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In the last twenty years, flexible systems management has developed as an integrated management paradigm and has acquired fairly precise outlines and a large number of perspectives and concepts, while the term "flexibility" is defined differently by different researchers in different contexts. Various types of flexibility in an organization are considered as strategic flexibility, organizational flexibility, staff flexibility, operational flexibility, marketing flexibility, financial flexibility, information system flexibility, decision-making flexibility, and so on.
All these developments contribute to the creation of a theoretical basis for the management paradigm of flexible systems, but there is still no clearly formulated and comprehensive theory in this regard. An attempt is presented to determine the components of flexible systems management, their interrelation and cause-effect relationships. This will help answer the fundamental questions of theory construction, that is, "what", "how" and "why". The composite controls of flexible systems are: situation, subject, process, proactive/reactive flexibility, internal/external flexibility, maturity of flexibility, learning, action and performance. Five research proposals have been developed and a critical assessment of all structural elements and the relationships between them is given, which over time can be tested as a full-fledged theory.
Keywords:flexibility, management of flexible systems, system flexibility, reactive flexibility, proactive flexibility, changes, stakeholders, unforeseen circumstances.
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