This study attempts to explore how working capital decision, that is, aggressive investment and finance decision and efficiency of the working capital management (WCM) contribute to the profitability operationalised by gross operating profit (GOP) and return on assets of listed manufacturing firms in Bangladesh. To investigate this relationship, the study has taken into consideration of 468 sample observations from 108 listed firms covering the year from 2013 to 2017. This study finds that aggressive investment and finance decision significantly contribute to the profitability of the firm. Besides, the efficiency of WCM has significant impact on the profitability. In addition, the constructs of efficiency of WCM—that is, days in inventory outstanding, days in sales outstanding—has significant negative impact on the profitability of the firm. Unfortunately, this study finds no significant impact of days in payables outstanding on firm’s profitability.

This study aims to investigate the factors which have impact on profitability of the manufacturing firms of Bangladesh. The determinants are divided into three categories i.e. firm-specific, industry-specific and macroeconomic factors and the profitability of the firms is defined with return on assets (ROA). To investigate this relationship, the study has taken into consideration of 508 sample observations from 113 Bangladeshi listed manufacturing firms covering the year from 2014 to 2018. The model this study used, includes the dynamic aspect of profitability and thus a dynamic panel estimator i.e. the General Method of Moments (G.M.M.) was applied. The result of this study shows that firm-specific factors (age, labor cost), industry-specific factor (concentration) and macroeconomic factors (G.D.P. growth rate, inflation) have significant influence on manufacturing firm's profitability. Contribution/Originality:This study examined the Panel data by using General Method of Moments (G.M.M.) to investigate the determinants of profitability which contributes to the existing literature in manufacturing industry of Bangladesh by introducing variables from three different categories; firm-specific, industry-specific and especially macroeconomic factors for the very first time.