Development of Organizational Agility Scale in Higher Education: A Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

To become third generation university, higher education (HE) institutions must compete, create value for internal and external stakeholders, and adapt to changing market conditions. The concept of organizational agility (OA) refers to a dynamic organization that can sense the change imposed by internal and external elements, routinely implement change, and has the capacity to learn continuously. Based on this concept, this research aims to develop a scale to discover the perceptional evaluations of academic and administrative staff of public universities in the context of OA, and thereby to establish an OA framework for public universities. The research was carried out in psychometric design. The resulting Organizational Agility Scale in Higher Education was pilot tested and administered to 893 academic and administrative staff from 10 public universities in Istanbul. The principal components analysis with varimax rotation supported four dimensions. Through confirmatory factor analysis, four-factor structure was found to be at acceptable level. Four dimensions of the scale (strategy and staff-oriented organizational design, internal stakeholder orientation, cooperation with external stakeholders, support for innovation) focus more on human side of higher education institutions and less on change management and responsiveness, compared to business agility. The findings imply that institutional and national efforts are needed to form a strategy and stakeholder-oriented organization design for universities. A separate OA framework should be constructed for private universities to reach a more holistic understanding of Turkish HE and to compare public and private higher education institutions and to discover how Turkish HE system can be more agile and responsive in national and international contexts.