AbstractAgility is an organizationa

Abstract
Agility is an organizational response to the emerging mass-customization
paradigm associated with economic, political, and cultural globalization. Agile
organizations are said to: 1) be solutions providers, 2) be knowledge-driven, 3) partner as
a first choice strategy, and 4) master change. The primary purposes of the study were to
create an instrument that measures agility in K-12 organizations, to establish the validity
and reliability properties of the instrument, and then measure the acceptance and practice
of agility among Pennsylvania school principals.
The literature was gleaned for indicators of agile organizations. These indicators
were refined for content validity with the assistance of five-person expert panel using a
Delphi technique. The indicators were then assembled into an instrument identified as
the Agile Performance Inventory for Schools (APIS) which was sent to 1,580
Pennsylvania school principals. There were 560 respondents.
A Cronbach Alpha procedure determined the reliability measures of the
instrument (.94, “importance” and .95, “practice”).
Paired t-test results indicate that the means for the importance of agility were
significantly higher than the means for practice. Principals significantly value the
concept of agility to a higher degree than it is implemented in their schools.
An exploratory factor analysis indicates that in the educational realm seven
constructs of agility exist, not four as the business model suggests. These seven
constructs served as the dependent variables in a series of MANOVA.