A hybrid approach to achieve organizational agility

Abstract

Purpose In today’s intense global competition, agility is advocated as a fundamental characteristic for business survival and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical methodology to achieve and enhance organizational agility based on strategic objectives. Design/methodology/approach In the first step, a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) of the organization being studied are recognized and classified under the perspectives of balanced scorecard (BSC). Critical success factors are then identified by ranking the KPIs according to their importance in achieving organizational strategic objectives using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In the second step, three houses of quality (HOQs) are constructed sequentially to identify and rank the main agile attributes, agile enablers, and improvement paths. In addition, in order to translate linguistics judgments of practitioners into numerical values in building HOQs, fuzzy logic is employed. Findings The capability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a case of a multi-national food company in Iran. Through the application, the company could find the most suitable improvement paths to improve its organizational agility. Research limitations/implications A limited number of KPIs were chosen due to computational and visual constraints related to HOQs. Another limitation, similar to other agility studies, which facilitate decision making among agility metrics, was that the metrics were more industry-specific and less inclusive. Practical implications A strong practical advantage for the application of the methodology over directly choosing agility metrics without linking them is that through the methodology, the right metrics were selected that match organization’s core values and marketing objectives. While metrics may ostensibly seem unrelated or inappropriate, they actually contributed to the right areas where there were gaps between the current and desired level of agility. It would otherwise be impossible to choose the right metrics without a structured methodology. Originality/value This paper proposes a novel methodology for achieving organizational agility. By utilizing and linking several tools such as BSC, fuzzy TOPSIS, and quality function deployment (QFD), the proposed approach enables organizations to identify the most appropriate agile attributes, agile enablers, and subsequently agile improvement paths.

Organizational agility: ill-defined and somewhat confusing? A systematic literature review and conceptualization

“…• Agility research has focused largely on specific agility enablers (Aravindraj et al 2013;Cho et al 1996;Gunasekaran 1998;Overby et al 2006;Vázquez-Bustelo et al 2007;Wang et al 2014) and implementation methodologies (Hazen et al 2017;Nejatian et al 2018). To date, not enough emphasis has been placed on an overall view of the OA research strands.…”

“…Thus, agility capabilities represent the company's 'fitness' to handle changes and uncertainties (Lin et al 2006, p. 356). In this core area, agility attributes appear as a synonym for agility capabilities (Bottani 2009;Nejatian et al 2018).…”

“…Agility enablers describe methods, tools, practices (Sharifi and Zhang 1999) and crucial technologies facilitating OA (Gunasekaran 1998;Lin 2004;van Oosterhout et al 2006). Agility enablers are utilized as leverage (Nejatian et al 2018) at multiple organizational levels (Sharifi and Zhang 1999) and enable the realization of agility capabilities (Sharifi and Zhang 2001). This core area contains information about the above points of interest and is also described in the literature as agility providers (Lin et al 2006;Zhang andSharifi 2000, 2007) or agile practices (Bessant et al 2001;Vázquez-Bustelo et al 2007).…”

The mediating effect of knowledge exploitability and organizational agility on the relationship between marketing adaptation strategy and sustainable competitive advantage

“…Wang, 2016). These activities can develop knowledge sharing (Nejatian et al, 2018), current skills and abilities (Subramony et al, 2018), responsiveness, operational flexibility, and business relationships (Baškarada & Koronios (2018), Worren et al (2014), Teoh & Cai (2015), Doz & Kosonen (2010), Sambamurthy et al (2003), Joshi & Sharma (2004), Conboy (2009).…”

“…Marketing program development as the degree of variation of marketing development and expand marketing programs to accommodate differences in environmental and consumer behavior to accommodate the exploit opportunities and capacity to identify more quickly than rivals (Nurcholis, 2018). These programs can affect knowledge (Nejatian et al, 2018), current skills and abilities (Subramony et al, 2018), responsiveness, operational flexibility, and business relationships (Baškarada & Koronios (2018), Worren et al (2014), Teoh & Cai (2015), Doz & Kosonen (2010), Sambamurthy et al (2003), Joshi & Sharma (2004), Conboy (2009). Therefore, the development of a marketing program can increase knowledge exploitability, organizational agility, and sustainable competitive advantage.…”