Strategic Flexibility Mediating the Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Organizational Excellence

The study aimed to analyze the impact of entrepreneurial orientation in achieving organizational excellence through strategic flexibility. This research is a quantitative study. The population of this study consists of all managers in the upper and middle management at the Jordanian Commercial Banks. The study conducted a comprehensive survey, by using its population as a sample, which totals 1023 managers. The data collection tool is a questionnaire that consists of 29 items was developed. The results show that the level of availability of entrepreneurial orientation, organizational excellence, and strategic flexibility has reached a high degree at Jordanian Commercial Banks. Other findings show that entrepreneurial orientation in its combined dimensions (innovative entrepreneurial orientation, proactive entrepreneurial orientation, and risk-taking entrepreneurial orientation) has a statistically significant impact on achieving organizational excellence through strategic flexibility in Jordanian commercial banks. From the findings, the authors conclude that strategic flexibility plays a partial mediating role between entrepreneurial orientation (with all its dimensions) and organizational excellence. At the same time, strategic flexibility fails to play a mediator role between entrepreneurial orientation dimensions and organizational excellence.


INTRODUCTION
In recent years, organizations have been interested in achieving organizational excellence (OE). OE and outperforming competitors by developing their leadership. This task imposed the greatest responsibility in planning work policies and making decisions on which the organization's success requires adopting scientific methodologies and encouraging entrepreneurship to renew leadership and achieve innovative visions.
Jordanian commercial banks face challenges due to continuous change in customers' needs, diversity of services provided, globalization, information and communication technology (ICT) revolution and the rapid development in the banking industry at local, regional, and global levels. Therefore, banks strive to develop services to meet customers' needs to gain competitive advantage and reach an acceptable degree of OE.
Based on the foregoing, the study problem is crystallized in answering the following question: "What is the impact of the EO in achieving OE through SF in Jordanian commercial banks?"

Entrepreneurial Orientation
Entrepreneurial orientation has been defined as a strategy that drives the organization to achieve a competitive advantage based on innovation and risk-taking activities to enter new markets (Mohsen, 2017). Aliyu et al., 2015;Revilla et al., 2014 indicated that the EO expresses the ability of the organization to make decisions that support innovation and new ideas, which leads to ushering in new business. Marei and Hassan, 2017;Thibault, 2016 emphasized that the EO is the organization's or individual's ability to innovate new ways and methods of conducting existing business, or to create new businesses capable of providing the organization with a competitive advantage, while taking into account the ability to bear emerging risks upon implementation. Hoque, 2018;Garcia-Villaverde, 2018;Zhai et al., 2018 argued that EO means an organization's ability to innovate and take initiative in marketing products, and to engage in risky ventures. Hernandez-Perlines, 2018; Kobylinski, 2018 added that EO is a strategic position for entrepreneurs, enabling them to take the right decisions and actions in the field of business performance.

Innovativeness
Innovation has been defined as an administrative activity with a specific methodology, in which the organization takes all the ways and means to provide everything new and innovative to develop products (Apell Karlsson and Wiberg, 2017). Proctor (2018) defines innovative as a process that includes adding value, a degree of novelty, and developing products that are offered by an organization to enhance its competitive position. Stokes et al. (2010) clarify the difference between innovations and innovative; as it became clear that innovative includes discovering new ideas, while innovation includes translating these ideas into reality. Njagi (2016) defined it as an organization's way of dealing with opportunities, and exploiting them despite the uncertainty about business outcomes, especially since entrepreneurial organizations often take more risks in their pursuit of opportunities. Hernández-Linares et al. (2019) indicates that it is the ability of the organization to take risks and these risks are represented in the desire to adopt innovative new ideas, and to provide the basic resources necessary to seize the opportunities available to the entrepreneur, who bears the responsibility for the failure of these ideas or opportunities. Al-Jinini et al. (2019) proclaimed that being proactive in seizing opportunities is one of the basics of leadership, and it is concerned with how to find opportunities, discover them in the surrounding environment, develop them, in order to take advantage of them, and invest them in satisfying customers' needs and desires, and facing competition in the market.

Organizational Excellence
Excellence is the result of a continuous journey of serious work based on correct planning, a correct vision, and clear goals that the organization aspires to achieve. No organization can achieve excellence without effort, and continuous work for improvement and development in organizational performance. Achieving the highest possible level of quality, mastery and excellence has become an urgent and vital requirement. Moreover, it cannot be excluded or neglected, because of the rapid development, change, technological progress in the environment.
Oorganizational excellence is the ability of organizations to pursue their goals by adopting and using modern methods to reach various goals, such as providing high-quality products and services, and generating more profits to achieve a competitive advantage (Al-Ma'aitah et al., 2020; Al-Weshah, 2019).
The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM, 2017) Excellence Model emphasizes that excellence is a way of life, which can occur in organizations, whether small or large, governmental or non-governmental, that provide a service or produce a commodity by building partnerships and taking responsibility for a sustainable future.
Based on the EFQM, there are two sets of OE dimensions (Abbas, 2018; AlHalaseh and Al-Rawadyeh, 2020): a. The first group deals with the enablers and includes leadership, strategy, people, partnership, and resources, and processes b. The second group is concerned with results, including results related to customers, people, and society.
This research studied the most visible components of OE in previous research (Al Shobaki and Abu-Naser, 2016;Al-Ansari, 2018;Alotaibi, 2018;Breadboard, 2017;Herzallah and Abu Lebdah, 2020;Hijjawi, 2020), which are • Leadership Excellence is the leader's distinct ability to exploit organizational opportunities, provide development opportunities, and accept innovative work to help the organization face turbulent processes and multiple crises (Alazab and Alanzi, 2013). Top management is considered to have a direct impact on excellence, through developing the capacity of individuals and encouraging them towards innovation and excellence (Aldalimy et al., 2019). • Excellence in service provision is vital to organizations because distinguished organizations work to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction by using metrics that cover all aspects of service (Herzallah and Abu Lebdah, 2020).

The Relationship between Entrepreneurial Orientation and Organizational Excellence
Studies discussing the relationship between EO and OE have differed according to the study's population and the studied variables. Salah (2019) studied the effect of the EO (creativity, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive offensive) in achieving organizational success. The study showed that the management of Zain Iraq for Mobile Communications used the pioneering trend to enhance its organizational success, and this contribution appeared distinctly in terms of information technology strategy and the characteristics of higher management. Hijjawi (2020) identified the impact of entrepreneurship (innovativeness, anticipation, risk-taking, and fierce competition) in OE, through the mediating role of wise leadership. The study showed that entrepreneurship has a significant impact on both visionary leadership and OE.
The study of Iswaiti (2019) found an effect of organizational leadership on organizational performance. It clarified the presence of statistically significant effects of organizational leadership (creativity, anticipation, risk-taking, offensive competition, and independence) on organizational factors (innovation, customer satisfaction, market share, and social responsibility). The study of (AlHalaseh and Al-Rawadyeh, 2020) showed a statistically significant effect of virtuous leadership (optimism, tolerance, trust, compassion, and integrity) on OE (leadership, partnership and resources, people management, policies and strategy, and process). Shen et al. (2020) discovered that manufacturing firms in China's transactional economy could use pioneering orientation strategies to improve their competitive position and deal with declining economic growth, in addition to enumerating innovation, pre-emption, and risk-taking as advanced methods to deal with environmental change in a market undergoing continuous economic reform.
Therefore, the First Hypothesis could be formulated as follows: H 0.1 : EO has no statistically significant effect on OE in Jordanian commercial banks.

Strategic Flexibility
It is the organization's ability to deal with ambiguities, uncertainties, and changes in the business environment, which is known as reengineering and restructuring (Hamokhalil and Alshikh, 2019). In addition, it is the ability of firms to adapt to new situations, by emphasizing diversity in the corporate environment with the help of flexible strategic directions (Evans, 1991;Grewal and Tansuhaj, 2001;Hess and Flatten, 2019;Zhou and Wu, 2010). It includes the ability of organizations to respond quickly to opportunities and changes in the environment (Brinckmann et al., 2019). The main strategic element of flexibility is the organization's ability to absorb and adapt to the changes that occur in the internal and external environment (Shalender and Yadav, 2019;Wang et al., 2019).
The importance of strategic flexibility emerges from the following reasons (Altahrawi, 2019): 1. Increase the organizations' ability to cope with the rapid changes in the environment efficiently and effectively 2. Enhance the organizations' ability to respond to the changing needs and desires of customers, and reveal their preferences and interest in the organization's marketing capabilities, through the process of interaction between them 3. Increase organizations' ability to display their products and services in the market, generate real value for customers, and respond quickly to the change in customer demands.
In addition, it contributes to increasing the profits of the organization, the quality of processes and products, providing suitable working conditions, increasing productivity, and achieving organizational innovation (Touhi, 2019).
According to (Abbott and Banerji, 2003), the dimensions of SF fall into three categories: market flexibility, production flexibility and competitive flexibility. According to MacKinnon et al. (2008) there are five types of strategic flexibility: operational flexibility, human capital flexibility, and information flexibility, supply chain flexibility, and financial flexibility. The strategic flexibility variable in this study is built upon the Abbott and Banerji (2003) dimensions.

The Relationship between EO and SF
Some research between EO and SF has been conducted, such as Arif (2019) who defined the role of the entrepreneurial trend (creativity, risk-taking, and seizing opportunities) in achieving SF (market, production, and human resources) in the pharmaceutical sector. In addition to the existence of a positive relationship, it showed a variation in the relative importance of the dimensions of the EO that affect strategic flexibility. To investigate the impact of EO and SF, the second hypothesis could be formulated as follows: H 02 : Entrepreneur orientation (innovativeness, proactivity, and risk-taking) has no statistically significant impact on strategic flexibility in Jordanian commercial banks. Grewal and Tansuhaj (2001) defined SF as the ability of organizations to assess and adjust their marketing efforts for a short period to meet any changing environmental conditions quickly. Whereas Johnson et al. (2003) indicates the long-term strategic advantage of companies that adjust themselves proactively (market flexibility) to change. The link between market-based flexibility and environmental uncertainty emphasizes the importance of providing high-level SF (market-based under conditions of high uncertainty) in increasing long-term organizational performance (Beraha, 2018). To investigate impact of SF on OE, the third hypothesis could be formulated as follows: H 03 : Strategic flexibility has no significant impact on organizational excellence in Jordanian commercial banks. Nadkarni and Herrmann (2017) hypothesized that strategic flexibility mediates the relationships between CEO personality and firm performance. The results extend previous research by not only highlighting the importance of CEO personality in driving strategic flexibility, but also indicating how each facet of CEO personality either enhances or inhibits strategic flexibility.

The Relationship between EO and OE Through SF
Reviewing previous studies dealing with the study variables (EO, OE, and SF), it was found that there was a research gap since there were no previous studies (to the best of the researchers' knowledge) that dealt with the variables of the study combined and its dimensions. In addition, there is a dearth of studies dealing with the impact of EO on achieving OE. As well, there is a paucity of studies addressing the effect of the EO on strategic flexibility. Moreover, most previous studies dealt with the concepts of EO, OE, and SF in various sectors, but not in the context of the Jordanian commercial banking sector. Therefore, the fourth main hypothesis is formulated as follows: H 04 : Strategic flexibility has no mediating effect on the relationship between the entrepreneurial orientation and organizational excellence of Jordanian commercial banks. Figure 1 clarifies the study model, which identifies the main and the sub hypotheses that have been studied in this research.

METHODOLOGY
The current study adopted the quantitative approach to achieve the study objectives, and answer its questions. It used the deductive approach, descriptive statistics to describe the variables of the study, and analytical statistics to determine the impact of the EO on achieving OE through SF.

Sample Size and Technique
Jordanian commercial banks constituted the study population, which numbered thirteen commercial banks. This sector plays an important role in the Jordanian economy and is characterized by The researchers adopted the field survey method utilizing the questionnaire as the study instrument. The questionnaire was created using Google Survey. Copies of the questionnaire were sent to the population of the study through social networking sites. Copies of (305) were retrieved; no copy was excluded, with a percentage of (30%) of the total number of distributed questionnaires. The decrease in responses is due to the managers' preoccupation with carrying out the tasks. Nonetheless, according to Krejcie and Morgan (1970) and Sekaran (2000), this is an acceptable percentage. SPSS V.22 and Smart-PLS, 0.3 packages were utilized in the statistical analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the testing of hypotheses and data analysis, the researchers arrived at a number of findings and recommendations.

Results Related to the Availability of the Entrepreneurial Orientation with its Dimensions in Jordanian Commercial Banks
The level of availability of the EO in all its dimensions has reached a high level among commercial banks operating in Jordan.
As for the availability of its three dimensions, the innovative entrepreneurial orientation came in the first place, followed by the proactive orientation in the second place with a high degree of availability, while the entrepreneurial orientation of risk-taking is available to a medium degree in the banks of the research sample.
According to this result, the top management of the banks should strive to promote a sustainable, innovative, and entrepreneurial orientation by encouraging employees to generate new ideas for work, providing support for the experimentation of their proposals, and providing incentives for that.
It stresses the importance of a proactive entrepreneurial approach towards exploring and investing opportunities. As for the average level of availability of EO of risk-taking, it indicates that Jordanian commercial banks have a fear of adopting unsecured entrepreneurial businesses that are characterized by a high degree of risk. Therefore, there is a need to increase the percentage of adopting the entrepreneurial approach to taking risks.

Results Related to the Level of Availability of Strategic Flexibility in Jordanian Commercial Banks
Strategic flexibility attained a high level of availability on the five-point Likert scale according to the Jordanian commercial banks. This result showed the banks' speed in responding to market opportunities and threats, and providing services/products that meet customers' desires and needs, in a way that distinguishes them from other competitors. In addition to the banks' interest in productive flexibility by introducing new banking products and services, which attract the largest number of customers, through which they try to increase their market share, and distinguish themselves over competitors. This result also explains the flexibility of human resources, which was reflected in the banks' interest in optimizing their human resources. By attracting experienced and competent people, working on training them, developing their capabilities to face the changes taking place in the environment, amending their practices to reflect on the success of the banks, and achieving their goals.

Results Related to the Level of Availability of Organizational Excellence in Jordanian Commercial Banks
The level of availability of OE has reached a high level, according to the perceptions of the respondents in Jordanian commercial banks. This result showed that banks are constantly seeking to improve their level of service provision, which gives them a competitive advantage. In addition, this result showed the tendency of banks to provide various services and products uniquely in a way that meets customers' expectations and satisfaction by listening to the problems they face, and accepting their suggestions regarding these services and products. It also explains the leadership excellence in banks, in terms of the interest of the top management in developing work skills within one team, instilling a culture of excellence among workers, creating interaction among them, and directing them to work in the best way, which is conducive to achieving the strategic goals of the banks.

Results Related to the Impact of the Dimensions of the Entrepreneurial Orientation on Achieving Organizational Excellence in Jordanian Commercial Banks, Which Cover H 01 and the Related Three Subhypotheses, H 01-1 to H 01-3
The results in Table 1 indicated that there is a statistically significant impact at the significance level (α ≤ 0.05) of the EO in combined dimensions (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking) in achieving OE in the Jordanian commercial banks. The findings indicated that proactive EO had an effect on OE. Moreover, there is an absence of the impact of innovative EO and risk-taking in achieving OE in Jordanian commercial banks. It is concluded from this that the more interest there is in the entrepreneurial approach, the more it enhances the organizational excellence in the Jordanian commercial banks. This is also explained by the fact that Jordanian commercial banks oblige employees to adhere to providing services to customers in accordance with policies, instructions, work procedures, and in a way that reflects the commitment of Jordanian commercial banks to the instructions issued by the Central Bank of Jordan.
This result agreed with Allouh, 2017;Alotaibi, 2018;Hijjawi, 2020;Mohsen, 2017, which concluded that there is a statistically significant impact of entrepreneurial factors on institutional excellence. While it differed with Alotaibi, 2018;Mohsen, 2017 in terms of the two dimensions of innovativeness and risk-taking in achieving organizational excellence.

Results Related to the Impact of the Dimensions of the Entrepreneurial Orientation on Strategic Flexibility in Jordanian Commercial Banks, It Covers H 02 and the Related Three Subhypotheses, H 02-1 to H 02-3
According to the findings of the study, the EO with its dimensions (innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking) has a statistically significant impact on the SF of Jordanian commercial banks at the significance level (0.05). The study showed the existence of the impact of innovative EO and proactiveness on SF. Also, it showed the lack of an entrepreneurial tendency to take a risk on SF.
It is concluded from this result that whenever there is an interest from the bank administrations in Jordan in the entrepreneurial approach, this will enhance the use of strategic flexibility. It follows from this that Jordanian commercial banks are working hard to maintain their financial integrity and avoid speculation, and are committed to prudent credit and investment policies that take into account the diversity of risk levels for their customers. Also, the various investment tools by building strong and solid allocations while focusing its business primarily on its local markets, through which it will be able to keep pace with environmental developments and changes and respond to them efficiently.

The Result Related to the Impact of Strategic Flexibility in Achieving Organizational Excellence in Jordanian Commercial Banks Covers H 03
The results of the study indicated that there is a statistically significant impact at the significance level (α ≤ 0.05) of the SF in achieving OE in Jordanian commercial banks. It is concluded from this result that the more there is interest in SF, the greater the OE in Jordanian commercial banks. The study's findings revealed that there is a statistically significant effect of EO with its combined dimensions (innovative, proactiveness, and risk-taking) in achieving OE through SF in Jordanian commercial banks at the significance level (α ≤ 0.05).
In testing the subhypotheses, the results showed that there was an impact of the proactive EO in achieving OE through SF. The results also showed that there was no impact of the innovative entrepreneurial orientation and the entrepreneurial orientation by taking risks in achieving organizational excellence through strategic flexibility. Thus, the SF variable plays the role of partial mediation between the EO with its dimensions and the OE ( Table 2). As the t value of the direct path between EO and OE exceeded the indirect path by a slight amount of 0.012 and 0.042. The SF variable also takes the role of partial mediator between proactive EO and OE. Because the direct path's regression coefficient and t Value exceeded the indirect path's regression coefficient value, that is, it weakened the relationship, but it did not cancel the relationship or the effect.
Depending on the above results the researchers can answer the research question: "What is the impact of the EO in achieving OE through SF in Jordanian commercial banks?", as follows: the SF positively and partially influence the relation between EO and OE. The proactive EO play its role in increasing the relation as it is the sole dimension that predict the OE in the indirect path. Therefore, whenever there is more interest in SF, the greater the OE in the organizations. Specially for organizations' leadership seizing, discovering, and developing opportunities in order to take advantage of them, and invest them in satisfying customers' needs and desires, and facing competition in the market. In another word it can predict the leadership excellence Figure 2.

DISCUSSION
The results from the quantitative study indicate that the Jordanian banks' implementation of EO of risk-taking is weak. This, in turn, was reflected in the absence of an impact of the innovative entrepreneurial orientation on organizational excellence in the study sample. It refers to the commitment of Jordanian banks to the instructions issued by the Central Bank of Jordan. These instructions and regulations are intended to protect the bank and its customers from the risks that may result from keeping  pace with environmental developments, information security, and cyber security by attracting the best human competencies, using the best technological systems in the world, following international best practices, and establishing a solid protective framework that forms an integral part of the risk management system at the bank's level by owning a prudent investment and credit policy that includes all high-and low-risk customers. It is clear from the above results that the banks' management stress the importance of a proactive entrepreneurial approach as they work on exploring and exploiting the opportunities available in the market. Being proactive is one of the most important factors that Jordanian commercial banks seek to follow up on everything new in the banking industry, changes that require the development of new services, and anticipate the future needs and desires of customers.
In addition, the results show the role of management in adopting strategic flexibility in terms of productivity flexibility and flexibility in human resources. It distinguishes itself by responding quickly to the market and customer requirements for financial products and services and increasing market shares. It also works to distinguish its human resources by attracting financial and marketing competencies, training workers, and developing their capabilities and capabilities to reach excellence in leadership and service as dimensions of organizational excellence examined in this study.

Implications
The results might be relevant to the practical as well as theoretical impacts of organizational excellence. In the field of practice, the transition from traditional organizations to distinct organizations throughout the use of strategic flexibility provides managers with an important role. Therefore, these findings can be useful to bank managers in designing their strategies by adopting process reengineering, which means re-designing all activities, from inputs outputs, in order to change the current performance patterns into more distinct patterns. These results are also useful for managers to direct their attention to innovation, R & D, technological leadership of innovative new products and services by dealing with and seizing opportunities to achieve customer needs and desires despite uncertainty about business results. As well as easing restrictions by the Central Bank of Jordan on commercial banks, especially since entrepreneurial organizations often bear more risks in their quest to seize opportunities. Theoretically, the findings can improve the comprehension of the integration of EO, OE, and strategic flexibility, improving knowledge about the link between antecedents and organizational excellence.

Limitations and Future Research Directions
The study's tool was distributed to the study's population during the COVID-19 lock-down in Jordan. Therefore, there was a limit to access to the respondents, in spite of using an on-line questionnaire. There was hence a significant chance of receiving incorrect and unexpected responses. The investigation should thus be carried out by physically dispersing research questionnaires. It is advised. One more limitation is due to the scarcity of studies that combine the variables studied, especially in the Middle East region. Future research into other banks and institutions, particularly Islamic banks and funding institutions, should be further advocated. The study should thus concentrate on the characteristics of organizational excellence (e.g. leadership, operational, and quality of products and services), and strategic flexibility (e.g. market flexibility, production flexibility, and human resource flexibility) to identify and achieve more precise outcomes.

CONCLUSION
The results of this study found that the innovative entrepreneurial orientation had no impact on achieving organizational excellence; the entrepreneurial orientation by taking risks had no impact on achieving organizational excellence; and an impact of the proactive entrepreneurial orientation in achieving organizational excellence. The authors conclude that strategic flexibility plays a partial mediating role between entrepreneurial orientation (with all its dimensions) and organizational excellence. At the same time, strategic flexibility fails to play a mediator role between the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions and the organizational excellence.