27,713 research outputs found
The Role of Human Resource Management in Achieving Organisational Agility
Whilst uncertainty and change has always been the focal point of strategic management theories, the increasing rate of change and uncertainty that organisations have been experiencing during the past few decades has stimulated new approaches to the strategic management of firms.
‘Agility’ has been introduced as an appropriate paradigmatic approach to integrative strategy making ((Doz and Kosonen, 2008, 2010; McGrath, 2013a, 2013b; Sharifi, 2014). The concept has been considered as providing a comprehensive and cohesive platform for addressing the new conditions in the business environment, epitomised in notions such as hyper-competition, hyper-turbulence, and the continuously morphing business environment, through the perpetual process of altering and adjusting the firm’s direction and courses of action (Doz and Kosonen, 2008). The main aim behind the concept is to maintain strategic supremacy and competitiveness by anticipating and taking advantage of change ((D'Aveni, 1994; Thomas, 1996; Doz and Kosonen, 2007; Jamrog et al., 2006), and coping with and surviving unexpected changes (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000).
Agile organisations rely on a series of agility capabilities such as strategic sensitivity, decision making prowess, learning aptitude and resource fluidity and flexibility (Hamel and Prahalad, 1993; Dyer and Shafer, 2003; Doz and Kosonen, 2008; Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2009), many of which are human-related. A review of the agility literature revealed that achieving agility, similar to other value-based management philosophies, is heavily dependent upon various human factors such as Human Resources (HR) strategy, management approach and the prevailing culture of an organisation (Harper and Utley, 2001; Street et al., 2003; Dyer and Ericksen, 2006). However, the review of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) literature indicated that the SHRM studies have not responded to the agility agenda, thus, little is known about human resource management strategies and systems enabling organisational agility.
In an effort to fill this gap, this research has focused on exploring the people aspects of organisational agility aiming at:
1. Identifying the HRM critical roles in developing organisational agility
2. Developing a theoretical model for crafting and implementing a HR Strategy which
assists organisations in acquiring agile attributes. The conceptual model delineates the key constructs and features of an Agility-Oriented Human Resource Strategy (AOHRS).
The research was conducted through exploratory qualitative research, collecting data mainly through semi-structured interviews with HR directors, agility professionals and senior managers from 17 large public and private organisations in the UK.
The research explicated the need and developed a conceptual framework for AOHRS, which gives explicit attention to an array of external environment forces. The framework proposes the need for ongoing reinterpretation of contextual information, frequent review of necessary individual and organisation-wide skills portfolio and capabilities profiles, and frequent re-evaluation of HR principles, policies and practices-in-use to reflect the persistent uncertainty and continuously morphing business conditions. The framework also offers for a dynamic HR system which can analyse capability needs continuously and have appropriate policies and practices in place to easily and quickly reconfigure the firms’ human assets.
The study contributes to the knowledge in the field of SHRM and organisational agility by presenting a comprehensive conceptual framework for AOHR strategy, complemented by an expansive definition for an Agility-Oriented SHRM suitable for an uncertain business environment. As part of this, the attributes and capabilities of the agile workforce, a series of Agility-Oriented HR Principles and a series of widely-adopted Agility-Oriented HR Practices are also empirically identified in addition to the characteristics and dimensions of an Agile HR Function
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Leanness and agility as means for improving supply chains. A case study on Egypt
Supply chain management has received greater attention from the academics and the practitioners, however the literature review lacks a comprehensive view for supply chain management practices and how its members should act to contribute to its overall success (Li el at., 2005). In this era, where the business organisations are working in several challenging threats and opportunities, greater attention is given to supply chain management. Nowadays, companies are always searching for means to improve their supply chains. The main aim of this research is to show "how leanness and agility approaches can be used within the same enterprise as complementary means for improving its supply chain". To achieve this research objective, the research has provided an assessment and summarised the literature on the supply chain management, lean thinking and agility thinking including their importance; their definitions; their practices and the relationship between lean and agility. The resulted proposed framework deduced from the literature has been applied in the Egyptian Manufacturing Business to show the relationship between the agility principles, lean principles, entity performance and the successful supply chain
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Exploring the supply chain agility attributes in fast moving consumer goods industry: A case study in the Middle East
During the 1990s, supply chain management and agility have both received great attention. This is due to the fact that the business market place is characterized by being highly dynamic and complex. This paper aims to explore the need and the attributes of supply chain agility in FMCG business industry working in the Middle East markets. A case study of a multinational company working in the Middle East was chosen, where it faces the challenges of its business environment and its rapid changes in its markets. The findings show the case study supply chain working within such type of industry needs to be agile and that the attributes required for achieving agility within FMCGs supply chain includes: responsiveness; Customer service; flexibility; innovation; speed; quality; efficiency; and responsible people thinking
Управління міжнародним бізнесом: Agility Journey для високотехнологічних компаній
The purpose of the article is the development of recommendations for the business maturity determination and measurement in the implementation of the agile approach for high-tech companies. Methods of analysis of documents, observation, personal and in-depth interviews, case studies have been used in the research.
The findings of the research: Business Agility Journey has been suggested for defining the state of the maturity of the company and conducting express diagnostics of agility. Agile Project Management Journey has been developed for the identification of weaknesses by the companies in the path to agility, as well as for
the determination of events for the transition from the traditional to the agile approach. Personal Agility Checklist has been designed for testing the soft skills of employees for the presence of the agile mindset. Research limitations include the study of the maturity of companies in the IT industry. Practical implications
are based on the use of suggested Agility Journeys in defining the state of maturity and main problems on the transition path. Also, Personal Agility Checklist will help to check the agility of the future employees. The originality of the article is based on the uniqueness of the Agility Journey that has been developed for the
first time. Further research on this topic should be focused on the development of an agile mindset as a prerequisite for the provision of agility in the company.Метою статті є розробка рекомендацій щодо визначення та вимірювання зрілості бізнесу при впровадженні еджайл-підходу для високотехнологічних компаній. У дослідженні використовуються методи аналізу документів, спостереження, особистого та глибинного інтерв’ю та кейс-стаді. Розроблено Business Agility Journey для визначення стану зрілості компанії та проведення експрес-діагностики еджайльності. Agile Project Management Journey було розроблено для визначення компаніями своїх слабких сторін, а також заходів для переходу від традиційного до еджайльного підходу. Personal Agility Checklist був створений для перевірки «гнучких навичок» (soft skills) співробітників на наявність гнучкого мислення (agile mindset). Обмеження досліджень включають вивчення зрілості компаній ІТ-галузі. Практична значущість ґрунтується на використанні запропонованих Agility Journeys для визначення стану зрілості та основних проблем на шляху переходу. Також Personal Agility Checklist допоможе перевірити еджайльність майбутніх працівників. Оригінальність статті базується на унікальності Agility Journey, яка була розроблена вперше. Подальші дослідження на цю тему доцільно зосередити на розвитку гнучкого мислення як передумови забезпечення еджайльності в компанії
Migrating agile methods to standardized development practice
Situated process and quality frame-works offer a way to resolve the tensions that arise when introducing agile methods into standardized software development engineering. For these to be successful, however, organizations must grasp the opportunity to reintegrate software development management, theory, and practice
An agile business process improvement methodology
Adoption of business process improvement strategies are now a concern of most organisations. Organisations are still facing challenges and finding transient solutions to immediate problems. The misalignment between IT solutions and organisational aspects evolves across space and time showing discrepancies. Unfortunately, existing business process approaches are not according with continuous business process improvement involving business stakeholders. Considering this limitation in well-known Business Process (BP) methodologies, this paper presents a comparative study of some approaches and introduces agility in the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and introduce agility in our proposal to address features, like the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions, in a simple and agile way. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V
Artificial Intelligence for the Financial Services Industry: What Challenges Organizations to Succeed?
As a research field, artificial intelligence (AI) exists for several years. More recently, technological breakthroughs, coupled with the fast availability of data, have brought AI closer to commercial use. Internet giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple or Facebook invest significantly into AI, thereby underlining its relevance for business models worldwide. For the highly data driven finance industry, AI is of intensive interest within pilot projects, still, few AI applications have been implemented so far. This study analyzes drivers and inhibitors of a successful AI application in the finance industry based on panel data comprising 22 semi-structured interviews with experts in AI in finance. As theoretical lens, we structured our results using the TOE framework. Guidelines for applying AI successfully reveal AI-specific role models and process competencies as crucial, before trained algorithms will have reached a quality level on which AI applications will operate without human intervention and moral concerns
Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices
Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that
individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile
projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of
software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical
individual skills are especially important in agile software development.
Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual
skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set
of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from
agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and
Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in
relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is
surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict
(i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software
development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical
individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to
understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software
development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the
non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all
individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile
practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
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