Journal of Urban Economics and Management

The development of agility capabilities, accountability, and rapid adaptation to environmental changes are considered to be instruments for achieving a competitive advantage. Strategic agility is a developed type of agility which, besides rapid accountability, pays specific attention to the strategic aspect and to the prediction of changes in the urban environment before they occur. Most studies in agility-related and competitive-advantage field have been conducted on production agility as well as supply chain agility. In addition to clarifying the concept of strategic agility and the determining factors whereof, the current research aims at investigating into the effect of strategic agility on competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in the city of Semnan to help economic development of the city. Hence, at first, a model was devised for the competitive advantage based on dynamic capabilities theory, and, then, the model was confirmed by the results obtained from factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and correlation coefficient indexes. The results indicated that the strategic agility has a significant effect on the competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in the city of Semnan. Besides, from among competitive advantage factors, strategic agility is highly correlated with innovation. Moreover, resource fluidity has been known to be the most significant factor in achieving a competitive advantage.