Investigating the Impact of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Marketing on Business Performance: Explaining the Mediating Role of Employee Participation

Todays, businesses need to have a deep understanding of their performance in order to stay competitive and maintain their competitive advantage over competitors. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of entrepreneurship orientation and entrepreneurial marketing on business performance by explaining the mediating role of employee participation. This research has been applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey. The target population of the study was 462 employees of Mellat Bank in Golestan province. The sample size was 212 according to Krejcie and Morgan table and simple random sampling method was used to sampling. Data were collected through a 55-item questionnaire which formulated from previous researches about entrepreneurship orientation (Antonik and Hisrich, 2003), entrepreneurial marketing (Becherr et al., 2012), business performance (Huang et al., 2015), employee participation (Marwan et al., 2018). Data analysis was performed by structural equation method with Smart PLS software. The results showed that the entrepreneurship orientation and entrepreneurial marketing have a positive and significant effect on employee participation. Employee participation has a positive and significant effect on business performance. The findings also confirmed the mediating role of employee participation in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial marketing on business performance.