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

Abstract

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.