Workforce Agility:

A Review of Literature
Ashutosh Muduli*

Agility research mainly considers the agile workforce from an operations

perspective. To date, a majority of research on workforce agility has focused on
the speed and flexibility from an operations perspective, while studies on the
attributes of agile workforce are lacking. Very few studies have been done on
management actions that can promote workforce agility. The present paper
addresses this research gap by exploring the attributes of an agile workforce
and identifying the management practices capable of promoting workforce agility.
An extensive survey of the available literature has been made to explore the
attributes and facilitators of workforce agility, and therefore, the study is
conceptual in nature. The findings reveal that an agile workforce is adaptive,
flexible, developmental, innovative, collaborative, competent, fast and informative
in nature. The study also explores the management actions on training,
compensation, empowerment, teamwork, and Information Systems (IS) which
promote workforce agility.

Introduction
The problem of dealing with unpredictable, dynamic and constantly changing
environments has been a prevailing topic both in the industry and academia for a
few decades (Sherehiy et al., 2007). Organizations are changing their strategy
and structure quickly to keep pace with the demands of uncertainty and change
(Hannan and Freeman, 1984; and Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001). This requires
organizations to adopt agile thinking. As Jackson and Johansson (2003) observed,
agility is not a goal in itself but the necessary means to maintain the competitiveness
in the market characterized by uncertainty and change.

An agile competitive environment is where the people skills, knowledge and

experience are the main differentiators between the companies (Goldman et al.,
1995). According to Hopp and Van (2004), an agile workforce can support strategic
objectives of cost, time, quality and variety. An agile workforce is seen to increase
productivity, profits and market shares, to grow a business in a competitive market
of continuous and unanticipated change and to enhance organizations’ prospects
for survival in an increasingly volatile and global business environment.

* Associate Professor, School of Petroleum Management, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University,

Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. E-mail: ashuhrm@gmail.com

Workforce Agility:
© 2013 IUP. A Review
All Rights of Literature
Reserved. 55
 In the search for competitive advantage, workforce agility—a well-trained and
flexible workforce that can adapt quickly and easily to new opportunities and market
circumstances—can make the difference.

Despite the increasing recognition that workforce agility is critical to achieve

competitiveness, the concept of workforce agility has not yet been systematically
studied (Gunasekaran, 1999). Whenever studied, agility research has mainly sought
to understand workforce agility by confining to speed and flexibility only from an
operations perspective (Goldman and Nagel, 1993). When it comes to management
actions that can promote workforce agility, literature is largely limited to untested
prescriptions (Sumukadas and Sawhney, 2004). The present study aims at catering
to these research gaps.

The study primarily aims at understanding agility from the workforce perspective.
Extensive literature survey has been conducted to explore the concept of agility
and the attributes of agile workforce. Further, attempts were also made to explore
the related management practices capable of promoting workforce agility in different
organizations.

Agility
Agility is an enterprise-wide strategy for responding to a competitive and changing
business environment. Developed in the 1950s in the field of air combat, agility
was defined as “an aircraft’s ability to change maneuver state, or, put another
way, as the time derivative of maneuverability” (Richards, 1996). The agility concept
was popularized in manufacturing in the early 1990s and was soon extended to
the broader business context, where it has been defined as an organization-wide
capability to respond rapidly to market changes and to cope flexibly with unexpected
change in order to survive unprecedented threats from the business environment
(Huang, 1999).

Organizational agility has been defined as the “... successful exploitation of

competitive bases (speed, flexibility, innovation proactiveness, quality and
profitability) through the integration of reconfigurable resources and best practices
in a knowledge-rich environment to provide customer-driven products and services
in a fast changing market environment” (Yusuf et al., 1999, p. 37). It is the capability
of operating profitably in a competitive environment of continual and unpredictable
changing customer opportunities (Goldman et al., 1995). Agility uniquely not only
recognizes change, but identifies its impact on competitiveness and sets out a
strategy for becoming proficient at change. It can mean adopting the right structures
and processes, embracing the right mindset, and deploying the right sort of
ideological commitment to move forward despite the many risks.

Sheriye et al. (2007) defined agility by distinguishing ‘adaptability’, ‘flexibility’,

and ‘agility’. The authors suggested that ‘adaptability’, ‘flexibility’, and ‘agility’
represent the evolution of the idea of the organization or enterprise able to adjust

56 The IUP Journal of Management Research, Vol. XII, No. 3, 2013

to changes, and the current and latest stage of evolution is represented by the
agile enterprise that comprises all concepts and propositions developed in the
frame of research on the adaptive and flexible organization and manufacturing.
Qumer and Henderson (2008) defined agility as a persistent behavior or ability of
an entity that exhibits flexibility to accommodate the expected or unexpected
changes rapidly, follows the shortest time span, and uses economical, simple and
quality instruments in a dynamic environment; agility can be evaluated by flexibility,
speed, leanness, learning, and responsiveness. Through extensive literature survey,
Breu et al. (2002) summarized the agility attributes as “consisting of environmental
scanning, responsive to change, skill assessment and development, employee
empowerment and autonomy in decision making, information and knowledge
access, collaboration and virtual organization, business process integration,
Information Systems (IS) integration and workflow, ICT and mobile technology.”

Since “ the principles of agility can equally apply to other functions of a business
and to service industries” (Katayama and Bennett, 1999, p. 44), it soon broadened
into the wider business contexts, evolving notions of ‘the agile competitor’ (Goldman
et al., 1995), ‘agile business relationships’ (Preiss et al., 1996), ‘agile supply chains’
(Christopher, 2000), ‘agile enterprises’ (Goldman and Nagel, 1993), ‘agile decision
support systems’ (Huang, 1999) and, most recently, the ‘agile workforce’ (Van
et al., 2001).

Agile Workforce
Organizational agility requires an agile workforce. As Upton (1995) observed,
“operational flexibility is determined primarily by plant operators and the extent to
which managers communicate with them”. While studying manufacturing flexibility,
Youndt et al. (1996) concluded that the achievement of manufacturing flexibility,
requires developing and maintaining a “highly skilled, technologically competent
and adaptable workforce that can deal with non-routine and exceptional
circumstances”.

Agile workforce is an organized and dynamic talent that can quickly deliver the right
skills and knowledge at the right time, as dictated by business needs. An agile workforce
is a well-trained and flexible workforce that can adapt quickly and easily to new
opportunities and market circumstances. An agile workforce can enhance an organization’s
ability to survive in a volatile global business environment (Katayama and Bennett, 1999).
Borrowing from the business agility literature, workforce agility involves two main
elements: the ability of the workforce to respond to changes in proper ways and in
due time; and the ability of the workforce to exploit changes and take advantage
of them as opportunities (Kidd, 1994). Thus, an agile workforce comprises people
with a broad vision and capabilities to deal with marketplace turbulence by capturing
the advantageous side of such dynamic conditions, such as occasional abrupt shifts
in customer preferences and account structure (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000).

Workforce Agility: A Review of Literature 57

 Through an extensive literature survey, an attempt is made hereunder to explore
the characteristics and attributes of agile workforce.

As observed by Plonka (1997), an agile workforce has a positive attitude towards

learning and self-development; good problem-solving ability; comfortable with
change, new ideas, and new technologies; ability to generate innovative ideas,
and always ready to accept new responsibilities.

Gunasekaran (1999) defined the characteristics of agile workforce as follows:

Information Tehnology (IT)-skilled workers, knowledge in team working, negotiation,
advanced manufacturing strategies, technologies, empowered employees,
multifunctional workforce, multilingual workforce and self-directed teams.

Based on the review of the organizational agility literature, Breu et al. (2002)
determined the initial indicators of workforce agility, such as responsiveness to
external change, benchmark for skill assessment, speed of skill development, speed
of adaptation to new work environments, speed of information access, speed of IT
change, use of mobile technologies, workplace independence, mobile information
access, collaborative technologies, virtual team, knowledge sharing and employee
empowerment.

Griffin and Hesketh’s (2003) framework describes adaptability at work with three
broad types of behavior: proactive, reactive, and tolerant which correspond to the
three adjustment style dimensions from the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA).
Proactive behavior occurs when a person initiates the activities that have a positive
effect on the changed environment. Reactive behavior is based on changing or
modifying oneself to better fit into a new environment and includes new learning,
interpersonal, cultural and physical adaptability. Tolerant behavior is to continue
functioning despite the changing environment or when proactive or reactive
strategies may not be appropriate.

Dyer and Shafer (2003) observed that an agile workforce is proactive, adaptive
and generative. Proactive behavior consists of two aspects: initiate and
improvize. Proactive initiative means active search for opportunities to contribute
to organizational success and take the lead in pursuing those opportunities
th at a ppea r p romi sing . P roac tiv e im prov izat ion req uir es dev ising a nd
implementing new and creative approaches to pursue opportunities and dealing
with threats. Adaptive behavior requires assumption of multiple roles to perform
in different capacities across levels, and projects often simultaneously move
from one role to another very quickly. The employees have to simultaneously
learn multiple competencies and educate themselves by actively sharing
information and knowledge.

Based on the models of Dyer and Shafer (2003), Griffin and Hesketh (2003) and
Sherehiy et al. (2007) grouped the attributes of agile workforce into three
dimensions: (1) Proactivity; (2) Adaptivity; and (3) Resilience. Proactivity refers to

58 The IUP Journal of Management Research, Vol. XII, No. 3, 2013

the situation when a person initiates the activities that have a positive effect on
changed environment (Griffin and Hesketh, 2003). Adaptive dimension is based on
changing or modifying oneself or their behavior to better fit in the new environment.
Resilience describes the ability to function efficiently under stress despite changing
environment or when the applied strategies have not been successful.

Thus on the basis of the above literature review, we may accept the following
as the attributes of an agile workforce.

Adaptive: Agile workforce is expected to be adaptive in nature. In a changing

business environment, an agile workforce has to be comfortable with change, new
ideas, and new technologies. Breu et al. (2002) observed that agile workforce is
quite responsiveness to external change. Duncan (1972) and Huang (1999) marked
that agile workforce is quite good in reading external change (e.g., customer needs,
new business opportunities and competitor strategies), adjusting business
objectives and acting quickly in line with new business direction.

Flexible: Flexibility is considered as the ability to pursue different business

strategies and tactics, to quickly change from one strategy/task/job to another.
Flexibility is an ability to process different products and achieve different objectives
with the same facilities (Sharifi and Zhang, 1999). Agile workforces are said to
move flexibly, rapidly and effectively into any environment (Forsythe, 1997).

Developmental: Agile workforce is developmental in mind. They tend to hold a

positive attitude toward learning and self-development. They are very systematic
in skill development. They map their skills, benchmark for skill assessment and
develop the skill. They love to take responsibility (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990).
They are expected to possess a good problem-solving ability.

Speed: Speed is the ability to complete the requirements of all other agile
characteristics in the shortest possible time. Speed attribute of an agile worker
refers to the speed of skills development, speed at which employees acquire
new skills (e.g., functional, IT and management skills), speed of adaptation to
new work environments (ease and speed with which employees assimilate new
work environments, e.g., moving across projects and functional boundaries), speed
of information access (ease and speed of access to consistent and accurate
information, e.g., customer, accounting, business performance and management
information) (Breu et al., 2002).

Collaborative: An agile workforce is also expected to effectively take part in any

collaborative environment (Forsythe, 1997), whether it is a cross-functional project
team, collaborative ventures with other companies, or a virtual organization (Van
et al., 2001). They are spontaneous collaborators. They are expected to be good
team players. Knowledge in team working and negotiating is expected of them.
They believe in knowledge sharing and employee empowerment.

Workforce Agility: A Review of Literature 59

Competent: Agile workforce is techno-savvy. Knowledge in advanced manufacturing
strategies and technologies, IT-skill, use of mobile technologies, mobile information
access; collaborative technologies etc. are essential for a workforce to be agile.
They utilize flexible technologies and infrastructure that support change and require
higher cognitive demands. In order to provide suggestions concerning improvement
in controls and equipments, the agile workforce has to be familiar with the
equipment technology. This in turn will require the acquisition of new knowledge,
accelerated learning, and JIT delivery of training (Plonka, 1997).

Informative: Agile workers are serious information seekers. They keep themselves
informed in order to achieve the objectives or clarify problems. They do personal
research on how to provide a product or service. They seek information or ask
questions to clarify what is wanted or needed. Personally, such workers undertake
research, analysis or investigation. An agile worker uses contacts or information
networks to obtain useful information.

Management Practices Capable of Promoting Workforce

Agility
Management practices can influence workforce capability to be agile (Kathuria and
Partovi, 1999; and Sumukadas and Sawhney, 2004). Chonko and Jones (2005)
observed that culture, collaboration, IS and competencies are the major factors
promoting agility in an organization. As Beatty (2005) observed, an agile
environment is “a corporate environment where skills are valued over jobs, where
cross-sector collaboration is encouraged, where not all functions and processes
need to be ‘owned’, and where data becomes business intelligence that can drive
decision making, companies can follow best practice organizations and meet the
challenges of the new global economy”. Management actions on training,
compensation, empowerment, teamwork, and IS can promote workforce agility.
An attempt is made below to explore the related management practices capable
of promoting workforce agility.

Training and Agility

Training promotes workforce agility. Agility cannot be achieved without leveraging
of employee’s knowledge and skills (Dove, 1993; Forsythe, 1997; and Plonka, 1997).
Achievement of manufacturing flexibility requires developing and maintaining a
“highly skilled, technologically competent and adaptable workforce that can deal
with non-routine and exceptional circumstances …” (Youndt et al., 1996). Agile
workforces capitalize on skills by proactively innovating their skills base just ahead
of need (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; and Yusuf et al., 1999). Employees can perform
a flexible range of tasks only if they have the necessary skill sets. Cross-training
and job rotation can help workers adapt better to new jobs. Hopp and Van (2004)
stated that the workers’ cross-training is a powerful strategy that can ensure

60 The IUP Journal of Management Research, Vol. XII, No. 3, 2013

workforce agility. They argue that the workforce agility can be achieved via cross-
training because cross-trained workers represent a flexible capacity since workers
can be shifted to where and when they are needed. According to them, cross-
training can increase the production flexibility of an organization. The workforce
with a larger set of skills would perform a wider range of tasks efficiently and
would provide task redundancy. Cross-training and greater task variety may also
facilitate performance due to less fatigue, boredom or repetitive stress.

Compensation System and Agility

Compensation system is also important from the workforce agility viewpoint.
Sumukadas and Sawhney (2004) classified compensation system as traditional
(profit-sharing, gainsharing and Employee Stock Ownership Plans [ESOPs]), and
non-traditional-based (improvement-based incentives, non-monetary rewards,
skill-based pay systems, etc.). They concluded that non-traditional approaches
are better suited to promoting workforce agility. According to them, “skill-based
pay systems emphasize task variability. Employees are rewarded for the number
and depth of skills acquired which is consistent with workforce agility. Team-
based production incentives encourage teamwork, fostering acquisition and
application of different skills. Non-monetary incentives are the only lower-order
involvement practice that supports power sharing and also influences workforce
agility directly”.

Empowerment and Agility

Empowerment is seen to be the key in making a workforce truly agile (Van et al.,
2001; and Kelly, 2008). While studying the contribution of Employee Involvement
(EI) practices to workforce agility, Sumukadas and Sawhney (2004) observed that
although lower-order EI practices such as quality circles, quality of work-life, survey,
feedback and suggestion systems have the potential to directly promote workforce
agility, they serve primarily as a foundation. It is only high-power practices such as
job enrichment, job enlargement and self-managed teams built on the top of that
foundation which contribute to workforce agility. Kathuria and Partovi (1999)
observed that higher-order EI practices support plant flexibility. Hopp and Van
(2004) concluded that power sharing practices offer the greatest potential to
support the workforce agility architecture by improving efficiencies of training,
switching, multitasking and collaboration.

Teamwork and Agility

Self-managing, self-organizing teams are essential for agile development culture
(Sharp and Robinson, 2004). Agile teams are characterized by self-organization
(Cockburn and Highsmith, 2001) and self-organizing teams are the key to
responsiveness and flexibility (Nerur and Balijepally, 2007). Organization’s teamwork

Workforce Agility: A Review of Literature 61

environment is capable of promoting workforce agility. Teamwork environment
relevant for promoting workforce agility is related to the internal teamworking
environment, external teamworking environment, intra-group teamworking
environment and cross-functional teamworking environment (Breu et al., 2002).
The synergy generated from cross-sector collaboration can help organizations in
the completion of projects taken from time to time. A good and congenial teamwork
environment will provide workers with accurate, comprehensive, meaningful
business intelligence with which they can make informed business decisions.

IS and Agility
IS can promote workforce’s ability for speedy action and operational flexibility.
The IS capability refers to the deployment of all flexible IT infrastructure that
supports the adaptation of the existing IS and the assimilation of new systems
swiftly and effectively. The access provided by the organization to information
related to: customer, accounting, business performance and management
information may help the employee to feel more informative and show readiness
for flexibility and collaboration.

The information, communication, and mobile technologies determine the IS of

an organization. Computer-aided technologies like Graphical User Interface (GUI),
Expert systems and Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) help the organization
to adopt a suitable IS (Greenlaw and Valonis, 1994). The employee receives
information through mobile phone about operational data, corporate document
and employee information, etc. (Breu et al., 2002). The information, communication,
and mobile technologies, on the other hand, will support and enhance the workforce
agility for speedy action and operational flexibility (Goldman and Nagel, 1993; and
Yusuf et al., 1999).

Conclusion
The holy grail of business today is to become a truly agile enterprise. Every business
leader in the corporate world wants to lead a company that is truly responsive to
its customers, can react quickly to the changing market conditions and so requires
a workforce (adaptive, developmental, innovative, collaborative, competent,
versatile, informative and proactive) that owns the business; a workforce that is
constantly seeking ways to improve products, services and profitability.
But the challenge is, “how in the world do we get there from here?” While agility is
a noble and even necessary goal in today’s business environment, it is not achieved
by just wanting it badly. Although management practices including teamwork,
compensation, empowerment, training and IS, are proved as enablers for promoting
workforce agility within an organization, the fact is that achieving the illusive goal
of agility in the business environment takes the hard way of disruptive change and
thinking about and managing our business affairs.

62 The IUP Journal of Management Research, Vol. XII, No. 3, 2013

 The present study is confined to the survey of available literature, and therefore
is conceptual in nature. The suggested concept can be tested by conducting empirical
research through a proper sample size. @

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Workforce Agility: A Review of Literature 65

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