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1 Introduction
Supply chain agility has been identified as one of the most important issues of contemporary supply chain management ([21] Lee, 2004). Agility enables a firm to respond in a timely and effective manner to market volatility and other uncertainties, thereby allowing the firm to establish a superior competitive position ([32] Swafford et al. , 2006). Increasingly reports suggest that supply chain agility must go from being a conference topic to a practical imperative for most companies ([35] White et al. , 2005).
Against this backdrop, research into issues associated with supply chain agility is increasing. Some agility research dates from the 1990s ([16] Goldman et al. , 1995; [36] Yusuf et al. , 1999). It has become apparent that business processes and structures, supply chain agility, and performance outcomes are inextricably linked in many ways ([22] Li et al. , 2008). Theories regarding these relationships are slowly emerging. For example, [32] Swafford et al. (2006) developed a framework for an organization's supply chain process flexibilities as an important antecedent of its supply chain agility. Overall, however, the theoretical base for these relationships is quite fragmented; few empirical tests of these relationships have been conducted, due mainly to a lack of unified conceptualization of agility and fairly limited views of agility dimensionality ([22] Li et al. , 2008). It is tempting to assume that concepts about supply chain agility are readily understood and easily measured, but this is not the case. Such concepts are likely to be complex in both definition and measurement. Nonetheless, as organizations continue to develop and adopt management practices to build supply chain agility, the need for valid and reliable instruments to assess supply chain agility increases.
The lack of valid and reliable instruments can lead to two potential problems over time. First, it is difficult to assess the significance of any particular study because "the lack of validated measures in confirmatory research raises the specter that no single finding [...] can be trusted" ([31] Straub, 1989, p. 148). Second, development of a research stream becomes particularly problematic because it is difficult to "compare and accumulate findings and thereby develop syntheses for what is known" ([7] Churchill, 1979, p. 67).
Thus, the frontiers of knowledge about supply chain agility can...