The Empirical Analysis of the Relationship among Environmental Hostility, Manufacturing Flexibility

This study investigates the impact of individual absorptive capacity on manufacturing flexibility as well as the role of organizational absorptive capacity to improve individual absorptive capacity in environmental hostility. It mainly focuses on the operational absorptive capacity to identify the interplay between environmental hostility and operational absorptive capacity to improve flexibility in the manufacturing sector of South Korea. For the structural equation models(SEM) analysis, we used a random sample of 428 manufacturing firms in shipbuilding, automotive and general machinery industries from the 2013 survey drawn from the Korea Productivity Center. Based on the results of analysis, it shows various findings regarding the relation of environmental hostility and individual and organizational absorptive capacity to manufacturing flexibility. This research proposed important theoretical and practical implications for the relationship between environmental hostility and operational absorptive capacity to improve manufacturing flexibility.