한국 기업의 소유구조와 국제 다각화

The purpose of this study is not only to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and international diversification, but also to investigate the moderate role of ownership structure between international diversification and firm performance. The ownership structure is measured with majority shareholders equity ratio and Chaebol dummy. The results show that majority shareholder equity ratio has a negative and significant relationship with international diversification. This implies that as the majority shareholders equity ratio increases, the level of international diversification decreases. Consistent with the result of majority shareholders, the Chaebol variable has a negative and significant relationship with international diversification. In addition, we find a positive moderate role of majority shareholders equity ratio between international diversification and firm performance. This result indicates that as the majority shareholders equity ratio increases, firms enhance their performance with international diversification. However, Chaebol shows a negative moderate role between international diversification and firm performance. This result indicates that firms within Chaebol group deteriorate their performance with international diversification. In summary the results suggest that firms with high majority shareholders equtiy ratio enhance their performance with international diversification, but firms within Chaebol group do not enhance their performance with international diversification. We provide evidence in favor of the tunneling hypothesis that because only some main firms within Chaebol elicit their operating income with international diversification by suppressing other firm’s international diversification, the relevance of the overall firm performance of Chaebol is reduced.