Attaining organisational agility through competitive intelligence: the roles of strategic flexibility and organisational innovation

Organizational agility can play an important role in an organization’s emergent strategy for survival in an increasingly competitive market-place. This paper examines the impact of competitive intelligence on organizational agility through strategic flexibility and organizational innovation. We gathered data from 83 agency managers of insurance companies in Iran, using random simple sampling. These were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS). Competitive intelligence was found to have an indirect influence on organizational agility through strategic flexibility, which was a mediating variable. Though competitive intelligence influenced organizational innovation organizational innovation did not have a significant effect on organizational agility. Our research contributes to the organizational agility literature by showing that organizational agility is influenced by competitive intelligence but organizational innovation is not as significant as has been assumed, instead strategic flexibility is a more important factor and suggests the human factor may be key to a successful strategy