A contingency model describing the moderating effects of perceived environmental uncertainty on the relationship between human resource flexibility (HR flexibility) and firm performance was proposed and tested. This study aimed to examine the relationship between different dimensions of HR flexibility and firm performance and further investigated the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on this relationship. A survey research was conducted using a sample of publicly traded firms listed in Taiwan Economic Journal data bank. Data was collected from different sources, including the opinions of CEO and HR managers in each company and the public disclosure of corporate information. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. After collecting empirical data and performing the factor analysis, five dimensions of HR flexibility, including behavior flexibility, skill flexibility, financial flexibility, functional flexibility, and market-oriented flexibility, were identified in this study. By testing Hypothesis1, results showed that skill flexibility, functional flexibility and market-oriented could predict some of the performance measures. However, behavior flexibility and financial flexibility had no significant influence on any firm performance measures. By testing Hypothesis2, three dimensions of environmental uncertainty were identified first. They were response uncertainty, effect uncertainty, and state uncertainty. Then, the results of the hierarchical regression models supported the argument that effect uncertainty positively moderated the influence of behavior, skill and functional flexibility on firm performance. But, the moderating effects of response and state uncertainty were not supported. Implications and future research directions were suggested in the final part of this study.

Nowadays, outsouring is quite popular and acceptable in business usage. In recent years, HR outsourcing has become a popular and known knowledge , and outsourcing on training is one of important strategies in HR outsourcing. However, the related academic research on the training outsourcing is as limited as a virgin field. Therefore, this study will evaluate if businesses use training outsourcing to achieve human resource flexibility and upgrade the organization performances, and to understand how the High-Tech Industry uses it and its affects . This study uses 40 data of Hsin-Chu Science-Based Industrial Park companies from both questionnaire form and interview survey in order to understand the usage status, usage reason, its problem and key successful factors of the training outsourcing on the High-Tech Industry. From the returned questionnaires, we found that 100% of the companies implement ¡§Training¡¨ and 95% of the companies take training outsourcing, but also found that the degree of training of outsourcing is not so popular as its usage status and most of companies prefer to do it by themselves. In addition, we also found that the demand degree of training outsourcing is much higher on the specific profession course than management and general training. The result shows the companies are required to use outside vendors for specific profession. According to the result of statistic analysis, we examine Hypothesis 1 and find the amount of staff and revenue are positive related with training outsourcing and are also positively affected , so it shows if the business scope is smaller, the degree of the training outsourcing will be higher. The result of Hypothesis 2, Human Resource Flexibility also positively affect the training outsourcing, especially the functional flexibility which meant as the degree of Flexibility is higher, the degree of training outsourcing will be also higher. The result of Hypothesis 3, training outsourcing is only positively affected to the organizational performance of ¡§ deducted Staff cost¡¨. According to the result of the interviews, we found the main reason that high-tech industry uses training outsourcing is due to lack of interior professional speaker; to strength the learning opportunity and experience of staffs to get-in the required professional skill and knowledge from the outside provider and to improve the competition ability; to improve the training quality and no specific department to take charge of training. The main problems for training outsourcing are the contents of training cannot match with the staff¡¦s need, the factor of outside speaker and what the staff learned from outside course cannot practice on the jobs. The role of Human Resource people during outsourcing play the administration service role, and sometimes can also play the strategic role, but in just a few cases. So, the result shows the training outsourcing is not quite the important mission in a company and still in a low level job. The key factor to make outsourcing successful is the cooperation and profession from the outside vendor, the support of high-level manager, the contents to match with the business strategy and goal , and the contents can match with the need of staff and company.