한국 기업의 위기대응력에 관한 연구: 비금융기업을 중심으로

Abstract

Are some firms have something unique to make them prone to perform poorly during crises? The purpose of this study is to answer the above question. In this paper, we show that a firm's stock return during the preceding crisis (stock return during the 1997 crisis, 1997 crisis return) has predictive power to the posterior crisis return (stock return during the 2008 crisis, 2008 crisis return). Analyses in this paper are related to those presented in the previous literatures (Fahlenbrach et al., 2012; Kim & Yang, 2013; and Kim, 2014). This paper analyzes whether Korean non-financial firms raised the confrontational ability or didn't change risk culture (or business model) after crisis experience. To this end, we test the two hypotheses through regression analysis. The main explanatory variable is 1997 crisis return, and the dependent variable is 2008 crisis return. Risk culture hypothesis refers to the situation that firms with poor performance during the preceding crisis would also perform poorly during the posterior crisis. Difficulty to change risk culture or business model that make firms sensitive to crises is the basis of an argument to this hypothesis. Learning hypothesis refers to the situation that firms with low stock return in 1997 would perform well in 2008 through crisis learning. Firms could change its risk culture or business model after crisis experience to raise the confrontational ability to the crisis. Our empirical findings are as follows. First, 2008 crisis return is positively associated with 1997 crisis return. This positive association is outstanding among firms which performed poorly during the 2008 crisis. This result lead us to conclude that the risk culture hypothesis is more appropriate for Korean non-financial firms than the learning hypothesis. Second, the above mentioned predictive power is weakened among firms with major shareholder. Major shareholder refers to the shareholder with ratio of share more than 2% in KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) and 4% in KOSDAQ (Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotations), or market capitalization more than 5 billion Korean won in KOSPI and 4 billion Korean won in KOSDAQ according to the Korean tax law. Corporate age – relating to the concept of organizational learning, organizational life cycle, and organizational inertia - is regarded to favor the risk culture hypothesis. But we can't find any significant difference according to the corporate age. Third, we examine the effects of firm characteristics and foreign investors' trading trend on the predictability of poor performers during the crisis period by probit analysis. Firms with higher borrowing to asset ratio and low turnover ratio of total liability and net worth had poor performance during the both crises. These results are consistent with the previous literatures which insist funding fragility is the main weakness during the crisis period. Kim and Yang (2013) found borrowing to asset ratio is the key factor that makes crisis return of Korean financial institutions low. High net sales growth rate had negative effect to the crisis return only in 1997. And firms with low foreign investors' net purchase ratio had poor performance during the 1997 crisis. This result is in line with the arguments that capital decontrol may be the cause of financial crisis. Forth, these results are robust to the change of the calculation method and period of the crisis return. We found statistically significant positive coefficient of regression as ever from the robustness check with two newly calculated main explanatory variables. Overall, the findings are consistent with the risk culture hypothesis. It means that some firms has vulnerability to the crisis. And this fragility would come from the difficulty in the change of the risk culture or the business model of them. Previous study with the sample of Korean financial institutions is in favor with the learning hypothesis (Kim & Yang, 2013; and Kim, 2014). It may be a big difference between financial institutions and non-financial firms in organizational learning after crisis experience, and of the persistence in the risk culture or the business model. This is considered from the dissimilarity of corporate governance. It is because the existence of major shareholder has significant effect to the firm's behavior after crisis experience. Our study is the first analysis over the Korean non-financial firms' behavior after crisis experience. This paper contributes to the literature on the financial crisis, the crisis return, and also on, in part, the organizational learning and the capital decontrol.