Measuring the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between affective organizational commitment and organizational responsiveness : a study of Egyptian incubated startups in ICT sector

Abstract EN

Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) encompasses and connects a vast range of management discipline which turns it to be a wide-spread concept.

Based on Miller’s theory, three dimensions of EO have been identified and used consistently: risk taking; innovativeness; and pro-activeness.

Therefore, the main aim of this study is to measure the impact of EO on the relationship between affective organizational commitment and organizational responsiveness through the moderating effect of business incubator (BI).

Based on the theoretical researches and data extracted from 185 entrepreneurs who are incubated by TIEC- one of the affiliates of ministry of Communication and Information Technology in Egypt, three hypothesized relationships are investigated in this study; the relationship between affective organizational commitment and EO, the relationship between EO and organizational responsiveness, and the moderating role of BI on the relationship between EO and organizational responsiveness.

The results reveal that the affective committed employees have a significant impact on EO dimensions since they regard the entrepreneurships positively and agree with their missions and goals.

Such committed employees actively endorse what the entrepreneurship is doing and remain employed there because they want to.

Also, EO has more significant influence on the organizational responsiveness in the presence of BI as the latter has played a vital role in speeding up the growth of start-ups and guiding early-stage businesses on the road to commercial success.

However, BIs need to overcome many pitfalls: they need to provide real value in terms of supporting innovativeness and proactiveness, not just offering space and technological support, to measure success and progress more than just funding and to update their service portfolio especially for the elder generations and finally introducing more proper exit policies.