Translating agile management practices into a traditional industry context
Melanie E. Kreye, Tabea Ramirez Hernandez, Steven Eppinger
kHUB post date: March 2025
Originally published: 20 October 2024 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 42, Issue 2 • March 2025)
Read time: 60 minutes
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This study explores the translation of agile management practices (agile) into a traditional industry context. Using a case study of agile adoption in a development project in a large traditional company of the aerospace and defense industry, this research investigates how the translation process unfolds by studying how both idea and context are adapted to create shared meaning. This research makes two main contributions. First, this research introduces translation theory to the innovation management literature and details its applicability in explaining variations in outcomes of applying management practices in new organizational contexts. Our research suggests that this constitutes a complementary theoretical lens to diffusion theory, enabling the explanation of the process to create shared meaning when idea and recipient context have a low level of compatibility. Second, this research shows the process of translating agile into a traditional context through a non-linear joint creation of meaning. The process was shaped largely by the experience and resolution of project-external (i.e., with the surrounding organization) and project-internal conflicts, which in turn motivated the idea or context to adapt. The study identifies two central concepts, namely isolation, and shielding, which determine how the translation process unfolds and how meaning is created. Managerial implications based on these contributions are presented and discussed.
Practitioner points
- Ability and ultimate result of translating a new management practice depends on the degree of compatibility between existing management practices and the new practice.
- For low compatibility, a new joint meaning has to be created through resolving experienced conflicts in the translation process resulting in an adapted management practice.
- The outcome of the translation process depends on the specific organizational level's isolation (i.e., dependency with the surrounding organization) and shielding (i.e., in how far conflicts are resolved by specific organizational levels).
- Managers may be able to anticipate conflicts by creating an in-depth understanding of the traditional organizational realities (e.g., large, slow, staged, controlling, connected, etc.) and of the new idea (e.g., agile tools and their practical variants)