The purpose of this study was to determine the acute effects of heavy resistance exercise on agility performance in court-sport athletes. Five men (age: 20.6 ± 1.9 years; body mass: 79.36 ± 11.74 kg; body height: 1.93 ± 0.09 m) and five women (age 21.2 ± 2.7 years; body mass: 65.8 ± 10.18 kg; body height 1.77 ± 0.08 m) volunteered to participate in the present study. All subjects were NCAA Division II athletes who currently participated in tennis or basketball and all had previous resistance training experience of at least one year. In a counterbalanced design, agility performance during a 10 m shuttle test was assessed following either a dynamic warm-up (DW) or heavy resistance warm-up (HRW) protocol. The HRW protocol consisted of three sets of squats at 50, 60, and 90% of 1-RM. Agility performance was captured using an eight camera motion analysis system and the mechanical variables of stride length, stride frequency, stance time, flight time, average ground reaction force, as well as agility time were recorded. No significant differences were reported for the HRW and DW protocols for any of the mechanical variables (p>0.05), although there was a trend towards the HRW protocol producing faster agility times compared to the control protocol (p = 0.074). Based on the trend towards a significant effect, as well as individual results it is possible that HRW protocols could be used as an acute method to improve agility performance in some court-sport athletes.

The purpose of this study was to determine the acute effects of heavy resistance exercise on agility performance in court-sport athletes. Five men (age: 20.6 ± 1.9 years; body mass: 79.36 ± 11.74 kg; body height: 1.93 ± 0.09 m) and five women (age 21.2 ± 2.7 years; body mass: 65.8 ± 10.18 kg; body height 1.77 ± 0.08 m) volunteered to participate in the present study. All subjects were NCAA Division II athletes who currently participated in tennis or basketball and all had previous resistance training experience of at least one year. In a counterbalanced design, agility performance during a 10 m shuttle test was assessed following either a dynamic warm-up (DW) or heavy resistance warm-up (HRW) protocol. The HRW protocol consisted of three sets of squats at 50, 60, and 90% of 1-RM. Agility performance was captured using an eight camera motion analysis system and the mechanical variables of stride length, stride frequency, stance time, flight time, average ground reaction force, as well as agility time were recorded. No significant differences were reported for the HRW and DW protocols for any of the mechanical variables (p>0.05), although there was a trend towards the HRW protocol producing faster agility times compared to the control protocol (p = 0.074). Based on the trend towards a significant effect, as well as individual results it is possible that HRW protocols could be used as an acute method to improve agility performance in some court-sport athletes.

Syftet med uppsatsen var att analysera mindre IT-företag i expansionsfas. Det företag som låg till grund för studien var det mindre IT-företaget Cogitel. Forskningsmetoden för arbetet var en fallstudie, då uppsatsen grundläggande syfte var att studera och analysera ett specifikt studieobjekt. Det inledande forskningsarbetet har genomförts i form av kvalitativ metod för att skapa en grundläggande kunskap om studieobjektet företaget Cogitel och dess utveckling. Följande, så präglades ett induktivt tänkande den kvalitativa ansatsen och fokuserade på att tolka människans subjektiva upplevelse av omvärlden. Vid insamling av data har två typer av datadimensioner använts; primär data och sekundär data. Det material som samlades in i form av kvalitativ metod från företaget i fråga var den data som utgjorde det empiriska materialet. Den primära metoden för insamling av kvalitativ data som utgjorde det empiriska materialet genomfördes i form av en semistrukturerad intervjuteknik.För att besvara frågeställningen togs en teoretisk modell fram och låg som underlag för analysen. Slutsatsen drogs, utifrån presenterad teori och insamlat empiriskt material, att samtliga teorier byggde på att man som organisation fördelaktigt bland annat borde ha väldefinierade mål och en tydligt uttalad intern struktur. Det kan vara en strategi att vara ostrukturerad, vilket styrks av samtliga teoretiska utgångspunkter, men behövde ha ett givet syfte och vara uttalad för att kunna skapa värde för kärnorganisationen hos Cogitel. / The purpose of the essay was to analyze smaller IT companies that are in an expansion phase. The company that formed the basis of the study was the smaller IT company Cogitel.The research method of work was a case study, when the essay was the basic purpose to study and analyze a specific study object. This in-depth research was conducted in the form of qualitative method, for creating a basic knowledge of the study object of Cogitel and its development. Further, an inductive thinking was characterized by the qualitative approach and focused on interpreting man's subjective experience of the outside world. When collecting data, two types of data dimensions was used; primary data and secondary data. The material collected in the form of a qualitative method from the company in question was the data that constituted the empirical material. The primary method for collecting qualitative data that constituted the empirical material was carried out in the form of a semi-structured interview technique.To answer the research question, a theoretical model emerged and lay as a basis for the analysis. The conclusion was that based on the theories presented and collected empirical material, all theories were based on the fact that, as an organization, advantageous inter alia, should have well-defined goals and a clearly stated internal structure. There may be a strategy to be unstructured, which is strengthened by all theoretical assumptions, but needed a given purpose and be pronounced in order to create value for the core organization at Cogitel.

Many organizations struggle to adapt to the increasing volatility, insecurity, complexity, and ambiguity of contemporary business environments. The implementation of agile practices within such organizations can facilitate their adaptation to change and can contribute to organizational continuity. Agility is defined as the continuous readiness to create, embrace, and learn from change. Therefore, the concept of agility is widely applied in practical team settings to address their increased complexity. However, prior literature on agility has primarily focused on software development and on agility in technical contexts. Analyzing the human elements of agility sheds light on the ways in which agile teams foster adaptability and promote innovation. Accordingly, the overall research objective of the present dissertation is to examine the concept of agility from a psychological perspective to determine the effect of agility on team innovation as well as the factors that moderate and mediate this relationship. To this end, next to the overall research objective this dissertation follows two sub-research objectives. Our first sub-research objective is to study agility in the context of cultural diversity. Globalization has significantly increased the prevalence and importance of culturally diverse teams. Within working environments, diversity is widely seen as a double-edged sword that intensifies interpersonal conflicts on the one hand and promotes creativity and innovation on the other. Therefore, a related research objective of this dissertation is to explore the potential mediating effect of agility on the relationship between cultural diversity and team innovation. The second sub-research objective is to analyze the relationships between agility and psychological empowerment and between agility and empowering leadership. The widespread use of agility in practical team settings has led to questions about how to properly implement agility. It is argued that the successful introduction of agility depends on the interpretation of agility as a working structure that promotes feelings of psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment is a psychological state closely aligned with intrinsic motivation that incorporates a combination of experiences of meaning, self-determination, competence, and impact at work. Empowering leadership describes the behavior of a leader who uses encouragement and mentorship to support their team(s) in acting autonomously. In this vein, the final research objective of this dissertation is to analyze the mediating effect of psychological empowerment and the moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between agility and innovation. To achieve the research objectives, we conducted three empirical studies. Study 1 contributes to the first research objective—to explore agility in the context of cultural diversity. The study is built on the ambiguous effects of team cultural diversity presented in the literature. A qualitative methodology was selected to analyze how culturally diverse teams work together and which factors promote collaboration. Our analysis identified team agility as a novel factor influencing the relationship between culturally diverse teams and performance. Study 1 thus laid the foundation for achieving our research goal and proved the relevance of agility for culturally diverse teams in the first place. Further investigating our first research objective, Study 2 used a quantitative design to examine culturally diverse teams and agility. This study, therefore, pursued a dual purpose. First, we investigated empowering leadership as a moderating condition for culturally diverse teams and its link to innovation. Second, we explored how psychological agility mediated the relationship between culturally diverse teams and innovation and if this relationship depends on the degree of empowering leadership displayed by the team manager. Our results showed tentative support for the claim that empowering leadership moderates the assumed relationship. However, we found that psychological agility mediated the relationship between perceived team cultural diversity and innovation, albeit to a small degree. Owing to the inconclusive findings of Study 2 on the relationship between agility and empowering leadership, in Study 3, we addressed this research objective in more depth, focusing on psychological empowerment. We investigated psychological empowerment as mediator of the effect of structural agility on organizational attractiveness and intention to apply. In addition, we investigated the moderating role of openness to experience. We assumed that organizations could attract potential applicants by implementing agility. The analysis yielded two findings. Referring to the personality hypothesis, our results found no support for openness to experience as a moderator of the relationship between structural agility and organizational attractiveness. However, our results showed that structural agility indirectly predicted organizational attractiveness and intention to apply through psychological empowerment. Taken together, the propositions and empirical results of this dissertation provide valuable first steps toward better understanding the effects of agility on team innovation and the factors that mediate and moderate this relationship. From a theoretical perspective, we introduced the categorization of agility in psychological and structural terms. This categorization allowed us to show the differing effects of various aspects of agility. Our findings illustrated the mediating effect of psychological agility on innovation as well as the importance of psychological empowerment in the implementation of structural agility. These insights constitute the foundation for future research aimed at understanding the complex interplay of agility and psychological empowerment within the context of cultural diversity. / Viele Organisationen kämpfen mit der Anpassung an die zunehmende Volatilität, Unsicherheit, Komplexität und Mehrdeutigkeit der heutigen Wirtschaftsumgebung. Die Implementierung agiler Praktiken in Organisationen kann die Anpassung an den Wandel erleichtern und zum organisatorischen Fortbestand beitragen. Agilität ist definiert als die kontinuierliche Bereitschaft, Veränderungen zu schaffen, anzunehmen und daraus zu lernen. Daher wird das Konzept der Agilität häufig in Teams angewendet, um mit der erhöhten Komplexität umzugehen. Die bisherige Literatur zu Agilität hat sich jedoch hauptsächlich auf die Softwareentwicklung und auf Agilität in technischen Kontexten konzentriert. Wie agile Teams die Anpassungsfähigkeit fördern und Innovationen vorantreiben, kann jedoch nur durch die Analyse der menschlichen Elemente von Agilität beleuchtet werden. Dementsprechend ist das übergeordnete Forschungsziel der vorliegenden Dissertation das Konzept der Agilität aus psychologischer Perspektive zu untersuchen. Ziel ist den Effekt von Agilität auf Teaminnovation sowie die Faktoren, die diese Beziehung moderieren und vermitteln, zu bestimmen. Neben diesem übergeordneten Ziel verfolgt die Dissertation zwei untergeordnete Forschungsziele. Das erste untergeordnete Forschungsziel lautet Agilität im Kontext kultureller Vielfalt zu untersuchen. Durch die Globalisierung ist die Prävalenz und Bedeutung von kulturell vielfältigen Teams deutlich erhöht. In Arbeitskontext wird Diversität jedoch weithin als zweischneidiges Schwert gesehen, das einerseits zwischenmenschliche Konflikte verschärft und andererseits Kreativität und Innovation fördert. Daher ist es ein Ziel dieser Dissertation den potenziell vermittelnden Effekt von Agilität auf die Beziehung zwischen kultureller Vielfalt und Teaminnovation zu untersuchen. Das zweite untergeordnete Forschungsziel ist die Analyse der Beziehungen zwischen Agilität und psychologischem Empowerment und zwischen Agilität und befähigender Führung. Der weit verbreitete Wunsch nach mehr Agilität in der Praxis wirft die Fragen auf, wie Agilität am besten implementiert werden kann. Es wird argumentiert, dass die erfolgreiche Einführung von Agilität unter anderem davon abhängt, inwiefern Agilität als Arbeitsstruktur interpretiert wird, die Gefühle von psychologischem Empowerment auslöst. Psychologisches Empowerment ist ein psychologischer Zustand, der eng mit intrinsischer Motivation verbunden ist und eine Kombination aus Sinnerfahrungen, Selbstbestimmung, Kompetenz und Wirksamkeit bei der Arbeit beinhaltet. Befähigende Führung beschreibt das Verhalten einer Führungskraft, die ihr(e) Team(s) durch Ermutigung und Anleitung darin unterstützt, eigenverantwortlich zu handeln. In diesem Sinne ist das letzte Forschungsziel dieser Dissertation, den vermittelnden Effekt von psychologischem Empowerment und den moderierenden Effekt von befähigender Führung auf die Beziehung zwischen Agilität und Innovation zu analysieren. Um die Forschungsziele zu erreichen, haben wir drei empirische Studien durchgeführt. Studie 1 trägt zum ersten Forschungsziel bei Agilität im Kontext von kultureller Vielfalt zu untersuchen. Die Studie baut auf den in der Literatur dargestellten mehrdeutigen Effekten von kultureller Diversität in Teams auf. Es wurde eine qualitative Methodik gewählt, um zu analysieren, wie kulturell vielfältige Teams zusammenarbeiten und welche Faktoren die Zusammenarbeit fördern. Unsere Analyse identifizierte Teamagilität als einen bisher nicht beachteten Faktor, der die Beziehung zwischen kulturell vielfältigen Teams und Innovation beeinflusst. Studie 1 legte damit den Grundstein unser Forschungsziel zu erreichen und zeigte die Relevanz von Agilität für kulturell vielfältige Teams überhaupt erst auf. Um unser erstes Forschungsziel zu erreichen, verwendete Studie 2 ein quantitatives Design, um den Zusammenhang zwischen kulturell vielfältigen Teams und Agilität tiefgehender zu analysieren. Die Studie verfolgte dabei zwei Ziele. Erstens untersuchten wir befähigende Führung als moderierende Bedingung für kulturell vielfältige Teams und ihre Verbindung zu erhöhter Innovation. Zweitens untersuchten wir, wie psychologische Agilität die Beziehung zwischen kulturell vielfältigen Teams und Innovation vermittelt und ob diese Beziehung von der Ausprägung der befähigenden Führung durch den Teammanager abhängt. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigten eine vorsichtige Tendenz der Annahme, dass befähigende Führung die angenommene Beziehung moderiert. Vor allen Dingen konnten wir aber zeigen, dass psychologische Agilität den Zusammenhang zwischen wahrgenommener kultureller Diversität im Team und Innovation mediiert, wenn auch in geringem Maße. Aufgrund der mit Vorsicht zu interpretierenden Ergebnissen von Studie 2 zum Zusammenhang zwischen Agilität und befähigender Führung haben wir in Studie 3 die Analyse dieses Zusammenhangs vertieft und uns auf die Rolle des psychologischen Empowerments fokussiert. Wir untersuchten psychologisches Empowerment als Mediator des Effekts von struktureller Agilität auf die Organisationsattraktivität und die Bewerbungsabsicht. Darüber hinaus untersuchten wir die moderierende Rolle von Offenheit für Erfahrungen. Wir nahmen an, dass Organisationen durch die Implementierung von Agilität potenzielle Bewerber anziehen können. Die Analyse lieferte zwei zentrale Ergebnisse. Bezogen auf die Persönlichkeitshypothese fanden unsere Ergebnisse keine Unterstützung für Offenheit für Erfahrungen als Moderator der Beziehung zwischen struktureller Agilität und organisatorischer Attraktivität. Als Beitrag zu unserem Forschungsziel zeigten unsere Ergebnisse jedoch, dass strukturelle Agilität indirekt die organisatorische Attraktivität und die Bewerbungsabsicht durch psychologisches Empowerment vorhersagte. Zusammengenommen liefern die theoretischen Beiträge und empirischen Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation wichtige erste Schritte zum besseren Verständnis der Auswirkungen von Agilität auf Teaminnovation und der Faktoren, die diese Beziehung vermitteln und moderieren. Aus einer theoretischen Perspektive haben wir die Kategorisierung von Agilität in psychologische und strukturelle Begriffe eingeführt. Diese Kategorisierung ermöglichte es uns, die unterschiedlichen Effekte verschiedener Aspekte von Agilität aufzuzeigen. Unsere Ergebnisse veranschaulichen den vermittelnden Effekt von psychologischer Agilität auf Innovation sowie die Bedeutung von psychologischem Empowerment bei der Umsetzung von struktureller Agilität. Diese Erkenntnisse bilden die Grundlage für zukünftige Forschung zum Verständnis des komplexen Zusammenspiels von Agilität und psychologischem Empowerment im Kontext kultureller Diversität.

Market changes are held to occur at an ever-faster rate due to forces such as technologicaladvancements, shifting consumer preferences and habits and increased competition. This hascaused a rise in interest for developing more agile working methodologies in marketing.Marketing agility is a capability that allows firms to quickly sense and respond to marketchanges. The assessment of when and how much marketing agility is needed is based on theknowledge of when the business environment is uncertain. Uncertainty is not always presentor constantly at the same level, indicating marketing agility is not as necessary in all contexts.The need for agility is also influenced by characteristics of the firm and their businessenvironment. Utilising a research design based on interviews with marketing managers inSweden, the purpose of this research is to determine how characteristics of the firm and theirbusiness environment influence the need for marketing agility. The results indicate that bothmarket uncertainty levels and different characteristics of the firm related to size, structure,resources, brand and product, influence the need for marketing agility. We emphasise how theneed for marketing agility can be constant or occur only in specific situations. The paperconcludes with implications for research and practice in relation to when marketing agility isneeded.Keywords: Marketing Agility, Iteration, Sensemaking, Speed, Marketing Decision, Uncertainty,Dynamic Market Changes

Background:Strategic flexibility and supply chain agility are integral for textile companies in developing countries to achieve success and competitive benefits. Technology is continuously being adopted in the supply chain process. However, some developing companies are lagging due to a lack of investment, poor infrastructure, lack of skilled workers, and other challenges. Developing countries face significant barriers to competing in the market. For instance, there is advancement in the supply chain for textile manufacturing that cannot be adopted by developing countries because of their conventional and rigid business model. Evaluating the relationship between strategic flexibility and supply chain agility in developing countries is imperative. Aim:This research aimed to discover the impact of different factors of strategic flexibility in the supply chain agility of textile companies in developing countries. Methodology:The research adopted a qualitative research method, utilizing semi-structured interviews with managers and employees of the supply chain process. We have employed two case studies i.e.Lucky Textile and Rainbow Textile, located in Pakistan. We used a thematic analysis technique to analyze data. Findings:The research identified three factors that influenced textile companies' strategic flexibility and supply chain agility. The factors include uncertainties in the environment, technology enablers, and organizational relationships. The technology enablers have been found more effective; however, the selected textile companies faced a lack of investment in technology adoption and usage of technology. Moreover, trust in partners, the commitment of partners, and shared vision between partners are three major factors involved to achieve supply chain agility and strategic flexibility. Conclusion:The adoption of technology can improve strategic flexibility and supply chain agility in textile companies in developing countries. Nevertheless, there is a need to adopt some useful steps like investing in technology, training and educating workers, building trust, and doing more research to enhance supply chain performance and satisfaction. Further research is required to discover the contribution of technology enablers to achieve strategic flexibility and supply and chain agility in other developing countries.

Background: From digitalization acceleration, digital disruptions such as edge-cutting technologies, have caused challenges and changes to business’ natures in terms of value, structures, and strategies. No industry nor organization is immune to these impacts, especially multinational enterprises in the information technology industry, whereas these businesses have started to overlook and disregard traditional ways of working to enhance these impacts. Agility has become a new vital dynamic capability in today’s environment, whereas organizational agility is argued to support businesses to cope with this turbulent era of increased competition, globalization, and digitalization. Although, to enhance this, traditional business processes and operations must be rethought and extended to a digital context.  Purpose: As digital disruptions have become a threat to businesses' values and operations, it has gained increased attention in both practice and research. Organizational agility is raised as a tool and response to cope with these new digital threats and changes to fundamental business values, however, this has also increased pressure on managers to create and maintain cohesion and motivation when change is imposed. Nonetheless, how this is managed and experienced within local subsidiaries of multinational enterprises lacks both exploration and understanding, and thus, suggesting that there is much left to uncover. This, especially on how to maintain local responsiveness while enhancing global fundamental values when introducing organization agility to cope with changes and digital disruptions.   Method: With a relativism ontology, interpretivism epistemology, and inductive research approach, this research studied how to be organizationally agile under digital disruptions, from a subsidiary perspective in an IT multinational enterprise. Through a qualitative explorative research and multiple-case study design, the empirical data was gathered from 12 semi-structured in-depth interviewees and observations, where the employee perspective set the foundation of how organizational agility and digital disruptions are managed and experienced within their local subsidiaries. The data were analyzed through a thematic analysis, including separate within-case analyzes, a cross-case analysis, and lastly, a comparison with existing literature.  Conclusion: The findings show how multinational enterprises in the information technology industry could manage organizational agility when digital disruptions occur and how this is experienced amongst employees. Subsidiary Management is vital for coping with digital disruptions whereas Strategic Decision-Making for responding to the same, fundamentally relying on the Organizational Culture with the six key factors of Ownership, Learning, Diversity, Inclusion, Trust, and Mindset. Moreover, organizational agility could cause a negative tradeoff of work-life balance and a negative tradeoff between increased workload and individual growth, whereas increased autonomy creates a tradeoff between local independence and global cohesiveness. This, however, was experienced as both positive and negative. Being organizationally agile is vital on both global and local levels to utilize efficiency, flexibility, and be locally responsive to regional market demands where the attention must be given to people rather than structures to be agile and digitally responsive.

Agility is developing to a more and more central concept in the military domain and new war fare methods etc. is creating a greater demand on the Swedish Defence Agency to be more agile. The concept is very complex but could be described as the ability a command team has to discover threats and opportunities, and act with a response towards these to gain advantage in the situation. This report aims to develop an assessment tool for evaluating whether or not, or to which extent, a command team is agile. Discussions have been made in sessions with informants that somehow are connected to (working with or research about) agility in the Swedish Defence Agency to discuss the development of an assessment tool like this. Five sessions have been executed and after the first two respectively the last three, upgrades of the tool were made. The result of the study shows that it is not impossible to develop an assessment tool, but for a complex concept like agility, it is very hard. The conclusions drawn is that it might be possible to create a basic frame for a tool that further on can be shaped to fit the command team being evaluated.

An organization's ability to succeed depends on the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of its information. This implies that the organization's information and assets must be secured and protected. However, the regular occurrence of threats, risks, and intrusions could serve as a barrier to the security of this information. This has made the management of Information security a necessity. Organizations are then trying to be more agile by looking for ways to identify and embrace opportunities swiftly and confront these risks more quickly. Very little research has examined the relationships between Organizational Agility and Information Security. Hence, this study aims to investigate the management of Information Security in organizations while maintaining agility and highlighting the challenges encountered, and also addresses the research question: How do organizations manage information security while maintaining organizational agility? The research strategy used is the Case Study, and the data collection methods used are semi-structured interviews and documents. The interview was conducted in a financial institution in Nigeria with seven security specialists, and documents were obtained from the company's website to help gain insights into the services and products offered. Thematic analysis was the data analysis method chosen. The findings revealed eighteen measures in which Information Security can be managed while maintaining Organizational Agility. Part of the identified measures are similar to those identified in previous research, while new measures are also discovered. Furthermore, these identified measures will be useful for other organizations, particularly financial institutions, to emulate in managing their Information Security and being agile while at it.

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