Investigating organizational agility of the Turkish construction companies

Abstract

Today’s business environment is complex, dynamic, and uncertain with increasing globalization, extreme competitiveness, developing technologies, and changing stakeholder needs. Companies need to sense the change and respond appropriately to survive, to sustain as an operable entity, and to become successful. Agility is a significant concept that helps organizations to survive and to stay competitive in an unpredictable and rapidly changing environment. Agility was founded and developed in the manufacturing and information systems industries. Although agility is at an early stage in the construction industry, it has potential. The existing literature of the construction industry mainly focuses on agile project management and supply chain agility, while organizational agility research is very limited. Considering this research gap, this study aims to investigate organizational agility of Turkish construction companies. A conceptual model was developed based on an in-depth literature review and interviews. In the model, organizational agility (sensing, responsiveness, flexibility, competency), environmental changes which act as agility drivers (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal changes, the threat of new entrants, rivalry among competitors), and organizational agility enablers (flat structure, change culture, organizational learning, people, technology, external relations) were considered. To test the relations in the model, the data were collected from practitioners working in Turkish construction companies through an online questionnaire survey. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. According to analysis results, change culture was found to have both direct and indirect positive effects on organizational agility. External relations were found to affect organizational agility positively. Organizational learning was found to affect organizational agility indirectly through the mediating role of people and technology, rather than directly. While the direct effect of the flat organizational structure on organizational agility was found to be negative, its indirect effect was positive through the mediatory role of human resources. Further, considering other research findings, theoretical, and practical contributions of the study were implied.