Evolution of organizational agility research: a retrospective view

Abstract

PurposeIn recent years, organizational agility (OA) has garnered significant attention from the academic community. Despite a substantial rise in the academic literature on OA, the nuanced understanding of OA among academicians, practitioners and policymakers is limited. To address this research gap, the current study attempts to synthesize the academic literature on organizational literature, understand the evolution of OA literature and state the potential research gaps that may open multiple research avenues.Design/methodology/approachThe current study critically evaluates academic literature published in peer-reviewed journals using the bibliometric approach to map the intellectual structure of identified 224 articles on published literature on OA between 2001 and 2022.FindingsThe findings outline OA's evolutionary trend, most prolific authors, journals, affiliations and countries. Further, network analysis is deployed to unearth prominent OA themes. After that, four key themes of OA from each cluster have been identified and evaluated.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on the literature drawn from the SCOPUS database. Although the SCOPUS database is one of the largest databases, the authors believe that the SCOPUS does not contain some publications that might have offered some different insights. Secondly, the bibliometric analysis does not offer the opportunity to provide critical insights into published literature, which is one of the main limitations of bibliometric-based studies. However, despite some of these limitations, the authors believe that the study is a useful guide for scholars, practitioners and policymakers who do not have much information related to OA literature.Originality/valueThis article provides a pioneering review of the OA literature using bibliometrics and network analysis. The results and potential directions for further research may assist researchers in increasing the relevance of OA in the current uncertain and ambiguous environment.