최근 기업의 사회적 책임은 글로벌 기업의 핵심 경영 주제로 부각되고 있다. 일부 국내 기업들도 기업의 사회적 책임을 실천하기 위해 금전적 기부, 사회봉사활동, 장애인 고용 등 사회공헌활동에 참여하기 시작했다. 그러나 국내 기업들은 사회적 공헌활동의 필요성에 대해 원론적으로 공감하면서 사회공헌활동에 대한 투자에는 아직 소극적인 것 같다. 그 이유는 사회공헌활동의 재무적 성과를 정확히 측정한 경험이 없고 대부분 기업은 사회공헌활동을 투자로 인식하기 보다는 비용으로 인식하는 경향이 지배적이기 때문이다. 본 연구의 목적은 기업의 사회공헌활동 및 관련 투자 효과를 정량적으로 측정하는 데 있다. 사건연구 방법론을 통해 2001년 1월 1일부터 2006년 11월 31일까지 사회공헌활동이 언론에 공개된 100개 국내 기업에 대해 분석한 결과에 따르면, 사회공헌활동 및 관련 투자는 사건당일과 사건 직전일의 비정상 수익률 합의 평균이 1.04%로 나타났다. 이는 시가총액 기준으로 약 1000억 원에 해당하며, 통계적으로 유의한 양(+)의 값임을 보여주었다. 또한 사회공헌활동이 기업가치를 상승 시키는 세부적인 요인을 검증한 결과, 자산규모가 작을수록 사회공헌활동 투자의 효율성이 오히려 큰 것으로 나타났다.
Recently, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is becoming a key management issue among leading global companies. A few Korean firms are beginning to recognize the importance of CSR and participate in corporate social activities such as donation, community services, the employment of the disabled, and so on. However, a majority of Korean firms are still not very active in investing in corporate social activities, even though they acknowledge its theoretical necessity. The purpose of this study is to measure the economic value of corporate social performance and investment using the event study methodology. There have been various methods to evaluate corporate social investment in previous research. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Some indices in the balance sheets have more frequently been used. However, overcoming the problems in previous valuation methods, this study has employed event study method. The event study method assumes that the firm’s stock price is immediately changed if any information considered to affect the corporate future cash flow is announced to the public. That is, it is possible to value the event on corporate action or environment by measuring the abnormal change of the stock price at the time of the information announcement. The key advantage of the event study is the possibility of reducing the bias between the time of corporate investment in the middle of the year and the time of making the balance sheets out in the end of the year. In other words, we can control the other extraneous variables affecting the value of corporate investment since we measure the instantaneous change of the stock price due to the event. Furthermore, stock price is known to be the most objective measure to evaluate the economic value of the company since it is determined by a lot of smart investors in the market who takes all kinds of possible future cash flows into present value. The events that this study is interested in are the news announcement to public on corporate social investment from January 1, 2001 and November 13, 2006 identified by key word search on several websites. The events on corporate investment include monetary donation, welfare service, social justice and the environment protection. To measure the abnormal return of the stock price exactly, we excluded the events on companies which were not enlisted or enlisted for less than a year (e.g., the period required to estimate normal return) in the stock market. We also excluded the events on companies which made corporate investment two or more time in the measuring period (10 days), to measure the exact value of the corporate investment. Finally, we excluded the events if other information (e.g., events other than corporate investment) could affect the change of stock price in the measuring period. Total remaining number of data was 100. The date when the event is announced is set to be the day 0 and the day before announcement date to be the day -1. We measure the abnormal returns on the days before the announcement date since some people often know the event before it is known to the public via news media. Our results show that the abnormal returns on the day 0 and -1 are statistically significant at the significance level of p = 0.05. Through social investments, the companies gain, on average, 1.04% of their market values or an average gain in market capitalization of $110 million. We conclude that corporate social investments have positive economic value. In addition, we studied whether the abnormal returns are different across company sizes, industry types, the types of social investments, and the time of the investment to find specific causes of the abnormal return. Only the size of the company was statistically and negatively significant at the significance level of p = 0.05. As the size of the firm is getting smaller, its return on investment from corporate social investment is getting bigger. It suggested that the companies do not need to concern about the types of social investments or industries, on deciding on the social investments.
