Post-Entry On-going Organizational Changes in Core Activities of Foreign Subsidiaries and Firm Survival

By applying conventional organizational adaptation theory, this study explores the relationship between post-entry on-going organizational changes in core areas of foreign subsidiaries, such as investment amount, ownership, and product, and the subsequent survival of such subsidiaries in a host country. This study further investigates the relative importance of subsidiary’s organizational change in core areas. For these research questions, this study employs a sample of 2,582 foreign direct investment cases by Korean textile firms. The findings show that a foreign subsidiary’s post-entry ongoing organizational changes in the core areas are negatively associated with its mortality rate. However, we carefully qualify this result: ongoing changes in investment amount and product areas help reduce the mortality rate, whereas changes in ownership do not.

Revisiting The Relationship Between Financial And Environmental Performance: Does Granger Causality Matter?

This study rigorously investigates two ongoing issues about the relationship between environmental performance and financial performance: its sign (negative or positive) and direction of causation. The results from the longitudinal sample of US heavy-polluting industries between 1991 and 2005 support the positive relationship between EP and FP. We also test the Granger causal relationship by applying Arellano-Bond estimator. The results present that the causal direction is contingent on the selection of financial performance measures and on the characteristics of sub-groups classified by environmental performance. Namely, we find that the causality is valid only in high pollution-intensive industry group in terms of the one-year lagged accounting-based FP. A weak reverse direction was found only in the pollution-intensive industry group with Tobin’s q. The findings clearly suggest that it is necessary to use a consistent estimator when examining causality with longitudinal data in a dynamic setting

Foreign Country-Specific Experience And Ownership Level: Moderating Effect Of Host Country’s Government Corruption

According to internalization theory, corporate international expansion occurs as a series of incremental commitment processes, such as an increased level of ownership. In addition, it is well known that host country-specific experience facilitates the increased ownership level. However, the existing empirical studies show the mixed results about the relationship between host country-specific experience and ownership level: positive, negative, and non-significant. To elucidate these mixed results, this study carefully explores how host country’s government corruption moderates the relationship, given that institutional environments influence standard economic activities within a specific economy. This study found that host country-specific experience has a positive effect on the ownership level in their foreign subsidiaries but the positive relationship was moderated by the negative effect of host countries’ government corruption. Accordingly, this study carefully qualifies the direct relationship between country-specific experience and ownership strategy, suggesting that an institutional contingency perspective needs to be considered to understand corporate international expansion strategies by the increased ownership level

Country-Specific Experience, Host Country Government Corruption, And Outward Foreign Direct Investment By Korean Textile Firms

This study explores how organizational learning and host country government corruption influenced outward foreign direct investment by Korean textile firms between 1986 and 1995, given that foreign direct investment decisions are not made in isolation from these two factors. The results provide empirical evidence for the recent organizational learning theory argument that the longevity of country-specific experience has a curvilinear relationship with foreign direct investment. In addition, the results suggest that the positive relationship between host country government corruption and foreign direct investment is moderated by the decreasing effect of host country–specific experience over time, suggesting that a dynamic framework of organizational learning could be used to cautiously qualify the existing bifurcated positive versus negative conclusion about the government corruption–foreign direct investment relationship

Corporate Governance, Firm Risk, And Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence From Korean Firms

Given that the prior studies on the relationship between corporate governance structures and firm performance are silent on firms’ social responsible roles, this study introduces an integrated model by combining corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance structures. This model is used to investigate how CSR moderates the relationship between corporate governance and firm risk in a sample of 640 firm-by-year cases for 215 firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange between 2005 and 2010. The results show that foreign ownership and board size have a significant and negative relationship with firm risk, whereas management ownership and outside director ratio have no significant effect on firm risk. The results demonstrate that CSR partially moderates the relationship between governance structures (especially management ownership and board size) and firm risk. These findings suggest that Korean firms with concentrated ownership structures can leverage CSR activities as invisible assets to achieve more efficient governance structure model.

Improvement of Saemangeum Dredged Soils Using Coffee Sludge for Vegetation Soil

In Korea, a large scale national project (Saemangeum Project) has been underway that requires a huge amount of dredged soils and their reclamation. Although a lot of dredged soil is needed for reclamation, only about 10% of the dredged soil is used. For this reason, much effort should be made to extensively use the dredged soil. The objective of the study is to find reasonable ways of improving the dredged soils in the Saemangeum area so that they can be used for vegetation of land plants. In order to develop ameliorating methods, we treated silty sand samples, the representative dredged soil of Saemangeum, with mountain soil (0% and 30%), sawdust fertilizer (0% and 6%), bioameliorant (0% and 6%), and coffee sludge (3%, 6%, and 9%), measured the germination rate of bent grass, and applied the lab experiment results to the field for validation. As a result, it was verified that when a mixture of coffee sludge and sawdust fertilizer was used, the chemical and physical properties of dredged soil were significantly improved. This implies that the beneficial use of the dredged soil can be facilitated

How Do Corporate Social Responsibility Activities Influence Corporate Reputation? Evidence From Korean Firms

This study applies the stakeholder theory and explores how corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities are associated with corporate reputation. In particular, we investigate how charitable contributions and toxic emissions as proxies for CSR activities are related with shareholder returns as a proxy for corporate reputation. This study employs a sample of Korean firms reported in the Korea sustainability index database between 2010 and 2012. The results find that charitable contributions and toxic emissions are positively and negatively related with shareholder returns, respectively. In addition, the results show that current shareholder returns are likely to be influenced by past charitable contributions and toxic emissions, suggesting that firms may develop current reputational competences by leveraging on past CSR activities