Internationalization does not simply make a firm more agile. In this study, it improves strategic sensitivity but weakens leadership unity, while turbulence strengthens every measured dimension of agility. The study examines how internationalization, firm age, and environmental turbulence influence three key components of strategic agility: strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity.

The specific impacts of these factors on strategic agility’s core capabilities have yet to be thoroughly explored, so the research aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how each variable shapes a firm’s strategic agility. The evidence comes from 220 Spanish firms in the service sector, analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The findings point to a dual effect of internationalization: it enhances strategic sensitivity but diminishes leadership unity. Firm age is associated with decreases in all aspects of strategic agility, while environmental turbulence positively impacts each dimension.

Recent literature highlights growing complexity for firms in ever-changing environments, increasingly visible in the fluctuating nature of global markets. That evolving dynamism presents challenges of unprecedented breadth. Strategic agility is attracting increasing attention from academics and practitioners, but the field lacks a uniform definition.

Still, there is consensus around three core capabilities: strategic sensitivity, the active sensing and anticipation of environmental changes; leadership unity, the ability of a leadership team to make bold, fast decisions; and resource fluidity, the internal capability to quickly reallocate resources.

Despite the growing number of papers on strategic agility, the precise factors that relate positively or negatively to it remain poorly understood. Much existing research examines individual variables, such as environmental turbulence and firm age, rather than their collective impact on strategic agility.

The study examines firm internationalization, firm age, and environmental turbulence together, and analyzes their influence on each dimension of strategic agility: strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity. The framework treats internationalization, age, and turbulence as variables that may affect the different aspects of strategic agility rather than treating agility as one undifferentiated outcome.

Environmental turbulence is proposed to have a direct impact on strategic agility, extending the discussion beyond its relationship with firm performance to its fundamental effect on agility itself. Strategic sensitivity refers to the manner by which firms anticipate and adapt to changes in the environment.

Firms with strategic sensitivity work to remain aware of competitor moves, shifts in customer desires, and the availability of new technologies. They dedicate time and resources to listening to clients through surveys, conducting market studies, and assessing competitors.

Leadership unity, also referred to as collective commitment, concerns top executives dialoguing, integrating, and aligning their interests. It hinges on the ability of members of the top team to understand and trust each other. Organizations with high leadership unity encounter minimal organizational resistance and make fast and bold strategic decisions.

Firms that excel at leadership unity have top management collaborating and solving challenges without engaging in win–lose politics. Resource fluidity pertains to the rapid redeployment of resources and reconfiguration of business systems. This organizational and coordinative capability matters because most firms suffer from resource rigidity.

Resource fluidity means shifting resources in real time rather than executing a predetermined plan, and firms with this capability can swiftly reallocate capital, people, and competencies. Because strategic agility is defined by three distinct capabilities, each capability may be influenced differently by external forces.

The investigation therefore targets internationalization, age, and turbulence, and examines how they may differentially affect strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity. Internationalization is often viewed as a driver of organizational agility, while younger firms typically display greater flexibility and older firms encounter obstacles to rapid adaptation.

Environmental turbulence involves swift and unforeseeable market shifts that require speedy reorientation and reallocation of resources, yet the collective influence of these variables on the specific dimensions has not been examined. Figure One presents the study’s conceptual framework and its nine hypotheses.

It maps three antecedents—internationalization, turbulence, and age—to the three components of strategic agility: strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity. Each labeled arrow represents a proposed relationship for empirical testing, making the figure important because it shows how the authors organize the study’s constructs and hypothesized links before measurement and analysis.

The first hypothesis predicts that internationalization is positively related to strategic sensitivity. The second hypothesis predicts that internationalization is negatively related to leadership unity. The third hypothesis predicts that internationalization is negatively related to resource fluidity.

The study draws on a survey of 220 Spanish firms operating in the service sector. The sample covers firms with different workforce sizes, including 72 percent of firms that are small and medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 250 employees.

Measurement of the capabilities that constitute strategic agility has been widely applied in the literature. Each capability uses three questions measured on a Likert scale, and those questions are specified in Table 1. Table one lays out the constructs for the paper’s latent variables and the survey questions used to measure them.

The authors note that strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity are each assessed with three Likert-scale questions, while internationalization follows the Uppsala model through a staged commitment measure; firm age is represented by years in operation. This table matters because it makes the study’s abstract capabilities and internationalization concept measurable.

Structural equation modeling is useful for elucidating complex relationships between multiple constructs, which is essential for examining strategic agility, internationalization, firm age, and environmental turbulence together. The partial least squares variant was chosen because it can manage formative and reflective constructs within the model.

The PLS approach also fits the moderate sample size of 220 Spanish service-sector firms and can process the intricate model proposed. Internationalization has a positive and significant relationship with strategic sensitivity, with a path coefficient of zero point one three eight and a p-value of zero point zero three three.

This result underscores the advantages that international firms have in gathering and responding to market information, and suggests that global operations enhance adaptation to diverse market conditions. The results do not support Hypothesis 2. Internationalization has a significant but negative relationship with leadership unity, with a path coefficient of negative zero point one four two and a p-value of zero point zero two nine.

That negative relationship highlights the challenge of aligning leadership in the context of internationalization. Firm age shows significant and negative path coefficients for Hypotheses 4, 5, and 6: negative zero point one zero eight, negative zero point zero nine six, and negative zero point one one five.

Together, these coefficients indicate a decline in strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity as firm maturity increases. Older firms may struggle to maintain the awareness and responsiveness required to navigate a rapidly evolving market landscape, while established routines may hinder the flexible reallocation of resources.

The findings support Hypotheses 7, 8, and 9 concerning environmental turbulence and strategic agility. Environmental turbulence has a positive relationship with strategic sensitivity, supported by a path coefficient of zero point four nine nine and a p-value below zero point zero zero one.

As turbulence intensifies, firms need to enhance foresight and insight so they can be proactive as well as reactive in the face of market disruptions and trends. Figure two presents the structural equation model linking internationalization, turbulence, and firm age to three dimensions of strategic agility: strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity.

The arrows report path coefficients with p-values, while the indicator loadings show how each observed measure relates to its construct—for example, internationalization’s path to strategic sensitivity is 0.138 with a p-value of 0.033. The study provides a novel approach for examining the complex interplay between firm internationalization, age, and environmental turbulence and their collective impact on the dimensions of strategic agility.

It concurrently investigates these variables and offers insights into the dynamic nature of strategic agility, challenging and extending current academic paradigms. The study advances understanding of strategic agility within the realms of internationalization, firm age, and environmental turbulence.

It also acknowledges limitations that pave the way for future research endeavors. The central lesson is that strategic agility is not one ability: internationalization, age, and turbulence affect strategic sensitivity, leadership unity, and resource fluidity differently.

That makes diagnosis more useful than a single agility score.