Organizational Structure and Agile Enterprise. Anticipated Effects and Empirical Results from Polish Enterprises

This paper focuses on an organizational structure in a context of agile enterprises with the aim of summarizing the theoretical postulates and their empirical verification. The theoretical model of agile enterprise is described in four dimensions: 1. Shrewdness of the enterprise, 2. Resource flexibility 3. Enterprise’s intelligence. 4. Smartness of the enterprise. These agile dimensions are interpreted from the “Aston concept” of five dimensions of an organizational structure: 1. Configuration, 2. Specialization, 3. Centralization, 4. Standardization, and 5. Formalization. The theoretical model of anticipated effects of agile in organizational structure has been verified as a part of two larger empirical research projects undertaken at the Faculty of Engineering Management of Poznan University of Technology. The first project from 2012, called “Adjustment of enterprises’ management systems to knowledge-based economy”, and the second one from 2014, called “Determinants of implementing modern methods and technics of management in Polish enterprises”. The both empirical research surveyed 150 of enterprises represented Polish economy.