Impacts of strategic orientations on new product development and firm performances

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between strategic orientations as well as the role played by them to impact the performance of industrial firms. Design/methodology/approach The paper formulates some hypotheses from the literature review. These hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling with data collected from 292 randomly selected firms operating in several industrial sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Findings The findings of this study showed the importance of these strategic orientations in enhancing the performance of Saudi industrial firms and emphasized the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation in the relationships of market orientation and technology orientation to new product development performance and firm performance. Research limitations/implications The study discusses the findings and advances certain limitations and research and managerial implications for future research avenues. It proposes some recommendations to help Saudi firms to choose more than one orientation simultaneously and adopt an appropriate configuration of orientations. Future research has to consider the interplay between these strategic orientations and the impacts of environmental turbulence in terms of market and technology turbulence on strategic orientations – performance relationship. Practical implications The study suggests that managers of Saudi industrial firms should utilize a mix of aspects from several strategic orientations such as market and technology through entrepreneurial capabilities and resources that enhance higher levels of performance. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship and strategic management by showing the reliability of scales used and the confirmatory of the factor structure. It also contributes to business practices by showing the importance for Saudi firms to combine different strategic orientations and provide more attention to the interplay of these orientations in order to perform better in such a transitional context.