한국 자동차산업의 협력관계 및 계열관계가 기업성과에 미치는 영향

This study examines how the cooperative relationship and group affiliated relationship of Korean auto industry influence its economic performance. To be more concrete, it attempts to analyze whether the performances of subcontractors are greater than those of non-subcontractors, and whether the accomplishments of affiliates are superior to those of non-affiliated companies. Korea has a market structure with conglomerates called ‘Chaebol’. In car industry, this market structure has led to vertical cooperation relationship, and antagonistic relationship has occurred between subcontractors and major auto companies. In addition, problems have arisen because of the monopolistic market structure. The pressure of lowering unit costs and unfair subcontract transactions have not only aggravated a crisis between an auto company and its subcontractors, but also threatened the potential for development of the subcontractors. The business performance of a subcontractor will be degenerated due to the pressure of lowering unit costs and unfair subcontract transactions with the major company. Thus, the subcontractor is likely to control discretionary accruals when carrying out a financial report, while group-affiliated firms are not influenced by unfair subcontract transactions. These findings highlight the fact that group-affiliated firms tend not to adjust discretionary accruals since their performing is generally good. This study examines whether the unit cost of cooperative firms is higher than that of non-cooperative firms, and whether the discretionary accruals of the former are bigger than that of the latter. Also, this paper analyzes whether the unit cost of the group-affiliated firm of the major car company is higher than that of a non group-affiliated firm, and whether the discretionary accruals of the former are smaller than those of the latter. The result of the analysis is as in the following. In case of ratio of sales cost, a cooperative firm was 5% slightly lower. This supports ‘H1a,’ which says that the cooperative firm has a tendency to have low unit costs on account of the pressure of the major company. However, group-affiliated firms had no significant difference from the rate of cost to selling price. In terms of analysis of profit rate, there were no significant differences in accordance with a type of company, but in case of business profit rate, group-affiliated firms were much higher. This reflects that group-affiliated firms have higher return on their investments than non group-affiliated firms. The result analysis of discretionary accruals indicates that both discretionary accruals by modified Jones model and Kothari et al.(2005) showed no significant difference, compared to a cooperative firm, but a group-affiliated firm had 5% higher discretionary accruals. This results show that group-affiliated firms have more earning management of discretionary accruals than non group-affiliated firms do. Overall, this study provides the signification to regulatory agencies and participants of all kinds of capital markets related to auto industry by suggesting that cooperative firms have low unit costs due to the pressure of lowering unit costs from a major company. On the other hand, group-affiliated firms have a large portion of earning management by using discretionary accruals.