Current competitive environments necessitate that firms pursue electronic integration in parallel to agility. However, most research to date has examined integration and agility relatively independently and has overlooked the relationship between them. Using coordination theory, this paper suggests that integration enables the two capabilities of agility (i.e., sensing and responding). Results from a study of 303 business unit operations of manufacturing organizations show that integration within business units and with outside partners is positively associated with process coupling of the value chain, both internally and externally. Further, both types of integration are positively associated with knowledge flow within and outside the business unit. In turn, both lead to higher capability to sense change in the business environment and respond to it with agility. This research helps us understand the integration-agility relation better by investigating the role of the knowledge and process capabilities.

当前的竞争环境使得公司必须追求与敏捷性并行的电子集成。但是，迄今为止，大多数研究都相对独立地研究了集成和敏捷性，却忽略了它们之间的关系。本文使用协调理论，提出整合可以实现敏捷的两种功能（即感知和响应）。对制造组织的303个业务部门运营的研究结果表明，业务部门内部以及与外部合作伙伴的集成与内部和外部的价值链的流程耦合正相关。此外，两种类型的集成都与业务部门内外的知识流成正相关。反过来，两者都导致更高的能力来感知业务环境中的变化并敏捷地对其做出响应。通过研究知识和过程能力的作用，这项研究可以帮助我们更好地理解集成敏捷性关系。