Organizational crisis preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic: an investigation of dynamic capabilities and organizational agility roles

Abstract

Purpose While there is a consensus that dynamic capabilities (DC) and organizational agility are two key mechanisms that help firms to survive and cope with the environment’s dynamic change and uncertainties, little is known about their roles in leveraging firms’ preparedness to overcome organizational crises during turbulent contexts such as the COVID-19. The purpose of this study is twofold. This paper first analyzes the direct relationship between DC and organizational agility dimensions (i.e. customer, operational and partnering agilities). Second, this paper investigates the direct link between organizational agility dimensions and a firm’s organizational crisis preparedness. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey of Moroccan firms administrated during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a theoretically derived model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Findings The results show that DC are significantly related to the three types of agility and that only customer and operational agility affect organizational crisis preparedness. Originality/value This research provides new insights into crisis management literature by introducing and empirically examining the impact of DC and organizational agility in addressing global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict organizational agility

“…Janssen [ 52 ] highlights the important lessons learnt for organisational agility, in particular post-pandemic. Incorporating organisational crisis/disaster management is one of the most important elements in bringing self-sustainability in businesses via keeping agility on the top of strategic vision [ 14 , 53 , 54 ]. Organisational agility and flexibility in decision marking [ 55 – 57 ] become more important to empower individuals, and businesses to innovate, satisfy the changing needs of the customers and swiftly adapt to business fluctuation [ 58 – 61 ].…”

Evolution of organizational agility research: a retrospective view

“…When it comes to response and execution, speed is one of the most crucial needs for agility, but innovativeness refers to the quality and substance of response (such as strategic direction, product creation and decision-making) (Cai et al, 2013). As a result, organizations frequently implement a strategic element that is needed for constructing the foundation of organizational agility in structures and procedures of organizations to guarantee the synthesis of internal efficiency and outward effectiveness (Wang et al, 2018) along with the ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances (El Idrissi et al, 2022;Franco et al, 2022). Organizations in this situation attempt to reduce the time needed to develop and deploy additional features by utilizing their workforce and agile approaches ( Agren et al, 2022).…”

Navigating a global pandemic crisis through marketing agility: evidence from Italian B2B firms

“…Despite the importance of this topic, further research is needed to address how embedding marketing agility may lead to more effective responses to a crisis such as the COVID-19 epidemic, especially in the B2B context. As the capacity to recover from a challenging situation is strongly empowered by agility (Birkinshaw, 2020; El Idrissi et al , 2022; Holbeche, 2018; Liu et al , 2020; Rapaccini et al , 2020), the purpose of this study is then to investigate the impact of marketing agility on the ability of B2B firms to address the pandemic crisis, to explore how they reshape their strategies during the different stages of a crisis.…”

“…Only recently, few studies have focused their attention on the first few months of a crisis showing how entrepreneurs responded quickly by relying on existing internal resources and networks (Kuckertz et al , 2020). Others have shown how agility may affect organizational crisis preparedness, thus enhancing firm’s capacity to prevent, address and cope with crisis events (El Idrissi et al , 2022).…”