기업지배구조가 환경성과에 미치는 영향

Good governance structure reduces agency costs, and facilitates the reflection of voices of various stakeholders on the corporate management decision. This study predicts and tests the hypothesis that corporate governance will have positive impacts on environmental performance of companies that are related to the firm value. Initial sample comprises 200 companies from environmental ratings data from 2012 Green Ranking and corporate governance rating data from Sustinvest which is a leading company in domestic SRI industry. A final sample of 159 companies are used in the empirical analysis. Results of the analysis indicate that corporate governance has positive effect on firm's general environmental performance. Although the total sore of environmental performance shows positive association with corporate governance, the relationship differs according to sub-categories of environmental performances. Specifically, corporate governance has positive relation with 'Environmental Impact Score' and 'Disclosure Score', but no significant relation with ‘Management Commitment Score’. In summary, this study shows that good corporate governance reduces agency costs and improves environmental performances of companies by influencing various stakeholders behaviors. The study adds evidence of the importance of corporate governance, and shows the new insights about the significance of environmental activities to the management of the Korean companies who do not seem to have full understanding of the relationship between corporate governance and environmental performances.