In an increasingly dynamic environment where change seems to be the only constant feature, operational excellence programmes are often used to achieve improved performance results. However, the capacity of such approaches to make organisations successful in the long term is yet to be demonstrated. Operational excellence should not be seen as an approach to promote change, but rather to provide tools and framing for people in the organisation to deal with it. Our literature-based theory is that the relationships of operational excellence with both organisational culture and agility have the potential for further integration in the promotion of long-term, sustainable operational excellence initiatives. To do so, such initiatives need to look beyond simple cultural fit and work to promote a more agile behaviour and a cultural capacity to deal with constant change. If these conditions are met, the sustainability of operational excellence should be achieved, with organisations being able to strive in the long term with the promotion of organisational agility capabilities and an adaptable culture. The objective of this paper is to sustain this theory building, proposing the research questions that will help us understand the relationships and integration between the concepts of operational excellence, organisational agility and organisational culture.

Operational Excellence (OpEx) is understood by the quest to continuously improve performance. While used by organizations worldwide, the capacity of OpEx programmes to make organizations successful in unstable business environments has been challenged. This article aims to answer the research question of what the nature of the relationship between OpEx and Organizational Agility truly is. The authors have previously proposed a theoretical framework supporting the link between Operational Excellence, Organizational Culture, and Organizational Agility. While built on a strong conceptual background, this framework lacked empirical validation. Following the conclusion of ten industrial case studies, this article provides a summary of the key findings obtained in each case and integrates them into an updated conceptual model. As key findings, this study shows how Operational Excellence enablers and cultural orientation have an important role in the development and scaling up of Organizational Agility capabilities, highlighting how different contexts may influence these dynamics. This article offers a better understanding of the balance needed to maintain high operational performance levels while dealing with change. It connects and upholds the importance of Organizational Agility and of the cultural paradigm in the management of Quality in technical and technological organizations.

Purpose: This article offers a novel approach that brings together management, engineering and organizational behavior. It focuses on the understanding of organizational dynamics in an era of technological change, upholding the importance of organizational agility and of the cultural paradigm in the management of organizations.Design/methodology/approach: In this work, the authors present the conclusions from a set of studies carried out in organizations operating in technical and technological industries. The authors assessed the capabilities of these organizations in terms of operational excellence maturity and its impact on the organizational culture and organizational agility.Findings: Results show the importance of operational excellence either in developing or expanding organizational agility capabilities while reinforcing the cruciality of an excellence-oriented culture to sustain these efforts over time.Originality/value: Increasingly unstable business environments have led to a growing interest in how to develop and maintain operational excellence in the face of continued and disruptive change. However, this interest has, so far, been advanced with little empirical evidence to support the corresponding predictions. This work offers the first practical evidence that continued focus and optimization of operations, with the right cultural alignment, helps organizations survive and thrive in increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments.

This document, “MSIS 2016: Global Competency Model for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems”, is the latest in the series of reports that provides guidance for degree programs in the Information Systems (IS) academic discipline. MSIS 2016 is the seventh collaborative effort between ACM and AIS (following IS’97, IS 2002, and IS 2010 at the undergraduate level; MSIS 2000 and MSIS 2006 at the graduate level; and CC 2005 as an integrative document).