Business Strategies and Disclosure of Research and Development Activities

The company's business strategy reflects how the company is competitive in the company's chosen market. The company can, in order to strengthen its business strategy, adopt a set of policies and activities that will enable them to gain a sustainable competitive edge in their preferred market. As the company's strategies affect the company's research and development activities, the strategy that the company chooses can also affect the amount of disclosure by the company. Therefore, in this research, the effect of commercial strategies on the disclosure of research and development activities has been studied. The required data of this study were collected from 86 member companies of Tehran Stock Exchange during the period of 2011-2016 with the help of RahAward software and Tehran Stock Exchange website. In this research, a checklist was used to measure the disclosure of research and development activities. The statistical technique used to test hypotheses is multivariate regression. Research findings in relation to the first hypothesis test show that the differentiation strategy has a significant positive effect on disclosure of research and development activities. Also, the findings of the second hypothesis show that cost leadership strategy has a negative and significant effect on the disclosure of research and development activities. These findings can be useful for managers and policymakers to decide on and plan regular programs in order to select the type of company's strategies.