Investigating the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and agility in manufacturing ente4prises Case Study: Manufacturing Enterprises of Kerman Province

In today’s business environments which are accompanied by change and uncertainty, firms can improve their performance through entrepreneurial orientation adoption. In other hand, the organizational agility concept has been emerged as a solution to encounter rapid change and uncertainty of the environment. This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and agility in manufacturing firms. In order to perform mentioned investigation, a case study in this regard has been done on a statistical sample consisting of one hundred manufacturing firms of Kerman province. The data of entrepreneurial orientation and its five components namely innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy as independent variables and agility as dependent variable gathered by questionnaire. The survey’s hypotheses were investigated by Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient tests. The results of statistical analysis confirmed a positive and significant relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and agility. In addition, all components of entrepreneurial orientation except risk taking, indicated positive and significant relationship with agility. Consequences of this study can help business managers and owners to evaluate the status of entrepreneurial orientation and agility in their firms and to enhance them in order to improve the performance of their businesses if needed.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship , Entrepreneurial orientation , Organizational agility , Agile manufacturing