Evolving IT Organizational Identity as a Source of IT-enabled Enterprise Agility in China

Prior research has proposed that IT may hinder the attainment of enterprise agility; how to prevent this hindrance and further achieve IT-enabled enterprise agility remains known. Because IT organizational identity can be an important guidepost for eliminating the hindrance, the purpose of this paper is to explore how to achieve ITenabled enterprise agility through an evolving IT organizational identity. By drawing upon recent thinking in the enterprise agility and organizational identity literature, this paper proposes a process model of IT organizational identity evolution to argue that the process of recreating an IT identity leads an enterprise to attain IT-enabled agility. In the present study, the case of China’s Haier Group is comprehensively analyzed based on the process model. Our study not only contributes to the knowledge of organizational identity and broader concepts of enterprise agility, but also provides useful means for practitioners to establish appropriate IT organizational identities over time.