Software industry has emerged as a powerful engine of economic growth. India, with its comparative factor advantages, has excessively high hopes on the industry. These hopes were partly fueled by more than fifty percent growth rates the industry experienced over the last decade. The new century demands new paradigm to succeed. Recent slow down in the U.S. and its adverse impacts hints at the weaknesses in the business model and managerial approaches used by many Indian firms to compete. Flexibility, a common theme among many evolving managerial approaches, will be critical for success of the software firms in their competitiveness journey. Attempts have been made in this paper to understand the role of flexibility in competitiveness taking the case of software industry. Correlation among criteria of flexibility and specific factors of competitive performance has been explored. The findings are reinforced through case study of a leading Indian organization that has sustpined its competitiveness.
competitiveness, flexibility, information technology (IT), software industry
