Dimensions of Organizational Agility in the Software and IT Service Industry – Insights from an Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Agility has increasingly gained attention in the software and IT services industry over the last years and academia put a heavy emphasis on research about agile software development methods. However, an organization does not only comprise development teams, and research often lacks an organizational perspective on agility. Presently, we have no consensus about what constitutes an “agile organization”. Hence, in this study, I identify the structure behind the concept of organizational agility using an exploratory research approach. I conducted a survey among organizations in the software and IT service industry and performed an, exploratory factor analysis and a cluster analysis (based on the variables). The results show that one can describe organizational agility using six interrelated factors that one can further aggregate into the three basic dimensions of “agility prerequisites”, “agility of people”, and “structures enhancing agility”. The identified structure is a first step toward a common understanding of organizational agility and helps to guide further research activities while simultaneously supporting practitioners in assessing the agility of their organizations.

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