기업의 지속가능경영 활동이 기업의 장단기적 가치에 미치는 영향

In recent years, the paradigm of business is changing from maximization of shareholders' wealth to sustainability management that creates a shared value for all stakeholders. According to the paradigm shift, business society's interest in CSR (corporate social responsibility) has increased. Firms and other organizations have started measuring their environmental, social, and governance performance, which can be observed through the publishing of sustainability reports that inform various stakeholders of the firms’ successes in sustainable management practices. To examine how CSR impacts a firm’s short-term and long-term values, this study attempts to confirm whether there are statistically significant differences in the long-term and short-term corporate values between companies that have and have not implemented social contribution activities, employing variables such as corporation donations and third-party verified sustainability reports based on GRI guidelines. The target companies have been maintained in the Korea securities market for a six year period from 2008 to 2013. For empirical analysis, the dummy variable of donations expenditure, issuing third-party verified sustainability reports, and the other control variables are used as independent variables. For the dependent variable, we employ stock log return as the proxy of each firm’s short-term value, and Tobin's Q ratio as that of its long-term value. Also, two-factor ANCOVA was performed with repeated measurements on one-factor analysis to check the impact of continuity of social contribution activities on the long-term value of the firms. The results show that Tobin's Q ratio of firms making donation contributions as well as issuing sustainability reports is significantly higher than that of those companies that are only making the donation expenditures. Furthermore, companies that do not issue any sustainability reports and do not make donation contributions had statistically lower Tobin's Q ratios than the companies with donation expenditure. In the case of the stock log returns, there was no statistically significant difference between the companies with donation expenditure and the companies that both issue sustainability reports and have donation expenditure. However, it is shown that the companies without those two activities at all has significantly lower performance than the companies with donation expenditure. These results imply that the donation expenditure alone would be enough to enhance the corporate image for investors' recognition, leading to preferable investment decisions while the sustainability reports serve as medium of effective communication among stakeholders inducing the enhancement of corporate long-term values. Also, the analysis regarding long-term effects of the persistency of social contribution activities on the corporate value shows that the pure effect of social contribution activities has increased gradually, even though the market environment was not in good condition during the six year period from 2008 through 2013. This result implies the companies would be able to enhance their long-term values through social contribution activities for a variety of stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers and local communities, which clashes with the conventional business activities that consider only the interests of shareholders. In addition, the continued issuance of third-party verified sustainability reports makes the companies present the outcomes of their social contribution activities to investors, which may lead to friendly investment decisions. Moreover, this result would motivate the companies that do not currently participate in social contribution activities to engage in those activities in the form of direct investment and donation expenditures.