Competitive strategies, firm performance and corporate social responsibility as third strategy

In recent decades low-cost and differentiation strategies are recognized as dominant strategies in business and researchers has indicated that having a business strategy can improve firm performance. On the other hand, corporate social responsibility is proposed as a third complementary strategy. However, according to the kind of strategy, applying corporate social responsibility can affect firm performance negatively or positively.
According to this, the research purpose is the investigation of business strategy and disclosure of information on corporate social responsibility on the firm performance. To measure the kind of business strategy the Yuen et al. model (2017) and for corporate social responsibility Mishra et al. model were employed. The research period was 2011-2015 and the sample was consisted of 96 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. The findings of research indicate competitive strategies have a positive and significant effect on performance. Furthermore, the effect of competitive strategies on corporate social responsibility is positive and significant. However, where corporate social responsibility disclosure is higher differentiation strategy has more effect on performance rather than low-cost strategy.