Effects of innovation on corporate performance of manufacturing companies: which roles associated to social responsibility?

Abstract

The present research aims at examining the overall impacts of innovation on corporate performance through the lens of the social responsibility perspective. For this purpose, 184 complete questionnaires were obtained from 250 managers of manufacturing companies located in the Rasht Industrial city during 2019–2020. Gathered data were subject to a SEM (Structural Equation Modelling) analysis, via SPSS (version 22) and LISREL (version 8.8) softwares. Conclusive findings support that innovation has a positive moderate effect on social responsibility and a strong influence on corporate performance. On the other hand, both economic and social dimensions of social responsibility have meaningful and moderate impacts on Rasht industrial enterprises’ performance. Moreover, innovation practices play an important role in improving the influence of social responsibility dimensions on corporate performance of those companies. Based on the results attained, it would be recommended that innovative manufacturing organisms engage more in CSR activities to upgrade their organisational performance.

Keywords:

• Innovation
• social responsibility
• corporate performance
• manufacturing companies
• the Rasht industrial complex

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohsen Akbari

Dr Mohsen Akbari is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Guilan, in Iran. He has published numerous papers in prestigious international journals such as European Management Review, Expert Systems with Applications and others. He is also a review board member at the Journal of Consumer Marketing.

Amina Omrane

Dr Amina Omrane is an associate-professor (HDR) of management science and entrepreneurship at the university of Sfax, in Tunisia. She is a reseacher at ECST RA, at IHEC Carthage. She published many interesting books as well as scientific papers in ranked journals such as IJESB, JAB, IJBG, RIP ME, etc. She is also coediting some other collective books and serves as reviewer for many considerable journals.

Arezoo Hoseinzadeh

Arezoo Hoseinzadeh is a researcher who holds a master of Marketing from the Rahbord Higher Education Institute, in Iran. Her main areas of research involve social rsponsibility, consumer behaviour, and advertising. She has been working on some projects with her professors and have published some papers in several specific Iranian journals.

Hani Nikookar

Hani Nikookar is a Ph.D Student in Business Policy at the Faculty of Literature And Humanities, University of Guilan, Rasht, in Iran. His Research Interest covers Leadership, Innovation, Corporate Performance, Corporate Social Responsibility and More. He is expanding his Research in the above areas.