Building an Agile Enterprise: Case OP Financial Group - OP Oulu
Niemelä, Juho Mikael (2020-04-25)
Niemelä, Juho Mikael
25.04.2020
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2020052739452
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2020052739452
Tiivistelmä
The fundamental question in the field of strategic management is how organizations can achieve and sustain competitive advantage. Achieving such an ambitious goal has become even more difficult in the modern world of innovation-based competition. Moreover, past success does not guarantee success in the future, which is why companies need to embrace a dual transformation towards focusing on changing customer needs and other strategic interventions. Organizations need to become adaptive and ambidextrous. The enterprise agile framework is gaining popularity and is proposed as a comprehensive answer to the question of building sustainable competitive advantage by many managers in organizations across industries. Agile teams were originally designed for use in small teams and projects, but their potential benefits have made them attractive for adoption at scale. However, adopting agile at scale is complicated. Doing so also means transforming strategy work from long-term planning to a continuous process. Enterprise agile is designed to increase manoeuvrability at the entire spectrum of the organization’s activities, which supports a continuous strategy process.
A theoretical representation of the agile operational model is presented. As the enterprise agile framework does not yet have an intellectual home in academic research, the concept of dynamic capabilities is proposed as a theoretical basis as it is well-researched and rooted in the research on adaptive and innovative organizations. Other concepts of interest in this thesis are innovation strategies, business model innovation, technological innovation and a specific dynamic capability, also a well-researched construct, called absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity emphasizes organizational learning capability which helps firms assimilate and implement new technologies, practices and processes.
The empirical section of the thesis studies an independent branch of the largest financial services corporation in Finland. A synthesis between theory and research suggests that organizational learning capability manifests in absorptive capacity, which has comprehensive potential to affect the organization’s ability to implement innovative managerial practices, such as enterprise agile. The enterprise agile framework is found to have potential to broadly strengthen several types of dynamic capabilities, which are at the heart of the organization’s ability to create and sustain competitive advantage. The empirical results further suggest that agile can be divided between concrete agile working methods and broader agile working techniques, which help conceptualize and compartmentalize the broader enterprise agile framework.
A theoretical representation of the agile operational model is presented. As the enterprise agile framework does not yet have an intellectual home in academic research, the concept of dynamic capabilities is proposed as a theoretical basis as it is well-researched and rooted in the research on adaptive and innovative organizations. Other concepts of interest in this thesis are innovation strategies, business model innovation, technological innovation and a specific dynamic capability, also a well-researched construct, called absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity emphasizes organizational learning capability which helps firms assimilate and implement new technologies, practices and processes.
The empirical section of the thesis studies an independent branch of the largest financial services corporation in Finland. A synthesis between theory and research suggests that organizational learning capability manifests in absorptive capacity, which has comprehensive potential to affect the organization’s ability to implement innovative managerial practices, such as enterprise agile. The enterprise agile framework is found to have potential to broadly strengthen several types of dynamic capabilities, which are at the heart of the organization’s ability to create and sustain competitive advantage. The empirical results further suggest that agile can be divided between concrete agile working methods and broader agile working techniques, which help conceptualize and compartmentalize the broader enterprise agile framework.