Future research challenges in business agility -time, control and information systems

Today organizations face increasingly dynamic and competitive environments. Business agility aims to address these challenges. In this contribution, we aim to increase understanding about business agility by introducing a novel conceptualization. In addition, we aim to identify key research challenges that need to be addressed by future research. In order to achieve these goats, we first introduce different levels of analysis that explain how business agility integrates into existing organizational structures. Subsequently we define business agility to 1) be goal-oriented and 2) to represent a triadic problem consisting of the three dimensions time, control and information systems. Then we introduce an integrative concept of business agility that ties together the three dimensions and introduces parameters that enable an assessment of different degrees of business agility. Based on that, we identify two main research directions, organic information systems and decision support systems, which are of special relevance and importance in the quest for increasing business agility of organizations.