Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has made the competition process even more difficult for businesses, changing the competitive dynamics. The already high level of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) has increased even more. To be successful in the new industry environment, businesses need to develop their skills in “speed, flexibility, resilience, responsiveness, cost, and efficiency.” Adaptive, flexible, and resilient dynamic capabilities needed by businesses in the post-covid19 era are defined as organizational agility. In this context, the concept of organizational agility is discussed in detail. In the study, recommendations were made about what the new era brought in terms of businesses in the pandemic and post-pandemic era and how to increase organizational agility capabilities (responsiveness, competency, flexibility, speed, and proactiveness) to achieve sustainable competition and survive in the changing competitive dynamics of businesses.
TopIntroduction
The Covid-19 pandemic is considered to be the biggest crisis experienced on a global scale since the Great Depression (Elali; 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic, which started in China and affected the world in a short time, has already caused approximately 400 million cases and 6 million deaths (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus). The pandemic, which is not limited to the field of health, has deeply affected all the dynamics of social life practice. All kinds of crises experienced in the historical process have deeply affected the survival of organizations (Doern, Williams & Vorley, 2019). However, among these crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a radical paradigm shift in businesses, especially digital transformation (Verma & Gustafsson, 2020; Yıkılmaz, 2021b).
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has left deep traces in the socioeconomic field, has brought radical changes in many areas from doing business to processes and even the interaction with employees, businesses, and customers (Ivanov, 2020; Moon, 2020;Yıkılmaz, 2021a; Yıkılmaz, 2021b). It has further increased the level of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), which businesses are already struggling with. The uncertainty and unpredictability created by the increasing VUCA have brought about significant changes in the production and service delivery processes, the expectations of internal and external customers, and the dynamics of competition within the industry in an intense industrial environment. Businesses that have the proper skill set to adapt to these changes are successful in this process. In addition, the conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic have also paved the way for businesses to gain important lessons in terms of the supply chain, production and service delivery processes, and resource agility (Nandi et al., 2021, 2020; Yıkılmaz, 2021b). In this context, the subject of organizational agility, which is the ability to properly interpret the threats and opportunities developing in their environment and to respond at the right place and time, within this radical change process in which businesses are involved, has been discussed within the scope of the study. Organizational agility is an important dynamic capability that will prevent the extinction of businesses and help them sustain their competitive advantage in today's challenging industrial environments (Tilman, 2019). Organizational agility is an important dynamic capability for businesses to properly interpret environmental changes, meet efficiency and productivity concerns, and offer innovative solutions for diversified customer expectations. Many studies emphasize that capabilities such as “speed, cost, resilience, flexibility” will play a critical role in the success of businesses in the post-pandemic period. In many respects, it is clear that organizational agility capabilities will make significant contributions to businesses adapting to newly developing situations and turning threats into opportunities in the post-pandemic era. Although arrows point to a detailed examination of organizational agility capabilities, most businesses have not yet started a comprehensive change process in this regard. In the studies, it is seen that the companies that started the agile change process by realizing the importance of the situation are around 14% (Aghina, Handscomb, Salo & Thaker, 2021). With this aspect, the subject requires more studies to be done to create the awareness it deserves.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Learning Organization: Organizations that can provide information from internal and external sources at the right place and time, use it appropriately at the organizational scale in response to environmental changes, and produce knowledge again for sustainable competitive advantage.
Digital Transformation: The transformation of the organization's way of doing business, customer experience, and business processes with digital technologies to meet changing expectations
Competitive advantage: The ability of an organization to outperform relatively others in the same industry or market in terms of various performance criteria.
Pandemic: It is the general name that defines epidemic diseases that spread and affect a very wide area in the world.
VUCA: It consists of the initials of the following four words in English (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity Ambiguity). VUCA expresses the context of an organization's current and future situations in its planning and management processes.
Agile transformation: It is the change process that covers the organization carried out in order to gain the agility capabilities that businesses need.
Agile human resources: Human resource that can detect change in the right place and time and update their skill sets and value creation process.
Post-Covid19 Era: The era, which includes the new dynamics and understandings brought by the Covid 19 pandemic, is the “new normal”.
Change Management: Change management is a systematic approach that an organization implements by developing new strategies to adapt its existing technology and processes to changing conditions.