Administrative transparency and entrepreneurial orientation in the Jordanian Customs Department: Testing the moderating role of organizational culture

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractAdministrative transparency is a critical lever for fostering effectiveness and entrepreneurial behavior in public agencies, especially in high-compliance settings. This study examines the effect of administrative transparency, disaggregated into information, decision-making, and communication transparency, on organizational entrepreneurial orientation and assesses whether organizational culture strengthens this relationship in the Jordanian Customs Department. A descriptive–analytical design was employed with a field survey administered in 2025; population descriptors were drawn from the Department’s 2024 Annual Report. We surveyed upper- and middle-level managers (directors, deputies, and section heads) across the Department’s directorates and units. Of 300 distributed questionnaires, 252 valid responses were analyzed (usable rate 84.0%). Simple regressions show that overall administrative transparency positively predicts entrepreneurial orientation (R = 0.579; R² = 0.335; F = 126.059; p < 0.001). Dimension-wise, information transparency explains 24.8% of the variance (R = 0.489; B = 0.610; p < 0.001), decision-making transparency explains 40.4% (R = 0.635; B = 0.664; p < 0.001), while communication transparency has a significant but weak effect (R = 0.172; R² = 0.030; B = 0.253; p = 0.006). Hierarchical regression indicates that adding organizational culture increases the model’s explanatory power from R² = 0.335 to 0.554 (ΔR² = 0.219; p < 0.001), evidencing a strengthening role of culture in the transparency–entrepreneurial orientation linkage. We conclude that institutionalizing transparent information and decision-making processes within a supportive culture can meaningfully enhance entrepreneurial orientation in public organizations.