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

Resource 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.

Resource flexibility in employee skills is "the number of potential alternative uses to which employee skills can be applied" (Wright and Snell, 1998) and resource flexibility in employee behaviors is "the extent to which the firm’s existing standard employees are willing (motivated) to perform a variety of alternative work activities" (Way et al., 201_). Both types were considered to form a single dimension of HR flexibility.

Items

• Almost all of your firm’s employees have the ability to quickly acquire skills that are necessary for them to be assigned to different work roles. (0.83)
• Almost all of your firm’s employees have the ability to quickly acquire skills that are necessary for them to adopt different technologies in their work activities. (0.88)
• Almost all of your firm’s employees can perform work activities that require different behaviors. (0.79)
• Almost all of your firm’s employees would be willing to accept a different job within your firm. (0.61)

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

Source

• Way, S. A., Tracey, J. B., Fay, C. H., Wright, P. M., Snell, S. A., Chang, S., & Gong, Y. (2015). Validation of a multidimensional HR flexibility measure. Journal of Management, 41(4), 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