changes through
utilization of structural and infrastructural elements, which corroborates the notion of A theoretical
agility being a more encompassing capability than flexibility. For instance, Zhang and review of
Sharifi (2000) suggests that agility is about responding to changes through the
utilization of managerial and manufacturing methods and tools; Brown and Bessant OM literature
(2003) cite links, people and processes; while Sanchez and Nagi (2001) cite
cooperativeness and synergism. Altogether, they arguably imply a fundamental
change in the existing configuration of a system. 37
More recently, Narasimhan et al. (2006) observed that the literature has mixed both
performance outcomes and commonly associated manufacturing practices in
definitions of agility. They point out that this has resulted in confusing definitions.
In order to deal with this issue, those scholars conceptually differentiate agility from
agile manufacturing systems, where agility is proposed as a performance capability,
while agile manufacturing systems refers to a cluster of related practices. Furthermore,
agility has been differentiated from lean manufacturing in that the latter is a response
to competitive pressures with limited resources, while the former is a response to
complexity brought about by constant and typically unforeseen changes (Sanchez and
Nagi, 2001). In general, the literature typically characterizes agility as a manufacturing
paradigm, which focuses on the ability to change the configuration of a system in
response to unpredicted and changing market conditions (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000;
Gunasekaran, 1999; Vokurka and Fliedner, 1998; Goldman et al., 1995) and involves
structural and infrastructural elements. This characterization is reflected in the current
definitions of agility found in the literature (Table II).
Table II presents some typical definitions identified in our literature review from
those few papers in the operations literature that exhibit an explicit definition of
agility. While the compilation of definitions in Table II may not be exhaustive or
comprehensive, we chose them because we deem them to be sufficiently representative
of what we found in our review in terms of the progression in the understanding and
scope of the concept. Although the extension and connotation of the definitions are
quite variable and their use still lags the conceptual progression found in the
conceptualization of flexibility, they implicitly or explicitly contain the notion of
reconfiguring a system in response to unpredicted and changing conditions. For
instance, Storey et al. (2005) define agility as a set of interlinked changes in marketing,
production, design and organization. Narasimhan et al. (2006) define agility as the
ability to efficiently change operating states in response to uncertain and changing
demands placed upon it. Both definitions somewhat explicitly contain the notion of
reconfiguration. As the table indicates, earlier definitions were vaguer in their
characterization of the concept, but they typically contain the implicit notion of
reconfiguration of the system and its properties. In general, the connotations of the
definitions are still not developed enough to allow a better degree of precision.
2.3 Responsiveness
OM literature has increasingly invoked the term responsiveness (Matson and McFarlane,
1999; Storey et al., 2005; Holweg, 2005; Donk and Vaart, 2007), but we believe the
conceptualization of the term is still lagging. Table III shows some typical definitions
identified in our literature review from those papers in the operations literature that exhibit
an explicit definition of responsiveness. As before, while the compilation of definitions in
Table III may not be exhaustive or comprehensive, we chose them because we deem them
IJOPM
29,1
The ability to accelerate the activities on a critical path that Kumar and Motwani (1995)
commences with the identification of a market need and terminates
with the delivery of a customized product
A comprehensive response to the business challenges of profiting Goldman et al. (1995)
38 from rapidly changing, continually fragmenting, global markets
for high-quality, high-performance, customer-configured goods
and services
The ability to produce and market successfully a broad range of Vokurka and Fliedner (1998)
low cost, high-quality products with short lead times in varying lot
sizes, which provide enhanced value to individual customers
through customization
The ability of an enterprise to respond quickly and successfully to McGaughey (1999)
change
The capability of surviving by reacting quickly and effectively to Gunasekaran (1999)
changing markets, driven by customer-designed products and
services
The ability of an organization to thrive in a constantly changing, Rigby et al. (2000)
unpredictable business environment
The ability of enterprises to cope with unexpected changes, to Zhang and Sharifi (2000)
survive unprecedented threats from the business environment, and
to take advantage of changes as opportunities
The organization’s capacity to gain competitive advantage by Meredith and Francis (2000)
intelligently, rapidly and proactively seizing opportunities and
reacting to threats
It is the ability to both create and respond to change in order to Highsmith (2004)
profit in a turbulent business environment
A set of interlinked changes in marketing, production, design and Storey et al. (2005)
organization
Table II. Ability to efficiently change operating states in response to Narasimhan et al. (2006)
Definitions of agility uncertain and changing demands placed upon it
to be sufficiently representative of what we found in our review in terms of the progression

in the understanding and scope of the concept. Gindy et al. (1999) refer to responsiveness as
the ability of a manufacturing system to make rapid and balanced adjustments to the
predictable and unpredictable changes characterizing today’s manufacturing
environment. These authors focus on internal factory conditions and on internal
operational outcomes. Barclay and Dann (1996) define responsiveness as the ability to
react purposefully, and within an appropriate timescale, to significant events,
opportunities or threats in order to achieve or maintain competitive advantage. They
also define the responsiveness capability as the degree of responsiveness that a company
possesses or needs, i.e. its ability to react to and/or predict events in order to manage,
control, and take advantage of them. Importantly, however, these authors use the terms
responsiveness and agility interchangeably in their study.
Holweg (2005) presents one of the seminal attempts at differentiating responsiveness
and flexibility. His discussion was then among a few in the operations literature to
explicitly recognize the customer or the market as part of the domain of responsiveness.
He articulates and empirically identifies three determinant factors of responsiveness in
supply chains, which he calls “dimensions of responsiveness.” However, the objective of
A theoretical
review of
A firm’s ability to respond in a timely manner to customer’s needs Tunc and Gupta (1993) OM literature
and wants
The ability to fill customer’s orders quickly Upton (1995a)
The ability to react purposefully and within an appropriate Barclay and Dann (1996)
timescale, to significant events, opportunities or threats to bring 39
about or maintain competitive advantage
The ability of a manufacturing system to make a rapid and Gindy et al. (1999) and
balanced response to the predictable and unpredictable changes Saad and Gindy (1998)
characterizing today’s manufacturing environment
The ability of a production system to achieve its operational goals Matson and McFarlane (1999)
in the presence of disturbances
The ability to respond and adapt time-effectively based on the Catalan and Kotzab (2003)
ability to read and understand actual market signals
The ability to plan and control the flow of materials through a Harrison and Godsell (2003)
sequence of supply chain processes in order to meet end customer
buying behavior
The firm’s ability to respond in a timely manner to the needs and Chen et al. (2004)
wants of its customers
The ability of the manufacturing system or organization to respond Holweg (2005)
to customer requests in the marketplace
Product-specific action taken as a function of the knowledge Hult et al. (2006)
generated and disseminated in logistics operations
The speed with which the system can adjust its output within the Reichhart and Holweg (2007) Table III.
available range of the four external flexibility types in response to Definitions of
an external stimulus responsiveness
his study was neither to establish a conceptual differentiation nor a formal conceptual
definition of responsiveness at an organization level, but to identify key factors
influencing a supply chain’s capability to respond to customer demand. More recently,
Reichhart and Holweg (2007) observed that most authors seem to link responsiveness
exclusively to external events and concluded that responsiveness should be considered
as a concept which is solely customer focused. Accordingly, they define responsiveness
as the speed with which a system can adjust its output within the available range of four
flexibility types (product, mix, volume and delivery) in response to an external stimulus.
This notion of stimulus (connection with the customer) resonates with one of the major
components of responsiveness (stimuli) identified by Kritchanchai and MacCarthy
(1999); the other two being awareness and capabilities. Most of the literature, and the few
explicit definitions of responsiveness available in the literature, which are represented
on Table III, contain the notion of stimuli. This component is explicit in Reichhart and
Holweg’s (2007) definition and implicit in the terms customer’s needs and wants (Tunc
and Gupta, 1993), requests (Holweg, 2005), orders (Upton, 1995a), and market signal
(Catalan and Kotzab, 2003) encountered in most of the remaining definitions. Another
major component found in most definitions is the notion of time, which is explicitly
captured by the terms timely (Tunc and Gupta, 1993; Chen et al., 2004), appropriate time
scale (Barclay and Dann, 1996), time-effectively (Catalan and Kotzab, 2003) and is
implicitly captured by the terms speed (Reichhart and Holweg, 2007) and quickly
(Upton, 1995b).
IJOPM The component “awareness” of responsiveness identified by Kritchanchai and
29,1 MacCarthy (1999, p. 829) is defined by the authors as:
[. . .] a firm’s knowledge and recognition of stimuli that occur or may occur, and the
preparation and responses necessary to address them, whether they emanate from customer
needs, environmental uncertainties, competitors or market conditions.
40 This notion has its counterpart in the definition of responsiveness found in another
body of literature: the marketing literature defines customer responsiveness as the
action taken in response to intelligence that is generated and disseminated (Slater and
Narver, 1994; Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Kohli et al., 1993; Narver and Slater, 1990).
For instance, Kohli and Jaworski (1990) indicate that responsiveness takes the form of
selecting target markets and designing and offering products/services that satisfy their
current and anticipated need. Marketing scholars initially conceptualized customer
responsiveness as one of the sub-dimensions of the customer orientation construct,
whereas customer orientation is a dimension of the market orientation construct (Kohli
and Jaworski, 1990; Narver and Slater, 1990). Slater and Narver (1999) explain that
customer orientation can be seen as a continuum of behaviors regarding the
development of, and responsiveness to, the needs of current and potential customers.
However, Jayachandran et al. (2004) note that customer orientation need not necessarily
result in customer responsiveness, as the propensity to respond may not be matched by
the corresponding ability to respond. Recently, customer responsiveness has started to
gain an independent research prominence in the marketing literature (Martin and
Grbac, 2003).
Reichhart and Holweg (2007) found support on Ackoff’s (1971) definition of system
response, from the management literature, to their observation that most authors link
responsiveness exclusively to external events (stimuli). Indeed, Holweg (2005) traces
the origins of responsiveness back to systems thinking in management. The
management literature refers to responsiveness as the ability to modify organizational
strategies to match environmental threats or opportunities (Weick, 1979; Tushman
et al., 1986; van de Ven and Joyce, 1981). This stream of literature focuses on
organizational adaptation to the external environment. Additionally, the strategy
literature explicitly recognizes that organizations not only react passively to
environmental changes, but also attempt to change external constraints. This notion is
exhibited in Barclay and Dann’s (1996) definition from Table III: . . . purposefully . . . to
bring about or maintain competitive advantage. In general, the strategy literature
presents a broad range of conceptual definitions and applications of the responsiveness
construct. For instance, Zaheer and Zaheer (1997) relate their notion of responsiveness
to the speed of strategic decision making and suggest that responsiveness is a critical
capability in fast-paced environments. Stalk (1988) concurs by suggesting that
responsiveness is one of the outcomes from implementing a time-based approach.
Das and Elango (1995) define responsiveness as the nimbleness and swiftness of an
organization to explore external opportunities, while reducing the impact of threats.
Williamson (1991) suggests that responsiveness has two dimensions: variety and
lead-time. Consonant with this suggestion, Meehan and Dawson (2002) concluded from
fieldwork that managers regard responsiveness as the ability to concomitantly meet
customer needs and be rapid and proactive. They further argue that customer
responsiveness refers to:
[. . .] accurately and insightfully giving customers what they need, want or do not yet know A theoretical
they want. And it is about consistently doing so more quickly that anyone else and rapidly
enough to retain the value of the decision or idea for the customer (Meehan and Dawson, 2002, review of
p. 29). OM literature
Thus, some traits emerge from our review of the literature and the definitions of
responsiveness as used in OM, and which, in general, closely correspond to the use of
the concept in related fields: external stimuli, time and the notion of awareness. 41
3. Insights gleaned from the literature review

In this section, the findings from the above literature review and content analysis are
synthesized (Table IV). Our interpretation of the findings suggests that flexibility
seems to be related to an ex ante mode in relation to change, whereby a system is
prepared in advance for some future transformation within defined constraints. For
instance, volume flexibility allows firms to respond quickly and effectively to both
increases and decreases in aggregate demand levels. As we can note, this characteristic
of the production system is an ex ante capability, an intrinsic and latent characteristic
of the system developed in preparation for future changes in the aggregate demand
levels within a predefined range. Central to this notion is the capability to generate
variety so that options are available to do things differently or do something else if the
need arises. Thus, it is a property of the system that indicates the system’s potential
behavior, rather than its performance and may exist without been demonstrated
(Gupta and Goyal, 1989; Upton, 1995b). We also found that the literature typically
mentions some form of range and penalties in theorizing flexibility, which can be
represented by the dimensions of scope and achievability. In terms of definition, we
found a progression over time towards a more balanced use of extension and
connotation, thus rendering the latest concepts of flexibility more precise.
Grounded on the literature review and study of formal definitions typically
encountered, we propose that flexibility is an enabling ability to change status within
the current configuration (a pre-established and limited scope and achievability).
The scope is the number of different states that can be achieved. The achievability
is the transition cost and time to move from one state to another within the established
scope. Flexibility is not an end in itself, but a means that enables (and is subsumed by)
a desirable outcome. It is neither change in the existing ability itself (scope and
achievability) nor change on how the ability is demonstrated or achieved. It is not the
Organizational
perspective Flexibility Agility Responsiveness
Scope Operating characteristic Business level organizing Business level

paradigm performance capability
Inherent system property Approach to organizing System behavior or
the system outcome
Definition Ability of a system to Ability of the system to Propensity for purposeful Table IV.
change status within an rapidly reconFigure (with and timely behavior Summary of proposed
existing configuration a new parameter set) change in the presence of conceptualization of
(of pre-established modulating stimuli flexibility, agility, and
parameters) responsiveness
IJOPM ability to change the intrinsic and current scope or achievability. The scope and
29,1 achievability can exist as a potential without being demonstrated; it is an option to
absorb uncertainty and not a commitment to do so. In this definition, the ability to
change status is broad and indicates the extension of the concept, while the connotation
is specified in terms of achievability and scope of the current configuration. This
concept is general because it can refer to a large class of entities, but it is also precise
42 because it has few differentiae. As one moves from this higher level of abstraction
towards a more specific situation, say product flexibility, more specific attributes
should be added while the breadth should be reduced.
The literature suggests that agility is a concept coined to address competitiveness in
the current fast-paced and unpredictable industrial environment. Although agility
shares a common component of meaning with flexibility, the literature indicates that
the latter has been used to indicate the ability to manage uncertainty by having
available options within an existing configuration and predetermined constraints. We
found that agility seems to be a philosophical approach to organizing and managing
manufacturing. Its identifiable characteristics have only recently started to be
addressed empirically (Narasimhan et al., 2006). It encompasses the ability to
fundamentally reconfigure available options in order to accommodate unforeseen
environmental circumstances and subsumes or is supported by flexibility. In terms of
conceptualization, the seminal attempts at defining agility have been characterized by
vagueness and variability. Indeed, many of the definitions seem loosely derived. Yet,
most of the definitions contain the notions of fundamental change and unpredictability.
Grounded on our reading of the literature review and study of formal definitions
typically encountered, we propose that agility is the ready ability to fundamentally
change states to accommodate unforeseen circumstances in a timely manner. It is a
property that allows the system to change its fundamental configuration vis-à-vis
unanticipated issues. It implies uncertainty about the future state (configuration) of the
system: upon materialization of a situation, the system changes states such that the
new architecture can address the situation. It is not the ability to absorb change within
pre-established parameters, but the ability to reorganize rapidly and smoothly,
whereby the end state or situation needing change are not established a priori. It is not
bound by pre-defined possibilities, as it implies the fundamental change in the
arrangement itself. It is not an available option previously incorporated to
accommodate uncertainty, but the fundamental change of the options available
themselves once uncertainty has materialized.
Our analysis of the literature suggests that responsiveness refers to the actions or
behavior of a system using a series of capabilities to address changes triggered by
stimuli. The literature suggests that the various types or forms of flexibility refer to
specific internal mechanisms within the broader system, which may be employed to
contribute to overall system responsiveness. For instance, Holweg (2005) asserts that
system flexibility (flexibility of the total operation), as defined in Slack’s (1991)
framework, can be rephrased as responsiveness. So flexibility often represents means of
responding to changes. Yet, a flexible system is not necessarily responsive, as the
system must also be able to judiciously employ its flexibility in response to disturbances
(Matson and McFarlane, 1999). Thereby, flexibility is associated with the availability
of choices, which may be used to respond to changes. It is an attribute of the system,
while responsiveness is an outcome or use of that capability to address stimuli.
For instance, Jordan and Graves (1995) asserts that increasing manufacturing flexibility A theoretical
is a key strategy for improving market responsiveness. By the same token, Daugherty review of
and Pittman (1995) asserts that making operations more flexible, and thereby increasing
corporate responsiveness, is a well-documented practice within the literature, which OM literature
supports the notion of responsiveness being a performance-oriented behavior or
outcome.
In their discussion about corporate responsiveness, Daugherty and Pittman (1995) 43
inquire about what firms are doing to make their operations more flexible and allow them
to become more responsive to their customer. Their inquiry suggests that responsiveness
is a performance-related concept originated in the interaction with markets, while
flexibility is an internal capability that may or may not interface with the external
environment, but that, importantly, enables that outcome. This illustrates the notion that
flexibility indicates the capability of the operating system to absorb disturbances, while
responsiveness indicates how well the system behaves vis-à-vis market change. Flexibility
allows a system to absorb uncertainty by functioning as a buffer to stabilize the
production process. As such, it supports the organization’s competitive strategy by
reducing the effects of environmental uncertainty. By contrast, agility allows an
organization to exploit uncertainty by facilitating timely competitive actions through
fundamental reconfiguration. It enables a competitive strategy by having the organization
consistently ready for reconfiguration. Thus, agility refers to the system capability to
rapidly reconfigure in the face of unpredictable changes, while responsiveness is the
system’s actual and purposeful change in behavior or outcome caused by a stimulus. In
terms of definition, responsiveness seems to be more developed than agility, while still
lagging the progression achieved by flexibility. We found that most definitions of
responsiveness contain the notion of external stimuli, time and awareness, although the
latter is typically implicit in terms such as customer needs. The most recent
conceptualizations have demonstrated a more balanced use of extension and connotation.
Grounded on our literature review and study of formal definitions available and
typically encountered, we propose that responsiveness is a propensity for purposeful
and timely behavior change in the presence of modulating stimuli. It is not a latent
means (availability of options), but an outcome. It is neither being prepared for a
pre-established range of actions nor being able to change the means to achieve
(reconfiguration), but a tendency to alter states in response to modulating stimuli. In
order for an entity to be denoted responsive, it has to anticipate or address stimuli with
timely and commensurate changes.
Table IV summarizes our findings by displaying our proposed conceptual
definitions, which we believe are precise universal concepts that incorporate the main
findings from our review and analysis. They are more general than many definitions in
the sense that they apply to a large class of terms (in the next section we illustrate this
by proposing a definition of customer responsiveness); whereas they are also precise,
because their differentiae (collection of properties that anything must posses to be
denoted by that term) are few. Although we recognize that achieving a universally
agreed upon definition and differentiation between the terms may not be
entirely possible at this stage, we believe that our proposed conceptualizations
greatly contribute to their cumulative conceptual refinement. Furthermore, the
differentiation proposed incorporates the contributions found in the literature and is
consistent with most usage of the terms in past research.
IJOPM According to our findings, flexibility is a manufacturing competence that can be an
29,1 internal or external, tactical or strategic, but we propose that, at a higher rung of the
ladder of abstraction, it can be characterized by the attribute of adaptation to change
within pre-defined parameters, such as levels of range and mobility as described in the
literature (Koste and Malhotra, 1999). At the organizational level, it is the ability of a
manufacturing system to accommodate change by modifying status within those
44 pre-specified parameters. Conversely, agility can be characterized by the attribute of
reconfigurability of the system itself to deal with unpredictable change. At the
organizational level, it is an approach to organize the production system that allows for
fast reconfiguration and “that requires resources that are beyond the reach of a single
company” (Sanchez and Nagi, 2001, p. 3562). As such, it may incorporate various
competencies, including flexibility. Therefore, we propose that flexibility may be
subsumed within agility. Finally, responsiveness is characterized by an action or
reaction in the face of modulating stimuli. At the organizational level, it is an
action/outcome or behavior of a business that involves decisions about when and how
much to utilize competencies and capabilities to act upon and accommodate particular
stimuli. Accordingly, a combination of various flexible and agile competencies may
form the backbone of the organization’s capability to be responsive to a particular
stimulus. Therein flexibility and agility are subsumed within responsiveness.
To illustrate our proposed conceptual differentiation, let’s consider the stylistic case
of FlexAgiRes, a contract electronics maker that designs, builds and ships complete
packaged products for original equipment manufacturers. The electronics industry is
characterized by very short product life-cycles and unpredictable demand, thus
considered a fast-paced environment. As such, FlexAgiRes must be able to adjust, for
instance, mix and volumes of the products it supplies. Thereby, FlexAgiRes needs to
have flexibility on those dimensions, i.e. it needs to be able to conveniently
accommodate changes in the mix and volume of its products, to enable the system to
respond to uncertainty. The need to accommodate changes on those dimensions would
have been determined a priori and the ability to accommodate changes would have
been built in and constrained by the design of the transformation system. So the
system was conceived to offer options such that it can handle a fixed scope of
uncertainty without undue penalties. However, let’s say that one of FlexAgiRes
customers places an order for 5,000 units of an item only to cancel the order soon after
and request delivery of 8,000 units of an alternate item. FlexAgiRes might have the
appropriate dimensions of flexibility that would allow it to satisfy the customer
without undue burden. The responsiveness to the customer needs (modulating stimuli)
will be demonstrated only if FlexAgiRes purposefully reacts to the request positively
in a way considered timely by the customer. Management may decide not do so either
because it considers such action disadvantageous from a managerial standpoint or
because they have other priorities. Thus, the end-state becomes not accepting the
change requested by the customer although the system contains the flexibility
necessary to do so. However, if the company decides to be responsive to the needs of
the customer, it will be likely to rely on the flexibility provided and built in the system.
Let us now assume that a new invention leads to a sudden loss of business making
the current product line of FlexAgiRes completely obsolete. FlexAgiRes identifies an
attractive new opportunity in a different product line, but this cannot be tapped with
the current transformation process and infrastructure. The opportunity could well
involve a new and unrelated market, not foreseen by FlexAgiRes. The company’s A theoretical
existing flexibility may be helpful in the pursuit of this new market, but need not be so. review of
For example, the aforementioned volume flexibility might have been built on
intermediate parts inventories. These might be completely irrelevant to the new OM literature
opportunity. Alternatively, the company’s flexibility might have been built on a
combination of supplier, equipment and operator characteristics, which could be very
relevant to the new opportunity. In either case, agility would be demonstrated only if 45
the company was able to readily and fundamentally reconfigure the transformation
process and infrastructure to tap the new opportunity. Responsiveness would further
require the company to rapidly do so in the presence of such a modulating stimulus.
To illustrate the traveling properties of our proposed conceptualization of the
responsiveness construct, in the next section we will climb down the ladder of
abstraction to propose a specific definition for the customer responsiveness construct
in OM at the organizational level.
4. Customer responsiveness: a conceptual definition for operations

management
Based on the examination of the broader literature and content analysis of related
terms, this study conceptualizes customer responsiveness at the organization level as
an ex post capability mode, in which a firm adopts an after-the-fact behavior once a
triggering episode has occurred. The relevant and increasingly important triggering
episode is market knowledge acquired or made available to a firm, which may, for
instance, originate from the relevant network of suppliers, distributors, and customers.
We propose that the adjustment or response undertaken by a firm can be reactive or
proactive in relation to the market. The response is proactive when the firm uses the
knowledge to impose changes in the environment. For instance, a firm may respond
proactively to customer needs when it becomes aware of information about a new
technology developed in the upstream network of suppliers by incorporating such
technology in its product to add value and anticipate customer needs. So the firm is
responding proactively to a potential or intangible customer need stimulated by a
newly acquired knowledge, the modulating stimuli. That is, a firm attempts to
proactively control uncertainty by seizing the initiative and trying to modify the
environment to its will. Alternatively, the response is reactive when the firm is coping
with changes imposed in the environment by external forces (e.g. customers,
competitors, new technologies and regulations). In this case, the firm is a passive
reactor to environmental cues. For instance, the firm modifies its product upon
gathering knowledge about new features that a competitor has incorporated in its
products. Thus, the firm is responding reactively to the market dynamics. Central to
this concept seems to be the capability to learn fast in an environment where changes
are fast-paced and difficult to foresee, so the firm invests in its cognitive capacity to
gather market knowledge, enabling appropriate actions. These insights are shown in
Figure 1, which describes our proposed definition for the customer responsiveness
construct. We define customer responsiveness as a firm’s propensity to act on market
knowledge to anticipate and/or rapidly address modifications in customer’s
expectations.
As shown in Figure 1, the breadth of the more universal concept of responsiveness
is reduced to a firm’s customer responsiveness, all the while its connotation is
IJOPM
A Theoretical
29,1 High
B
Responsiveness is a propensity for purposeful and timely behavior
change in the presence of modulating stimuli.
S
T
R
46 A
C
Figure 1. Customer responsiveness is a firm’s propensity to act on market
T
The ladder of abstraction Empirical knowledge to anticipate and/or rapidly address modifications in
for the responsiveness Low I customers’expectations.
construct in operations O
management N
increased by indicating the characteristics a firm must possess to be deemed

responsive to its customers. Building on Reichhart and Holweg (2007), we further
specify the concept’s connotation in terms of modifications in:
.
the aggregate demand levels;
.
the demand mix;
.
demand for new or modified products; and
.
demand for varying delivery schemes.
At the lower level of abstraction, we believe that our definition of customer responsiveness
clearly indicates the distinctive taxonomic characteristics that identify this term at an
organization-level. The behavior change at the higher level of abstraction has its extension
reduced to acting to anticipate or rapidly addressing, while the connotation stimuli is
increased to encompass modifications in customer’s specifications in terms of volume,
mix, product variety and delivery schemes. This illustrates the traveling property of our
conceptualization of responsiveness, as the concept is precise enough to allow us to define
it in the same way and test it in a wide range of situations (Osigweh, 1989).
5. Discussion and conclusion

The differentiation and conceptualization of terms proposed in this study has
important theoretical and practical implications. Establishing clear definitions is a
necessary first step for research progress in any field. This study has proposed
a conceptual differentiation of the terms flexibility, agility and responsiveness, that is
consistent, at higher levels of abstraction, with the terms’ usage in the literature. We
believe this proposed differentiation is an important contribution to theory, because
previous interchangeable use of the terms and unstated assumptions about their
inter-relationships – especially at lower levels of abstraction – has made the extent to
which these are distinct concepts uncertain. This existing confusion among the terms
may lead to results in empirical studies that are not valid or reliable and such empirical
results will derail the advancement of theory and contributions to managerial practice.
Future research can build on our study via efforts to empirically test the proposed
differentiation and conceptualizations and by climbing down the ladder of abstraction
to develop conceptual definitions of specific constructs related to these three terms.
Extending our findings to the broader literature on operations strategy, our A theoretical
conceptualization proposes that flexibility could be subsumed within agility and both of review of
these may be subsumed within responsiveness. Hence, it suggests that a manufacturing
firm could develop competence for flexing, within agile capability to reconfigure as and OM literature
when needed, within a strategic vision of responsiveness. These findings (propositions)
relate to and are coherent with the notion of cumulative capabilities in the manufacturing
strategy literature (Nakane, 1986; Ferdows and de Meyer, 1990; Roth, 1996; Rosenzweig 47
and Roth, 2004). This literature suggests that different generic capabilities are cumulative
and not the result of compromises and tradeoffs. The underlying assumption is that
improving certain capabilities can amplify other capabilities. In fact, it seems that in the
current environment, flexibility, agility and responsiveness are for the most part likely to
be found in organizations within a portfolio of cumulative capabilities (Rosenzweig and
Roth, 2004). Therefore, we hope that our proposed conceptual differentiation stimulates
further research that can empirically advance our understanding of how responsiveness,
and more particularly customer responsiveness, is achieved and whether the conceptual
relationships proposed here hold.
Based on our differentiation of the terms, it seems that research into flexibility may be
more common in discipline specific operations literature. Agility requires a business
capability to pursue a new opportunity, which would more commonly suggest a research
focus at the business level than a discipline-oriented treatment of the subject. Similarly,
responsiveness requires linking an external sensing capability with mechanisms
triggering reactive internal behaviors. This observation may be of particular relevance to
the growing community of scholars whose research addresses the marketing-OM
interface. A host of research questions immediately arise. For example, is there a difference
between the type of information used by operations managers to determine the limits of a
system’s flexibility and the information provided by marketing functions urging customer
responsiveness? Are organizations with greater flexibility really more likely to be agile as
suggested by advocates of the sand-cone model and cumulative capabilities? Or does
extant flexibility both reduce the need for agility and create structural barriers to agility
through greater entrenchment of process and infrastructure? Is the availability of
flexibility or agility an impetus to the development of superior stimulus sensing
mechanisms needed for responsiveness? Or does ability to sense the need to respond lead
to greater investments in flexibility and agility? Indeed, the research opportunities arising
from our differentiation of these terms are myriad.
Finally, with respect to the responsiveness construct specifically, as our understanding
of the construct advances on a common footing, studies may address important questions
such as: what initiatives or activities can increase the levels of responsiveness? Identifying
factors that contribute to higher levels of responsiveness and quantifying their impact on
the competitiveness of a firm are issues of primary interest. (In the current competitive
environment, firms may choose not to respond to all market changes, but we can assume
that they will not have the option of never responding to any change.) Furthermore,
research might entertain the notion that firms that focus on the proactive aspect of
responsiveness will benefit from higher levels of firm performance.
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pp. 35-43.
Corresponding author
Ednilson Santos Bernardes can be contacted at: ebernardes@georgiasouthern.edu
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Ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances Gerwin (1987)

to be sufficiently representative of what we found in our review in terms of the progression

3. Insights gleaned from the literature review

Scope Operating characteristic Business level organizing Business level

4. Customer responsiveness: a conceptual definition for operations

increased by indicating the characteristics a firm must possess to be deemed

5. Discussion and conclusion

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