Abstract This paper investigates first why flexibility is needed. Continuous organizational change appears to be a major driving force for changing information systems. Two main types of flexibility requirements are identified, namely, changes in operational procedures and changes in decision making. Three types of flexibility requirements are discussed, namely, syntactical, semantical and pragmatical flexibility. The following conclusions are drawn: •Syntactical flexibility is in principle obtainable by available software engineering principles. •Semantical flexibility is difficult to obtain and is constrained by the investment in application software. •Pragmatical flexibility is in practice constrained by investments in existing data and in organizational learning, and not by application software. This holds especially for changes in decision making.
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