APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATIONAL SLACK IN RESEARCH PUBLISHED IN INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS: A THEORETICAL ESSAY

Abstract

The term organizational slack is sometimes recognized as the excess resources in an organization. Since this term does not have a clear definition, it has accumulated over the years concepts of various authors through scientific publications. This study aims to examine the approaches to organizational slack in the context of research papers published in international scientific journals. To do so, a theoretical essay was performed based on international publications making reference to the term organizational slack. The antecedents of organizational slack, a total of 43 papers were analyzed according to the classification proposed by Sharfman et al. (1988), three levels of analysis: industry, organization and interest groups. The study results show that research on organizational slack have varied and evolving concepts and that the approaches to innovation and strategy are key points for research related to the topic, as they were the most found in the literature. However, the measurement of these types of resources slack is still an obscure point in the research developed. The studies of Cyert and March (1963), Bourgeois III (1981), Sharfman et al. (1988), Gulati and Nohria (1996) are branching out to other aspects of the organization. Though, it was concluded that research on definition of organizational slack and its relations with organizational environment aspects are evolving and signal further wider discussion in international scientific journals.