This thesis contains no text, graphics or tables copied and pasted from the Internet, unless specifically acknowledged and the source is detailed in the thesis and References sections. The largest BU in a leading multinational FMCG company (Organisation X) in South Africa has experienced a number of challenges over the past 5 years that have negatively impacted performance.
Introduction
Background
Another source of uncertainty comes from the volatile exchange rate and prices of the raw materials used in the products. Ambiguity stems from the need to achieve business goals and ensure customer satisfaction while complying with local legislation (Bennette and Lemoine, 2014).
Problem statement
Motivation for the Study
Research Objectives
Three factors plaguing our country reinforce the need for this organization to focus on agility to survive the next hundred years.
Research Questions
Expected outcome
Focus of the study
Expected limitations of the study
Structure of the study
Introduction
VUCA Environment
Complexity refers to factors inside and outside the organization that can influence decision-making. To overcome the challenge of uncertainty, an organization must gather information that can be used to assist in decision making.
Corporate agility
- Measuring Organisational Agility
- Innovation and Renovation
- Customer Satisfaction
- Agile Organisational Structure
The organization's structure should reflect changes in the external environment and enable faster response times. The results of the study indicate that customer flexibility contributes to organizational agility and improves organizational performance.
Organisational Culture
Characteristics of an Agile Culture
This type of competency ensures that whatever change takes place, the organization knows where it is going and will find a way to achieve that goal. An organization that operates faster and more efficiently than others is likely to outperform those that do not.
Customer Orientated Culture
Employees who are involved feel valued and are more likely to embrace change as they have a vested interest in the company's success. One of the aspects that was tested is the impact of a customer-oriented culture on NPD.
Culture of Teamwork and Collaboration
It involves the collection and analysis of the results of more than 100 case studies carried out in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. High scores indicate a culture of common vision and goals, all employees moving in the same direction and sharing information and knowledge. The aim of the study was to identify factors that facilitate and mediate workforce agility.
The results of the study proved that there was a statistically significant relationship between teamwork, knowledge sharing, collaboration and organizational agility and firm performance.
Leadership and agility
- Key Characteristics of Agile Leaders in a VUCA environment
- Leadership Agility and Strategy Innovation
- Leadership Agility and Spot Coaching
- Role of leadership in creating a Learning Organisation
- Leadership style and Organisational Agility
- Leading a multigenerational workforce
It has been found that an organization can achieve agility by observing and internalizing changes in the business environment and adjusting the strategy accordingly. The study was conducted in the UK with the aim of investigating the leadership skills needed to adapt to a VUCA environment. A UK study conducted by Wilson and Smith (2016) examined the role of coaching and mentoring in a VUCA environment.
Transactional leadership, servant leadership, and authentic leadership are other forms of leadership that are likely to yield beneficial results in a VUCA environment (Sarkar, 2016).
Employee Empowerment and Agility
Workforce Autonomy and Job Uncertainty
Job security refers to the level of understanding an employee has of the job. A situation where an employee does not understand the requirements, importance and expectations of the job is called job insecurity. An agile workforce must be given enough autonomy and a full understanding of the work they do to be better adaptable and flexible.
Therefore, the key features of workforce agility are embracing workforce autonomy and ensuring that all employees fully understand the importance and contribution to the organization.
Employee Empowerment through Teamwork and Collaboration
Workforce autonomy refers to empowering employees to make decisions and take initiatives to make meaningful contributions to the company. A study was conducted by Sherehiy and Karwowski (2014) to explore the characteristics and characteristics of workforce agility.
Facilitators and Mediators of Workforce Agility
Information Technology and Agility
Gaining a Competitive Advantage through Information Technology
The role of technology in achieving agility is to be leaner, focus on value creation and eliminate waste to be more flexible and responsive to change (Lowru and Wilson, 2016). A study conducted in the United States by Lowry and Wilson (2016) to investigate the role of IT services and IT quality on organizational agility. The results of this study proved that IT services and IT capabilities positively influence organizational agility.
These results indicate that a favorable IT service environment is an important strategic decision that organizations can use to develop and maintain a competitive advantage in markets.
Leveraging Information Technology to facilitate faster Decision Making . 28
To utilize technology effectively, the organization must therefore ensure that the strategy and objectives of the organization are well designed and guide the objectives of the IT solutions. Managing risk requires the organization to use technology to recognize potential threats, assess the vulnerability of that particular asset to the threat, and quantify the risk. The main constructs of human-related barriers to agility were classified as lack of knowledge, cultural issues, resistance to change and lack of cooperation (Figure 2.8).
According to the results of this study, there was a general lack of knowledge about the agile concept and values.
Conceptual Framework
32 2) Skepticism about new ways of working – Employees who are unfamiliar with agile concepts will not fully understand the need for them. It is up to the leadership team to ensure that coaching reinforces the values learned during agility training.
Summary
However, IT without agile leadership and an agile workforce is unlikely to deliver organizational agility. Based on the findings of the literature review, this study will assess the organizational agility of a leading multinational FMCG company by assessing culture, leadership, employee empowerment and technology in the organization.
Research Methodology
- Introduction
- Research Paradigm
- Research Design
- Research Strategy
- Research Setting
- The Target Population
- The Research Instrument
- Survey Instrument design
- Data Collection
- Data Analysis
- Analysing and interpreting quantitative data
- Validity
- Reliability
- Elimination of Bias
- Researcher Bias
- Selection Sampling Bias
- Response Bias
- Ethical Stance and Consideration
- Chapter Summary
A questionnaire was developed using the Likert scale to test the conceptual framework illustrated in Figure 3.1. The study was divided into five sections. Reliability refers to the questionnaire's ability to produce the same results under different circumstances (Saunders et al 2013). Response bias refers to the effect of non-response on the results of the survey (Creswell, 2014).
Participants were assured that participation was voluntary and the results of the study would be kept confidential.
Data Analysis and Presentation
- Introduction
- Participants
- Presentation of Results
- Organisational Agility
- Organisational Culture
- Organisational Leadership
- Employee Empowerment
- Information Technology
- Correlation between the various constructs of Agility
- Chapter Summary
According to the results of the frequency and distribution analysis, 49.2% employees are below the mean of 13.57 for organizational culture. According to the results of the survey, most employees agreed that employee empowerment within the organization was favorable. The results of the study indicate that IT systems do not effectively meet the needs of the organization.
The results of the study were analyzed in terms of demographics, the five constructs of agility, and the relationship between these factors.
Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendations
Introduction
Research objectives
Organisational Agility
- Strengths of Organisational Agility
- Development areas of Organisational Agility
The main competence areas related to organizational agility were competitive intensity, innovation and renewal, product development according to customer taste and cooperation with other departments. This finding was further emphasized by the participant's response to the question about organizational flexibility. According to a study conducted by Mehrabi et al (2015), the organizational structure of an agile organization should be smoother, more transparent and support faster decision-making.
Therefore, in line with the suggestions from Sharmelly (2017), Organization X should develop a system for employees and customers to make suggestions, allow the formation of innovation teams and ensure that business and innovation objectives are aligned in in order to take readiness to the next level.
Organisational Culture
- Strengths of Organisational Culture
- Development areas for Organisational Culture
A culture that supports customer satisfaction over profit is a key characteristic of an agile organization (Denning, 2014). In this study, it was found that most employees believed that Organization X is good at prioritizing customer satisfaction over profit. This finding is consistent with the findings of Alzoubi, Al-outum, and Albatainh (2011), where a culture of customer satisfaction was significantly associated with organizational agility.
It is recommended that Organization X continue to focus its efforts on achieving customer satisfaction and continue to support teamwork and collaboration within the organization.
Leadership Agility
Fostering a culture of experimentation and innovation is a major asset of an organization and must be leveraged to gain a competitive edge in the industry. Rewards and recognition was rated at 2.28 and consequently highlighted as an area that can be improved in order to improve agility in the organization. These results show that the leaders in the organization are very adept at managing the organization in a VUCA environment using the principles of agility.
Therefore, it is recommended that Organization X maintains the current approach to recruiting and training managers in order to support agility in the organization.
Employee Empowerment
- Strengths of Employee Empowerment
- Development areas for Employee Empowerment
All these aspects were examined in the questionnaire and were highly rated in all departments. In Belagali's (2016) research, self-managing teams are crucial for the agility and success of an organization. To achieve self-managing teams, employees must be involved in strategy planning and contribute to planning in the organization.
It is recommended that Organization X implement a reward system that recognizes internal and external collaboration and results in improved performance and efficiency.
Information Technology
- Strengths of Information Technology
- Development areas of Information Technology
Therefore, it is recommended that Organization X continues to exploit IT strengths while working to develop IT weaknesses in the organization. Participants were asked to agree or disagree with the statement that IT supports faster decision-making in the organization. Therefore, it is recommended that Organization X take the necessary steps to improve IT systems to support faster decision-making within the organization.
This study indicates that Organization X has not sufficiently utilized the IT systems to gain a competitive advantage.
Relationship between the Constructs of Organisational Agility
- Main drivers of Agility in Organisation X
The significant relationship between organizational culture and organizational agility is consistent with the findings of Mashki and Teimouri, (2013) where six dimensions of organizational culture were found to have a positive impact on organizational agility. 66 These results are consistent with the results of Nold and Michel (2016) as well as Hall and Roland (2016), where leadership was identified as the fundamental element to achieve organizational agility. An organizational culture that is resistant to change and hinders collaboration in the workforce can be an obstacle to organizational agility (Javdani et al (2016).
The results prove that Organizational Culture is one of the main drivers of organizational agility in Organization X.
Improving Corporate agility in the Organisation
- Collaboration
- Leadership
- Customer service
- Quicker decision making
Organizational culture can be both a barrier to agility and a promoter of agility. This study evaluated organizational culture based on openness to ideas, innovation, collaboration and customer satisfaction. This finding is consistent with the findings of Nold and Michel (2016), Alzoubi et al (2011), Bennett and Lemoine (2014) and Muduli (2015), in which openness to ideas, innovation, collaboration and customer satisfaction are characteristics of an agile organization . Organizational culture and considered essential to support agility in an organization.
To improve the situation, it is suggested that the organization encourage more autonomy and decision-making authority.
Limitations of the Study
Recommendations for Future Studies
Conclusions
It was found that the organization had made significant improvements in terms of corporate agility. However, the organizational structure was perceived as ineffective in contributing to corporate agility in a VUCA environment. To assess the impact of organizational culture on corporate agility, it was found that the overall organizational culture was viewed positively by the majority of employees.
To determine whether IT infrastructure facilitates business flexibility, it was found that IT systems still need to be improved to achieve business flexibility.
Summary
The majority of employees rated leadership very highly, indicating that leadership is effective in improving organizational agility. For those individuals who are concerned with the process of making strategic decisions in my department, it is typical that they are aware of changes in the market and that they can read and analyze them. Coaching/mentoring enables flexibility in the way work is carried out and encourages suggestions for improvements.
IT systems are suitable for our needs and allow us to be more competitive in.
