Agile project management for economic sustainability: a time-lagged mediation model of strategic agility and agile leadership among software professionals

This research examines how agile project management affects economic outcomes, with agile leadership and strategic agility serving as mediators. Data were collected using a time-lagged approach (T1 = 304; T2 = 236) from managers at five major IT and telecommunications companies via a questionnaire, yielding 236 usable responses for analysis. The study uses structural equation modeling (Smart-PLS) to investigate these relationships. The findings suggest that agile leadership and strategic agility serve as mediators between agile project management and economic sustainability. This work contributes to the field by empirically examining the balance between control and flexibility in agile project management. It also expands the definition of strategic agility to include the ability to switch business partners and broadens agile leadership to encompass coordination between partners. The findings suggest that while agile leadership enhances customer value creation, strategic agility is crucial for achieving economic sustainability.