EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION ON ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE IN MALAYSIAN SMES AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY AND ABSORPTIVE CAPABILITY

Abstract

The ability to adapt and demonstrate resilience is critical when navigating competitive and turbulent business environments. In recent years, businesses have been confronted with significant disruptions and unprecedented challenges. The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic for instance have significantly impacted various sectors of employment and business. This had such a substantial impact that it resulted in a negative effect on the country's economic growth. The present study aims to examine the impact of organizational orientation on the organizational resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia and the mediating role of organizational ambidexterity and absorptive capability. This study employed the dynamic capability theory as this theory and organizational resilience is closely related concepts, in which both are concerned with a firm’s ability to adapt and respond to changing environmental conditions. Dynamic capability can enhance a firm’s resilience by enabling it to rapidly respond to new environmental opportunities or threats and to develop new resources and capabilities to address future challenges. Similarly, resilience can support dynamic capability development by enabling a firm to recover from disruptions or failures and learn from these experiences to improve its capabilities and processes. Therefore, this study can provide new directions on how dynamic capability theory is generated and integrated with the resource-based view (RBV) theory as the dynamic capability framework is based on the RBV.