Achieving IT-Enabled Enterprise Agility in China: An IT Organizational Identity Perspective

Abstract

An ongoing challenge that enterprises currently face is that of fostering agile mindsets and behaviors among employees as necessary to achieve enterprise agility by leveraging IT. Although existing studies focus on the shortening business processes and adopting agile methods of system implementation, little attention is directed toward the “people” factor as a critical factor in enterprise agility. As a means to inspire agile mindsets and behaviors in employees, our study proposes an important concept, organizational identity of IT department which encourages organization members to achieve IT-enabled enterprise agility. We term such an identity as IT organizational identity. As rapid environmental changes continue, a firm's IT department should develop different types of IT organizational identities to maintain agile behaviors and mindsets among its employees. Therefore, our study reveals how IT departments can develop appropriate and positive organizational identity at various stages of organizational development.