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

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.