Advances in Decision Sciences
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 569076, 13 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/569076
Research Article

How Do German SMEs Cope with the Increasing Need for Flexibility?

Katharina Roitzsch, Winfried Hacker, Ulrike Pietrzyk, and Uwe Debitz

Workgroup “Thinking-Knowing-Acting”, Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Received 2 March 2012; Accepted 23 May 2012

Academic Editor: Günther Schuh

Copyright © 2012 Katharina Roitzsch et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Within this study a qualitative approach was chosen to find out whether German SMEs deal with flexibility requirements rather strategically or intuitively. Results show that many SMEs do not show strategic approaches. Possible reasons are seen in lacking organizational resources as well as the limited training of the CEOs. A toolbox has been developed to offer applicable information about flexibility measures on a low level.