The Agile Imperative

Sabine Pfeiffer holds the Chair of Sociology, Nuremberg Campus of Technology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen- Nürnberg, Germany.

Manuel Nicklich works at the Chair of Sociology, Nuremberg Campus of Technology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

Stefan Sauer works at the Chair of Sociology, Nuremberg Campus of Technology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen- Nürnberg, Germany.

In an ever-changing working environment, customer and workplace demands have brought new challenges to how we organize and manage work. Increasingly, this is addressed by the idea of 'agility.' From its beginning, agile work has claimed to be a radically different approach which allows organisations to react flexibly to changing environmental demands whilst also offering a 'people' centered approach to management.
While the literature often examines agile instruments from a business perspective, this edited collection advances the discussion of the efficacy of agile working,  by applying a more critical social science perspective.The chapters scrutinize whether agility is just a discursive imperative, or whether it is in fact a genuine organizational and institutional strategy that is meant to better deal with complexity and volatility. 

The answers to these questions can vary at different levels, and the editors therefore examine agility at the level of teams, organizations and societies. By assembling different perspectives on the sustainability and virtue of agile instruments, and by bringing together international scholars from a variety of disciplines, the project stimulates a comparative discussion. 

Combines researchers from different theoretical backgrounds with an empirical view of the most diverse phenomena of agility in different institutional settings

Part 1. Multi-level-perspectives on agility as a new principle of organizing work.- 1.Agile Methods: Self-Management vs. The World, Robert Biddle.- 2.The Use of Software Tools in Agile Projects, Azuka Mordi.- 3. Antecedents and consequences of agility - on the ongoing invocation of self-organization, Sabine Pfeiffer;,Manuel Nicklich, Stefan Sauer.- Part 2. The team-level as the base of agile work.- Part 3.Management and organizational level as the impulse of agile work.- 4. Reflexive Scaling, Stephanie Porschen-Hueck.- 5.Design Thinking as a Panacea? Towards a Symbiotic Understanding of Design Thinking and Organizational Culture, Gordon Müller-Seitz.- 6.  Strategility - A challenging alliance, Kerstin Pichel & Andrea Müller.- 7. Agile organizations in startup companies, the new way of manufacturing consent?, Flecher, Marion.- Part 4.Societal level as the frame of agile work.- 8.Traveling management ideas, lost and gained in translation: Agility in Japan, Takahiro Endo; Masatoshi Fujiwara; Yuki Tsuboyama.- Understanding agility: multi-level analysis of a Belgian subsidiary of a foreign bank, Olivier Jégou & Fyriel Souayah.-  Designing work for Agility and Affect's Measure, Phoebe Moore.