Empirical Relationship of Company's Intangible Resources and Corporate Financial Performance- A Panel Data Approach

Abstract

The present analysis proposed a model to explain the impact of corporate intangible resources, such as research & development (R&D), human capital, and corporate reputation on corporate financial performance. The corporate financial performance was measured with two determinants, return on assets (ROA) & return on equity (ROE). The data had been collected from 81 different manufacturing and consumer goods companies for three years from 2014 to 2016. To investigate the association considering the intangible resources and control variables, the panel data regression is applied. For the descriptive analysis, the mean, dispersion, and correlation among all the variables are examined and the redundant fixed effect test is applied to choose an appropriate model between panel data regression and pooled OLS regression. The study results highlighted that the intangible resources human capital and research & development have significantly and positively impacted the financial performance indicators ROE and ROA. However, the intangible resource corporate reputation significantly, but negatively affects the corporate financial performance ROE and ROA. Likewise, the control variable leverage has a significant impact, but the size has an insignificant effect on corporate financial performance. The study highlights the importance of a firm's intangible recourse in the organizational performance and gives a wider scope to investigate the influence of other intangible resources on organizational financial performance.