Purpose

The paper aims to explain how agility capabilities (competence, flexibility, responsiveness and speed) influence the chance of improving a small and medium-sized enterprise's (SME's) competitive position, measured by market share and profit.

Design/methodology/approach

Combining organisational agility with competitiveness, the authors analysed how an SME's activities in the field of agility capabilities – competence, flexibility, responsiveness and speed – influence the chance of improving their competitive position. Data were collected from 1,286 SMEs from Poland using the computer-assisted personal interviews method (CAPI). To analyse the data, the authors used logistic regression and odds ratios.

Findings

The study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between agility capabilities and an SME's competitive position. First, the results suggest that all the studied agility capabilities positively impact SMEs' competitive position. Second, the study shows that seeking to increase market share requires particular attention to flexibility, the impact of which is slightly higher than that of the other variables. Third, the findings suggest that the drive to increase profitability requires an appreciation of responsiveness and competence.

Originality/value

The literature contains much discussion about the relationship between agility capabilities and a company's competitive position. However, these studies refer to large companies, whilst the question of the relationship between agility capabilities and competitive position amongst SMEs remains mainly unanswered, which given SMEs' contribution to the creation of economic growth, seems difficult to understand. Although small companies are by nature highly flexible, due to the size of the companies' operations and flattened and decentralised structure, companies' competitive potential is limited as a result of the limited resources that can be devoted to developing procedures for change.

中文翻译：

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中小企业竞争力的新视角 敏捷能力如何影响公司的竞争地位？

目的

本文旨在解释敏捷能力（能力、灵活性、响应能力和速度）如何影响提高中小企业 (SME) 竞争地位（以市场份额和利润衡量）的机会。

设计/方法论/途径

作者将组织敏捷性与竞争力相结合，分析了中小企业在敏捷能力（能力、灵活性、响应能力和速度）领域的活动如何影响提高其竞争地位的机会。使用计算机辅助个人访谈法 (CAPI) 从波兰 1,286 家中小企业收集数据。为了分析数据，作者使用了逻辑回归和优势比。

发现

该研究提供了敏捷能力与中小企业竞争地位之间关系的实证证据。首先，结果表明所有研究的敏捷能力都会对中小企业的竞争地位产生积极影响。其次，研究表明，寻求增加市场份额需要特别关注灵活性，其影响略高于其他变量。第三，研究结果表明，提高盈利能力需要提高响应能力和能力。

原创性/价值

文献中有很多关于敏捷能力和公司竞争地位之间关系的讨论。然而，这些研究针对的是大公司，而中小企业的敏捷能力和竞争地位之间的关系问题基本上没有得到解答，考虑到中小企业对经济增长的贡献，这似乎很难理解。尽管小公司本质上具有高度灵活性，但由于公司的运营规模以及扁平化和分散的结构，可用于制定变革程序的资源有限，因此公司的竞争潜力受到限制。