The Promise of Agility

Eine Klärung des Agilitätsbegriffs und eine Einführung in die Patterns of Integrated Organization

Abstract

Companies are confronted with considerable pressure for change and socially complex problems, for both of which agility seems to promise remedy. By introducing agile structures, companies hope to bring about some change that is not defined with much precision. In the current agility discourse, there is no consensus about the term neither in everyday work nor in research. It offers a projection surface, where different worldviews collide with great force and little reflection. After a cognitive-linguistic analysis of the term in a historical context, a structured reflection process in the form of Patterns of Integrated Organization is presented, which serves to clarify the longing projected on the term and thus provides a decision-making tool for an organizational design in accordance with consciously negotiated points of view.