Impact of Environmental Uncertainty and Organizational Mechanism on Manufacturing Flexibility through Absorptive Capacity

Organizations face with continuously changing external environments. Those external changes are characterized by the uncertainty which can be categorized according to its source or its type. This study reviews the construct of environmental uncertainty in previous studies and investigates the relationship between the organizational context and the development of dynamic capabilities. In fact the environmental uncertainty characterized by uncertainty types and sources is considered as an external context. The organizational mechanism associated with the development of coordination capabilities, systems capabilities, and socialization capabilities is considered as an internal context. We adopt a research framework based on the contingency theory, assuming that there is a congruence between the external context (environmental uncertainty) and the internal context (organizational mechanism). Then, we proceed to investigate the impact of such a congruence on the flexibility as a manufacturing performance through absorptive capacity.