The influence of managerial and leadership practices on organizational agility

Details

Supervisors

Vas, Alain

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

Organizations in all their forms are more and more vulnerable to the fast-changing environment they have to operate in. Regardless of the geographic area or the sector, it has become an imperative nowadays to take proactive actions in order to survive and succeed. One key to success lies in the capacity of the organization to be agile. Agility is improved through several dimensions. This thesis focuses, on one hand, on the managerial practices that need to be adopted in order to become more agile. On the other hand, it identifies the type of leadership required to mobilize these managerial practices in such a context. For an organization to become agile, it is necessary to forget about the principles of traditional management. New managerial practices take place (e.g. destructuration, elimination of the hierarchy, transparency of information, etc.) and replace the former established rules and procedures. Fourteen managerial practices were identified through the analysis of case studies. These organizations are either born like this or they were transformed to become more agile. This was possible thanks to the mobilization of these managerial practices by a liberating leader. In any organization, every manager has the opportunity and the responsibility to have an impact on the level of agility. However, this requires from him to evolve from a managing to a leadership role. In order to do so, he is advised to follow the six actions lines of a leader in agile organizations that were identified in this thesis (e.g. self-management, purpose statement, talent management and people’s development, etc.) By applying effectively and efficiently those recommendations, a manager should be able to bring an added value to the organization through his unique leadership. At the same time making his employees happier, he will manage to increase the agility of the entire organization and improve the performance.