Strategic Charitable Giving and R&D Innovation of High-Tech Enterprises: A Dynamic Perspective Based on the Corporate Life Cycle

As important components of differentiation strategy, charitable giving and R&D innovation can have a profound impact on the survival and growth of high-tech enterprises. However, the strategic interaction between them has not been studied in depth using the whole-life-cycle perspective. With Chinese A-share-listed high-tech enterprises in the 2015–2020 period as the research sample, the Tobit model was used to empirically test the interaction between charitable giving and R&D innovation and analyze differences in their utility over different life cycles. The results show that there was a strategic synergy between charitable giving and R&D innovation and charitable giving could significantly improve R&D innovation, but its utility was affected by changes in the life cycle of firms. Among them, the synergy utility was highest for maturing firms, followed by declining firms, but not significant for growing firms. A further study on the synergistic utility of mature firms found that, for non-state firms where executives have an R&D background, charitable giving could promote integration of external advantageous resources and R&D innovation development. Finally, the regression findings remained significant after accounting for possible endogeneity and heteroskedasticity between charitable giving and R&D innovation.