Design of Transformation Initiatives Implementing Organisational Agility -- An Empirical Study

TL;DR

This empirical study analyzes perceptions and practices of organisational agility across different company profiles in Europe, highlighting key drivers, functions, and frameworks associated with agility.

Contribution

It provides a detailed empirical analysis of how various organisational dimensions influence agility and how different profiles adopt transformation approaches.

Findings

Leaders focus more on processes and products than project work.

IT, product development, and research are seen as most agile functions.

Higher agility correlates with using multiple agile scaling frameworks.

Abstract

This study uses 125 responses from companies of all sizes headquartered in Germany, Switzerland, France and UK to reveal perceptions of the drivers of organisational agility. It further investigates current understanding of managing principles of multiple organisational dimensions such as culture, values, leadership, organisational structure, processes and others to achieve greater organisational agility. The data set is disaggregated into four major profiles of agile organisations: laggards, execution specialists, experimenters, and leaders. The approach to agile transformation is analysed by each of those profiles. While the positive effect from a more holistic approach is confirmed, leaders tend to focus more on processes and products rather than project work. Respondents perceive that IT, product development and research are most agile functions within their organisations, while human resources, finance and administration are considered being not agile. Further, organisations with higher levels of organisational agility tend use more than one agile scaling framework. Implications on theories of agile transformations and organisational design are discussed.