The effect of organizational agility on institutional excellence in the department of passport and immigration in UAE : The organizational performance as a mediator variable

Organizational agility refers to an organizational capability to adapt to changes in response to both internal and external environmental conditions. The objective of this study was to examine the mediating role of organizational performance in achieving institutional excellence within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Department of Passports and Immigration. This department was selected due to the UAE’s status as one of the world’s leading destinations for tourists and immigrants, which places distinctive operational and policy demands on its immigration system. The department faces various challenges in decision-making process that affect both its performance and institutional excellence. To explore this, the study drew on existing literature to examine three dimensions of organizational agility: sensing agility, decision-making agility, and acting agility. Primary data were collected from 310 employees of the UAE Department of Passport and Immigration. The data were first tested for normality, and hypothesis testing was conducted using SMART PLS 3. The results showed that sensing agility, decision making agility, and acting agility had a significant impact over institutional excellence. Thereby, this results support the proposition of resource based view (RBV) by addressing its limitation in accounting for organizational change. Likewise, all three dimensions of agility also significantly influenced organizational performance which, in turn, had a significant effect on institutional excellence. The study confirmed the theoretical significance of the study by testing the mediating role of organizational performance between the three types of agility and institutional excellence. The integration of the RBV, Grunig’s Excellence Theory, and Tom Peters’ Theory within a single framework demonstrated a synergistic theoretical alignment. The findings offers practical implications for policymakers by highlighting the importance of timely and effective decision-making in achieving institutional excellence.