CSR categories and R&D investment: the moderating role of Managerial emotional intelligence

Abstract The purpose of this paper was to determine the important role of Chief Executive Officer emotional intelligence to explain the interaction relationship between research and development investment and corporate social responsibility categories. This research relied on the completion of a questionnaire type inquiry structured around the table-based analysis. The questionnaire was sent out to a large sample of Tunisian firms’ Chief Executive Officer. The results of the 96 valid responses were entered for analysis by the partial least squares method. They show the significant effect of Chief Executive Officers’ emotional intelligence on the relation between corporate social responsibility categories (customer, employee, community, territory and environment) and research and development investment. In addition, the Chief Executive Officer emotional intelligence provided explanations into research and development investment for the corporate social responsibility problems in Tunisia. Firstly, this study emphasized the important role of research and development investment in the corporate social responsibility categories. Secondly, a new data analysis method “decision-tree” was applied to estimate the moderating effects of managerial emotional intelligence on the CSR – R&D relationship.