Impact of strategic agility on reputation and sustainable competitive advantage a study of retail Banks in India

Abstract

Historically, when business environments were stable, competitive advantage was viewed as a newlinematter of position, where firms occupied a competitive space and built and defended market share. However, in today s ever-changing, inter-connected and complex environment the ability to develop a sustained competitive advantage is increasingly rare. This in turn entails, newlinefrequent reviews of business strategies to factor in the actual and anticipated external influences and at times innovative and path breaking solutions to survive and maintain a competitive edge. It follows then, that being agile and specifically strategically agile is key to staying relevant and successful in the current business environment. newlineAgility is a well explored concept in the manufacturing context. Strategic agility is an emerging newlinearea of research in the larger agility domain and seeks to engage with the learning and newlineresponding aspects embedded in an organisation. Thus, strategic agility relies on gaining newlineknowledge to anticipate market changes and respond appropriately while agility requires newlineorganisations to be flexible and reactive to change in the most effective manner. newlineThis research uses a Competence-Capability-Performance (CCP) framework along with the newlinetheoretical perspectives of dynamic capability to explicate how an organisation can build the required competencies to become strategically agile . Furthermore, the impact of strategic agility on corporate reputation, sustainable competitive advantage and performance is explained. The research is carried out in the context of the retail banking sector in India and provides a background to the discussions of the research.the research. Three broad set of findings resulted from the study. First, we find that organisation learning capability is a key determinant of strategic agility. As organisation learning capability newlinerepresents the knowledge enabling conditions prevailing in an organisation, it reinforces our understanding of strategic agility as a knowledge driven capability.