Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> Agility is vital to the innovation and competitive performance of firms in contemporary business environments. Firms are increasingly relying on information technologies, including process, knowledge, and communication technologies, to enhance their agility. The purpose of this paper is to broaden understanding about the strategic role of IT by examining the nomological network of influences through which IT impacts firm performance. By drawing upon recent thinking in the strategy, entrepreneurship, and IT management literatures, this paper uses a multitheoretic lens to argue that information technology investments and capabilities influence firm performance through three significant organizational capabilities (agility, digital options, and entrepreneurial alertness) and strategic processes (capability-building, entrepreneurial action, and coevolutionary adaptation). We also propose that these dynamic capabilities and strategic processes impact the ability of firms to launch many and varied competitive actions and that, in turn, these competitive actions are a significant antecedent of firm performance. Through our theorizing, we draw attention to a significant and reframed role of IT as a digital options generator in contemporary firms. <s> BIB001 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> In turbulent environments, enterprise agility, that is, the ability of firms to sense environmental change and respond readily, is an important determinant of firm success. We define and deconstruct enterprise agility, delineate enterprise agility from similar concepts in the business research literature, explore the underlying capabilities that support enterprise agility, explicate the enabling role of information technology (IT) and digital options, and propose a method for measuring enterprise agility. The concepts in this paper are offered as foundational building blocks for the overall research program on enterprise agility and the enabling role of IT. <s> BIB002 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> Organizational agility has recently received a great deal of attention as a significant business capability for competing in the current dynamic business environments. Further, researchers have hypothesized that information technology management enables organizational agility and competitive success. However, few large scale empirical efforts have yet been conducted to examine the hypothesized nomological networks surrounding IT capabilities, organizational agility, and competitive performance. This research utilizes data from a large-scale field survey and archival performance data to test a model of the relationships among IT capabilities, organizational agility, and firm performance. The results of a structural equation model analysis indicate that IT capability enables operational innovation capability and operational excellence capability, which in turn affect the development of two types of agility. These two types of agility, entrepreneurial and adaptive agility, are found to be associated with firms' sustainable competitive advantage. These findings provide a better understanding of the strategic role of IT in contemporary businesses. The study benefits both academics and practitioners by providing conceptual advancements of research constructs and theoretical extension of IT-enabled organizational agility. <s> BIB003 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> Enterprise systems (ES) are industry-specific, customizable software packages that integrate information and business process in organizations. Despite the advantages associated with implementing ES, their success has been mixed. This has attracted the interest of researchers and resulted in a proliferation of literature on implementation. However, the extant ES studies lack a theoretical framework for the examination of ES use and its implications for change in organizations. We seek to bridge this research gap by proposing a theoretical framework for change induced through ES use. This paper contributes to theory in two areas. First, by analytically separating the notions of structure, institution, and organization, we illustrate a consistent application of Giddens' structuration theory to ES use. Second, we develop a structurational model of ES-induced change that explicates the relationship between specific characteristics of ES and the nature of change occasioned through their use by human agents within a historically shaped organizational context. Towards this objective, we distinguish ES from other information systems. Implications for practitioners and researchers are presented. <s> BIB004 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> This article is a review of work published in various journals on the topics of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) between January 2000 and May 2006. A total of 313 articles from 79 journals are reviewed. The article intends to serve three goals. First, it will be useful to researchers who are interested in understanding what kinds of questions have been addressed in the area of ERP. Second, the article will be a useful resource for searching for research topics. Third, it will serve as a comprehensive bibliography of the articles published during the period. The literature is analysed under six major themes and nine sub-themes. <s> BIB005 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> This study develops a research model of how the technical, behavioral, and business capabilities of IT personnel are associated with IT infrastructure capabilities, and how the latter are associated with IT-dependent organizational agility, which is conceptualized as comprising IT-dependent system, information, and strategic agility. Analysis of crosssectional data collected from 293 IT managers generally corroborates the hypothesized relationships, showing that the technical and behavioral capabilities of IT personnel have a positive effect on infrastructure capabilities. The analysis also provides evidence that the effect of infrastructure capabilities on IT-dependent strategic agility is direct, as well as mediated by IT-dependent system and information agility. The validity of the findings is strengthened by demonstrating that the hypothesized research model fits the data better than two alternative theoretically-anchored models describing different relationships between the same constructs. This study advances understanding of the interrelationships between two major subsets of IT capabilities, and their relationships with the agility afforded by IT. <s> BIB006 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> The lack of an agreed upon definition of information system (IS) is one of many obstacles troubling the academic IS discipline. After listing a number of definitions of IS, this paper defines IS as a special case of work system as defined in Alter (1999a). This definition has many desirable characteristics: it is easy to understand; differentiates IS from information technology (IT); covers totally manual, partially automated, and totally automated ISs; links to a life cycle model that generates many insights about development and implementation problems; provides a simple guideline that helps in interpreting common IS/IT jargon; and has other useful implications related to IS concepts, IS terminology, and the analysis and design of ISs. The paper presents the proposed IS definition and evaluates the definition in terms of simplicity, clarity, scope, systematic power, explanatory power, validity, reliability, and fruitfulness. An Appendix summarizes previously published concepts and two frameworks that flow from the proposed definition and are useful for appreciating many points in the evaluation section. <s> BIB007 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> 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, prior research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the question becomes how to configure IT resources to prepare for, or react to, change. In this paper, we posit that managerial IT capabilities based on IT-business partnerships, strategic planning, and ex-post IT project analysis lead to the development of technical IT capabilities associated with a flexible IT infrastructure which in turn drives agility or a firm's ability to react to change in its products and markets. Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we find that managerial and technical capabilities affect agility. In further testing, we reveal that in a stable setting, technical IT capabilities are more important to agility than managerial IT capabilities, while in a dynamic setting, the opposite is true. Thus, for firms operating in volatile markets, effective models of managerial IT governance are essential for delivering superior agility or adaptiveness. <s> BIB008 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> An electroconductive laminated window having an electroconductive coating applied to one interior substrate surface with a pair of bus bars electrically connecting a source of electrical potential thereto. The bus bars include an electroconductive layer having volume resistivity less than about 10-2 ohm-cm interposed between and conformable to the surface configurations of the electroconductive coating and a flexible metallic current carrying member. The metallic current carrying member is preferably a mesh of thin copper foil which is substantially bendable in its own plane, and the electroconductive layer is preferably a metallic layer substantially free of non-metallic components, consisting of a mixture of finely divided electroconductive particles and finely divided metal alloy particles having a fusion temperature between about 70 DEG C. and about 150 DEG C. <s> BIB009 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> VII. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS <s> Although the organizational capability for agility in IT deployment is crucial to the attainment of enterprise agility, there is scant research on how the capability may be nurtured and leveraged to this end. As improvisation may be an important mechanism for attaining agility in IT deployment, we apply the literature on organizational improvisation to analyze the case of Chang Chun Petrochemicals, one of the largest privately-owned petrochemical firms in Taiwan with a storied history for agile IT deployment. In doing so, a process model is inductively derived that sheds light on how the organizational capability for improvisation in IT deployment can be developed, leveraged for enterprise agility, and routinized for repeated application. With its findings, this study contributes to the knowledge on agile IT deployment and the broader concept of IT-enabled enterprise agility, and provides a useful reference for practitioners who face resource constraints or time pressures in IT deployment. <s> BIB010
Organizations that are faced with challenges from a highly turbulent business environment have looked into agility as a new capability and success indicator to respond to those changes and achieve a high level of performance. Likewise, how IT/IS influences agility is a topic of interest in IS research. Yet the IS literature has not been very clear in regard to the conceptualization of organizational agility: IT-enabled organizational agility and the "IT artifact." Further, the literature is inconclusive about the relationship between IS/IT and organizational agility. Some view the role of information systems on organizational agility as that of facilitator; others consider it to be an inhibitor. In addition, most, if not all, of the studies that investigated IS-related agility antecedents work on the assumption of a direct relationship between IS-related factors and organizational agility. Changes from the business environment come from various sources, causing organizations to have various distinctive ways of responding to changes. Hence, organizational agility is viewed to have polymorphous aspects BIB003 . In that context, simply viewing the direct relationship between IS and OA constrains the understanding of how IS supports the polymorphous aspects of organizational agility. Since the early days of computerization, there have been significant improvements in organizational IS ecosystems as organizations move from in-house developed systems to off-the-shelf enterprise-wide architectures and systems. Enterprise systems, which capture the most advanced development of IT, are becoming common fixtures in most organizations. Although ES are classified as one type of information system implemented in organizations, thus inheriting the common IS characteristics, they have unique features that differentiate them from legacy information systems BIB004 . ES can improve organizational performance. However, literature on ES is still dominated by ES implementation issues rather than post-implementation issues BIB005 . As such, how ES affect OA has been less researched. This article aimed to review the existing literature on IS and OA in general and ES and OA in particular and to provide a framework to theorize the mechanisms by which organizations can exploit their ES to advance agility. In achieving the first aim, the article offers a comprehensive and deepened perspective toward the existing discourses on IS/IT and ES-enabled organizational agility. We followed a systematic and rigorous approach to identify, select, and analyze the literature. The review represents an original contribution to IS research and can serve as a building block for future research on IS and organizational agility. In pursuing the second aim, the article extends the IS and ES literature in three areas. First, the research contributes to the current body of knowledge on the post-implementation benefits of ES, which is still less researched BIB005 . Following the suggestions of Orlikowski and Iacona [2001] and BIB007 , the article explicitly theorizes about enterprise systems-related competencies that can be exploited to develop distinctive ES-enabled sensing and responding capabilities to advance organizational agility under dynamic environment. This theorization aligns with the findings from previous studies that strategic use of IS competence can positively influence organizational performance BIB008 Bhatts et al., 2010; BIB006 . Specifically, the current research suggests that if organizations possess ES technical competence, ES human competence, and ES management competence, they would create a digital platform to renew and develop unique and ES-enabled sensing and responding capabilities to improve their agility. Enterprise systems evolve after the implementation through system upgrades; thus the ES competence will continue to be maintained and developed. Second, the research identifies a clear nomological structure linking enterprise systems with organizational agility. From the literature, we identified two views of organizational agility vis-à-vis the concepts of sensing and responding. While some BIB002 treat sensing and responding as components of agility, others take a process BIB009 and capability BIB001 ] view and treat sensing and responding separately from agility. The framework proposed in the current article shares BIB009 and Sambamurthy et al.'s [2003] views that sensing and responding are separate from, and reside outside of, the domain of agility. This position challenges Overby et al.'s [2006] view which treats the two components as part of, and as located within, the scope of agility. While BIB001 suggested the digitization of business processes and knowledge would generate digital options, they did not specifically address what type of business processes and knowledge contribute to digital options. This article extends Sambamurthy et al.'s [2003] framework by emphasizing the digitization of business processes involved in sensing and responding to changes and by theorizing how that contributes to organizational agility. Further, we also identify three competencies of ES, that is, technical, human, and managerial. Then, drawing from the dynamic capability and process-based theories, in addition to the direct relationship between ES competence and OA that has been recognized in prior literature, we introduce two distinctive types of high-order ES dynamic capabilities i.e., enterprise system-enabled sensing capability and enterprise system-enabled responding capability and the alignment between the two as part of the nomology linking ES competence and organizational agility. This structure clearly defines our notion of ES-enabled organizational agility as distinct from those of BIB010 , BIB002 , and Sambamurthy et al.'s [2003] . Thus the article opens up the black-box of the role of ES in OA. Using the capability hierarchy, the research delineated different levels of ES capability which could support practitioners in managing their ES resources and capabilities more effectively. Third, the current research proposes a framework that can be tested empirically. The seven propositions provide the mechanism to investigate ES-related contributions to, and variations in, OA. We believe that these propositions represent a valuable step. Overall and directly addressing the research question posed at the beginning of the article, our theorization shows that organizations can achieve agility out of their ES investment in three ways: (1) by developing an ES technical, human, and managerial competence; (2) by exploiting their ES competence to build ES-enabled capabilities that digitize their key sensing and responding processes; and (3) when ES-enabled sensing and ES-enabled responding capabilities are aligned than when they are not and when organizations operate in a relatively turbulent environment. However, we acknowledge one limitation of the article and proposed framework. In order to focus more on the ES capabilities, we did not include the self-learning aspects into the framework BIB001 ]. Selflearning or feedback looping between the capability and outcome can be critical for a sustainable OA.