Strategic Flexibility as a Panacea or Pandora's Box? A Meta-Analytic Review

It is axiomatic that strategic flexibility (SF) is a key success factor in generating competitive advantage. Despite this maxim, often peddled in the normative literature, empirical studies have produced inconsistent results for the strength and direction of this relationship. We synthesize these results and provide empirical support for a general, moderate, and positive effect of SF on performance. Moreover, we find that SF indirectly affects financial performance through its positive effects on innovation capability and superior market position, and that SF has a negative direct effect on financial performance. Importantly, the meta-analytic evidence also indicates that the SF-performance relationship depends on measurement methods, the research context, and certain environmental characteristics. Overall, our results provide the necessary nuance to discerning the consequential effects of SF.