Purpose

Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

Findings

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

Originality/value

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.

中文翻译：

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围绕战略灵活性的新兴趋势：文献计量技术支持的系统回顾

目的

由于外部环境的快速变化，战略灵活性（SF）对于企业变得越来越重要。鉴于 SF 的实际重要性，围绕它发展了一个新兴的研究领域，试图理解 SF 的本质和关键关系。本研究的目的是揭示近期科幻文献的语义结构，并为未来研究提出新的有前景的领域。

设计/方法论/途径

作者利用书目分析技术进行了系统的文献综述，使作者能够识别近期的主要文献流，并为未来的研究提供反思和建议。

发现

作者揭示了 SF 研究的三个主要新兴领域，即 SF 作为一种动态能力、知识管理对 SF 的作用以及公司 SF 与外部环境之间的关系。作者提出了SF未来研究的三个途径：途径1：SF、商业模式创新（BMI）和其他动态能力（DC）；途径2：数字技术和SF/组织敏捷性；途径3：SF和可持续性。题为“数字时代灵活性、敏捷性和适应性的战略视角”的特刊中包含的文章为 Avenue 2 做出了贡献，从而为填补有关 SF 和数字化之间关系的一些已确定的空白铺平了道路。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，这是第一篇关于 SF 的文献综述，它使用文献计量方法对文献中的发现得出结论。该评论通过说明和解释长期存在的核心主题，以及提出进一步发展作者关于科幻小说知识的三个主要途径，有助于对科幻小说的理论理解。