How Strategic Flexibility and Market Orientation affect Companies’ Performance? Evidence from Jordanian Pharmaceutical Companies

Abstract

Performance is one of the most important issues for any company. It considered as an essential criteria to evaluate companies’ ability to survive in the market or go out of it, especially in the context of a dynamic business environment which is characterized by uncertainty and is full of both changes and challenges. Both strategic flexibility and market orientation are considered mechanisms which enable companies to improve and enhance their performance; strategic flexibility enables companies to deal with uncertainty, and market orientation enables companies to focus on the market and take advantage of any available opportunities they find there. This study aimed to discuss how SF and MO affect the performance of pharmaceutical companies in Jordan. This research is a survey study, and a questionnaire was used for data collection. The sample of the study encompass all the pharmaceutical companies in Jordan (42 companies). The questionnaire designed based on Likert scale was forwarded to the managers at those companies to collect the data. The number of respondents was 021. Descriptive analysis, a reliability test, a correlation matrix and linear regression used to get the results by using SPSS 25. The results show that Jordanian Pharmaceutical Companies are market-oriented and they use strategic flexibility as a technique to react to uncertain situations. Both strategic flexibility and market orientation affect the performance of Jordanian Pharmaceutical Companies positively. Strategic flexibility interprets 43.0% of the variance in customer satisfaction and 34.8% of the change in the financial performance of those companies. Market orientation interprets 51.5% of the variance in customer satisfaction and 22.4 % of the variance in the financial performance of those companies. In this study some shortcuts will be used to express the variables, such as, MO: market orientation. SF: strategic flexibility. IG: intelligence generation. ID: intelligence dissemination. Res: responsiveness.