Handbook of Management Scales/Coordination flexibility in employee skills and behaviors

Coordination flexibility in employee skills and behaviors (alpha = 0.74 ... 0.86)

Description

Based on a thorough scale development and validation process, the authors present a multidimensional measure of the HR flexibility construct. It includes five dimensions: resource flexibility in HR practices, resource flexibility in employee skills and behaviors, coordination flexibility in HR practices, coordination flexibility in contingent worker skills and behaviors, and coordination flexibility in employee skills and behaviors.

Definition

HR flexibility has been conceptualized by Wright and Snell (1998) as a firm-level capability consisting of (1) people who possess a variety of skills and behavioral repertoires and (2) the HR practices that can be used to effectively utilize those people to be responsive to changes in market demands, be adaptive, and be successful in a dynamic environment.

Coordination flexibility in employee skills reflects "how individuals with different skills can be redeployed quickly in the value chain" (Wright and Snell, 1998) and coordination flexibility in employee behaviors reflects "the degree to which the firm can acquire and deploy standard employees or contingent workers who possess the requisite variety of behavioral scripts and who are willing to apply those scripts in a variety of work activities" (Way et al., 201_). Both types were considered to form a single dimension of HR flexibility.

Items

• Your firm can quickly assign new work activities to employees who possess the skills necessary to perform these activities. (0.68)
• Your firm cannot quickly reassign employees to a different job that requires different (e.g., greater) skills. (0.80)
• Your firm can effectively assign different work activities to employees who perform below the required level. (0.84)
• Your firm cannot effectively reassign employees to different jobs within your firm. (0.80)

Response options for each item range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

In Samples 2 to 4, item 2 and item 4 were reverse-scored (negatively-worded) items, whereas, in Samples 5 and 7 these items were positively worded; namely, cannot was replaced with can.

Source

• Way et al. (2015): Validation of a Multidimensional HR Flexibility Measure. Journal of Management, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 1098–1131

Comments

Due to the thoroughness of the scale development and validation process, the scales should be highly valid and reliable.

Related Scales

• HR flexibility: resource flexibility in HR practices, resource flexibility in employee skills and behaviors, coordination flexibility in HR practices, coordination flexibility in contingent worker skills and behaviors, coordination flexibility in employee skills and behaviors