Impact of Operating Cash Flow on Research and Development Costs with Emphasis on the Role of Managers' Competency

The present study aimed at understanding the effect of managerial competency (the indicator of this variable was cashback and non-cashback reward to the board) on research and development expenditures due to the operating cash flow. For this purpose, the data of the companies listed on the stock exchange were used as the research population. The research time scope was considered from 2009 to 2016. Thus, five hypotheses were designed and the fixed effects method was used by generalized least squares method to test the research hypotheses. The results of the study indicated that operating cash flow and cashback reward have a significant positive effect on the research and development expenditures of companies while non- cashback reward has no significant effect. In addition, the results indicated the negative effect of cashback reward on the relationship between operating cash flow and research and development expenditures while non- cashback reward has no significant effect.