Strategic agility in international business

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Riikka M. Sarala, Virginia Batte Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Business (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: It has become something of a truism to say that companies face challenges in coping with the rapid rate, and increasing complexity, of environmental, social, political and economic change (Fernhaber & Zou, 2022). What sets the present time apart is that such changes are likely to be of an unprecedented scale and scope, with past recipes for coping often no longer being tenable, hence highlighting the importance of strategic agility (e.g., Ahammad, Basu, Munjal, Clegg, & Bazel-Shoham, 2021; Boojihawon, Richeri, Liu, & Chicksand, 2021; Montiel, Cuervo-Cazurra, Park, Antolín-López, & Husted, 2021). Strategically agile firms develop new ways to manage business transformation and renewal, developing learning and knowledge transfer skills founded on an adaptive corporate culture. While the literature on strategic agility has been growing rapidly in recent years, research on the subject in the dynamic context of emerging and transitional markets is rather more limited. Although there is an emerging body of conceptual and applied research, it is based on the experience of a limited range of countries, and many opportunities remain for further theoretical development (see, for example, Shams, Vrontis, Belyaeva, Ferraris, & Czinkota, 2021; Sampath, Bhattacharyya, & Krishnamoorthy, 2021; Adomako et al., 2022). Yet, it can be argued that the importance of strategic agility is even greater in emerging and transitional markets than in developed ones, given the more fluid nature of the former's institutional supports and their lower availability of systemic resources suited to deal with grand challenges.

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of World Business, 58(2)
Language: English
Date: 2022
Keywords
strategic agility, international business

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