Exploratory research into IT's support of organisational agility : concept development and pilot testing of an assessment instrument

• Main Author: Stringer, Lance
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Information Systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7404

Bibliography: leaves 98-112. === This exploratory research is aimed at the development of a conceptual model and assessment instrument to assess the extent to which IT supports organisational agility. The concepts of uncertainty, flexibility and agility are reviewed and a synthesis of concepts is undertaken to form the agility construct to be used in this research, together with proposed dimensions and measurement indicators. in deciding how to assess lT's support of organizational agility the idea of measuring ""fit"" or ""alignment"" is used. We conceptualise an organization as having a ""business agility orientation"", similar to Venkatraman's (1989) ""business strategic orientation"", and we measure this ""business agility orientation"" along the constituent agility dimensions developed in this research. As with Chan (1993), a set of matched ""IT agility orientation"" dimensions and related indicators is proposed and an ""agility alignment"" score is calculated by matching, on a one-to-one basis, the indicators of the ""business agility orientation"" and the ""IT agility orientation"". The degree of alignment between the organizations business and IT agility orientations is thus indicative of lT's support for organizational agility. The measurement instruments developed are subjected to pilot testing for reliability and validity. No causal model is posited in this research. High measurement scale reliability was reported although concerns of multicollinearity caution against over reliance of these results. Given the limited focus of this pilot testing and the limited study of only four organisations, encouraging internal validity is found. Crucial to any extension of this research are the use of a shorter set of questions and the extension of validity testing.