Conceptualizing service ecosystem agility to maintain functionality in the face of perturbations

While service ecosystems typically rely on self-adjustment to adapt to change, these mechanisms are often inadequate to maintain ecosystem functionality during perturbations. Specifically, the gradual and reactive nature of self-adjustment, dependent on institutional flexibility and resource availability, cannot match the escalating scale, complexity, and velocity that characterize perturbations. In response, the concept of agility has gained attention for its potential to support continuity in evolving environments. However, current agility literature adopts organization-centric perspectives that overlook ecosystem interdependencies and remain theoretically unsuitable for addressing perturbations that exceed natural adaptive thresholds. To fill this gap, we introduce the concept of Service Ecosystem Agility (SEA). Through rigorous theoretical synthesis of self-adjustment and agility literatures, we develop an ecosystem-centered understanding of agility that creates emergent properties unavailable to existing conceptualizations. The resulting SEA concept comprises four interconnected building blocks: multi-level actor interconnectedness, proactive-reactive orientation, coordinated resource integration, and calibrated response capability. Each building block addresses limitations that neither self-adjustment mechanisms nor existing agility approaches can resolve independently. Through the analysis of literature, we develop theoretical propositions that specify what must exist for SEA to operate efficiently. These propositions illustrate conditions that enable SEA’s building blocks to materialize in practice and provide a foundation for future empirical validation. This research advances the service ecosystem literature by explaining functionality maintenance phenomena that existing theory cannot account for and by identifying building blocks that enable ecosystem-level agility during perturbations.