Shen, K.-Y.; Yan, M.-R.; Tzeng, G.-H. Exploring R&D Influences on Financial Performance for Business Sustainability Considering Dual Profitability Objectives. Sustainability2017, 9, 1964.
Shen, K.-Y.; Yan, M.-R.; Tzeng, G.-H. Exploring R&D Influences on Financial Performance for Business Sustainability Considering Dual Profitability Objectives. Sustainability 2017, 9, 1964.
Shen, K.-Y.; Yan, M.-R.; Tzeng, G.-H. Exploring R&D Influences on Financial Performance for Business Sustainability Considering Dual Profitability Objectives. Sustainability2017, 9, 1964.
Shen, K.-Y.; Yan, M.-R.; Tzeng, G.-H. Exploring R&D Influences on Financial Performance for Business Sustainability Considering Dual Profitability Objectives. Sustainability 2017, 9, 1964.
Abstract
The influence and importance of research and development (R&D) for business sustainability have gained increasing interests, especially in the high-tech sector. However, the efforts of R&D might cause complex and mixed impacts on the financial results considering the associated expenses. Thus, this study aims to examine how R&D efforts may influence business to improve its financial performance considering the dual objectives: the gross and the net profitability. This research integrated a rough-set-based soft computing technique and multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to explore this complex and yet valuable issue. A group of public listed companies from Taiwan, all in the semiconductor sector, was analyzed as a case study. Initially, more than 30 variables were considered, and the adopted soft computing technique retrieved 14 core attributes—for the dual profitability objectives—to form the evaluation model. The importance of R&D for pursuing superior financial prospects is confirmed, and the empirical case demonstrates how to guide an individual company to plan for improvements to achieve its long-term sustainability by this hybrid approach.
Keywords
business sustainability; research and development (R&D); multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM); financial objective; variable-consistency dominance-based rough set approach (VC-DRSA); internetwork relationship map (INRM); directional flow graph (DFG)
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Business and Management
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
