• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.127-133
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• 2018

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the strategies for managing firms' business activities but may have heterogeneity depending on ownership structures. This study investigates the association between group-affiliation and CSR activities. Drawing on a theory from the prior research, this study predicts that group-affiliated firms are less likely to invest on CSR activities. For instance, prior research finds that controlling shareholders expropriate the values of minority shareholders. As one of the motivations of investing on CSR activities is the harmonization among the stakeholders, it leads to the prediction that firms controlled by large shareholders are less likely to engage in CSR activities. Second, group-affiliated firms under poor financial performance benefit from other group members through sharing their financial resources. Thus, there is less incentive for managers of group-affiliated firms to increase their financial performance by conducting CSR. By leveraging firms listed in Korean stock market and CSR score from Korea Economic Justice Institute, the result shows that the group-affiliation is negatively related to CSR activities. The result is consistent in case of applying propensity score-matched sample. Based on the findings of this study, this paper contributes to the related literature by showing the significant association between group-affiliation and CSR decisions.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.77-82
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• 2018

Purpose - This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial reporting quality. Corporate social responsibility is a way for firms to take responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their business operations. Corporate social responsibility is a broad concept that can take various forms depending on the firm and industry. Through corporate social responsibility programs, firms can benefit society. At the same time, firms improve their reputations by increasing engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. However, corporate social responsibility activities are not directly related to profitability, especially for distribution firms. Research design, data, and methodology - 229 distribution & service firm-years between 2011 and 2016 are used for the main analysis. In Korea, Korean Economic Justice Institute evaluates the ethical performance of Korean firms, and the institute annually discloses the scores of top firms. This study uses the KEJI Index scores to measure firm-level corporate social responsibility activities. Discretionary accruals are used as a proxy for financial reporting quality. Discretionary accruals can be used opportunistically, and thus distort the information in earnings. We extract financial data from the KIS Value database. Results - We find that distribution & service firms' engagement in corporate social responsibilities is positively related to their financial reporting quality. First, there is a negative correlation between implementation of corporate social responsibility activities and discretionary accruals. In addition, we find that the coefficient of CSR is significantly negative, supporting our prediction. The result is significant at the 1% level. Conclusions - We examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility activities of distribution firms and their financial reporting quality while most prior studies examine the engagement in corporate social responsibility activities of manufacturing firms. The results of this study show that distribution & service firms engaging in corporate social responsibility activities are likely to maintain high-quality financial reporting.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.35-54
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• 2020

Purpose - It seems common sense that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a key driver of business sustainability. Nevertheless, there has been little research on the performance of socially responsible activities, including economic and environmentally responsibility activities, in internationally diversified firms. Design/methodology - The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of CSR activities on management performance. For this evaluation, an empirical analysis was conducted with total of 2,520 cases, selected from companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index market for six years from 2013 to 2018. As proxies for management performance, financial data such as a total asset net profit ratio and a total asset operating ratio were used. A multivariate regression analysis was conducted to test hypotheses. Findings - The results of this analysis indicated that firms in the CSR outstanding group were ranked significantly higher than other groups in management performance. In addition, CSR activities of internationally diversified firms positively influenced the total asset net profit ratio and total asset operating ratio. Originality/value - The results suggest that the CSR activities of these firms can play a significant role in enhancing management performance in the economic status of Korea, where the degree of export dependency is high.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2016

Patent management activities are considered to play a key role for technology-based firms under the recent knowledge-based economies. This is because intellectual property, including patents, can act as a system for continuous profit generation by protecting firms' products, processes and services. In Korea, healthcare industry is now regarded as one of the promising next generation industries. Despite the promise of healthcare industry, Korean healthcare product manufacturers are faced with turbulent business changes, such as market opening. Even though there are various industrial studies on the effect of patent management activities on firm outcome, previous studies have hardly paid attention to Korean healthcare product manufacturing firms. For this reason, this study identifies the effect of patent management activities, such as patenting activeness, technical excellence and cooperation degree, on firm outcomes, including financial profitability and firm growth, with respect to the Korean healthcare product manufacturers. In this study, we located 86 Korean healthcare manufacturing firms from KORCHAMBIZ and DART, and then collected the data of their patenting activities and outcomes between 2001 and 2013. By applying factor analysis and regression analysis, our empirical study found that firms' patenting activeness has the significant positive relationship on firms' financial profitability, and firms' patenting activeness and technical excellence have the significant positive relationship on firms' financial growth. Our study is an initial attempt to identify the effect of patent management activities on firm outcome within Korean healthcare product manufacturing industry, and thus its results can be used as the basis to formulate national policies for Korean healthcare product industry.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.111-145
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• 2023

This study examines the impact of political connections of Chinese listed firms on CSR(Corporate Social Responsibilities) activities. Firms recognize the political connections as 'non-market strategy' and actively utilize various benefits obtained through them for management activities. In order to utilize these political connections, there is a need for firms to implicitly perform the government's social policy obligations in return for their benefits. In particular, CSR activities in China are one of the government-led social policies unlike in the West, and the government wants firms to solve social problems through active CSR activities. In this background, this study empirically verifies whether firms with political connections are actively carrying out CSR activities required by the government from 2013 to 2019. As a result, Chinese listed firms with political connections have a positive effect on CSR activities. Especially, those with political connections with central government carry out both government benefits and social policy obligations.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.131-152
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• 2021

Political connections may facilitate firms' exporting activities, particularly in developing countries, because politically connected firms may be more likely to receive informational and financial support, allowing them to overcome barriers to export. We test this hypothesis using a unique, firm-level dataset from traditional apparel and textile clusters in the Red River Delta Region in Northern Vietnam. We find that political connection of certain types increases the chance of receiving valuable information or financial support from the government. Moreover, those firms that have access to government information have higher chances of being direct exporters. However, firms that receive financial support from the government are not necessarily engaged in exporting activities. Although politically connected firms are more willing to export, they do not necessarily engage in more exporting activities than firms without such connections. These results suggest that the misallocation of information and financial resources to politically connected but insufficiently productive firms leads to a failure to promote exporting activities. In contrast, political connection increases the chance of importing materials and parts, possibly because high productivity is necessary for exporting, but not for importing.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.145-173
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• 2007

Using patent and firm-level panel data for 1982-2001, this study investigates spillover effects of patents and the strengthening of intellectual property rights on Productivity and Innovation. As well as we consider the effect of intra-industry spillovers, we extend the effect to inter-industry spillovers which implies the effects of IT industries on non-IT industries. The empirical results are summarized as follows. First, allowing for firm-level variables, market competition and technological spillovers, the strengthening of intellectual property rights does not play a significant role on innovative activities. Second, while innovative activities of domestic firms affect significantly firms' innovative activities, those of foreign firms do not. Third, innovative activities of IT industries as inter-industry spillovers play a significant role on innovative activities and labor productivities of domestic firms.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.431-457
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• 2007

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants of innovation in the medium core firms that belong to components and materials industry. For this purpose, we introduce the Schumpeterian hypothesis as a theoretical background at first. According to the Schumpeterian hypothesis, large firms in concentrated markets are likely to have more innovative activities. That means, firm site and market structure are the main determinant of innovation. Then, we propose other economic factors that have been considered to have effects on firms' innovative activities in previous studies. Those factors are export, profit, growth rate, R&D expenditure and capital intensity. In order to analyze the determinants of innovation, we estimate whether firm size, market structure, export, profit, growth rate, R&D expenditure and capital intensity affect to the possibility of creating innovation in medium core firms. In order to do this, our study uses survey data from 'Korean Innovation Survey(2005)' conducted by STEPI as well as utilizes the probit model as an analytical method. According to the empirical results, firm size has a positive relationship with innovative activities of medium core firms but market concentration does not. We find the negative correlation between market concentration and innovative activities in this study. Thus, was have to say that we do not fully support the Schumpeterian hypothesis in this case. Among other variables, profit and R&D expenditure are estimated to have positive relationship with innovative activities, while export and capital intensity are estimated to have negative relationship with innovative activities. In case of growth rate, we do not find any significant relationship with innovative activities. In conclusion, larger firm size, higher market competition, more access to the financial market and additional R&D investment would facilitate innovative activities of medium core firms. However, we have to review the relationship between export and innovative activities that has been estimated in this study. While the estimated effect of export on innovative activities can be explained by the own characteristics of medium core firms that produce and supply capital goods to final manufacturer, we have address this issue in the future.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.251-265
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• 2021

It seems a common sense that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a key driver to attain business sustainability. Nevertheless, there has been little research on the performance of socially responsible activities, including economic and environmental responsibility activities in internationally diversified firms. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of CSR activities on management performance. For this evaluation, an empirical analysis was conducted with a total of 2,520 cases, selected from companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index market for six years from 2013 to 2018. As proxies for management performance, financial date such as a total asset net profit ratio and a total asset-operating ratio were used. A multivariate regression analysis was conducted to test hypotheses. The results of this analysis indicated that firms in the CSR outstanding group are significantly higher than other groups in management performances. In addition, CSR activities of internationally diversified firms positively influence their total asset net profit ratio and total asset-operating ratio. The results suggested that CSR activities of these firms can play a significant role in enhancing management performances amid the economic status of Korea, where a degree of export dependency is high.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.59-76
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• 2019

Most technology-based entrepreneurship(TBE) go through an process of decline or disappear without overcoming the valley of death(VoD). The purpose of this study is to identify the growth dimension of TBE and to test the influence of firms activities on firms growth over time. This study identified the two-dimensional growth dimension divided by size and profit through exploratory factor analysis(EFA) of a number of growth indicators. Then, we defined the discrete state of growth firm in four states, divided by size and profit, and five states, including the closure of business. Multi-nomial logit model is used to predict the effect of TBE activities on a discrete state of growth firm(size×profit, closure of business) based on multiple independent variables. The independent variables are based on five representative firms activities: employment, marketing, R&D, financial activities, and general management activities. The growth stage of TBE over time has been categorized into three stages: early stage, middle stage, and late stage of business, taking into account the main periods during which the survival rate of startups sharply decreases. The analytical data of this study was based on the secondary data of the start-up supporting companies of government and public institutions. The subjects of analysis were TBE within 10 years. As a result of the empirical analysis, the employment and marketing activities of TBE show that early and mid-term activities had an effect on the state of firms growth. However, if there is a difference, employment activities have both positive and negative effects, while marketing activities have only a positive effect on size and profit growth. And besides, R&D activities, financial activities, and general management activities throughout the entire process of firms growth were found to be firms activities that have both positive and negative effects on firms growth. In addition, the age of the founder, the firms' industry, and the geographic location of the firms, which are general characteristics of the company, were found to have a distinctive effect on the growth status of the firms according to the growth stage.