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Purpose The purpose of this study is to critically examine the scholarly articles associated with the diverse aspects of supply chain agility (SCA). The review highlights research insights, existing gaps and future research directions that can help academicians and practitioners gain a comprehensive understanding of SCA. Design/methodology/approach The present study has adopted author co-citation analysis as the research methodology, with a view to thoroughly investigating the good-quality articles related to SCA that have been published over a period of 22 years (1999-2020). In this study, 126 research papers on SCA – featuring diverse aspects of agility – from various reputed journals have been examined, analysed and assimilated. Findings The salient findings of this research are, namely, agility is different from other similar concepts, such as flexibility, leanness, adaptability and resilience; of the 13 dimensions of agility discussed in the literature, the prominent ones are quickness, responsiveness, competency and flexibility; literature related to SCA can be categorised as related to modelling the enablers, agility assessment, agility implementation, leagility and agility maximisation. This research proposes a more practical definition and framework for SCA. The probable areas for future research are, namely, impediments to agility, effective approaches to agility assessment, cost-benefit trade-offs to be considered whilst implementing agility, empirical research to validate the framework and SCA in the domain of healthcare and disaster relief supply chains. Practical implications This paper provides substantial insights to practitioners who primarily focus on measuring and implementing agility in the supply chain. The findings of this study will help the supply chain manager gain a better idea about how to become competitive in today’s dynamic and turbulent business environment. Originality/value The originality of this study is in: comprehensively identifying the various issues related to SCA, such as related concepts, definitions, dimensions and different categories of studies covered in literature, proposing a new definition and framework for SCA and identifying potential areas for future research, to provide deeper insights into the subject and highlight areas for future research.

Information technology is generally considered an enabler of a firm's agility. A typical premise is that greater IT investment enables a firm to be more agile. However, it is not uncommon that IT can also hinder and sometimes even impede organizational agility. We propose and theorize this frequently observed but understudied IT-agility contradiction by which IT may enable or impede agility. We develop the premise that organizations need to develop superior firm-wide IT capability to successfully manage their IT resources to realize agility. We refine the conceptualization and measurement of IT capability as a latent construct reflected in its three dimensions: IT infrastructure capability, IT business spanning capability, and IT proactive stance.We also conceptualize two types of organizational agility: market capitalizing agility and operational adjustment agility. We then conduct a matched-pair field survey of business and information systems executives in 128 organizations to empirically examine the link between a firm's IT capability and agility. Business executives responded to measurement scales of the two types of agility and organizational context variables, and IS executives responded to measurement scales of IT capabilities and IS context variables. The results show a significant positive relationship between IT capability and the two types of organizational agility. We also find a significant positive joint effect of IT capability and IT spending on operational adjustment agility but not on market capitalizing agility. The findings suggest a possible resolution to the contradictory effect of IT on agility: while more IT spending does not lead to greater agility, spending it in such a way as to enhance and foster IT capabilities does. Our study provides initial empirical evidence to better understand essential IT capabilities and their relationship with organizational agility. Our findings provide a number of useful implications for research and managerial practices.

This study examines the role that business intelligence (BI) and communication technologies play in how firms may achieve organizational sensing agility, decision making agility, and acting agility in different organizational and environmental contexts. Based on the information-processing view of organizations and dynamic capability theory, we suggest a configurational analytic framework that departs from the standard linear paradigm to examine how IT's effect on agility is embedded in a configuration of organizational and environmental elements. In line with this approach, we use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze field survey data from diverse industries. Our findings suggest equifinal pathways to organizational agility and the specific boundary conditions of our middle-range theory that determine what role BI and communication technologies play in organizations' achieving organizational agility. We discuss implications for theory and practice and discuss future research avenues.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze whether business owners that simultaneously demonstrate past entrepreneurial experience and process agility have greater export propensity levels.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed hypotheses are tested using binary choice models relating past entrepreneurial experience and reported process agility on a unique sample of 246 Catalan business owners for the year 2010.FindingsConsistent with the theoretical arguments on the relevance of generative-based cognitive agility, the results of this paper reveal that serial entrepreneurs demonstrate a greater export propensity. Additionally, the authors found that serial entrepreneurs who also demonstrate process agility show superior export propensity levels, compared to the group of business owners outside this ambidextrous group (first-time business owners without process agility).Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this study indicate that traits characterizing international marketing agility, decisional speed and accuracy are also linked with greater export propensity levels. The added export market expansion resulting from the opportunity responsiveness of serial entrepreneurs is found to be amplified by the accuracy of internal adaptation capabilities of process agility.Practical implicationsTherefore, the promotion of ambidextrous strategic agility coming from the complementarities between the benefits of entrepreneurial experience and adaptive process abilities is essential for increasing businesses’ internationalization.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the literature by further exploring the influence of different sources of agility on the internationalization of entrepreneurial ventures and opens a link between entrepreneurs prone toward export market expansion and international marketing agility.

This study aims to explore and examine an integrated model predicting digital agility in higher education institutions. In the exploratory phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the heads of the institutions to understand their challenges in ensuring digital agility at work in higher education institutions. In the second phase, the integrated model derived from codes taken from interview responses was developed. The first study round identified factors affecting digital agility from word cloud and thematic analysis using grounded theory. Based on the common codes, themes were developed, and an integrated model comprising digital transformational leadership, internal branding, and digital self-efficacy was developed. Then, established measures were taken to test the model, while a novel scale was developed to measure digital agility. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that digital transformational leadership impacts digital agility with intervening roles of internal branding and digital self-efficacy.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the interactions among different readiness factors for implementing agility in healthcare organization. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) based readiness framework for agility has been developed to understand the mutual interactions among the factors and to identify the driving and dependence power of these factors. Design/methodology/approach The identification of factors is done by TISM approach used for analyzing the mutual interactions between factors. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis is utilized to find the driving and dependent factors of agile readiness in healthcare. Findings This paper identifies 12 factors of readiness for change in literature review, which is followed by an expert interview to understand the interconnection of factors and to study interrelationships of factors. The study suggests that factors like environmental scanning, resource availability, innovativeness, cost effectiveness, organizational leadership, training and development are important for implementing/improving the readiness of agility in healthcare organizations. Research limitations/implications This research focuses mainly on readiness factors for agility in healthcare sector. Practical implications Top management must stress on readiness factors that have a strong driving power for efficient implementation of agility in healthcare. This study helps the managers to take quick decisions, and continuous monitoring of readiness factors would be more beneficial to improve the quality of service, which makes the organization more agile. Originality/value In this research, TISM-based readiness for agile framework structural model has been proposed for healthcare organizations, which is a new effort for implementation of agility in healthcare.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the interplay between resilience and agility in explicating the concept of resilient agility and discuss institutional and organizational antecedents of resilient agility in volatile economies. Design/methodology/approach The authors develop a conceptual framework that offers an original account of underlying means of ambidextrous capabilities for organizational change and behaviors in volatile economies and how firms stay both resilient and agile in such contexts. Findings The authors suggest that resilient agility, an ambidextrous capability of sensing and acting on environmental changes nimbly while withstanding unfavorable disruptions, can explain entrepreneurial firms’ survival and prosperity. The authors then address institutional (instability and estrangement) and organizational (entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and bricolage) antecedents of resilient agility in volatile economies. Originality/value The authors highlight that unfavorable conditions in volatile economies might have bright sides for firms that can leverage them as entrepreneurial opportunities and propose that firms can achieve increased resilient agility when high levels of institutional instability and estrangement are matched with high levels of EO and bricolage.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (QFD)-based approach for identifying and prioritizing organizational agility (OA) capabilities and enablers based on its drivers.Design/methodology/approachFirst, several models for agility drivers (ADs), agility capabilities (ACs) and agility enablers (AEs) are reviewed and ranked, and the best for each one is selected. Second, ADs’ indexes are weighted by using experts’ comments and fuzzy numbers. Finally, by using a proposed fuzzy QFD approach, ACs and AEs are prioritized. In addition, the proposed approach has been examined within a real case study, Golnoor Company in Esfahan, Iran.FindingsResults reveal that among ADs’ criteria, “Changes in competition criteria” have the highest weights for the case study. In addition, “Leadership in the use of current technology” and “Knowledge management” have been ranked as the first place among ACs and AEs, respectively.Originality/valueAfter conducting a comprehensive literature review, the authors did not find any particular framework, which consider AEs and ACs based on ADs simultaneously. Accordingly, the authors’ main novelty is proposing a fuzzy QFD to prioritize the OA capabilities and enablers based on its drivers.

Changes in the way customers shop, accompanied by an explosion of customer touchpoints and fast-changing competitive and technological dynamics, have led to an increased emphasis on agile marketing. The objective of this article is to conceptualize and investigate the emerging concept of marketing agility. The authors synthesize the literature from marketing and allied disciplines and insights from in-depth interviews with 22 senior managers. Marketing agility is defined as the extent to which an entity rapidly iterates between making sense of the market and executing marketing decisions to adapt to the market. It is conceptualized as occurring across different organizational levels and shown to be distinct from related concepts in marketing and allied fields. The authors highlight the firm challenges in executing marketing agility, including ensuring brand consistency, scaling agility across the marketing ecosystem, managing data privacy concerns, pursuing marketing agility as a fad, and hiring marketing leaders. The authors identify the antecedents of marketing agility at the organizational, team, marketing leadership, and employee levels and provide a roadmap for future research. The authors caution that marketing agility may not be well-suited for all firms and all marketing activities.