Study On Strategy Flexibility And Its Relationship With Enterprise Performance For Knowledge Enterprises

The business environment has changed fundamentally under the environment uncertainty, which puts forward a new problem to business management. In order to conform to dynamic environmental challenges, keeping business healthy, sustainable and stable, implementing flexible strategy has become urgent. More and more scholars start to focus on the theory of strategy flexibility. With the forthcoming era of knowledge economy, we will not confine our study to manufacturers. More importantly, we should pay more attention to the strategy flexibility for knowledge enterprise and its relationship with enterprise performance, which is the main content of this paper.I started my research with literature review. Based on the foreign and domestic papers about strategy flexibility for manufacturing enterprises, this paper applied strategy flexibility theory to knowledge enterprises, and especially discussed its integration with practical situation in china. In addition to theoretical analysis, the author also conducted an empirical study by statistical methods, focusing on the explanation of theory and the rationale of enterprise strategy. The main content of this paper is listed as follows:a. Elaborating the purpose and significance of this study. Based on a large quantity of literature abroad and home, the author made a summary of previous research on strategy flexibility and its current trends, and then outlined the structure arrangement of this paper.b. Discussing several subjects related to knowledge enterprises, including the characteristics of knowledge enterprises as well as its knowledge staff, the differences between knowledge enterprises and manufacturing enterprises, the structural factors of strategy flexibility for knowledge enterprises, and the evaluating indicator system of strategy flexibility.c. Summarizing the main research conclusions on relationship between strategy flexibility and enterprise performance, and putting forward suggestions. By empirical study, the author verified significantly positive relationship between strategy flexibility and enterprise performance.d. Proposing suggestions on how Chinese knowledge enterprises implement their strategy flexibility.This paper pays much attention to logic relation among chapters, combining theoretical analysis with empirical analysis, qualitative research with quantitative research, induction method with deduction method, and historical analysis with comparison analysis, etc. There are six chapters in total, and the main content of each chapter is described as follows:Chapter 1: Introduction. In this chapter, the author discussed the research backgrounds and importance, answered the question why she did this research. The author found that it is a historic necessity for enterprises to implement strategy flexibility.Chapter 2: Literature review. The author found similarity among different definitions of flexibility: the ability to accommodate itself to environmental changes and uncertainty. Theorists paid more and more attention to strategy flexibility. Most of them focused on manufacturing enterprises, and they designed the evaluating indicator system from the perspective of production flexibility, manufacturing flexibility and market flexibility.Chapter 3: Assessing the strategy flexibility for knowledge enterprise. At first the author discussed the characteristics of knowledge, knowledge enterprises and knowledge staff, which laid theoretical foundation for designing an evaluating indicator system of strategy flexibility for knowledge enterprises. Then the author set up a fuzzy comprehensive assessment model, applied analysis of hierarchical process, and made a conclusion that the flexibility of human resource, enterprise culture, organization structure and ability were the effective evaluating indicators. By qualitative study and quantitative study, the author made an assessment on the strategy flexibility in China. In order to verify hypotheses, the author also made a case study on a knowledge enterprise, Sichuan Union Group Corporation.Chapter 4: Analysis on the relationship between strategy flexibility and enterprise performance. The author designed the evaluating indicators system for knowledge enterprise in four aspects: customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction, society satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction. Empirical study verified that there was a significantly positive relationship between strategy flexibility and enterprise performance.Chapter 5: Proposing methods through which knowledge enterprises implement strategy flexibility. Based on the previous research on how to strengthen strategy flexibility, the author raises several ways and measures for knowledge enterprises to implement strategy flexibility. The author discussed human resource flexibility from the perspective of"soft working condition". The author argued that in order to encourage the innovation incentives and working spirit of staff, there should be a group of charismatic leaders who know how to judge and use people, a circumstance of enterprise culture with cooperation and innovation encouraged, effective management and a series of flexible working systems. Within the flexibility of enterprise culture, the author laid emphasis on the construction of Chinese traditional culture, and brought forward five key factors—affinity, cohesion, inspiration, guidance force and autonomy. With regard to the flexibility of organizational structure, the author argued that with the forthcoming era of knowledge economy, traditional modes of organization structure could no longer gear to the environmental changes, and a short, networking and compatible organizational structure is needed in modern enterprises. The author discussed ability flexibility from the perspective of competition and cooperation.Chapter 6: Conclusion. The author conclude a brief summary on the main methods and content in the paper.There are four innovation points in my paper:a. Designing an evaluating indicator system of strategy flexibility for knowledge enterprises, including human resource flexibility, enterprise culture flexibility, organization structure flexibility and ability flexibility. b. Setting up a model to assess the strategy flexibility, applying the method of a fuzzy comprehensive assessment, combining the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, which best illustrates the traits of strategy flexibility.c. Developing a model illustrating the relationship between strategy flexibility and enterprise performance. An empirical study was also conducted to verify the theoretical model.d. Improving the approaches on which knowledge enterprises implement strategy flexibility. The author put forward a set of suggestions on implementing strategy flexibility for Chinese knowledge enterprises.