Opening up the black-box: Information systems and organizational agility

Successful organizations need to exhibit characteristics of agility, in order to stay ahead of their competition, and in some cases even survive in fiercely competitive environments. While the goal of any organization is to deploy its resources, using its processes, in an effective and efficient manner to meet market demands and stakeholder expectations; the agile organization must be able to deploy its resources, using its processes, in a proactive and reactive manner, under time-sensitive conditions. This agility requires a focus on continuous improvement and learning in order to increase the speed, lower the cost and effort, and improve the effectiveness of any changes. The objective of this paper is to examine how information systems can both enhance and suppress organizational agility.