The Effect of Sales-Marketing Collaboration, Market-Oriented Product Development, and Nimble Network Structure on Organizational Agility

Abstract

The study aims to comprehensively understand how organizational agility in telecommunication equipment companies affects organizations’ business performance. Furthermore, it also elaborates how organizational agility is shaped by the interdependence of the main antecedents―sales-marketing interdepartmental collaboration, complete market-oriented integrated product development (IPD) strategy, and nimble network structure. Exploratory case study and literature review are used to examine the interrelationship of organizational agility antecedents and to develop the conceptual framework. The study identifies that in highly dynamic, rapidly changing, and complex digitized business environments of Telecommunication 4.0 era, to achieve competitive advantage, organizations are required to become agile, which is becoming responsive and flexible in delivering continuous innovation and customer-focused solution through rapid experimentation and decisiveness. To fully gain organizational agility, the collaborative role of sales and marketing in guiding and supporting research and development (R&D) is crucial for product development success. Further, the whole organization needs to embrace an agile mindset and working under a nimble network structure and project management arrangement. Derived from resource dependence theory, the originality of this study lies on the elucidation of collaboration and integration among functional specialists working under nimble project-based network structure that bring positive impact on the accomplishment of product development collective task and responsiveness in satisfying customer’s requirement. This study is expected to enrich prior studies on organizational agility from a different perspective.