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The co-evolutionary relationship between digitalization and organizational agility: Ongoing debates, theoretical developments and future research perspectives

Francesco Ciampi, Monica Faraoni, Jacopo Ballerini, Francesco Meli

arXiv:2112.11822v1econ.GN

TL;DR

Digitalization and organizational agility are important but their relationship remains complex and insufficiently synthesized. Using a systematic literature review and bibliographic coupling, the paper identifies three interconnected research clusters and concludes that digital capabilities and agility have a bidirectional relationship.

  • Problem

    The literature lacks a holistic understanding of the complex, co-evolutionary relationship between digitalization and organizational agility.

  • Method

    The study conducts a systematic literature review and applies bibliographic coupling to 171 connected papers.

  • Results

    The review identifies three interconnected clusters focused on big-data analytics, supply-chain agility, and information-technology capabilities, and finds a bidirectional relationship between digitalization and organizational agility.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Digital capabilities should be considered both enablers and possible outcomes of organizational agility.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    The authors identify subjectivity in their interpretations as a limitation of the study.

Abstract

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This study is the first to provide a systematic review of the literature focused on the relationship between digitalization and organizational agility (OA). It applies the bibliographic coupling method to 171 peer-reviewed contributions published by 30 June 2021. It uses the digitalization perspective to investigate the enablers, barriers and benefits of processes aimed at providing firms with the agility required to effectively face increasingly turbulent environments. Three different, though interconnected, thematic clusters are discovered and analysed, respectively focusing on big-data analytic capabilities as crucial drivers of OA, the relationship between digitalization and agility at a supply chain level, and the role of information technology capabilities in improving OA. By adopting a dynamic capabilities perspective, this study overcomes the traditional view, which mainly considers digital capabilities enablers of OA, rather than as possible outcomes. Our findings reveal that, in addition to being complex, the relationship between digitalization and OA has a bidirectional character. This study also identifies extant research gaps and develops 13 original research propositions on possible future research pathways and new managerial solutions.

Declarations of interest: none

The authors declare no specific grant funding from public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

  • No specific grant funding was received from public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

1. Introduction

The introduction frames digitalization and organizational agility as increasingly important in turbulent environments, while highlighting a fragmented understanding of their complex relationship. The study addresses this gap through a systematic review that identifies thematic clusters, examines bidirectionality, and proposes future research pathways.

  • Turbulent markets, changing stakeholder needs, and digital disruption make organizational agility increasingly important for firms.Agility supports responses to environmental changes and the exploitation of evolving digital technologies.
  • Digital technologies can support agility through data management, workflow coordination, infrastructure flexibility, and reduced maintenance effort.Examples include big-data analytics, IoT, blockchain, enterprise social media, cloud technologies, and integrated IT infrastructure.
  • Existing research examines digital and agility capabilities through varied constructs and perspectives, but does not provide a holistic understanding of their relationship.The introduction identifies underexplored research gaps, topics, and emerging issues concerning digitalization and agility.
  • The review addresses four questions concerning research themes, gaps, future avenues, and whether digitalization and agility are related one-way or two-way.The study explicitly challenges the traditional view that digital transformation fosters agility without reciprocal influence.
  • Three interconnected clusters focus on big-data analytic capabilities, supply-chain agility, and information-technology capabilities.The study also develops research pathways and a framework for agility capabilities across digital-transformation phases.
  • The relationship between digital capabilities and organizational agility is bidirectional, requiring balanced and progressively evolving capability development.The paper argues that digitalization processes must remain agile and flexible so firms can acquire and integrate new digital capabilities.

2. Theoretical background

The theoretical background presents organizational agility and digital capabilities as dynamic capabilities for sensing and responding to environmental change. It explains why their relationship is complex, reciprocal, and relevant across digitalization stages.

  • Organizational agility involves sensing environmental changes, accelerating decisions, responding flexibly, and exploiting emerging opportunities.The paper connects agility with responsiveness, competency, flexibility, speed, proactiveness, radicalness, adaptiveness, and innovation.
  • Agility has technological, behavioral, organizational, and environmental antecedents, including IT, leadership, innovation capacity, strategy, and uncertainty.These antecedents relate to adapting to and anticipating changes within firms and supply chains.
  • Digital transformation requires firms to evolve business models, structures, processes, culture, strategic change, collaboration, skills, and technology integration.The digital revolution changes consumer behavior, business models, and competitive environments.
  • Digitalization stages differ in their effects: digitization converts analog information, digitalization restructures operating activities, and digital transformation produces new business models.The paper associates digitalization with IT-enabled transformation and optimization of activities such as communication, manufacturing, and customer relationship management.
  • Digital capabilities and organizational agility have a complex and partly controversial relationship because each can enable the development of the other.The paper treats digital capabilities as both enablers of agility and possible outcomes of agility.
  • The dynamic-capabilities perspective frames both agility and digital capabilities as abilities to integrate, reconfigure, and deploy resources under changing conditions.Organizational agility is presented as a subset of dynamic capabilities, while digital capabilities support digital transformation through information management and IT infrastructure.

3. Methodology

The study uses a structured systematic-review protocol, searches and filters the literature using predefined criteria, and applies bibliographic coupling to identify research clusters. The final similarity analysis links 171 papers into three clusters.

  • The review follows three stages: planning the review, undertaking it, and developing and reporting the results.The planning stage specifies objectives, inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria, and databases.
  • The review objectives cover research themes, gaps and limitations, future avenues, and the bidirectional digitalization–agility relationship.These objectives correspond to the study’s four research objectives.
  • The search required agility-related terms alongside digitalization, digital technology, big-data, IoT, or information-technology terms in English journal articles or reviews.The protocol used wildcard operators and publication-date, language, and document-type restrictions.
  • Scopus supplied the primary search database, while Web of Science was used for cross-validation and produced no additional relevant documents.The search syntax generated an initial dataset of 2,630 papers.
  • Bibliographic coupling found 171 connected papers whose shared references formed three well-defined clusters.The resulting cluster structure was used to interpret the literature and identify its research streams.
  • Independent screening applied six exclusion criteria, and the reviewers’ Krippendorff alpha agreement exceeded 0.80.The process reduced the dataset through exclusions before citation chaining added three papers, producing 197 documents.

4. Research profile and results of the VOS analysis

The bibliometric review maps a rapidly expanding literature into three interconnected thematic clusters. These clusters center on digital technologies and agility at firm, supply-chain, and organizational capability levels.

  • Research profile: Publications per year have grown exponentially since 2017, indicating strongly increased recent scientific interest.The increase is linked in the review to growing attention to the digital revolution and leading technologies.
  • Thematic clusters: The blue cluster treats big-data analytics, IoT, artificial intelligence, and social media as crucial drivers of company agility and performance.Its core topic is the relationship between big-data analytic capabilities and organizational agility.
  • Thematic clusters: The red cluster examines digital technologies and agility at the supply-chain level, while the green cluster focuses on IT capabilities and organizational agility.The green cluster also connects IT capabilities and agility with competitiveness and innovation performance.
  • Cluster indicators: The green cluster has the most total citations but the lowest normalized citation score, whereas the blue cluster has the highest normalized citation score.The green cluster’s NTC is 52.1; the blue cluster’s is 72.7.

5. Results of the systematic review

The systematic review organizes its findings by thematic areas associated with the identified clusters. Table 6 presents the main topics examined within each cluster.

  • The review presents its results in sections following the bibliometric analysis.
  • The analysis is organized around the main thematic areas identified within each cluster.
  • Table 6 summarizes the main topics per cluster.

AGILITY

The literature identifies big-data analytics, supply-chain digitalization, and information-technology capabilities as interconnected contributors to organizational agility. Their effects depend on complementary capabilities, organizational culture, environmental conditions, and the ability to convert information into action.

  • Information-technology capabilities: IT infrastructure contributes to agility when combined with managerial assets, modularity, integration, and an agility-oriented culture rather than through infrastructure investment alone.A flexible, integrated cloud-based infrastructure supports agility, but IT spending focused mainly on infrastructure has no significant overall effect.
  • Information-technology capabilities: IT flexibility has a stronger effect on organizational agility than IT integration, while IT exploitation and IT knowledge also contribute positively.Operational dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacity mediate some relationships between IT capabilities and agility.
  • Supply-chain agility: Digital technologies and capabilities support supply-chain agility through collaboration, information sharing, coordination, responsiveness, and production flexibility.Their effects are strengthened by coherent IT capabilities, dynamic IT, agility-oriented culture, and strong supplier-buyer relationships.
  • Big-data analytic capabilities: Big-data analytic capabilities improve agility by supporting ambidexterity, rapid decision-making, knowledge access, and responsiveness to changing customer needs.Their benefits depend on alignment among data, analytical tools, competencies, and a learning-oriented culture.
  • Supply-chain agility: Big-data analytics and related technologies also support supply-chain agility, resilience, communication, trust, predictive maintenance, and customized production.IoT enables information sharing and real-time production control, while analytics can improve demand forecasting and inventory management.

6. Discussion and research propositions

The review synthesizes research gaps across digital capabilities, supply-chain digitalization, trust, and sustainability. It uses these gaps to organize future research opportunities identified in the literature and summarized in Table 7.

  • Research-gap synthesis: Table 7 synthesizes the most relevant understudied topics emerging from the review.Its references identify papers that directly or indirectly inspired the research gaps in the table’s first column.
  • Research gaps: The review identifies understudied questions about how complementary digital capabilities jointly influence organizational agility across environmental contexts.It also highlights digital assimilation capabilities and non-IT capabilities as areas requiring further investigation.
  • Supply-chain research gaps: Supply-chain research needs deeper analysis of digital capability drivers, business-model innovation, trust-based relationships, and sustainability.The review specifically notes limited attention to digital technologies’ role in trust and to digital technologies’ effects on supply-chain sustainability.

and Narvel, 2019; Sheel and Nath, 2019).

The propositions extend research on how digital capabilities, contextual conditions, and complementary organizational resources shape organizational and supply-chain agility. They emphasize interaction effects, broader uncertainty, assimilation strategies, trust, and competence integration.

  • 6.1.1. The variable and complementary effects of the diverse digital capabilities in diverse environmental and organizational contexts: The review proposes studying how digital capabilities complement and interact with one another across diverse environmental and organizational contexts.The relative importance of capabilities depends on context, and their interaction mechanisms remain insufficiently understood.
  • 6.1.2. Exploring the effects of new dimensions of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between digital capabilities and agility: Future research should broaden environmental uncertainty beyond market and industry factors to include institutional pressures, government support, and global emergencies.These factors may affect the relationship between digital capabilities and agility.
  • 6.1.3. Digital technology assimilation strategy as an amplifier of the absorptive capacity–agility relationship: Digital technology assimilation strategies may amplify absorptive capacity’s positive relationship with organizational agility.The review proposes investigating strategies that maximize this effect rather than treating infrastructure investment as sufficient by itself.
  • Complementary capabilities: Research should clarify which non-IT complementary capabilities support the IT capabilities–agility relationship and how firms can use them effectively.Innovation capacity is identified as a relevant complementary capability, although its broad definition requires further precision.
  • Supply-chain digitalization: The propositions call for deeper study of supply-chain digitalization’s effects on business-model innovation, trust, and competence integration.They also emphasize how digital technologies can strengthen knowledge sharing and how technical, operational, and managerial competences should be integrated.

6.1.8. Leveraging new digital technologies for SC sustainability

The review identifies sustainability as an important but insufficiently studied dimension of digitalized supply-chain agility. It also calls for more granular evidence on how big-data analytics affect organizational areas and processes.

  • 6.1.8. Leveraging new digital technologies for SC sustainability: Research has not yet established whether and how big data, blockchain, and IoT enhance supply-chain sustainability.The review proposes investigating which digital technologies and infrastructures can support this challenge.
  • BDA–agility contingencies: Research has not sufficiently examined how BDACs’ effects vary across competitive environments or how their soft aspects influence agility.The review proposes studying both contextual variation and communication or interactional dimensions.
  • BDA–agility measurement: Existing studies often use overall performance indicators, leaving process-level effects of the BDACs–agility relationship insufficiently measured.The review therefore calls for specific KPIs covering different company areas and processes.
  • BDA–agility measurement: Future studies should develop and test KPIs that assess BDACs–agility interconnections across company areas and processes.Such measures would address the review’s call for more specific evaluation of where these interconnections affect performance.

6.1.11. Developing a coherent BDA organizational culture

Fully exploiting big-data analytics for organizational agility requires firms to align organizational competencies and learning culture with employees’ knowledge and skills. The literature calls for deeper study of how this fit can be achieved and maintained over time.

  • Fully exploiting BDA for agility requires firms to evolve their organizational competencies and learning culture.
  • Firms need an adequate fit between their big-data use and the competencies and knowledge employees actually possess.
  • More research is needed on how this fit can be reached and maintained over time.
  • Proposition 11 calls for research on the qualitative and quantitative coherences between a company’s need to use BD and its required BDA organizational culture.

6.1.12. Delving into the effects of integrating diverse digital technologies

The review identifies diverse digital technologies and capabilities as interconnected elements of organizational and supply-chain agility. It argues that digitalization and agility should be studied as mutually shaping capabilities across contexts, with balanced development affecting competitiveness and performance.

  • Proposition 12 calls for research on the effects of using different combinations of digital technologies.
  • A two-way perspective should investigate how bidirectionality varies across environmental and organizational contexts and how balanced capability development affects competitiveness and performance.
  • The review develops 13 research propositions and proposes further study of digitalization–agility interconnections and capability development across the digital-transformation lifecycle.
  • The review identifies three interconnected clusters: big-data analytics as agility drivers, digitalization and agility at supply-chain level, and information-technology capabilities supporting agility.
  • Future research should examine complementary mechanisms among digital capabilities, technology assimilation, absorptive capacity, and non-IT capabilities in the IT-capabilities–OA relationship.
  • At supply-chain level, research should address digital transformation, trust mechanisms, integrated digital competences, and technologies supporting sustainability and supply-chain agility.
  • The review finds a bidirectional relationship: digital capabilities positively affect OA, while agility also drives companies’ digital evolution.
  • The dynamic-capabilities perspective frames both OA and digital capabilities as dynamic and supports a holistic view of research gaps and future avenues.

7. Conclusions

The review synthesizes digitalization–organizational agility research through a dynamic capabilities lens, identifying three thematic clusters and a bidirectional relationship that motivates future research.

  • The review treats organizational agility and digital capabilities as dynamic and uses dynamic capabilities lenses to develop a holistic understanding of the literature.
  • The review examines three interrelated clusters: big-data analytic capabilities, supply-chain digitalization and agility, and information technology capabilities.
  • The study provides 13 research propositions addressing theoretical and practical issues and promising future research avenues.
  • The paper advances a two-way view in which digital capabilities and agility capabilities have mutual, co-evolutionary interconnections rather than a one-direction relationship.
  • The propositions mainly concern digital capabilities, approaches and culture, while also opening avenues on digitalization and agility’s effects on corporate strategy and innovation.

Author Biographic Notes

The authors’ biographies describe academic and professional backgrounds spanning management, digital transformation, marketing, big data and bibliometric research.

  • Francesco Ciampi is a management professor at the University of Florence whose research includes innovation, knowledge, strategy and SMEs.
  • Monica Faraoni is a management associate professor whose research examines technology-driven digitalization, consumer behavior, big data and fashion branding.
  • Jacopo Ballerini is a lecturer and PhD candidate in innovation management and digital transformation with multinational and startup marketing experience.
  • Francesco Meli researches big data, collaborative innovation, co-creation, knowledge management and bibliometric and systematic-review methods.
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