IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jorgde/v14y2025i1d10.1007_s41469-024-00179-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scaling or growing agile? Proposing a manifesto for agile organization development

Author

Listed:
  • Constantin Bremer

    (Chalmers University of Technology)

  • Anna Rylander Eklund

    (Chalmers University of Technology)

  • Maria Elmquist

    (Chalmers University of Technology)

Abstract

In the face of today’s world of uncertainty, many organizations aim for more flexible and less hierarchical forms of organizing. Relatedly, management scholars and consultants have increasingly taken stock of the agile concept, advocating a scaling of agile teams and their maverick practices to the organizational level. Considering four common challenges with organization-level agile in practice, we outline an alternative trajectory for agile in the context of organization design. This alternative trajectory builds on the notion of growing (rather than scaling) agile and is rooted in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development as the philosophical anchor of the agile movement. In this paper, we describe the journey of a Swedish software company along which we highlight the discrepancies in assumptions about uncertainty and people between manifesto agile and large-scale agile. Based on our case analysis, we propose a Manifesto for Agile Organization Development with four associated values, bringing the original Agile Manifesto and its mindset of trusting people to solve problems together locally to the organizational level. We further articulate five principles for agile organization development and illustrate through our case how bringing them to life can help address the common challenges of organization-level agile. Rather than a blueprint, our manifesto, and its associated values and principles are intended as an alternative basis for developing and discussing what manifesto agile means at an organizational level and how it can be turned into practice(s) in local contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Constantin Bremer & Anna Rylander Eklund & Maria Elmquist, 2025. "Scaling or growing agile? Proposing a manifesto for agile organization development," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 14(1), pages 23-34, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jorgde:v:14:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s41469-024-00179-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s41469-024-00179-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41469-024-00179-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41469-024-00179-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephan Billinger & Maciej Workiewicz, 2019. "Fading hierarchies and the emergence of new forms of organization," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-6, December.
    2. Oliver Baumann & Brian Wu, 2022. "The many dimensions of research on designing flat firms," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 11(1), pages 1-3, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jeroen Bree & Martin Gonzalez, 2025. "Principles over practices: introduction to the special issue maverick organization design in practice," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 14(1), pages 1-4, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Annika Campaner & John S. Heywood & Uwe Jirjahn, 2022. "Flexible work organization and employer provided training: Evidence from German linked employer‐employee data," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 3-29, February.
    2. Paul C. Fenema & A. Georges L. Romme, 2020. "Latent organizing for responding to emergencies: foundations for research," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 9(1), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Luigi Mosca & Martina Gianecchini & Diego Campagnolo, 2021. "Organizational life cycle models: a design perspective," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 10(1), pages 3-18, March.
    4. Oliver Baumann & Gerald F. Davis & Sven Kunisch & Jiao Luo & Brian Wu, 2023. "Organizing for good—using organization design to take on grand challenges," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 12(4), pages 165-176, December.
    5. Samwel Muguna Henry & Nguchie Gathogo & Solomon Mbula Munyao, 2025. "Effect of Team Leadership on the Growth of Pentecostal Churches in Kenya," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 9(1), pages 5058-5070, January.
    6. Aseem Kaul, 2022. "Of fruit flies, toads, and other hopeful monsters: thoughts on Levinthal’s Evolutionary Processes and Organizational Adaptation," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 11(3), pages 91-94, September.
    7. Phanish Puranam, 2022. "Deflating the rhetoric around “flat firms”," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 11(1), pages 15-17, March.
    8. Harsh Ketkar & Maciej Workiewicz, 2022. "Power to the people: The benefits and limits of employee self‐selection in organizations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(5), pages 935-963, May.
    9. Katherine Tatarinov & Tina C. Ambos, 2025. "Technology-enabled organization designs for tackling the grand challenges: the case of Giga," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 14(1), pages 35-41, March.
    10. Frank Martela, 2023. "Managers matter less than we think: how can organizations function without any middle management?," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 12(1), pages 19-25, June.
    11. Oliver Baumann & Brian Wu, 2023. "Managerial hierarchy in AI-driven organizations," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 12(1), pages 1-5, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jorgde:v:14:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s41469-024-00179-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.