Reeling in the Slack: An Integrative Review to Reinstate Slack as a Central Theoretical Construct for Management Research

Slack is a prominent construct in management research, and has been shown to be relevant for a wide range of phenomena. Yet, despite slack’s prominence and breadth of application, our review reveals a lack of clarity and consistency in the categorization, theorizing, and measurement of various types and forms of slack. This has led to differences in the characterization and treatment of seemingly identical kinds of slack, which prevents full exploitation of the conceptual depth of the slack construct and thus the creation of robust knowledge about slack resources. Based on a review of 229 studies that explicitly theorized about slack, we identify two fundamental dimensions of the slack construct—availability and fungibility—that allow us to: (a) systematize and integrate past research about slack and its implications for organizations, (b) enrich and expand theorizing on slack by advancing a novel typology for understanding slack resourcing decisions and orchestration in organizations, and (c) reinvigorate and open new directions for future research on slack.