• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.125-150
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• 2021

The paper investigates investor sentiment's role in boosting Japanese companies to enhance their environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) performance. Using ESG scores of 367 firms between 2005 and 2019 from the ASSET4 database, we find that negative sentiment in the previous year, both firm and market level, can be a stimulation for the company's commitments to its ESG activities next year. Notably, the moderating effect of the business sector and economic cycle on the sentiment-ESG inference are detected in our study differentiating between corporate and market sentiment, which have never been reported before. In detail, we discover that the impact of firm-specific sentiment is less pronounced for high-sensitive ESG firms. On the other hand, the driving force of market sentiment on corporate social behaviors weakens when economic recessions happen. Our results are robust after controlling for potential endogeneity issues and using alternative proxies for market sentiment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.243-253
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• 2020

As economic profits and social influences of firms grow with economic development and their organizational expansion, consumers increasingly require firms to have their social responsibility. Because social responsibility strongly influences corporate reliability, consumers' intention to purchase, customer loyalty to the products and the recognition of an ethical firm have gained attention as a concept of strategical importance. The prosperity of society should be proceeded for the sustainable development of a firm and the necessity of social responsibility should be emphasized to achieve virtuous circle structure that promotes growth. Additionally, the social responsibility should be proceeded to form trust on a firm. It is very important to change the recognition of consumers to purchase products and increase the profit of a company. This study aims to analyze how social responsibility properties of firms (economic, ethical, discretionary, and legal aspects as low-level factors of social responsibility which Carroll (1979) defined) affect corporate reliability and purchase intention. The analysis found that consumers trust in firms are positively influenced by ethical responsibility (0.391), economic responsibility (0.293), legal responsibility (0.251), and discretionary responsibility (0.248). The relationship between sub-factor of social responsibility and purchase intention is not significantly influenced by other explanatory variables. Corporate trust exerts a direct influence on purchase Intention (0.456). The social responsibility of a firm didn't influence a direct purchase intention. It was found that it brought positive effect on the purchase intention in the course of forming trust. This study suggests that firms should make efforts to understand the relationship between corporate trust and purchase intention along with the characteristics of social responsibility that consumers recognize and improve management strategies for mutual complementary interests.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.31-43
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• 2018

Purpose - We examine how a Korean retail firm's social responsibility is related to its financial performances. The traditional view of corporation expects a negative relationship, while the stakeholder theory expects a positive one. Research design, data, and methodology - We adopt the ESG score, published by Korean Corporate Governance Service to measure the level of socially responsible activity for the Korean retail firms. The ordinary least square method is adopted to investigate this relationship. The publicly traded retail firms are examined from 2011 to 2016. Results - We find that the total ESG score is negatively related to ROE but shows no statistically significant relationship with ROA and Tobin's Q value. However, a firm's environmental score is negatively related with both of ROE and ROA. Its social score is no conclusive relationship with the performance measures. The governance score is negatively related to the value of Tobin's Q. Conclusions - This paper generally supports the traditional view of corporate theory, especially in terms of ROE. This evidence is not well aligned with the existing study for Korean corporations generally documenting positive relationships. We find almost no empirical evidence supporting the stakeholder theory of corporation in the Korean retail industry.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.101-108
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• 2013

In this paper, we examine the impact of family ownership mechanism on the firm's debt policy. Our results show that family firms tend to have a lower debt level, compared with non-family firms. Foreign investors are found to lead to a reduction in the firm's debt level through their monitoring incentives for dominating large shareholders. The firm's profitablily is related to a lower level of debt, whereas higher tangible assets and firm size are positively associated with high debt ratios due to the possibility of large collateral assets. Some implications are that foreign investors can reduce the agency costs of dominating large shareholders in family firms through monitoring activities, thus enhancing the efficiency of business decision-makings.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.131-177
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• 2006

This paper examines a simultaneous determination of corporate control mechanisms, and its effects on firm performance. The corporate control mechanisms considered include the following; insider shareholding, institutional shareholding, the board of directors, dividend policy, and capital structure. This paper applies a simultaneous equation methodology and investigates the interdependence among the corporate control mechanisms. In the first part, the paper finds that firm-level variations of control mechanisms are large across time although average variations are relatively small. These variations are related to one another, which is confirmed by Granger causality test based on dynamic panel autoregression model. More specifically insider shareholding, institutional shareholding and outside director ratio cause each other. With regard to interdependence among the control mechanisms, 2SLS(two stage least squares) regression results show that insider shareholding and institutional shareholding are substitutes while institutional shareholding acts as complements to the ratio of outside members in the board of directors. Then in the second part, the paper examines the relationship between firm performance and corporate governance. Firm performance, measured by Tobin's Q, has a positive association with leverage ratio while that has a negative relation to outside director ratio. This suggests that there may be a room for reforming corporate governance in Korea. Specifically it is necessary to enhance the independence of the outside directors.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2020

This study examines the effect of financial reporting opacity and audit quality on stock price crash risk using listed firms in Japan. This study is the first research to examine the effect of financial reporting opacity on crash risk using a Japanese listed company. Furthermore, the effect of audit quality on crash risk is verified. High level auditors can mitigate crash risk by playing a role as a corporate governance device mechanism to reduce agency costs. We use a logistic regression and linear regression model to test whether financial reporting opacity and audit quality affect crash risk using listed firms in the Japanese stock exchange market during the fiscal years 2015 January through 2017 February. The results of this study suggest that the financial reporting opacity variable shows a positive relationship with CRASH, which states that a firm with more opaque financial reporting increases crash risk. The results suggest also that the firms audited by Big4 auditors experience less crash risk, implying that the audit quality in Japan can be one of the factors mitigating firm's crash risk. This study provides implications for financial reporting and audit quality to external stakeholders who wants to avoid losses.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

This study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate governance among major US corporations belonging to S&P 500 index during 2000-2008. Specifically, it examines the ways in which firms engage their boards of directors in integrated strategy by establishing a public affairs(PA) or social responsibility(SR) committee at the board level and the effects of this practice on their corporate social performance(CSP). The empirical findings show that negative CSP is the major driver for establishing such a committee, that is, firms suffering from negative CSP as a result of experiencing undesirable social events tend to establish such a committee. On the other hand, such a committee helps the firm increase positive CSP once it is established. In other words, the purpose of establishing such board-level committees is to address problems associated with negative CSP, and once established, they can help enhance positive CSP by enabling the firm to integrate market, non-market, and social responsibility aspects in strategy formulation more effectively. This is evidence that Baron's integrated strategy framework can help firms achieve tangible outcomes.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.35-43
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• 2017

This paper explores the impact of corporate control, measured by ownership structure, on top-executives' compensation in Japan. According to agency theory, the pay-performance link is expected to be affected by the firm's ownership structure. Using a sample of 4,411 firm-year observations (401 firms for the 11-years period from 2001 to 2011) for Japanese non-financial firms publicly traded on the first section and second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), this study demonstrates that institutional ownership (both financial and corporate) is negatively related to the level of executives' compensation. Such finding is in line with efficient monitoring hypothesis which claims that the presence of institutional shareholders provides direct monitoring over managers, limits managerial self-dealing and curves the increase in top-executives pay. On the other hand, the results also show that managerial ownership is positively related to their compensation which supports managerial power theory hypothesis, i.e. management-controlled firms are more likely to extract more compensation from the business than other firms. Overall, this study confirms that corporate control has significant impact on cash compensation paid to Japanese top-executives after controlling the conventional pay-performance relationship.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.195-208
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• 2021

Purpose - The primary objective of this paper is to empirically examine whether the engagement of socially responsible activities in corporations affect the tendency of tax-avoidance by using the sample of Korean companies. We are particularly interested in Chaebol-affiliated firms, which are a special type of Korean conglomerates. Design/methodology/approach - This study is based on a sample of 5,496 firm-year observation data from 2011 to 2017 by using the ESG ratings from the Korea Corporate Governance Service(KCGS), a ESG rating agency in Korea. For our analysis, the firms were separated into 1,547 Chaebol-affiliated firms and other 3,949 firms. All financial and firm data were extracted from Fn-guide, which provides financial information for Korean listed firms. Findings - We find that CSR is generally positively related to the effective tax rate, which indicates a lower level of tax avoidance for more socially responsible firms. In particular, a positive relationship of social score with GAAP ETR was observed. Research implications or Originality - We find that the positive relationship is robust to the group of chaebol and non-chaebol affiliates unlike extant literature.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.365-371
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• 2021

In the wake of several high-profile corporate accounting scandals, there has been evidence that companies are more eager to hire Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) with an accounting background. This signals that CEOs with an accounting background are recognized and trusted by the corporate world to boost the quality of financial reporting of a company. If it is so, in the context of combating the earnings management, hiring CEOs with an accounting background (being a conservative accounting practitioner), could become one of the effective internal corporate governance mechanisms (CGM) to bring down the earnings management activities. This study attempts to provide insight into the level of conservatism of the CEO with an accounting background. Following Basu (1997) and Khan and Watt (2009), the firm-year measure of conservatism (C_Score) was obtained, which later was associated with the accounting education of the CEO to determine their relationship. As expected, CEOs with accounting background exhibit a higher level of moral reasoning than their non - accounting educated counterparts. The finding of this study is useful to persuade the policymaker to consider lifting the trend of hiring a CEO with an accounting background as one of the best practices that the companies can work out to lessen earnings management activities.