IT and Organizational Agility

19 Feb IT and Organizational Agility

Organizational agility (OA) defined as a combination of flexibility, nimbleness, and speed [1]. [2] defined it as an organization’s ability to respond to change and maximize opportunities. OA is vital because changes happen fast on a global scale [3] and apply to all organizations [4]. Research on the impact of IT on OA has been widely conducted, and almost all of IT dimensions supported the achievement of OA [5]. However, some things need concern. The researchers have had used a wide range of IT and OA constructs definitions. Therefore, a literature review was required to reveal clearly in detail the variety of constructs used. In which the theme and direction of future research could be identified.

A meta-analysis of research in the field of IT – OA has already conducted by [5], where the study mapped the characteristics of IT and OA. However, the study was only focused on studies which used quantitative methods and excluded antecedents other than IT. A study by [3] review the findings of IT-OA and propose a research framework within the IT-OA field, which was a macro-picture of research in the IT-OA field. To enrich the literature review that has already been done, this study – besides identifying the aspects of IT-OA and included the research employing qualitative method – also group the topics of previous studies into themes. It was expected that the outer boundaries of IT-OA research could be figured, thus the new studies following those themes emerge.

Reference

• [1] Singh, J., G. Sharma, J. Hill, and Schnackenberg. (2013) “Organizational Agility: What It Is, What It Is Not, and Why It Matters.” Academy of Management Proceedings 2013: 11813.
• [2] Ravichandran, T. (2018) “Exploring the Relationships Between IT Competence, Innovation Capacity and Organizational Agility.” Journal of Strategic Information Systems 27: 22–42.
• [3] Heckler, J., and A. Powell. (2016) “IT and Organizational Agility: A Review of Major Findings”, in Proceedings of the Eleventh Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• [4] Aghina, Wouter. (n.d.) “The Keys to Organizational Agility.” McKinsey Company.
• [5] Leonhardt, D., M. Mandrella, and P.D.G. 2016) “Diving into the Relationship of Information Technology and Organizational Agility”, in ICIS – International Conference on Information Systems. pp. 1–19.