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According to the definitions presented for agility drivers, it can be mentioned that supply chain risk factors in terms of feature have very close roles to agility drivers and both of these factors impact the uncertainty in the environment. However, the risk factors with a wider domain are more comprehensive. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of risk as a driver on the organizational agility.

To conduct the research, after identification of influential risk factors of supply chain and indicators of organizational agility, questionnaires needed for the research were designed and after confirming their validity and reliability were distributed among the member of the sample. To assess the relationship between supply chain risk and the amount of organizational agility, data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling technique.

The results of data analysis showed that supply chain risk factors could be considered as a driver affecting the organizational agility. In addition, in this study, supply chain risk factors were ranked using interpretive structural modeling. The presented comprehensive model indicated that based on causal relationships between risk factors, sovereign risk as the basis for model (three levels) and product and customer satisfaction risks as the output of the model (Level 1) were considered.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how the risk factors as drivers of supply chain agility can have effect on agility.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if companies in the modular and offsite construction (MOC) industry are agile or not and its level of application for agility principles, which allows for quick responses to the increasingly dynamic nature of industry environments.

This paper proposes an agility assessment framework for MOC that uses 48 assessment attributes organized into four categories: metrics, drivers, enablers and capabilities. A questionnaire approach was used to disseminate the framework globally in 19 countries and synthesize its relevance to the MOC industry. The questionnaire had 55 complete responses, majority of respondents work in managerial positions for MOC manufacturing facilities and onsite general contractors.

It was found that the lowest metric score for adapting to change was for cost since controlling cost would be difficult for any changes required after the design freeze stage. The top agility driver was found to be the need to respond to the wide variety of customer expectations, while the lowest driver was the existence of competing priorities. The top agility enabler was vendor partnership, which can be related to current postpandemic supply chain disruptions. Regarding technological capabilities, Europe and the USA acquired better scores compared to Asia, Latin America and Africa.

This study contributes to the MOC body of knowledge by creating an agility assessment tool for MOC firms to analyze their agile approach and environment, identifying the preliminary importance of agility assessment attributes and determining significant agile differences between the main MOC industry groups.

As we approach the twenty‐first century, manufacturing success and survival are becoming more and more difficult to ensure. This fact is rooted in the emergence of a new business era that embraces “change” as one of its major characteristics. The emphasis is now on adaptability to changes in the business environment and on addressing market and customer needs proactively. The emerging paradigm is agile manufacturing. Understanding and responding to changes, and taking advantage of changes through strategic utilisation of managerial and manufacturing methods and tools, are some of the pivotal concepts of agile manufacturing. This paper discusses these concepts and presents a methodology to assist manufacturing companies to achieve agility. Industrial questionnaire surveys and case studies are carried out to support and validate the methodology. Results and conclusions derived from the surveys and case studies in support of the methodology are reported.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the confusion between flexibility and agility. The paper traces the evolution of agility and the evolution of flexibility over time, analyses their drivers and different elements, draws the boundaries between them and defines their relationship.

A systematic literature review of flexibility and agility was developed. Papers written between 1920 and 2017 were reviewed and analyzed using a structured review technique. The identified papers focus on flexibility and agility, relating both to manufacturing and the supply chain.

Agility is the natural evolution of flexibility. Until the 1990s, the term “flexibility” was used to refer to agility, but, because of market changes, competitiveness and the need for speed, the term “agility” was coined. While flexibility is considered as an operational ability, agility is a strategic ability that enables a firm to establish a strategic long-term vision. In fact, flexibility is an agility capability, among other capabilities such as responsiveness or speed. There are also several types of flexibility that are used as agility sub-capabilities, or as agility enablers, which further confirms the idea that flexibility is a part of agility.

This research is a systematic review of the existing literature on the concepts of flexibility and agility. Although it is theoretical, it could provide a set of hypotheses that would enable an empirical study to be conducted into how firms from different industries perceive flexibility and agility and how they implement each of them.

Flexibility and agility are two distinct characteristics that enable a firm to gain a competitive advantage by responding quickly and effectively to changing customer demand. However, there is confusion between these two concepts in the academic and professional literature, with both terms being used to refer to the same idea. Our literature review aims to draw the boundaries between flexibility and agility by analyzing the evolution of the two concepts and detailing their respective drivers and elements, in order to bring more clarity to the nature of the relationship between flexibility and agility.

This paper takes a holistic and process-based view on agility from a Middle Management (MM) perspective. Its purpose is to identify subjective factors of agility emerging from people's interpretations and perceptions and to integrate them into the process of agile strategy-making.

To provide a theoretical foundation, literature was reviewed in the area of agile diversity and strategy-making. A qualitative study based on interviews was conducted to uncover the hidden subjective factors from the personal experiences and perceptions of the participants.

The study has revealed that individual opinions in terms of agility can originate from three sources: individual understandings, contextual drivers and personal beliefs.

The research contributes to dynamic capability theory by providing a better understanding of agile diversity at the MM level. The findings can help mid-level executives to cope with the complexities and ambiguities in managing agility by aligning the different understandings and people's perceptions. This is crucial, as missing alignment of team members can lead to poor dynamic capabilities of business entities and thus threatens overall organisational agility.

A model was developed to align the subjective factors of agility during the process of agile strategy-making at the MM level. The framework allows a flexible adaptation to the individual demands of organisational units, as well as concentrated measures for effective agile management. It contributes to organisational agility and business success by scaling the dynamic capabilities of MM.

In the current era, multiple factors have driven the IS information system to be able to cope with changes caused by internal and external factors that affect the organization’s strategy. A variety of environmental factors can influence organizational capacity and performance and tend to change organizational strategy, including political, socio-economic, financial, and technological changes. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, other changes are expected, such as those associated with cybercrime and artificial intelligence. In this chapter, the authors discuss the concept of agility, the dimension of agility, relevant literature studies, proposed agility models, and the authors propose their conceptual model of strategic agility for IS.

The 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.

First, 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.

Results 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.

After 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.

This paper aims to represent an exploration of drivers of workforce agility under the lens of dynamic capabilities to advance the existing workforce literature on agility and strategic human resource management.

In-depth qualitative interviews with senior information technology professionals, managers, directors and leadership were conducted. Data coding and analysis followed the Gioia methodology to develop a theoretical framework.

The theoretical paradigm of workforce agility is seeing revisions. In the past it was solely connected to resource-based view theory, current literature superficially speaks of the link with dynamic capability but lacks comprehensive and strategic understanding. The research brings in the evolutionary change by viewing workforce agility directly under the lens of dynamic capability theory and recognizes workforce agility as a high-level strategy. Based on the analysis of the qualitative interviews this study has developed a conceptual heuristic of workforce agility drivers, interlinked with dynamic capabilities micro-foundations – “sensing”, “seizing”, and “continual renewal”. This paper conceptualizes workforce agility as a response to high pressures for the dynamic capability of the company, which requires reconfiguration and redeployment of external and internal human resources and an inherent need to bring some stability to the internal resources of the company.

There is a growing body of literature linking organizational agility with dynamic capabilities, which overlooks workforce agility. This study is theory-based research on workforce agility, which guides practitioners in making human resource processes more agile.

This study aimed to provide a model for evaluating organizational agility in the banking industry in Isfahan using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach.

This research’s population consists of selected first-class branches of Saderat, Melli, Shahr, Maskan, Keshavarzi, Refah and Tejarat banks. Five branches of each bank and Bank Shahr as a newly established bank with two branches were included in the study. First, a suitable DEA model was selected and then agility inputs and outputs for designing the model were extracted from the literature. The selected model is an output-oriented returns to scale model. Inputs were agility enablers extracted from the A.T. Kearney model, whereas agility results were considered as the output.

The results showed that of the 32 selected branches, 4 were efficient and 28 were inefficient. In the end, the efficient branches were ranked using the Anderson–Peterson ranking model.

This study tries to provide a model for evaluating the efficiency of bank branches in terms of agility (relative agility) through the DEA technique, considering inputs and outputs of the organizational agility system. Accordingly, the managers can identify the efficiency of bank branches and also they can improve the inefficiency of bank branches.

An evolutionary transformation of business environment, with change as a main characteristic, is taking place. Manufacturing companies, even those operating in relatively stable conditions with good market positions, are facing rapid and often unanticipated changes in their business environment. Agile manufacturing is proposed in response to the circumstances as a solution and is perceived as a vital characteristic that manufacturing companies need to have in order to maintain their competitive advantages in the new order of world business. Each company will respond in a specific and different way to the changing circumstances by deploying its own agile characteristics. Agility in manufacturing may be achieved through the implementation and integration of appropriate practices which provide the required abilities for a company to respond properly to changes. Based on this concept, a methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organisations is developed. The methodology is applied in two manufacturing companies and data collected from the applications are used to validate the methodology. This paper provides a brief summary of the methodology and details its implementation and validation in the two case study companies. Practices are proposed to support the achievement of agility in the two organisations.