Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of international trade on outside director system in Korean firms. The authors expected that Korean firms highly depending on international trade would mitigate the resource provision function of outside director system in order to reduce information asymmetry among global business partners. In addition, the authors tried to find out the functions of outside director system: the control function based on agency theory and resource provision function based on resource dependence theory.

The authors tested the hypotheses by Poisson regression with 2011 and 2002 Korean-listed manufacturing firms. The dependent variable is the number of excessively appointed outside directors and independent variable is CEO type: family CEO or professional CEO. The moderating variable is the dependency on international trade measured by export proportion out of total sales.

The authors found that not control but resource provision function was a main role of outside director system in Korean firms. The authors also found negative moderating effect of dependency on international trade, which means that firms highly depending on global market tended to consider outside director system as control function, namely “global standard.”

This paper is the leading study that tries to analyze empirically the relationship between international trade and the function of governance mechanism; outside director system in Korean firms. It also confirms that Korean firms adopted outside director system on the basis of the resource dependence theory.

This paper seeks to explore such questions as: “What are the impacts of foreign investors and what are the channels through which foreign investors contribute to or detracts from firm value in Korea?” It aims to discuss how foreign investors and foreign outside directors interact to enhance firm value.

Using longitudinal data from the KOSPI200 index in Korea during 2004‐2007, the study examined the direct and interaction effect of foreign blockholders and foreign board members. To address the representativeness of foreign investors, the authors verified the mandates of foreign board members though telephone interviews.

Foreign block shareholders and foreign outside directors respectively provide expertise and independent monitoring over management. Foreign blockholders' management control via board membership is likely to mitigate leverage of value enhancement when foreign outside directors represent private interests of foreign blockholders. The moderating effect is also supported since foreign ownership concentration has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with value enhancement. The paper confirms that board independence reinforces the positive impact of foreign outside directors on firm value.

This study offers a key to understanding corporate governance in that mutual monitoring and a balance among various types of stakeholders are crucial to value enhancement.

The paper provides clues to the extant diverse findings concerning the impact of foreign investors on firm value. It applies an integrated perspective to the empirical analyses of the impact of foreign investors by giving consideration to the agency – foreign outside directors – to implement management control on behalf of foreign blockholders.

This study investigates the relationship between outside directors, managerial compensation, and firm performance in the Korean insurance industry.

The authors employ a simultaneous equation framework by using three-stage least squares (3SLS) to address the endogeneity problems that could result from the joint determination of outside directors, firm performance, and executive compensation in Korean insurance companies.

The authors find that the ratio of outside directors on the board is negatively associated with insurance firm's value and financial profitability. In addition, this study's evidence shows that greater representation on the board by outside directors leads to a higher level of executive pay. In particular, the authors provide evidence that variable compensation scheme and outside directors who have backgrounds in the legal profession and former high-ranking government officials drive this study's main results.

This study adds to the literature by first demonstrating the interaction effects between outside directors, firm performance, and executive compensation in the Korean insurance industry. Unlike previous studies that typically focus on US companies, the authors study the Korean insurance sector that is an emerging power in the global insurance market, ranking seventh in terms of total premium volume, and show that the Korean insurance firm's outside directors system does not work in the manner that it is intended to function.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a regulation has influenced board structures, board processes, and board decision making and specifically, to explore the structural differences of a board before and after enforcing a regulation. This paper also investigates the change in operational processes of a board and determines which factors can influence the board's decision making.

To expand the scope of board studies, this study used the board minutes which were recorded in a stenographic form. Data from the board minutes provide the following information: date, director name, attendance rate, agenda, and spoken details by outside directors, etc. The minutes are taken from 24 public institutions in Korea.

The study on governance structure and processes has demonstrated the following outcomes. First, the number of directors has increased since enforcing the regulation. Second, the percentage of outside directors has increased. Third, the number of board meetings has increased. Fourth, the attendance rate in the board meetings showed a constant rate. Fifth, the number of agenda items in both reports and decisions has increased. Sixth, the SPCA unit of outside directors appeared different according to their job. Seventh, the number of decisions with amendments has increased. Eighth, there are several factors that influence board decisions.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of boards' decisions.

This paper aims to explore the effect of social ties on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance in Korea.

Social ties were measured from firm disclosures of 318 Korean firms from 2012 to 2015. Propensity score matching and regression analysis were used to investigate the moderating effects of social ties on the relationship between CSR and firm performance.

The result shows that social ties have more negative moderating effects on the relationship between CSR and firm performance in Chaebol firms than in non-Chaebol firms.

Firms need to enhance the monitoring of social ties within board members to assure the proper oversight of CSR.

This paper contributes to the CSR literature by providing empirical evidence of the negative aspects of social ties on the relationship between CSR and firm performance in Korea.

Based on 3,775 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2013 using publicly available disclosure data for Korean listed firms, this study examines whether and how firm-level governance characteristics are associated with investment in internal auditing proxied by compensation and the number of statutory internal auditors.

The authors investigate the association between governance characteristics and investment in internal auditing proxied by compensation and the number of statutory internal auditors.

The authors find that firms with greater ownership of the largest shareholders and with a higher proportion of outside directors invest more in internal auditing. These results indicate that firms with higher incentive and demand for monitoring are more likely to invest more in internal auditing. The authors further find that the positive effect of the largest shareholder ownership (board independence) on investment in internal auditing is attenuated in firms with greater board independence (ownership of the largest shareholders) suggesting that the complementary effect of the two governance mechanisms associated with internal auditing weakens as they function simultaneously.

The results provide regulators and investors with a clear picture of the governance characteristics of firms associated with investment in internal auditing. The results imply that both the largest shareholders and the outside board of directors play a significant role in resource allocation in internal auditing within a firm. The effect of allocation, however, can be attenuated contingent upon the combined characteristics of governance mechanisms.

Using large amounts of public archival data, this study adds to the extant literature on firm characteristics associated with investment in internal auditing. This study also contributes to the literature by expanding the scope of research on executive compensation to the locus of statutory internal auditors.

The 1997 financial crisis in Asia has entailed significant changes and governance reforms in the Korean banking industry. This study investigates the impact of corporate governance on the risk and return of Korean banks during the 10 years that followed the financial crisis era. In particular, we investigate the ownership structure of banks, the extent of involvement of foreign institutions and investors in ownership and board membership of Korean banks, and the heterogeneity of board structure on bank performance. Our findings indicate that foreign ownership, the extent of external board involvement, and the presence of foreign directors on the board are associated with significantly higher bank returns. Although foreign ownership and the number of outside board directors are associated with lower risk, the involvement of foreign board members is positively associated with risk. The results are fairly robust to a battery of tests and control variables, and offer the first detailed empirical documentation of the Korean banking governance reform and its achievements since 1997.

Drawing upon the resource dependence theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the board capital diversity influences the explorative innovation of firms, attempting to resolve the inconsistent empirical findings of the effect of outside directors on firm’s R & D strategy.

Using a sample of Korean manufacturing firms which consider R & D capability to be one of their core competencies, the study uses negative binomial model to test the influence of board capital diversity on explorative innovation.

Results support the value of moderate level of board diversity hypothesis by demonstrating that board capital diversity shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with explorative innovation. The results also suggest that CEO ownership positively moderates the relationship between board capital diversity and firms’ innovative performance.

Mainstream research has focussed on the directors’ monitoring role based on agency theory, overlooking the more positive resource provision role. Taking on the concepts of board capital and exploration, the study introduces the notion that outside directors should be selected with a view as vehicles for bringing in valuable expertise and social linkages for the firm’s explorative innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify both the problems and their solutions in the corporate governance systems of Korean business groups (chaebols) in the wake of the Asian financial crisis.

This is a conceptual paper and includes suggestions for improving international governance systems.

In this paper, the author focuses on how chaebols should be restructured to improve the Korean economy. In order to figure out how they should be restructured, the author explains the positives and negatives of their current structure and how these can be modified/eliminated to make stronger corporate governance.

The paper provides conceptual insights into systems and laws, which can be used to improve the corporate governance of business groups.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of recent studies on Korean firms’ financial policies and their interactions with financial markets, and suggest directions for future research.

The authors review the finance research on Korean firms and markets, focusing on the articles published in the last 20 years.

This survey of the recent Korean finance literature covers the research on the capital structure and the distinct financing behaviors of chaebol-affiliated firms and independent firms; the factors affecting the costs of capital and firms’ preferences for capital budgeting methods; raising capital through public and private equity issuance; corporate governance and the market for corporate control; payout policies; and bank-firm relationship. The authors suggest a number of future research directions that may lead to significant contributions to the literature.

This paper provides the first comprehensive review of the post-crisis corporate finance literature in Korea.