Flexibility – Definition

Flexibility can be defined as “the degree to which an organization possesses a variety of actual and potential procedures, and the rapidity with which it can implement these procedures to increase the control capability of the management and improve the controllability of the organization over its environment” in the context of management (Byrd and Turner 2000, p.170).  Applying this concept in the domain of IT infrastructure based on various views from different researchers, Byrd and Turner define IT flexibility as “the ability to easily and readily diffuse or support a wide variety of hardware, software, communications technologies, data, core applications, skills and competencies, commitments, and values within the technical physical base and the human component of the existing IT infrastructure” (Byrd and Turner 2000, p.172”).  More generally, technology flexibility is defined as “the ability to adapt to both incremental and revolutionary changes in the business or business process with minimal penalty to current time, effort, cost, or performance” (Nelson and Ghods 1998, p.233).