1 Introduction

Since the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” was declared in 2001 (Highsmith 2011), the Agility concept and methodologies have migrated from a narrow area of the IT industry to a wide range of organisational applications. Agility has often been associated with startups and small and medium-sized companies but has recently been extended to large corporations. Due to the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) business environment combined with intense competition and threats from new startup radical growth, large firms are forced to change their status quo and their heavy and inflexible business and management models to quickly adapt to the rapidly changing environment. As such, embracing agility and leading with agility have become new norms and are essential for business survival (Rigby et al. 2016).

In recent years, the world economy has gone through unprecedented crises due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tech and trade war between the US and China, the Ukraine-Russia war, and the most recent Gaza Strip conflict triggering the Red Sea marine crisis; this has intensified the need for organisations to develop more agile business models to weather environmental turbulence and economic downturns (McKinsey & Company 2020). Complexity and unpredictability are dominating rules, challenging traditional management methods that rely on well-order planning. As such, in today's business world, being agile is no longer optional—it is essential for a company to stay alive (Harraf et al. 2015).

The recent focus on organisational agility in both research and practice can also be tied to some common practices applied in both small and large companies. One example is the use of cross-functional teams with procedures such as SCRUM to work in harmony with customers and deliver what they expect in a timely and cost-efficient manner (Handscomb et al. 2019). Teams with members from different functions and disciplines work together to put customers first and respond swiftly to their requests, reducing the waiting time visible in hierarchal organisations. However, further research evidence is needed to examine whether and to what extent it is sufficient for such a practice to build organisational agility. This highlights the need for comprehensive literature reviews with scientific research insights to guide industry practitioners in the application of agile practices.

Organisational agility is often defined as the dynamic capability of an organisation to act and react to uncertainties and the ability to explore and exploit opportunities in the business environment (Overby et al. 2006; Roberts and Grover 2012). Since 2019, the number of publications on organisational agility in literature has increased notably. However, as this literature evolves, agility is conceptualised inconsistently. This is particularly problematic given that agility is a multidimensional concept that includes but is not limited to various aspects, such as manufacturing agility, strategic agility, supply chain agility, IT agility, marketing agility, and workforce agility (Walter 2021). Such disagreement among researchers regarding how agility should be defined and constructed has posed significant challenges for researchers and practitioners in this area moving forwards, making it difficult to build the literature upon previous findings, to generalise those findings in different contexts and to apply this concept in reality (Walter 2021). Thus, a comprehensive understanding of agility as an overarching concept, its antecedents, and its effects on organisational outcomes is needed (Walter 2021).

Agility is often considered beneficial to organisational performance. With a dynamic ability to weather rapid changes and turbulence, an agile organisation is believed to be in a better position to produce outcomes. However, some evidence shows that the organisational benefits of agility are dependent on a range of factors, including the types of agility and outcomes as the focus of interest and the conditions for agility to contribute to organisational outcomes (Wieland and Wallenburg 2012). For instance, agility is found to increase firm financial performance (Rafi et al. 2021) or boost innovation (Del Giudice et al. 2021). However, in their study, Chakravarty et al. (2013) found that only entrepreneurial agility—the proactive ability to anticipate and exploit market opportunities and challenges—can help achieve better financial performance, while such effects from reactive types of agility are not significant. Additionally, while researchers have devoted much attention to some aspects of agility, such as supply chain agility or strategic agility, other aspects of agility, such as workforce agility and marketing agility, are still underresearched (Ajgaonkar et al 2022; Gomes et al. 2020). This demonstrates the need for a comprehensive and systematic review of whether, how, and what agility can contribute to organisational outcomes.

Recent literature reviews in this area have elucidated how agility is measured, what contributes to agility and the impact of agility on organisational outcomes. However, these reviews either adopted a narrow focus on one aspect of agility, such as marketing agility, supply chain agility, or IT agility (Kalaignanam et al. 2021; Patel and Sambasivan 2021; Tallon et al. 2019), or failed to provide an in-depth analysis that focused exclusively on the contribution of agility to business outcomes (Walter 2021).

The lack of a consensus on the concept, measurements and association of organisational agility with critical business outcomes indicates the need for a systematic review of the literature to, first, bring together all different types of agility and examine their impact on different organisational outcomes; second, identify the intervening factors that affect this relationship; and third, provide implications for future research in this area. This paper addresses the abovementioned objectives with an overarching research question: What is the current status of the literature on organisational agility and organisational outcomes? Then, this question is broken down into five broad subquestions as follows:

  • How are organisational agility and organisational performance defined and measured?

  • What is the relationship between organisational agility and organisational outcomes?

  • Which theories are used to examine the relationship between organisational agility and organisational outcomes?

  • What are some possible mediators or moderators that affect the relationship between organisational agility and organisational outcomes?

  • What are the implications for future research on this topic?

To comprehensively review the literature on agility and organisational performance, this paper adopts the strategy of a systematic literature review to examine 249 empirical studies in this area from 1998 to February 2024. This paper makes two significant contributions to the literature in this field. First, it seeks to provide a comprehensive summary and a conceptual map of whether and how organisational agility affects organisational performance based on 26 years of empirical evidence on this topic. Second, it aims to identify the gaps in knowledge and propose possible directions for future research and practices in this area. The paper starts with an introduction of the research design, followed by a description of the research findings, and ends with a discussion and recommendations for future research.

2 Research design

This paper adopts the widely used systematic review methodology in literature review studies to collect and analyse data because it is comprehensive, transparent, evidence-based, and unbiased (Khan et al. 2003; Snyder 2019; Tranfield et al. 2003). Figure 1 explains the strategy and steps taken to conduct this literature review.

Fig. 1
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Systematic literature review strategy and procedure

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Following Xiao and Watson (2019), Diaz Tautiva et al. (2024), Tranfield et al. (2003), the paper utilises a systematic strategy and review steps through the three main phases of (i) planning, (ii) data collection, and (iii) data extraction, synthesis, and reporting to ensure the replicability and transparency of the methodology and findings. In the planning phase, we formed the review framework by carefully crafting the research objectives and referring to existing systematic review frameworks. Through this process, we were able to determine the search criteria and the framework for data extraction and classification, as indicated in Fig. 1.

The review framework is based on dimensions of agility, variable measurement, theoretical background, methodology, findings, and intervening factors, followed by a synthesis of a conceptual map (Walter 2021; Bhattacharjee and Sarkar 2022; Patel and Sambasivan 2021). This framework is well aligned with our research questions and objectives and is often used in other literature review papers (Walter 2021; Bhattacharjee and Sarkar 2022; Patel and Sambasivan 2021). By using this framework, we can then move to the next step, which involves identifying the knowledge gaps in the literature and proposing some directions for future research in the field.

Using the predetermined search criteria identified in the planning phase, we first conducted a general search on Web of Science, one of the largest coverage databases, and obtained a sample of 8107 papers. We used the filter function to include 1165 peer-reviewed articles that had full texts available, were written in English, and were published in the fields of business, economics, and management. Then, we screened the titles and abstracts and adopted further exclusion criteria, as shown in Fig. 1. The final sample consists of 249 English peer-reviewed empirical articles on agility and organisational outcomes, with agility being one of the main variables of interest in studies that test the firm-level impact of agility in the business, economics, and management fields.

Three groups of coders performed the data extraction and grouping based on the predetermined criteria mentioned above. Discussion and moderation were conducted before each group carried out their tasks. The data were extracted into an Excel file and categorised into the following columns: article title, authors, year, journal, theories, sample size, sample type (cross-sectional or panel), independent variables, moderators and contextual variables, mediators, dependent variables, control variables, analytical approach, and findings.

3 Research findings

3.1 Descriptive analysis

Table 1 summarises some key features of our data. In this dataset, agility is either the primary independent variable or a mediator that links inputs to outcomes. We also included other recent literature reviews and conceptual papers in this field to support our data analysis. Thus, our final data consist of 249 empirical studies, 39 literature reviews and conceptual studies, and seven other relevant studies in this area.

Table 1 Summary of data
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Figure 2 presents the distribution of 249 empirical studies on agility and outcomes from 1998 to February 2024, with a sharp increase in the number of publications in recent years since 2017. This indicates researchers’ growing interest in this area and reflects a timely research response to recent environmental and societal changes (Joyce 2021).

Fig. 2
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Publications by year from 1998 to February 2024

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Table 2 provides an overview of different subtopics in agility and organisational outcomes research and shows that supply chain agility, organisational agility, and strategic agility are the most researched topics in this area. Other aspects of agility run from manufacturing/operational to marketing, business process, customer, workforce, IT and digital, market capitalising, project management, leadership, intellectual, R&D, social media, and value creation.

Table 2 Types of agility
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3.2 Measuring agility

Table 3 elucidates how different types of agility are measured in the literature. There is no consensus on how agility should be defined and measured. As the most researched type of agility, supply chain agility has been captured based on one or multiple dimensions, such as customers, products, delivery, responsiveness to the environment, competitors, and partners (Mandal 2018; Charles et al. 2010), collaborative planning (Braunscheidel and Suresh 2009; Chiang et al. 2012), procurement/sourcing and distribution/logistics (Swafford et al. 2006). Other approaches to measuring agility focus more on organisational capabilities such as alertness, accessibility, decisiveness, swiftness, and flexibility (Gligor and Holcomb 2012) or internal processes such as network collaboration, information integration, process integration, customer demand responsiveness (Mirghafoori et al. 2017) or information sharing (Whitten et al. 2012).

Table 3 Measurement approaches for different types of agility
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Organisational agility has also been measured in different ways. While some pioneering studies consider organisational agility to be flexible (Sharifi and Zhang 1999), others reveal that organisational agility should be a broader concept (Vokurka and Fliedner 1998). Such a concept can be similar to organisational ambidexterity (Overby et al. 2006; Roberts and Grover 2012), can feature dynamic capability (Teece et al. 1997), or can represent an overall organisational framework (Doz and Kosonen 2008; Dyer and Shafer 1998). The three most popular dimensions of organisational agility—customers, operation and partnership—are drawn from the work of Tallon and Pinsonneault (2011). Other approaches capture the sensing capability and response capability of organisations (Overby et al. 2006) or have different focuses, including but not limited to internal capabilities (Sharifi and Zhang 1999), people (Pramono et al. 2021), business processes (Vaculík et al. 2018), or products and costs (Zheng et al. 2023).

Strategic agility is commonly measured based on strategic sensitivity, resource fluidity, leadership unity, or a combination of technology capability, collaborative innovation, organisational learning, and internal alignment (Clauss et al. 2021; Doz and Kosonen 2008). Another approach involves adopting the three key dimensions of agility from Tallon and Pinsonneault (2011) from a strategic perspective. Some other measurement approaches are presented in Table 3.

Manufacturing agility has been examined as a system leveraged by a range of capabilities, including responsiveness, competency, flexibility and speed (Cao and Dowlatshahi 2005; Sharifi and Zhang 1999), or as an organisational competency (Jacobs et al. 2011). Some of the less popular types of agility, such as customer agility, are measured as customers’ sensing capabilities and customers’ response capabilities (Clauss et al. 2021; Doz and Kosonen 2008). Intellectual agility is captured as the level of business-related skills, the frequency of skills and knowledge updates, the perception of work tasks as a challenge or an opportunity to practice skills, and the willingness to apply alternative solutions when solving problems (Chen and Chiang 2011; Felipe et al. 2016; Sambamurthy et al. 2003).

Overall, the literature on agility offers a wide range of approaches to measuring organisational agility and other dimensions of agility. While traditional approaches such as those of Sharifi and Zhang (1999), Overby et al. (2006), or Tallon and Pinsonneault (2011) are widely used, the literature continues to evolve with newer and more innovative approaches to measure agility and its dimensions. On the one hand, it motivates researchers in this field to develop better and more comprehensive ways to capture agility. On the other hand, the lack of consistency in measuring agility makes it difficult for researchers to synthesise how agility and its dimensions are constructed and what organisations should focus on to be more agile. Thus, there is a lack of informed guidance for practitioners to build agility in their organisations.

3.3 Measuring organisational outcomes

Table 4 provides an overview of the various aspects of organisational outcomes and the ways in which they are measured. The literature indicates a wide range of organisational outcomes examined in the context of agility. Some popular approaches to measuring organisational outcomes include the use of a self-reported overall organisational performance indicator, the construction of a composite variable with multiple dimensions, or the use of multiple separate indicators to capture different aspects of performance, including but not limited to financial performance (accounting and market indicators), nonfinancial performance, environmental performance, operational performance and beyond (Kurniawan et al. 2021a, b). Other aspects of organisational outcomes examined in the agility and organisational outcomes literature include supply chain performance, innovation, competitiveness, customer service performance, digital and technology performance, manufacturing and operation, sustainability, international performance, employees, marketing, and organisational capabilities.

Table 4 Measuring organisational outcomes
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The literature offers a diverse set of organisational outcomes in conjunction with agility. This allows researchers and practitioners to look at how agility affects organisations in different angles and layers from financial performance to organisational survival, operation, sustainability, capabilities, employee performance and well-being. However, methodologically, the literature reveals some flaws in measuring and constructing organisational performance. While the predominant use of composite variables helps capture an overall indicator of organisational performance, which eases the analysis process (Panda 2021), this approach lacks consideration of the separate impact of each aspect of performance, making it challenging to interpret the results and apply the findings to practice.

The literature also reveals that organisational outcomes are often measured as construct variables through reflective/self-report survey questions (Altay et al. 2018; Goncalves et al. 2020), which raises some concerns about data reliability and validity. Some other studies use quantitative variables based on secondary data (Gligor and Bozkurt 2021; Pereira et al. 2021) or examine both qualitative and quantitative performance variables. However, further tests should be adopted to ensure the consistency and congruence of these methods (Feizabadi et al. 2019; Gligor et al. 2020a, b).

3.4 The use of theories in agility and organisational outcome research

Table 5 provides a summary of relevant theories in this area of research. Despite the wide range of theories available in this domain, the use of theories in empirical research in this sample is still inadequate. Out of 249 empirical studies, 141 (56.6%) adopt single or multiple theoretical approaches to build their argument of the contribution of agility to organisational outcomes. However, 109 (43.8%) studies in the dataset did not explicitly utilise relevant theories to support their hypothesis development. Given this lack of solid theoretical frameworks, these studies cannot develop a logical and established view of how or why agility improves organisational outcomes, which might threaten the rigour of their research design and the strength of their argument.

Table 5 Theoretical background in agility and organisational outcomes research
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Furthermore, Table 5 highlights a wide range of theories incorporated in this research domain, with the dynamic capabilities perspective and the resource-based view being the most widely used theoretical background. These two theoretical frameworks are often combined to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between agility and outcomes (Jabarzadeh et al. 2022; Mikalef and Pateli 2017). The dynamic capabilities perspective emphasises the importance of perceiving and seizing valuable growth opportunities and the ability to transform the organisation to fit with these opportunities (Teece et al. 1997). However, the dynamic capabilities perspective is criticised for its limited explanation of how and to what extent organisations should achieve the abovementioned purposes (Ambler and Wilson 2006). The resource-based view focuses on analysing the internal resources of the enterprise as well as linking internal resources with the external environment to foster innovation and create competitive advantage (Sambamurthy et al. 2003). However, similar to dynamic capabilities theory, the resource-based view still has limited practicality (El Shafeey and Trott 2014). Therefore, future studies on firm performance and agility should be based on a multitheoretical approach to obtain a more comprehensive view of this relationship (Doz and Kosonen 2008; Dyer and Shafer 1998).

3.5 The relationship between agility and organisational performance

Figure 3 summarises the findings of the relationship between agility and performance. Evidence from the current literature elucidates the positive impact of agility on organisational performance, with 219 (87.9%) studies confirming the positive impact of different forms of agility on organisational outcomes. Twenty-seven studies reported mixed effects between agility and organisational outcomes, 2 studies found no significant relationship between agility and organisational outcomes, and 1 study showed a negative impact of organisational agility on the continuity of innovation projects in organisations.

Fig. 3
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The impact of agility on organisational performance

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Overall, relatively strong and consistent results support the contribution of organisational agility to organisational outcomes, including overall organisational performance (Stei et al. 2024), financial and nonfinancial performance (i.e., Rafi et al. 2021), innovation (i.e., Goncalves et al. 2020), sustainability ( i.e., Lopez-Gamero et al. 2023), competitiveness (i.e., Mikalef and Pateli 2017), digital and technology transformation ( i.e., Ly 2023), international performance ( i.e., Nemkova 2017), and employee job performance ( i.e., Chung et al. 2014).

However, some studies still report mixed effects of organisational agility on organisational outcomes. Several factors contribute to this mixed effect. First, it depends on the type of inputs and outcomes in the models where organisational agility serves as a mediator or a main independent variable. For example, even though organisational agility is found to enhance radical innovation, it does not help incremental innovation, even under technological turbulence, according to a study conducted by Puriwat and Hoonsopon (2021). Organisational agility has been shown to translate firm knowledge management into competitive advantage. However, by taking a closer look at different forms of knowledge management, Corte-Real et al. (2017) found that organisational agility serves as a mediator only for the relationship between exogenous knowledge management and firm competitiveness but not for that between endogenous knowledge management or knowledge sharing partners. Another study confirmed that knowledge management improves organisational agility, which in turn strengthens firm competitive advantage, but a similar positive mediating effect is not found for knowledgement and firm innovation (Salimi and Nazarian 2022).

Second, the impact of organisational agility on organisational outcomes is dependent on its dimensions. For instance, between the two types of organisational agility, entrepreneurial agility improves firm financial performance, while adaptive agility does not (Chakravarty et al. 2013). Additionally, El Idrissi et al. (2023) found that among the three dimensions of organisational agility—customer agility, operational agility, and partnering agility—only the first two help organisations to be more prepared for crises.

Third, the mixed effect of organisational agility on organisational outcomes is found under different contextual factors. For instance, the dynamics of the business environment facilitate the positive effect of organisational agility on firm financial performance but not on environmental performance or social performance (Khan 2023). Under a low to moderate level of industry competition, organisational agility positively mediates the impact of operational cooperation on the mass customisation of products and services. However, when competition is too intense, this mediating effect becomes negative (Sheng et al. 2021). Vaculík et al. (2018) found that under disruptive organisational changes, firms need to trade off short-term benefits for long-term performance. In such a situation, being more agile causes firms to abandon their current innovation projects and leads to greater possibilities of innovation project termination.

Supply chain agility has been found to improve organisational financial performance (DeGroote and Marx 2013, Wamba and Akter 2019; Zhu and Gao 2021), competitive advantage (Alfalla-Luque et al. 2018; Chen 2019), commercial performance (Sturm et al. 2021), customer service (Avelar 2018), customer satisfaction (Gligor et al. 2020a, b), supply chain performance (Baah et al. 2021; Wang and Ali 2021), and supply chain resilience (Naimi et al. 2020). However, in some specific situations, such as uncertain environmental conditions and supply chain disruptions, only supply chain flexibility—one of the three dimensions of supply chain agility—increases organisational performance, while the impacts of the other two dimensions (velocity and visibility) are not statistically significant (Juan et al. 2021). Another study showed that supply chain agility has no significant impact on performance (Wieland and Wallenburg 2012).

Strategic agility has been found to directly improve overall performance (Chan and Muthuveloo 2021; Kurniawan et al. 2020), project performance (Haider and Kayani 2021), technological performance (Pereira et al. 2021), competitive advantage (Hemmati et al. 2016), and innovation (Clauss et al. 2021). However, Reed (2021) shows that under environmental turbulence, firms that are more strategically agile experience lower financial performance.

Manufacturing agility and operational agility have been proven to increase competitiveness (Vázquez‐Bustelo et al. 2007), manufacturing performance (Awan et al. 2021), and market share (Ettlie 1998). However, Jacobs et al. (2011) found that the relationship between manufacturing and firm financial performance is not significant.

Strong evidence supports the contribution of other forms of agility to organisational outcomes (Abrishamkar et al. 2021; Asseraf et al. 2019b; Gupta et al. 2019; Ju et al. 2020; Roberts and Grover 2012). However, the positive contributions of these forms vary under certain conditions. Onngam and Charoensukmongkol (2023) highlighted that firms benefit more from social media agility when the organisational size is smaller and the dynamism of the business environment is lower. Sharif et al. (2022) found that market capitalising agility only mediates the relationship between knowledge coupling and firm innovation during business downsizing. Khan (2020) and Zhou et al. (2019) noted that marketing agility improves firm financial performance. However, when the market is turbulent, this positive effect becomes nonsignificant; when the complexity of marketing is heightened, higher marketing agility reduces marketing adaptation ability. Ngo and Vu (2021, 2020) examined two dimensions of customer agility and found that while sensing capability helps organisations achieve superior financial performance, response capability does not.

Overall, the literature on the organisational impact of agility provides strong evidence to support such a positive and significant effect. However, in some cases, how and whether agility leads to higher outcomes is notably dependent on (i) certain environmental factors, (ii) different dimensions of agility and (iii) the types of organisational outcomes.

3.6 Intervening factors in organisational agility and outcomes relationship

Table 6 presents the use of intervening factors in agility and performance research. Agility is often treated as an important mediator linking organisational inputs to outcomes. This is reflected in 61.8% of the research in the dataset incorporating agility as a mediator in their models. For instance, organisational agility is considered a positive explanatory factor for the impact of technological capability and IT (Govuzela and Mafini 2019), corporate network management (Kurniawan et al. 2021a, b), knowledge and intellectual resources management (Cegarra-Navarro et al. 2016), leadership capability (Oliveira et al. 2012b, a), risk management culture (Liu et al. 2018), organisational learning culture (Pantouvakis and Bouranta 2017), strategic alignment (Hazen et al. 2017), promotion information analysis capability (Shuradze et al. 2018), organisational ambidexterity (Del Giudice et al. 2021), and dispute management (Yaseen et al. 2021) on organisational performance. This indicates the importance of conducting agility-performance research in an organisation's internal and external context to understand how agility plays out with other factors to predict organisational outcomes.

Table 6 The use of intervening factors in agility and organisational outcomes research
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Table 7 presents the types of intervening factors examined in the literature on agility and organisational outcomes. The literature highlights that the organisational impact of agility is subjected to a wide range of moderating factors. As aforementioned, organisational agility tends to exert its strengths under adverse environmental conditions, such as volatile and complex environments (Clauss et al. 2021), high competitive pressure (Ahammad et al. 2021), and high demand for major technological change in the industry (Ashrafi et al. 2019). Additionally, the impact of agility on organisational outcomes depends on external factors such as customer loyalty (Gligor et al. 2020b, a) and industry type (Lee et al. 2016) or internal factors such as firm age (Reed 2021), the adaptability of products and marketing (Asseraf et al. 2019a), the nature of work (Chung et al. 2014), information technology systems agility (Tallon and Pinsonneault 2011), and startup innovation sensitivity (Tsou and Cheng 2018).

Table 7 The types of intervening factors examined in agility and organisational outcomes research
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Third, the literature also elucidates the mediators through which agility contributes to organisational outcomes. These include but are not limited to the following: new technology acceptance (Chung et al. 2014), business model innovation (Mihardjo and Rukmana 2019), entrepreneurship and innovative behaviour development (Pramono et al. 2021), networking structure (Yang and Liu 2012) and market and social media analytics capability (Yang and Liu 2012). Similarly, supply chain agility is said to improve organisational performance through competitiveness (Sheel and Nath 2019), risk management (Okoumba et al. 2020), collaboration and re-engineering capabilities (Abeysekara et al. 2019), effectiveness, cost reduction (Gligor et al. 2015), and customer value and customer service (Um 2017).

The above analysis and the aspects that are mentioned in Sect. 3.5 stress the importance of studying the relationship between agility and firm performance in the context of both contextual factors and mediators. This highlights the need for future research to continue searching for factors that affect the contribution of agility to firm performance. Such comprehensive models will enhance our understanding of the relationship between agility and organisational performance and, as such, will significantly contribute to further developing this research area.

3.7 Research methodologies in the agility and firm performance literature

Table 8 presents a summary of popular research methodologies used in agility–organisational outcome research, with several notable findings as follows:

Table 8 Summary of research design
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First, most studies in the sample use quantitative methods to examine the effect of agility on firm performance. Qualitative and mixed methods, although considered insightful and comprehensive (Truscott et al. 2010), have not been adequately utilised in this literature. Overall, the quantitative approach is appropriate for testing the causal effect between Agility (X) and OP (Y) in one or multiple regression models. However, the over-emphasis on causality testing without a proper investigation of the underlying reasons and insights using qualitative techniques might lead to imprecise findings and conclusions, which may create confusion and misunderstanding when applied to practice (Heyvaert et al. 2013).

Second, the research on agility and organisational performance mainly uses primary data from surveys and questionnaires to individuals and organisations at a specific timeframe. This approach is appropriate because, given the complexity of measuring agility, it is challenging and impractical for researchers to use proxy and secondary data for measurement. However, using a one-time survey has disadvantages in terms of reliability and generalisability, as the information collected only reflects the impact of agility on organisational performance at a specific time point. This reduces the generalisability of research findings to other contexts at different time points (Bartram 2019; Wooldridge 2010).

Third, the most popular analytical tool used in this literature is structural equation modelling (SEM)/PLS-SEM (Mikalef and Pateli 2017; Ramos et al. 2021), which includes bootstrapping techniques (Felipe et al. 2020; Gligor et al. 2019), followed by multiregression approaches for cross-sectional or panel data (Chen et al. 2014; Pereira et al. 2021). It is appropriate to use SEM for complex models with multilevel causal relationships. This method facilitates the examination of models with different pathways, including models with mediators and moderators, and provides suitable treatments for latent variables (Bollen 2014; Kline 2015).

Notably, there are two widely used methods in SEM: covariance-based SEM (CB-SEM) and partial least squares-based SEM (PLS-SEM). CB-SEM is often used in confirmatory research and factor-based models, while PLS-SEM is used in exploratory research and composite-based models (Dash and Paul 2021; Rigdon et al. 2017). However, the use of PLS-SEM is still debatable in the literature. PLS-SEM is criticised for its limited ability to examine complex and multidirectional causal relationships in SEM and its unproven assumptions (Antonakis et al. 2010). This leads to inconsistency in analytical findings and the ability to appraise model fit, especially for models based on small sample sizes (McIntosh et al. 2014; Rönkkö et al. 2016). Recent research in this area has emphasised that researchers must prioritise understanding their research question, the nature of the variables used, and the purpose of their research to consider the appropriate analytical method (Sarstedt et al. 2016).

4 Discussion and implications for future research

Using a dataset of 249 empirical studies from 1998 to 2024, this literature review paper has highlighted that agility is an essential predictor of organisational outcomes. Details about agility, firm performance, and the intervening factors of this causal relationship are summarised in Fig. 4. The findings of this paper support our understanding of the relationship between agility and organisational performance and provide valuable implications for future research in this field, as indicated below.

Fig. 4
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A summary concept map of the agility and organisational outcomes relationship

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4.1 Measuring agility

The literature shows that organisational agility is a matter of becoming rather than being (Alzoubi, et al. 2011; Harraf et al 2015). As analysed earlier, the literature on agility and firm performance has not provided a solid answer as to how and to what extent agility and its dimensions should be measured. For instance, Table 2 indicates that organisational agility can be measured with multiple instruments, including a firm’s internal capability, external partnership management, its proactiveness to sensing new opportunities, and its responsiveness to changes in the environment. This provides opportunities for future research to explore more extensive approaches to measuring agility based on the literature and explore how organisational agility and its dimensions could be improved (i.e., Ajgaonkar et al. 2022).

4.2 Theoretical background

Our analysis indicates that there is a wide range of theories available in the literature that provide explanations and justifications for the contribution of agility to organisational performance, with dynamic capability theory and resource-based theory being the two most widely used theories. The literature also highlights the growing use of multitheoretical approaches for a more extensive understanding of this relationship. Future research could explore new theories and simultaneously continue to incorporate multiple theories to examine the relationship between agility and firm performance.

4.3 Agility dimensions and their impacts on organisational performance

Our analysis indicates that organisational agility, supply chain agility, strategic agility, and manufacturing/operational agility are the most popular topics in the agility-firm performance literature, while the organisational impact of other types of agility, for instance, workforce agility, intellectual agility, leadership agility, and project management agility, are not thoroughly examined. This provides opportunities for future research to investigate these dimensions and their impact on organisational outcomes.

Another promising pathway moving forwards is leadership agility. While top managers and corporate boards are considered crucial for creating and promoting organisational agility, research on this topic is still scarce in terms of both quantity and quality (Lehn 2018). The existing corporate governance literature has emphasised the unparalleled contribution of boards of directors to organisational survival with their ability to link firms to external resources during economic uncertainties, crises, or bankruptcy (Haleblian and Finkelstein 1993; Hillman et al. 2009). To do so, boards needs to build their dynamic capabilities to create, strengthen, and adjust their internal resources to adapt to the external environment (Barreto 2010; Helfat et al. 2009). However, except for the work of Desai (2016) that examines the impact of board size and ownership structure on organisational flexibility and the work of Hoppmann et al. (2019) on the influence of the board on strategic flexibility, this area of research is still in its infancy. This gap in knowledge encourages future research to examine (i) the processes that allow boards to fulfil their role of facilitating changes and building agility capability in their organisation, (ii) the attributes and characteristics of boards that allow them to be more agile, and (iii) whether such agility can contribute to organisational agility, which translates to organisational outcomes.

Our literature review also indicates that agility can contribute to a wide range of organisational outcomes. However, there is still a lack of evidence on how agility affects outcomes in an orderly way running from the individual level to the group level to organisational level outcomes and how and whether the impact of agility on organisational outcomes might be different in the short, medium, and long term. Thus, it is strongly recommended that future research explore these possibilities to provide a more comprehensive and structured view of agility and outcome relationships.

4.4 Interactions and intervening factors

Our review indicates that many aspects of organisational performance benefit from agility. However, these benefits are likely to be dependent on a wide range of factors. This encourages future research to continue searching for intervening factors that have meaningful impacts on the agility–performance relationship. For instance, how and whether agility impacts organisational outcomes might depend on various factors: the type of organisation – small and medium-sized enterprises, public sector organisations, multinational enterprises, nonprofit organisations or domestic vs. international organisations; different stages of the organisational life cycle; and different types of organisational structure and culture (Harraf et al 2015).

Additionally, different types of agility may interact, and such interactions might affect organisational outcomes in different ways. This warrants further investigation to examine the effects of different types of agility on firm performance both separately and interactively (Gunasekaran et al 2019), for instance, the interactive effects of workforce agility and manufacturing agility on organisational performance.

4.5 Methodology

Our review shows that quantitative research is a primary approach in agility-firm performance research. However, the overreliance on causality might prevent researchers from understanding the underlying reasons why agility can translate to organisational outcomes and the dynamics behind this causal relationship. As such, future research should use a mixed method with both qualitative and quantitative approaches to first understand the organisational impact of agility at the surface level and, second, reveal the processes, dynamics, blockages, enablers and other organisational factors that explain the relationship between agility and organisational outcomes.

Additionally, our review indicates that there is still a lack of comparative research in this area. This provides some pathways for future research to investigate the effect of agility on firm performance in comparative settings. For instance, is the impact of agility on organisational outcomes different across different national cultures and institutional contexts?

Finally, our review highlighted the need for panel and time series data to examine the short-term, medium-term, and long-term effects of agility on organisational performance. We strongly recommend that future research develop more extensive datasets covering multiple periods to ensure that robust and rigorous studies are added to this literature.

4.6 Implications

The resulting concept model of this paper with antecedents, mediators, moderators, organisational outcomes and types of agility has multiple implications for industry practitioners.

First, organisational agility is constructed from several subcomponents corresponding to multiple business functions, such as the supply chain, strategy, manufacturing, marketing, workforce, IT and leadership. For an entire organisation to be agile, each and every function should be agile.

Organisations can utilise different avenues and practices to build capabilities that contribute to agility.

Second, agility promotes corporate outcomes through its impact on mediating actions. To realise the potential of agility, organisations should account for those mediating steps and outcomes in their implementation.

Finally, a strong finding of this literature review is the way in which the relationship between agility and outcomes is contextualised. As such, organisations should pay attention to both internal and external environments as contingent factors on agility and outcomes. For instance, agility seems to have the greatest impact in complex and volatile environments, so organisations should carefully consider the implementation of agility if they operate in relatively stable industries. Additionally, while startups in high-tech industries are initially agile, established businesses in stable industries are generally not agile. As such, for such businesses to achieve agility, they should consider factors such as firm size, IT infrastructure and their customer base.

5 Research contribution, limitations and conclusion

By answering the research question “What is the current status of the literature on organisational agility and organisational outcomes?” in the above analysis, this study has provided a comprehensive picture of the current literature on the relationship between several aspects of agility and firm performance, with the former either as independent or as mediator variables. The review covers theories, measurements, relationship structure, methodology, and concepts of agility. Following Walter's (2021) systematic review of agility, our study has extended the scope of investigation and focuses specifically on the relationship between the two most important concepts of agility and performance that play a minor role in Walter’s OA conceptual map. Additionally, the paper has mapped out the organisational agility–performance relationship with antecedents, mediators and moderators, each with a specific list of dimensions for measurement, as sketched out in the subresearch questions. This conceptual map can guide future studies in establishing well-rooted research models.

With a limited number of empirical studies (249), a sharp increase since 2017, a few with archival data (while a majority with data from questionnaires and interviews), and a significant proportion of research without theories as background, agility performance appears to be an emerging research field in its immature phase. This point is strengthened by the fact that the reviewed articles are not in top theoretical management journals such as the Journal of Management and the Academy of Management Journal. Furthermore, theories of this relationship have not been explicitly developed to support quantitative studies for hypothesis testing. By highlighting this gap, this study opens a new road for researchers to establish theories for the agility–performance relation beyond what is currently borrowed from the strategic management field.

Our paper has several limitations. Our attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of agility and performance prevents us from examining this relationship in a specific country or industry context. In addition, although our dataset covers a long time frame from 1998 to February 2024, some of the most recent research may not be included in our review. Nevertheless, we believe that our findings underline both the importance of organisational agility and the worth viewing it in conjunction with other organisational aspects in predicting organisational performance. Furthermore, we hope that this study will inspire future investigations to move further in this literature.

In conclusion, organisational agility and its association with organisational performance have emerged as attractive research topics since 2017. Even though quantitative empirical studies account for most publications, a significant number of them lack a background theory and a consensus on measuring agility and its subcategories. This is detrimental to the value of the findings and intensifies the need for future studies to develop this immature field.