Agile Advantage in Navigating the Coronacrisis: Insights from Manufacturing Firms

The corona crisis period and the consequences of restrictive anti-epidemiological measures have shown that the ability to be prepared to implement changes, to react in a timely and effective manner to changes in the environment, which means applying an agile approach, is becoming an essential prerequisite for both survival and success. For this reason, we conducted research aimed at finding out how the manufacturing enterprises of the Slovak Republic coped with the changes caused by the pandemic COVID 19. The aim of the paper is to highlight the experience of manufacturing enterprises of the Slovak Republic with the agile approach, to analyse their reactions and measures taken overcoming the crisis pandemic situation through guided interviews with managers and by linking them with the development of financial indicators. Using the methods of summative content analysis, cluster analysis and box plots, the research results were evaluated. The results showed that the ability to be agile was demonstrated most by small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises owned by Slovak owners and large enterprises with foreign ownership. The ability to be agile enabled these enterprises to use the crisis as a business opportunity and to achieve significantly better financial results than in the pre-crisis period. The main contribution of the paper is to extend the empirical knowledge by examining the resolution of the obstacles and challenges of the pandemic period in manufacturing firms in the context of corporate agility.