Strategic agility through improvisational capabilities: Implications for a paradox-sensitive HRM

Act or Wait-and-See? Adversity, Agility, and Entrepreneur Wellbeing across Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic

How can entrepreneurs protect their wellbeing during a crisis? Does engaging agility (namely, opportunity agility and planning agility) in response to adversity help entrepreneurs safeguard their wellbeing? Activated by adversity, agility may function as a specific resilience mechanism enabling positive adaption to crisis. We studied 3162 entrepreneurs from 20 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that more severe national lockdowns enhanced firm-level adversity for entrepreneurs and diminished their wellbeing. Moreover, entrepreneurs who combined opportunity agility with planning agility experienced higher wellbeing but planning agility alone lowered wellbeing. Entrepreneur agility offers a new agentic perspective to research on entrepreneur wellbeing.

Character-enabled improvisation and the new normal: A paradox perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified and exacerbated organizational paradoxes felt by individuals largely because of the nostalgia individuals feel for the "old" normal while facing the need to let go in order to create a "new" normal. We position improvisation as a synthesis-type approach to working through the paradoxes of the pandemic. Furthermore, we look at individual differences that underpin the ability to improvise, and identify that it is the strength of character and character-based judgment of the individual that enables the enactment of a focal context, the choice to improvise, and the act of effectively improvising to work through paradoxes. Linking character to improvisation, and, vice versa, improvisation to the development of character, reveals the importance of dimensions such as courage, humility, temperance, transcendence, humanity, and collaboration in the practice of improvisation.

Pandemic, power and paradox: Improvising as the New Normal during the COVID-19 crisis

The global COVID-19 pandemic made salient various paradoxical tensions, such as the trade-offs between individual freedom and collective safety, between short term and long-term consequences of adaptation to the new conditions, the power implications of sameness (COVID-19 was non-discriminatory in that all were affected in one way or another) and difference (yet not all were affected equally due to social differences), whereas most businesses became poorer under lockdown, others flourished; while significant numbers of workers were confined to home, some could not return home; some thrived while working from home as others were challenged by the erosion of barriers between their private and working lives. Rapid improvisational responding and learning at all levels of society presented itself as a naturally occurring research opportunity for improvisation scholars. This improvisation saw the arrival of a 'New Normal', eventually defined as 'learning to live with COVID-19'. The five articles in this special issue capture critical aspects of improvisation, paradoxes and power made salient by the COVID-19 pandemic in contexts ranging from higher-education, to leadership, to medical care and virtue ethics. In their own ways, each breaks new ground by contributing novel insights into improvisation scholarship.

Sailing through the storm: Improvising paradox navigation during a pandemic

Despite rich depictions of paradox navigation strategies, and the recognition that they are fraught with uncertainty, research reveals relatively little about how leaders navigate paradoxical tensions when improvising in the face of highly unpredictable and quickly evolving events. We conducted a narrative study of how French President Macron navigated the tension between the paradoxical poles of “saving lives” and “preserving life as usual” during the pandemic. Our article surfaces three central elements that form a model of improvised paradox navigation in stormy conditions: turning points, fog of uncertainty, and chaotic learning. Our model contributes to paradox theorizing by shedding light on paradox navigation in highly turbulent environments and has implications for management learning and improvisation.

The Impact of Dynamic Accounting Information System on Organizational Resilience: The Mediating Role of Business Processes Capabilities

For decades, one of the main concerns of both practitioners and academics has been the business value of dynamic accounting information systems (DAIS). A number of studies have demonstrated the positive effects of information systems capability on overall organizational performance, but our understanding of the business processes capabilities through which such gains are achieved remains limited due to a lack of focus on the turbulent business environment. As a result, the research on information systems continues to debate such a connection. The role of business process capabilities in modulating the link between dynamic AIS capability and organizational resilience was investigated in this study. Our results show that, while firm-wide dynamic AIS capability has characteristics of flexible AIS, complement BI system, and AIS-related human resource competency, the impact on organizational resilience is positively affected by mediation of business process capabilities based on 144 matched questionnaires selected from large companies from various sectors listed on the Bursa Malaysia. Our results also suggest that dynamic AIS capability has an impact on organizational resilience. According to the Resource-Based Theory (RBT) and dynamic capabilities view (DCV) viewpoints, there is a link between dynamic AIS and business process capacity to improve organizational resilience. The findings strongly support the claim that an organization’s dynamic AIS capabilities—both flexible AIS, complementary business intelligence (BI) system, and AIS-related human resource competency—can help an organization improve its resilience. This research’s practical and theoretical ramifications as well as its limitations are examined.

Effects on corporate performance through ISS-enabled strategy-making on dynamic and improvisational capabilities

Purpose

This study develops the idea that resource orchestration (RO) of ISS-enabled strategy-making (ISS-SM) can influence dynamic and improvisational capabilities in innovation resulting in corporate performance (CP) gains under a hostile environment.

Design/methodology/approach

The structural equation modeling is applied to the data collected from 551 Brazilian firms.

Findings

The results suggest that ISS-SM facilitates dynamic and improvisational capabilities in innovation, consequently promoting CP. The research also showed that, under conditions of high environmental hostility, the impact of improvisational capabilities in innovation on CP is significantly amplified. Finally, in the specific case of high hostility, ISS-SM is especially important in enabling organizational capabilities on CP, for digital mastery firms, large firms in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Practical implications

The findings provide insights on how RO of ISS and resource management action enable strategy-making to leverage innovation and corporate performance during an uncertain environment.

Originality/value

This study developed an original contribution to resource orchestration, information systems strategies, and strategy-making literature through developing a novel construct of ISS-enabled strategy-making to enhance proximate and distal outcomes under a hostile environment.

The Mediating Role of Innovation Capability on the Relationship between Strategic Agility and Organizational Performance

The changes in the business environment and the increase in competition have led organizations to focus greatly on improving their organizational performance in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by relying on keeping pace with these changes and developing their innovation capability to meet their customers’ desires. Therefore, this research paper aims to explore the relationship between strategic agility and organizational performance through the mediating role of innovation capability. The research population consisted of senior managers in industrial corporations, and the sample comprised 224 senior managers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used as a statistical method for testing hypotheses. The results showed that there is a significant influence of strategic agility on organizational performance and innovation capability. Furthermore, innovation capability plays a mediating role in improving the relationship between strategic agility and organizational performance. Accordingly, a set of recommendations are provided to corporations’ senior managers for supporting the organizational activities that lead to the creation of new products and services that are appropriate to the general context of the development of customer desires, realizing the importance of the corporation acquiring flexible re-sources that can be reallocated to meet the changes in the business environment, and adopting modern business models based on stimulating collaborative work and adopting creative ideas.

Drivers of workforce agility: a dynamic capability perspective

Purpose

This paper aims to represent an exploration of drivers of workforce agility under the lens of dynamic capabilities to advance the existing workforce literature on agility and strategic human resource management.

Design/methodology/approach

In-depth qualitative interviews with senior information technology professionals, managers, directors and leadership were conducted. Data coding and analysis followed the Gioia methodology to develop a theoretical framework.

Findings

The theoretical paradigm of workforce agility is seeing revisions. In the past it was solely connected to resource-based view theory, current literature superficially speaks of the link with dynamic capability but lacks comprehensive and strategic understanding. The research brings in the evolutionary change by viewing workforce agility directly under the lens of dynamic capability theory and recognizes workforce agility as a high-level strategy. Based on the analysis of the qualitative interviews this study has developed a conceptual heuristic of workforce agility drivers, interlinked with dynamic capabilities micro-foundations – “sensing”, “seizing”, and “continual renewal”. This paper conceptualizes workforce agility as a response to high pressures for the dynamic capability of the company, which requires reconfiguration and redeployment of external and internal human resources and an inherent need to bring some stability to the internal resources of the company.

Originality/value

There is a growing body of literature linking organizational agility with dynamic capabilities, which overlooks workforce agility. This study is theory-based research on workforce agility, which guides practitioners in making human resource processes more agile.

The Relationship between HRM Strategies and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Testing the Mediating Role of Strategic Agility

This study aims to investigate the impact of strategic agility on the relationship between Human Resources Management (HRM) strategies and Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA). A total of 227 large and medium-sized manufacturing companies were surveyed and studied. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), this study found a positive and direct impact of HRM strategies on SCA. The study revealed a mediating effect of strategic agility on the relationship between HRM strategies and SCA. This study provides practical guidance for Yemeni large and medium-sized manufacturing companies to maintain SCA by focusing more on strategic agility in a turbulent business environment.

Evolving uses of artificial intelligence in human resource management in emerging economies in the global South: some preliminary evidence

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in human resource management (HRM) in the Global South.

Design/methodology/approach

Multiple case studies of AI tools used in HRM in these countries in recruiting and selecting as well as developing, retaining and productively utilizing employees have been used.

Findings

With AI deployment in HRM, organizations can enhance efficiency in recruitment and selection and gain access to a larger recruitment pool. With AI deployment in HRM, subjective criteria such as nepotism and favoritism are less likely to come into play in recruitment and selection of employees. AI deployment in HRM also has a potentially positive impact on the development, retainment and productive utilization of employees.

Research limitations/implications

AI is an evolving technology. Most HRM apps have not gained enough machine learning capabilities with real-world experience. Some of them lack a scientific basis. AI in HRM thus currently affects only a tiny proportion of the population in the GS.

Practical implications

The paper explores the roles of AI in expanding recruitment pools. It also advances our understanding of how AI-based HIRM tools can help reduce biases in selecting candidates, which is especially important in the Global South. It also delves into various mechanisms by which AI helps in the development, retainment and productive utilization of employees.

Originality/value

We provide details of various mechanisms by which AI brings input and output efficiencies in recruitment and selection in these countries.