The Analysis of Flexibility in Buyer-Seller Relationships from a Transaction Cost Economics Perspective

Abstract

Flexibility is a very prominent subject in everyday parlance as well as in economic theory. In economic theory, an analysis of flexibility is problematic because a lot of different academic disciplines have dealt with the subject of flexibility. From this follows a variety of definitions. In this section, I therefore approach a definition of flexibility which is appropriate for the analysis of flexibility in buyer-seller relationships, I investigate the roots of the word, I explore different lines on flexibility, and I compile some definitions used in economic literature in order to extract a working definition.