The impact of managing working capital on the return on assets of economic organizations of the I.R. Iran’s Ministry of Defense with a emphasize on the role of macroeconomic factors

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD in Accounting, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

2 MSc in Accounting, University of Tehran, Tehran. Iran .

Abstract

One of the main duties of financial managers is the proper working capital management, and adopting an appropriate strategy can increase the return on assets of the organization.The current research investigates the effect of working capital management on the return on assets of economic organizations of the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics of Islamic Republic of Iran, focusing on the direct and moderating roles of inflation and GDP variables. The research hypotheses were tested over a 7 year period (from 2011-2017) using the ordinary least squares with robust standard errors. The results show that by decreasing the cash conversion cycle, the return on assets of economic organizations of the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics increases.This result supports the adoption of an aggressive working capital management strategy. Additionally, the results show that gross domestic product (GDP) has a negative significant relationship and inflation rate has a positive significant relationship with the return on the assets of economic organizations. Results from the two last research models indicate that GDP and inflation rate do not moderate the relationship between working capital management and return on assets. We also performed additional tests in support of the research results in the robustness tests section.

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