Operational Agility in Tech: Best Practices for Administrative Leadership

The ability of technology organisations to be agile in their operations becomes increasingly important in the context of an era of high disruption. Nevertheless, despite the accumulating literature on agile practices, there has been a dearth of academic interest in administrative leadership as a source of organisational agility in operations. The paper includes an analytical framework in which administrative leadership practices appear as the main independent variable that would impact operational agility in technology organisations. Formed on three theoretical perspectives, which include Dynamic Capabilities Theory, Transformational Leadership Theory, and Agile Management Theory, the framework postulates that the connection between the administrative leadership and operational agility is mediated by four organisational mechanisms, which include organisational culture, technology adoption, employee empowerment, and process efficiency. Also, three moderating variables are added, including organisation size, industry dynamics, and environmental uncertainty, to explain contextual variation in the strength of such relationships. There are five empirically testable propositions that are developed to inform future quantitative and qualitative research. The framework has contributed to the literature by providing a theoretically grounded model that bridges the gap between leadership behaviour and operational performance in technology-driven settings. Technology managers, human resource practitioners, and organisational development specialists are discussed as having practical implications for building agility through purposeful administrative leadership. Future empirical validation of the framework is recommended across diverse technology sectors and organisational contexts.