Conceptualizing agility of enterprises

Abstract

This article discusses and elaborates on the fourfold constituency of enterprise agility conceived by Trzcielinski (2007, 2009). With Trzcielinski (2009, agility consists of the following characteristics or properties of the enterprise: Brightness is the ability to quickly perceive market opportunities and threats emanating from the environment; flexibility is a feature of resources available for the enterprise, extending the repertoire of the tasks that can be executed with use of these company functions and finding intentional reactions in these situations; intelligence is the ability to understand the situations in which the company functions and to find intentional reactions in these situations; and shrewdness is the ability of an enterprise to quickly use the opportunities in a beneficial way. The article sets out from the viewpoint of opportunity theory and from that of entrepreneurial undertakings (i.e., actions directed toward them). A primary concern is to define in what sense and to what degree we can speak of opportunities and actions as factual in contrast to representational, and thus bridge conceptual notions and management praxis. Opportunities and actions are argued to have a factual and a representational aspect, which coincide in the enterprise praxis. The article suggests that, if validity and factuality claims are correctly addressed, both outer and inner aspects of actions and the representational and objective notions of opportunities can be treated as agility constituents of the enterprise and that their interaction provides for a comprehensive model of enterprise agility, where ontologically different constituents complement each other and interact. C

Agile Enterprise: A Human Factors Perspective

“…Having defined agility, we should discuss what makes an organization agile. The existing body of literature provides some criteria to decide whether an enterprise is agile, for example Forsythe (1997), Huumonen (2011), and Sherehiy and Karwowski (2014). We believe that one of the best classifications distinguishes the following features: brightness, flexibility, intelligence, and shrewdness (Trzcieliński & Trzcielińska, 2011).…”

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“…Agility is the capability of a method to cope with uncertainty in a reactive as well as proactive manner. It forms a paradigmatic approach since the beginning of the 1990s (Huumonen, 2011), in the mainstream business literature first, then across many fields and disciplines such as in the software development (with the agile methodologies Extreme Programming/XP and Scrum for the most popular) and in the information system engineering.…”

“…Although many definitions of agility co-exist, and may lack of conceptual grounding (Abrahamsson, 2009) (Huumonen, 2011), several benefits to embrace an agile strategy/methodology can be listed: flexibility and adaptability, responsiveness (quick and efficient reaction to changing requests), speed, integration (of information technology, personnel, business process organisation, innovation and facilities), low complexity, mobilization of core competences, high quality and customized products, culture of change, removal of non-value-added activities, stakeholders satisfaction and finally unison of the enterprise resources to compete with the changes in the environment and to create business value.…”

Bibliometric Insights into Organizational Agility and Dynamic Capabilities: Analyzing SCOPUS Database

“…In a commercial setting, agility was first described in 1982 as "the ability to respond quickly to rapidly changing situations" [21]. The expression of a company's set of competencies to grow and develop in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment is the meaning of organizational agility [22]. Enterprise agility is a strategy to make a business more competitive and sustainable.…”