Date of Award

9-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

David R. Jacques, PhD

Abstract

There is an ongoing demand for organizations to become more agile in order to prosper amongst their competitors. Many organizations, including the United States Department of Defense (DoD), have declared a renewed focus towards organizational agility. This research begins by providing a suitable and formal definition of organizational agility (OA) by exploring and analyzing relevant scholarly literature on the subject. Existing methods to measure OA are examined and summarized, and their current limitations are highlighted. Previous studies to find characteristics associated with organizational agility are examined and the Q-sort method was employed to discover, analyze and eliminate redundant items from the data set, ultimately resulting in 64 unique characteristics. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and was applied to a preliminary study with over 250 respondents representing 13 organizations to establish the structure of a latent construct to measure OA along with the individual characteristics necessary to calculate its factors. A second study, this time representing 40 organizations and with over 1,100 respondents, used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to confirm and validate the latent construct, its factors, and the fundamental questions necessary to measure OA. Lastly, the principles of convergent and discriminant validity were applied to test the validity of the OA model. Overall, this research contributes a model to proactively measure OA utilizing a 20-question questionnaire, allowing leaders the insight necessary to improve their organizations and to be prepared to capitalize on innovative opportunities.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENV-DS-20-S-061

DTIC Accession Number

AD1114538

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