Title: Interim management utilisation, firm flexibility and its impact on firm performance

Authors: Rodrigo Isidor; Christian Schwens; Ruediger Kabst

Addresses: Department of Management, University of Paderborn, Warburger Str. 100, 33098 Germany ' Department of Management, Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225 Duesseldorf, Germany ' Department of Management, University of Paderborn, Warburger Str. 100, 33098 Germany

Abstract: The utilisation of interim management increases steadily. However, its impact on firms' flexibility and performance remains unclear. Drawing on the flexible firm model, we derive hypotheses for the influence of interim management utilisation on the firm's functional, numerical, and financial flexibility. We test the hypotheses on a dataset of 294 German firms. Our results show that interim management utilisation is positively related to the firm's numerical and financial flexibility but not to functional flexibility at all. Moreover, results illustrate that functional and financial flexibilities are significantly related to firm performance. Based on our theoretical analyses and empirical results, we consider interim management to provide a fertile ground for future research. Thus, we encourage future research to apply different theoretical lenses to shed light on the complex topic of interim management.

Keywords: interim management; interim leadership; qualified external workforce; flexible firms; labour flexibility; management on demand; temporary leaders; human resources; firm performance; firm flexibility; Germany; financial flexibility; functional flexibility; numerical flexibility.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHRDM.2014.069327

International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, 2014 Vol.14 No.4, pp.174 - 186

Received: 29 Aug 2012
Accepted: 26 Nov 2013
Published online: 13 May 2015 *

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