Publications

SSRN

2021
Working Paper

Being the Boss: Gig Workers' Value of Flexible Work

By: Laura Katsnelson and Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Workers who join the gig economy face a challenging trade-off. Gig work provides worktime flexibility and a sense of being one’s own boss, but gig workers forgo certain protections that employees enjoy. In this paper, we study the work patterns of a large sample of... View Details

Keywords: Gig Workers; Flexible Work Arrangements; Worker Welfare; Labor; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

April 2021
Article

Work-From-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographical Flexibility

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson

An emerging form of remote work allows employees to work-from-anywhere, so that the worker can choose to live in a preferred geographic location. While traditional work-from-home (WFH) programs offer the worker temporal flexibility, work-from-anywhere (WFA) programs... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Flexibility; Work-from-anywhere; Remote Work; Telecommuting; Geographic Mobility; USPTO; Employees; Geographic Location; Performance Productivity

Research Summary

Flexibility in Manufacturing Systems

David M. Upton has examined the management of flexibility in manufacturing systems. Although flexibility has become an issue of critical competitive importance in a growing number of industries, it remains an ill-understood concept. The broad use of the term and its... View Details

2014
Working Paper

Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architectures: A Flexibility Analysis

By: Robert Lagerstrom, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan MacCormack and David Dreyfus

In this paper, we test a method for visualizing and measuring software portfolio architectures and use our measures to predict the costs of architectural change. Our data is drawn from a biopharmaceutical company, comprising 407 architectural components with 1,157... View Details

Keywords: Design Structure Matrices; Software Architecture; Flexibility; Software Application Portfolio; Complexity; Applications and Software; Forecasting and Prediction

October 2000 (Revised March 2004)
Background Note

Variance Analysis and Flexible Budgeting

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Facilitates the teaching of cases on variance analysis and flexible budgeting. Uses algebra, diagrams, and numerical examples to illustrate the calculation of price, quantity, and mix variances for revenues and costs, and a flexible budget for analyzing indirect and... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Price; Mathematical Methods; Revenue; Budgets and Budgeting

Educators

Purchase

01 May 1997
Conference Presentation

Product Development Flexibility

By: Alan David MacCormack and M. Iansiti

Keywords: Product Development

08 May 2019
Blog Post

In the Business of Flexibility

As founder of Prokanga, the innovative recruiting firm that connects companies with experienced, flexible marketing and finance expertise, Jamie Cheney (MBA 2007) understands the value of a fluid workforce. Together with Annie Davis (MBA... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Nonprofit / Government

March 1994 (Revised June 1999)
Background Note

Real Options: Valuing Managerial Flexibility

Provides a basic understanding of real options in corporate finance. Traditional discounted cash flow techniques (NPV) do not deal well with managerial flexibility or future response to uncertainty. The value of this flexibility can be significant and is handled well... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Capital Budgeting; Corporate Finance

Educators

Purchase

01 Jan 2013
News

The Flexibility Stigma

Keywords: Joan Williams, Mary Blair-Loy, Jennifer Berdahl

February 1997 (Revised June 1999)
Background Note

Committed and Flexible Resources

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Stresses the difference between costs committed in advance of knowing actual demand (committed costs) and cost incurred proportional to demand. Committed costs appear fixed since their supply is independent of the amount actually used. Flexible resources are supplied... View Details

Keywords: Cost

1992
Working Paper

Product Development Flexibility

By: Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack

1999
Chapter

Flexible Product Development

By: S. Thomke and Don Reinertsen

Keywords: Product Development

June 2017
Article

Is Operating Flexibility Harmful under Debt?

By: Nikolaos Trichakis, Dan A. Iancu and Gerry Tsoukalas

We study the inefficiencies stemming from a firm's operating flexibility under debt. We find that flexibility in replenishing or liquidating inventory, by providing risk-shifting incentives, could lead to borrowing costs that erase more than a third of the firm's... View Details

Keywords: Covenants; Risk-shifting; Inventory; Agency Costs; Debt Financing; Risk Management; Borrowing and Debt

May 2017
Article

Stable and Strategy-Proof Matching with Flexible Allotments

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp

We introduce a framework of matching with flexible allotments that can be used to model firms with cross-division hiring restrictions. Our framework also allows us to nest some prior models of matching with distributional constraints. Building upon our recent work on... View Details

Keywords: Balance and Stability; Mathematical Methods

Register to Read

Leslie Perlow discusses with Adam Grant how to think about flexibility in this new hybrid world where flexibility more than ever is not just about time but also place of work. View Details

23 Jan 2020
News

Why flexible working is a nasty lie

2016
Chapter

How Moral Flexibility Constrains Our Moral Compass

By: F. Gino

Cheating, fraud, deception, uncooperative actions, and many other forms of unethical behavior are among the greatest personal and societal challenges of our time. While the media commonly focuses on the most sensational scams (e.g., Enron, Bernard Madoff), less... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Organizations; Attitudes

Nov 23 2020
Testimonial

A Flexible Learning Format in a Virtual World

1 Mar 2013 - 2 Mar 2013
Conference Presentation

The Value of Flexibility in Baseball Roster Construction

By: Timothy Chan and Douglas S. Fearing

Drawing inspiration from the theory of production flexibility in manufacturing networks, we provide the first optimization-based analysis of the value of positional flexibility (the ability of a player to play multiple positions) for a major league baseball team in the... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Design; Production; Resource Allocation; Groups and Teams; Adaptation; Sports