Abstract
This article summarizes the literature on inventory management flexibility from a competence perspective, and it classifies the work according to inter-firm and intra-firm flexibilities. It also explores the relationships between inventory competence flexibility, service capabilities flexibility, and performance. The results show that intra-firm inventory management flexibility, which reflects internal competence, has a positive impact on service capabilities and performance, while inventory coordination flexibility, which captures inter-firm competence, has no significance on those elements. Empirical results suggest that collaborative inventory management flexibility is an important issue for Mainland China to address in the future, although intra-firm competences there have been improved.
