Agile software development methods reduce project costs and development time by simultaneously enhancing quality. But despite these advantages, agile principles are rarely adopted by the whole organization. In fact, it seems difficult to describe what distinguishes an agile organization from another. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to gain an understanding what factors constitute agility at an enterprise level and to develop a maturity model as measurement tool. To fulfill this aim, the thesis as based on a multi-paradigmatic approach combining behavioral and design science and utilizes a pluralistic set of research methods belonging to both paradigms. A comprehensive analysis of agility-related frameworks showed that despite partial similarity there is no consensus about what constitutes an “agile organization”. Hence, the thesis identified the structure to be found behind the concept of organizational agility using an exploratory research approach. A survey among organizations in the software and IT services industry was conducted and showed that organizational agility can be described using six interrelated factors that can be further aggregated into the three basic dimensions of “Agility Prerequisites,” “Agility of People,” and “Structures Enhancing Agility.” Based on these results, the Organizational Agility Maturity Model has been developed providing a theoretically and empirically grounded structure of organizational agility supporting the efforts of developing a common understanding of the concept. The application of the maturity model furthermore creates useful benefits for organizations and underscores the strategic character of organizational agility. It generates an awareness about the complexity of organizational agility. Furthermore, it may serve as a reference frame to implement a systematic and well-directed approach for improvements and continuous assessment of actions taken.

Agile software development methods reduce project costs and development time by simultaneously enhancing quality. But despite these advantages, agile principles are rarely adopted by the whole organization. In fact, it seems difficult to describe what distinguishes an agile organization from another. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to gain an understanding what factors constitute agility at an enterprise level and to develop a maturity model as measurement tool. To fulfill this aim, the thesis as based on a multi-paradigmatic approach combining behavioral and design science and utilizes a pluralistic set of research methods belonging to both paradigms. A comprehensive analysis of agility-related frameworks showed that despite partial similarity there is no consensus about what constitutes an “agile organization”. Hence, the thesis identified the structure to be found behind the concept of organizational agility using an exploratory research approach. A survey among organizations in the software and IT services industry was conducted and showed that organizational agility can be described using six interrelated factors that can be further aggregated into the three basic dimensions of “Agility Prerequisites,” “Agility of People,” and “Structures Enhancing Agility.” Based on these results, the Organizational Agility Maturity Model has been developed providing a theoretically and empirically grounded structure of organizational agility supporting the efforts of developing a common understanding of the concept. The application of the maturity model furthermore creates useful benefits for organizations and underscores the strategic character of organizational agility. It generates an awareness about the complexity of organizational agility. Furthermore, it may serve as a reference frame to implement a systematic and well-directed approach for improvements and continuous assessment of actions taken.

Der Begriff Agilität bezeichnet innerhalb der Organisationslehre seit etwa 20 Jahren eine Form der flexiblen, schlanken, kundenorientierten Organisationsgestaltung und verbindet sich, um jeweils neu entwickelte Technologien erweitert, mit dem Charakter einer jungen, modernen Organisationsform. Verstärkt wird dieser Eindruck durch die Tatsache, dass vor dem Jahre 1991, als das Iacocca Institute entscheidend zur Verknüpfung des Begriffes Agilität mit der Organisationslehre und zur Verbreitung der mit der Agilität verbundenen Methoden beitrug, der Agilitätsbegriff innerhalb der Organisationsforschung kaum auftauchte. Erst seit den frühen 1990er Jahren sind zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zu diesem Thema erschienen, eine anhaltende Tendenz, wie die Publikationen des aktuellen Jahres belegen. Für den Ursprung des Begriffes Agilität wird in den meisten Aufsätzen dementsprechend das Jahr 1991 angesetzt, nur einige wenige Quellen nennen ältere Aufsätze und noch seltener taucht der Hinweis auf, das der Agilitätsbegriff im Umfeld der Sozialwissenschaften bereits seit den 1950er Jahren bekannt ist, interessanterweise durch das Werk eines Wirtschaftstheoretikers. Die Herkunft des Begriffes Agilität im organisationalen Umfeld auszuleuchten und sich an die vielfältigen Darstellungen dieses Konzeptes anzunähern, ist das Anliegen der vorliegenden Arbeit. Das Agilitätsmodell in der seit den 1990er Jahren entwickelten Prägung ist eine Sammlung von Elementen verschiedener organisationstheoretischer Ansätze und enthält eine Vielzahl organisationaler Konzepte, die zudem fortlaufend erweitert und verändert wurden. Es würde den Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit sprengen, die Theorien und Konzepte aufzulisten, die dem Agilitätsbegriff eine grundsätzliche Prägung verliehen. Es werden jedoch einige Organisationstheorien und Konzepte, deren Elemente sich als Kennzeichen der Agilität wiederfinden, aufgezeigt, um darzustellen, dass agiles Denken existierte, bevor der Begriff „Agilität“ geprägt wurde. Die Agilität ist kein Konzept, das aus der Praxis heraus entstanden ist und anschließend zum Forschungsgegenstand der Wirtschaftswissenschaften wurde, vielmehr handelt es sich um einen Entwurf, der originär als theoretischer Lösungsansatz zur Behebung einer wirtschaftlichen Stagnation entwickelt wurde. Inwieweit dieser theoretische Ansatz in der Praxis tatsächlich auch Verbreitung finden konnte, ist eine interessante Fragestellung, die zum Thema mehrerer Forschungsarbeiten gewählt wurde. Die vorliegende Arbeit wird diesen Bereich jedoch nicht näher beleuchten. Vielmehr steht eine Sammlung und Strukturierung verschiedener in der Literatur vorhandener Auffassungen und Auslegungen des Agilitätsbegriffs im Mittelpunkt.

While conventional approaches of managing organizations have been considered to be outdated, Organizational Agility has been acclaimed for its prowess to cope with today's increasingly volatile and dynamic environment. Yet the predominant focus has been directed towards how agility is achieved, while its retention as organizations grow has to a great extent been unexplored. Through a qualitative case study of a renowned organization for its unorthodox approach, this study aims to contribute with an extension to the current scope of organizational agility by stretching beyond the focus on mere transformations in an attempt to understand in what ways organizational agility is retained as they grow. The findings of this study challenge the common conceptions found within literature suggesting that changes in the external environment are what drives organization’s to be agile in order to sustain its competitiveness. Organizational agility has thus primarily been considered to be constituted by dynamic adaptations in accordance to forces of the external environment. In contrast, this study finds that the retention of organizational agility during growth is an evolutionary process that is internally driven by placing indispensable value on the employees and by focusing on the organization itself, its desire and community. Retaining organizational agility is thus something that grows “from the inside and out”.

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.

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.

Der Begriff Agilität bezeichnet innerhalb der Organisationslehre seit etwa 20 Jahren eine Form der flexiblen, schlanken, kundenorientierten Organisationsgestaltung und verbindet sich, um jeweils neu entwickelte Technologien erweitert, mit dem Charakter einer jungen, modernen Organisationsform. Verstärkt wird dieser Eindruck durch die Tatsache, dass vor dem Jahre 1991, als das Iacocca Institute entscheidend zur Verknüpfung des Begriffes Agilität mit der Organisationslehre und zur Verbreitung der mit der Agilität verbundenen Methoden beitrug, der Agilitätsbegriff innerhalb der Organisationsforschung kaum auftauchte. Erst seit den frühen 1990er Jahren sind zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zu diesem Thema erschienen, eine anhaltende Tendenz, wie die Publikationen des aktuellen Jahres belegen. Für den Ursprung des Begriffes Agilität wird in den meisten Aufsätzen dementsprechend das Jahr 1991 angesetzt, nur einige wenige Quellen nennen ältere Aufsätze und noch seltener taucht der Hinweis auf, das der Agilitätsbegriff im Umfeld der Sozialwissenschaften bereits seit den 1950er Jahren bekannt ist, interessanterweise durch das Werk eines Wirtschaftstheoretikers. Die Herkunft des Begriffes Agilität im organisationalen Umfeld auszuleuchten und sich an die vielfältigen Darstellungen dieses Konzeptes anzunähern, ist das Anliegen der vorliegenden Arbeit. Das Agilitätsmodell in der seit den 1990er Jahren entwickelten Prägung ist eine Sammlung von Elementen verschiedener organisationstheoretischer Ansätze und enthält eine Vielzahl organisationaler Konzepte, die zudem fortlaufend erweitert und verändert wurden. Es würde den Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit sprengen, die Theorien und Konzepte aufzulisten, die dem Agilitätsbegriff eine grundsätzliche Prägung verliehen. Es werden jedoch einige Organisationstheorien und Konzepte, deren Elemente sich als Kennzeichen der Agilität wiederfinden, aufgezeigt, um darzustellen, dass agiles Denken existierte, bevor der Begriff „Agilität“ geprägt wurde. Die Agilität ist kein Konzept, das aus der Praxis heraus entstanden ist und anschließend zum Forschungsgegenstand der Wirtschaftswissenschaften wurde, vielmehr handelt es sich um einen Entwurf, der originär als theoretischer Lösungsansatz zur Behebung einer wirtschaftlichen Stagnation entwickelt wurde. Inwieweit dieser theoretische Ansatz in der Praxis tatsächlich auch Verbreitung finden konnte, ist eine interessante Fragestellung, die zum Thema mehrerer Forschungsarbeiten gewählt wurde. Die vorliegende Arbeit wird diesen Bereich jedoch nicht näher beleuchten. Vielmehr steht eine Sammlung und Strukturierung verschiedener in der Literatur vorhandener Auffassungen und Auslegungen des Agilitätsbegriffs im Mittelpunkt.

Introduction: Traditional organizational routines for the innovation process, like the Stage-Gate Model, are often characterized by rigid and inflexible activities, limiting firms' ability to identify, develop, and commercialize software and digital/connected products and services. Examples of inflexible activities include predefined project milestones, linear progression through development stages, and a lack of iterative feedback loops. This rigidity can lead to prolonged development timelines, increased costs, reduced competitiveness, and the risk of losing market share. Specifically, the rigidity inherent in traditional innovation processes hampers the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing digital landscape, where swift recognition of opportunities, flexible development strategies, and repeated enhancements are key to achieving success. The literature has suggested organizational agility as a potential approach to address the consequences of rigidity. The medical device-development healthcare industry has unique characteristics. It faces challenges that increase the lead time from idea to market in innovation processes, reducing the number of innovations that are developed. Therefore, for medical device development, healthcare firms may need to understand how their innovation process routines align with organizational agility to address the unique features of their industry. Purpose: This thesis aims to understand the current organizational routines of a medical device-developing healthcare firm's innovation process and how these routines align with operational, customer, and partnering agility. Method: A single case study with 12 semi-structured interviews was conducted at a leading European medical device-developing healthcare firm, hereafter referred to as MedTech X. Findings: MedTech X's innovation process routines align with organizational agility through its customer-centric approach, adaption or modification of its extended network to access diverse knowledge, assets, or competencies, practical and iterative operations, and adaptable informal routines. However, as MedTech X further ventures into the realm of software and digital/connected solutions, there is a failure to realize the full potential of real-time customer data. Moreover, there is a recognized need to improve its partnering agility. Also, over-reliance on external resources for sensing may limit the firm's operational agility. Conclusion: Despite certain routines aligning with agility, inconsistency, and overreliance on external resources for sensing pose challenges. Therefore, reassessment and redesign of current innovation routines are advised to balance stability and flexibility. Formalizing innovation processes may be critical for MedTech X to handle unexpected changes, and informal routines play a significant role in this process, suggesting a future research direction.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of DevOps adoption on organizational agility. The first chapter establishes through literature review and a pilot study, a theoretical definition of DevOps and identifies through survey data, the key DevOps adoption capabilities. The definition and key capabilities identified during the pilot study establishes the foundation through which a subsequent study is performed. The second chapter details an examination of the effects of DevOps adoption capability on organizational agility. Through capability theory, we propose that DevOps adoption capability positively affects organizational agility. We also propose that the capabilities of collaboration/communication, continuous monitoring, measurement and automation positively affect DevOps adoption capability and likewise; the capabilities of responsiveness, competency, flexibility, and quickness affect organizational agility capability. We test our model with survey data collected from 333 respondents and find that our hypotheses are supported and that DevOps adoption capability has a positive effect on organizational agility capability. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

This thesis investigates the interconnections of the factors that a company essentially should possess to implement agile applications and examines the extent to which agility factors are transferable across diverse sectors. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with industry experts and executive ranks across various sectors, this research aims to identify the key factors that are indispensable to organizational agility to successfully implement agility and assess their applicability in diverse organizational contexts. The findings highlight the universal relevance of agility factors such as leadership and vision, top-management support, customer focus, adaptability, collaboration, innovation, resource management, technology utilization, and training and development.