Strategic flexibility holds strong significance for any business dealing with unprecedented environmental changes. Strategic innovation helps organizations to remain relevant and competitive in today’s fast-changing technological world by developing new ideas, products, or processes. However, the coexistence of strategic innovation and strategic flexibility has largely been unexplored in existing studies. This paper aims to present a comprehensive literature review of 106 articles on strategic innovation and strategic flexibility and propose a conceptual framework contributing to the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities theory, and transaction cost theory. Future research directions are also presented based on the identified research streams.
The authors employed bibliometric and qualitative content analysis (theory, context, characteristics, and methodology; TCCM) to address four key research questions in this study. Co-citation analysis was used to identify research streams that contributed to the development of the conceptual framework.
The findings reveal key research streams and several future research questions. The authors propose a conceptual framework suggesting that strategic flexibility influences firm performance, with strategic innovation as a bridge between these two factors.
This study synthesizes the prior literature on strategic innovation and strategic flexibility. Its findings hold practical implications for organizations, offering valuable guidance for strategic decisions related to innovation and flexibility.
The study makes a significant theoretical contribution, offering valuable insights to help practitioners and policymakers navigate the dimensions of innovation and flexibility in organizations.
