Business Administration (PhD) / Διοίκηση Επιχειρήσεων (PhD)

Intense globalization, political instability, and the rapid advancements in technology have undoubtedly created turbulence in the business environment. As a result, shorter product lifecycles and rapid shifts in customer preferences quickly erode firms’ competitive advantage. To be competitive in this turbulent environment, organizations should become more flexible with ways of making sense and responding to environmental shifts, and this can be achieved through the cultivation of strategic agility. Over the last years there has been a great interest among scholars to examine how organizations develop strategic agility without however, providing a comprehensive framework with solid practices towards this goal. Therefore, this thesis aims to fill this gap by providing a best-practices framework that emerges from different theoretical and functional perspectives. By adopting the dynamic capabilities in high-velocity environments as the main theory, this research conducts a multidisciplinary literature review and identifies the intellectual roots and key emerging theoretical concepts that contribute to strategic agility. Specifically, the intellectual roots of strategic agility are found in paradox, ambidexterity, and strategic change theories with leadership, human resources, knowledge management, information technology are identified as equally important. Following a three-phase, embedded mixed-methods design, this thesis identifies the key strategic themes and associated practices that organizations should focus on, in order to develop strategic agility. This thesis finds that while there is a great focus on digitalization, strategic agility requires a holistic approach and the interaction of open innovation, sustainability, dynamic human resources management, and technology, led by adaptive leadership. Additionally, the conducted research here in finds that corporations develop strategic agility in order to increase their overall value. After an empirical investigation of the corporations’ financial indicators, this thesis principally finds that organizations should focus on their intangible assets and finally, recommends specific ratios based on the international financial reporting standards