In this study, the effect of foreign investors on corporate social responsibility was verified through the fulfillment of mandatory employment for the disabled. Assuming that foreign investors are not a homogeneous group, but may be heterogeneous depe...
In this study, the effect of foreign investors on corporate social responsibility was verified through the fulfillment of mandatory employment for the disabled. Assuming that foreign investors are not a homogeneous group, but may be heterogeneous depending on ownership and investment purposes, it was divided into foreign institutional investors with more than 5% of a company's shares and foreign investors with less than 5% of shares to verify whether the influence on the company's social responsibility is different.
During 2015~2020, logit analysis was conducted on 479 manufacturing companies listed on the KOSPI market. The main results are as follows. First, it was found that the higher the share of foreign investors, the higher the likelihood of not fulfilling the mandatory employment for the disabled. Second, it was confirmed that foreign institutional investors with more than 5% of a company's shares had no significant impact on the fulfillment of mandatory employment for the disabled, while foreign investors with less than 5% of shares had a significant negative impact on the fulfillment of their employment obligations.
These results mean that foreign investors may have an incentive to suppress corporate social responsibility by recognizing them as a kind of cost, and foreign investors may have different effects on corporate management depending on the purpose or shareholdings. In other words, foreign institutional investors with more than 5% of shares in a company are usually strategic investors with a long-term shareholding period, who are likely to support corporate social responsibility. While since foreign investors with less than 5% are short-term and financial investors, it suggests that social responsibility activities without clear benefits can be recognized as costs and suppressed.