The Moderating Effect of Social Responsibility on the Relationship between Investment and Performance in State-Owned Enterprises

Studies on strategic development goals in the last half century indicate that social responsibility and commitment have been the basis for judging the performance of governments. Therefore, in the present study, the effect of social responsibility on the relationship between investment and performance in state-owned Enterprises was investigated.

In this research, 125 companies from the listed companies in the stock exchange including 31 public companies were selected as the research sample and the effect of social responsibility on the relationship between the mentioned variables during the period 2013-2019 was tested. To test the hypotheses, regression analysis by panel data method has been used.

The results show that in  general, social responsibility has a moderating effect on the relationship between investment and corporate performance. However, this effect is less common in state-owned enterprises due to lower levels of agency problems.

Considering that the negative effect of social responsibilities on performance in state-owned enterprises is less, the government can achieve social development goals by investing in this sector.