For years heath care workers have been dealing with environmental changes which have created turbulent, complex work environments. Turbulence has been considered a negative phenomenon. However Workforce Agility may be a positive response to Environmental Turbulence. Other disciplines are familiar with the term Turbulence and Workforce Agility but there is little research available on this concept despite the impact that they may have on patient outcomes.The purpose of this research was to identify the relationship between Environmental Turbulence, Workforce Agility and Patient Outcomes through the examination of four alternative theoretical models.This research was conducted using secondary analysis of the IMPACT data set (Verran, Effken & Lamb, 2001-2004). The data were reanalyzed in order to answer different questions than the primary study. Causal modeling with path analysis and regression analysis was conducted to answer the research questions. Three questions included the use of either a moderator variable or mediator variable.The setting for the IMPACT Study was acute care hospitals in the Southwestern region of the United States. For the IMPACT study, the sample consisted of patient care units from teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Subjects consisted of staff members who were employed on the patient care units.Data collected from the Registered Nurses were used for the secondary analysis because this research was interested in looking primarily at the nursing unit. The total RN staff assigned to patient care units who responded to the questionnaires was N=454. The total number of patients who responded to the survey was N=1179.In summary, the unit characteristics that were found to be Antecedents to ET were the sub-composites of Team and Complexity. Proxy variables, Collaborative Culture Agility and Experiential Agility, were successfully formed as a composite for WFA and were tested with the primary data. No mediators or moderators were shown; however, main effects of WFA and ET did have an impact on patient outcomes.

This study aims to define workforce agility via a literature review and a conducted research survey of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Engineering workforce. The survey results will help us determine the workforce agility of the KSC engineering team and understand what has allowed them to transition from the Space Shuttle Program to the new Exploration Ground System (EGS) program. Structural Equation Modeling was used to develop a model of relationships to test the hypotheses. The results show that organizational practices and psychological empowerment significantly support workforce agility. The implications of this study for understanding the characteristics of workforce agility are also discussed.

The concept of workforce agility has become increasingly popular in recent years as agile individuals are expected to be better able to handle change and uncertainty. However, agility has rarely been studied in a systematic way. Relations between agility and positive work outcomes, such as higher performance or increased well-being, have often been suggested but rarely been empirically tested. Furthermore, several different workforce agility measures are used in the literature which complicates the comparison of findings. Recognizing these gaps in the literature, we developed a new workforce agility measure, compared this measure to established workforce agility measures, and empirically tested the relations of workforce agility with work outcomes. For this purpose, we surveyed participants from two samples (N1 = 218, N2 = 533). In a first step, we used Sample 1 to examine the factor structure of the measure for item selection. In a second step, we used Sample 2 to confirm the 10-factor structure and to compare the predictive validity of our measure along with two other agility measures. Findings demonstrate predictive validity for all three workforce agility scales, especially in relation to innovative performance. Furthermore, workforce agility related positively to task and innovative performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and well-being.