• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.25-51
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• 2008

In this paper, we analyse empirically the fixed asset investment smoothing of working capital of firms listed on Korea Securities Market. The main results of this study can be summarized as follows. Firms will seek to lower long-term cost by smoothing fixed asset investment and maintaining stationary investment with working capital. Working capital is not only an important use of fund, but also a source of liquidity that should be used to smooth fixed asset investment relative to cash flow shocks if firms face financial constraints. Working capital investment is more sensitive than fixed asset investment to cash flow fluctuations. If firms face financial constraints, working capital investment will compete with fixed asset investment for the limited pool of available cash flows. So, fixed asset investment will have negative relationship with working capital investment. However, criticism that the positive correlation between cash flows and fixed asset investment could arise simply because cash flows is proxy variable for investment demand. Finally, controlling for the fixed asset investment smoothing effects of working capital results in a much larger estimate of the long run impact of financial constraints. Financial constraints is measured by dividend payout ratio and market access level. Fazzari et al. (1988), Fazzari and Petersen (1993), and Faulkender et al. (2008) emphasize that low dividend firms or market unaccessible firms are more likely to face financial constraints, and rarely make use of new equity issuing. The results from empirical analysis show that financial constraints can be better explained using 'adjustment cost' concept. Specifically, the results show that financial constraints exist and that in order to measure financial constraint effects more succinctly, fixed asset investment smoothing effects with working capital should be considered.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.51-84
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• 2008

We investigate the signaling effect of repurchase preceding new equity issue using Korean data. In a short time span, firms announce stock repurchases and equity offerings. The proximity of two events in Korean firms indicates that those are not independent of each other. In this paper, we test the signaling effect of repurchase on equity offerings on the two measures. One is announcement effect, which is measured as CAR(0, +2). The other is the effectiveness which is measured as CAR(0, +30) because the price movement during this window influences on the price of new issues. Previous studies that stock repurchase convey positive signal to equity offerings-Billet and Xue(2004) and Jung(2004)-construct sample without the limit of time interval between two events. This causes the unclear relation between those because of the long time interval. In this study we consider only samples of being within one year each other to reduce this problem and clarify the signal of repurchase on equity offerings. Korean firms are allowed to repurchase own shares with two different method. One is direct repurchase as same as open market repurchase. The other is stock stabilization fund and stock trust fund which trust company or bank buy and sell their shares on the behalf of firms. Generally, the striking different characteristic between direct repurchase and indirect repurchase is following. Direct repurchase is applied by more strict regulation than indirect repurchase. Therefore, the direct repurchase is more informative signal to the equity offering than the indirect repurchase. We construct two sample firms- firms with direct repurchase preceding-equity offerings and indirect repurchase-preceding equity offering, and one control firms-equity offerings only firms-to investigate the announcement effect and the effectiveness of repurchases. Our findings are as follows. Direct repurchase favorably affect the price of new issues favorably. CAR(0, +2) of firms with direct repurchase is not different from that of equity offerings only firms but CAR(0, +30) is higher than that of equity offerings only firms. For firms with indirect repurchase and equity offerings, Both the announcement effect and the effectiveness does not exist. Jung(2004) suggest the possibilities of how indirect stock repurchase can be regarded as one of unfair trading practices on based on the survey results that financial managers of some of KSE listed firms have been asked of their opinion on the likelihood of the stock repurchase being used in unfair trading. This is not objective empirical evidence but opinion of financial managers. To investigate whether firms announce false signal before equity offerings to boost the price of new issues, we calculate the long-run performance following equity offerings. If firms have announced repurchase to boost the price of new issues intentionally, they would undergo the severe underperformance. The empirical results do not show the severer underperformance of both sample firms than equity offerings only firms. The suggestion of false signaling of repurchase preceding equity offerings is not supported by our evidence.

• 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.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.47-70
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• 2009

Social network is one of the representative analytical method of the complexity theory and this research analyzed various and unique strategic alliance model of e-business domain using social network technique. A lot of small and medium firms of e-business field had developed many useful type of strategic alliances for the firms tried to maximize the effect of advertisement, marketing and to make up for their weak points and to compete with huge company with capital strength long before. But it is too rare to analyze the structure of the firm networks and to study the evolution and extension of business model considered the role of each company in the network. Social network analysis helps each firm's network easily visualized and completely modelized. Additionally, this paper cries to analyze the relationship between the role of hub and broke in the firm networks for strategic alliance, and financial performance. We demonstrate the firm with finer business model to the business environment can make higher financial performance. This implies that the firm that can create new finer business model, will lead the network of e-business firms and evolve the industry of e-business.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.35-61
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• 2009

This paper investigates whether the investment of a chaebol firm depends on financial characteristics such as leverage and growth opportunity. We find that the investment of a chaebol firm increases as its growth opportunity increases. We also find that this positive effect of growth opportunity on the investment is more pronounced in a low-leverage firm than in a high-leverage firm. Unlike chaebol firms, however, the interaction effect between leverage and growth opportunity is not statistically significant for nonchaebol firms.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.85-99
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• 2017

New and Renewable Energy Equipment Certification program has been integrated into the KS(Korean Industrial Standards) certification system as of July 29, 2015. This study is to determine whether the KS certification requirement has had a positive effect on corporate performance (e.g. quality improvement, financial result, customer satisfaction) within those that had already acquired the New and Renewable Energy Equipment KS certification. As a result, among the requirements for the KS certification, quality management, product management, and product testing have a positive impact on product quality improvement, and product testing has shown a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Although requisite for the KS certification did not have a significant effect on financial outcome such as increase in revenue, it has shown to have positive consequence to some extent on those firms that newly obtained the certification.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.81-90
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• 2018

Modern investment theory has empirically proved that stock returns can be explained by several factors such as market risk, firm size, and book-to-market ratio. Other unknown factors affecting stock returns are also believed to still exist yet to be found. We believe that one of such factors is the operational efficiency of firms in transforming inputs to outputs, considering the fact that operations is a fundamental and primary function of any type of businesses. To support this belief, this study intends to empirically study the relationship between firm efficiency and stock price performance. Firm efficiency is measured using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with inputs and outputs obtained from financial statements. We employ cross-efficiency evaluation to enhance the discrimination power of DEA with a secondary objective function of aggressive formulation. Using the CAPM-based performance regression model, we test the performance of equally weighted portfolios of different sizes selected based upon DEA cross-efficiency scores along with a buy & hold trading strategy. For the empirical test, we collect financial data of domestic firms listed in KOSPI over the period of 2000~2016 from well-known financial databases. As a result, we find that the porfolios with highly efficient firms included outperform the benchmark market portfolio after controlling for the market risk, which indicates that firm efficiency plays a important role in explaining stock returns.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.59-71
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• 2022

Purpose - We investigate how firms transfer financial risks to employees in a form of flexible employment contracts and layoffs. Design/methodology/approach - Based on the literature on the prevalence of shareholder value ideology and the associated 'risk shift', we examined how stock price volatility is associated with a firm's use and hiring of nonstandard employees, and the number of employees lay-offed. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal, multi-source, dataset of Korean firms from 2003 to 2011. Findings - We found support for the relationship between stock price volatility and flexible employment contracts and layoffs after controlling for actual risks such as increased debt or decreased sales. However, we found that the relationship is moderated by the power of professional CEOs relative to that of shareholders, in that powerful CEOs are more likely to transfer the external risks, i.e. stock price volatility, to employees. Research implications or Originality - This study contributes the emerging stream of literature that explore the effect of stock market pressures and governance structures on human resource management.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.245-262
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• 2021

Despite the numerous advantages that CSR engagement can potentially offer, top managers may not always be willing to invest in CSR as they are expected to meet expectations of external constituents in the short run. Given that financial analysts' expectations are important short-term performance targets that top managers are motivated to meet, this study examines how performance relative to earnings forecasts issued by analysts affect top managers' decisions about CSR engagement. Using a sample of publicly listed U.S. firms from 2000 to 2016, we find that top managers are more likely to reduce discretionary expenditure on CSR activities as performance falls below analyst forecasts to improve financial performance in the following fiscal year. As performance exceeds analyst forecasts, top managers are motivated to reduce CSR investments in order to meet higher expectations of analysts. As financial analysts closely monitor the firms that they follow in order to publish investment advice to market participants, we find that analyst coverage weakens top managers' incentive to reduce CSR engagement. Overall, this research sheds meaningful insight into the contextual background in which the top managers are situated in when they make decisions on CSR engagement.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2005

This Paper examines the effect of IT knowledge and IT communication on the operational performance of small firms. Small firms which could be defined firms with less than 50 people in total lags behind medium and large firms in computerization. In order to fill up the computerization gap resulted from size differences, Korean government has been promoting the 'Networking Small Firms' project since 2001. Survey data with 698 small firms in Korea, we could find that If knowledge and IT communication significantly contributed to the operational performance of small firms. Internal process performance is affected by individual IT knowledge, traditional communication, and e-mail communication. Customer performance is affected by above three factors, organizational IT knowledge and internet/EDI communication. Interestingly, financial performance is not affected by traditional communication but only IT knowledge and IT communication.