Financial services providers are exposed to a highly turbulent environment that is characterized by an intense competition for the development of new financial products and the attraction of customers. Against this background, Grid technology assimilation can be assumed to be a potential strategic response to address fast changing market demands and to enhance the operational agility of busines...

This paper outlines approaches for assessing and classifying manufacturing and service operations in terms of their suitability for use of cross-trained (flexible) workers. We refer to our overall framework as Agile Workforce Evaluation (AWE). The primary contributions of this paper are: (1) a strategic assessment framework that structures the key mechanisms by which cross-training can support ...

In fast changing business environments, firms’ dynamic capabilities help them to identify and exploit market opportunities. Customer agility is a vital dynamic capability, which helps managers identify untapped customer demand and reconfigure existing firm assets and capabilities. The purpose of this research-in-progress paper is to set the stage for an empirical study, which aims to explore ho...

To remain competitive in the present dynamic environment, ‘governance for agility’ has become a key solution. Past literature paid little attention to understanding how governance for agility, particularly in regard to the delivery of Information Technology (IT) implementation. Using agile organisation and IT-governance theory as lenses to analyse data from a hospital case study, a strategic pr...

"Abstract This paper is concerned with leadership capacity at national level to mobilise society take up challenges. It uses empirical analysis explain how, in a European context, this covaries the development of strategic state capabilities. The evidence used explore conditions which capabilities have positive effect on society. These include factors related public: social capital, average sub...

Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) need to be agile to adapt to new situations by using detailed, precise, and appropriate data for intelligent decision-making. The intricacy of the relationship of strategic goals to operational performance across the many levels of a manufacturing system inhibits the realization of SMS. This paper proposes a method for identifying what aspects of a manufacturin...

Organizational agility—defined loosely as a combination of flexibility, nimbleness, and speed— is increasingly regarded as a source of competitive advantage in today’s fiercely competitive and fast changing markets. We aim to tighten and explicate a conceptualization of organizational agility that clarifies what it is and what it is not. We theorize that agility is a bi-dimensional concept that...

Recent innovations in utility computing, web services, and service-oriented architectures, combined with a growing array of IT skills, have improved firms’ ability to be more agile in responding to change. Using the resource-based view of the firm, research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the questi...