earticle

영어

This study assumes that companies(stocks) included in the ‘KRX ESG Leaders 150’ theme index are excellent ESG companies, and presents the research results that the effects of ESG activities can negatively affect financial performance. Specifically, since the benefits from ESG activities do not appear on the financial statements or appear smaller than the costs, we hypothesize that the profit will be management upward to offset the costs incurred by the disclosure of non-financial information and report the analysis results. Specifically, the discretionary accrual(AEM), which is a proxy for earnings management traditionally used in accounting, and the proxy for earnings management based on real activities(REM), were used through the financial data of the companies selected as a sample. As a result of the analysis, the overall excellent companies for ESG showed a positive correlation with the discretionary accrual and the proxy of some real activity earnings management, indicating the result that through this, it is judged that their earnings are management upward. However, in this regard, as a result of additional analysis on companies that were selected as 'KRX Eco Leaders 100' and showed excellent performance in the environmental sector and companies that showed excellent performance in society and governance, variables that have been used as a proxy for earnings management and no statistical significance was found. Summarizing these results, it is judged that if ESG performance is evaluated by each factor, benefits that offset costs are obtained, so there is no incentive to raise earnings in the short term. In other words, it is judged to be a result of the fact that the benefits that a company can obtain for each individual ESG factor are all different. Such analysis results are considered meaningful in that they suggest that ESG activities can be used to hide the opportunistic decision-making of managers. In addition, global climate change requires companies to disclose more non-financial information and demand performance. However, when ESG activities appear as a negative signal to a company's financial performance, managers can use ESG activities as a means of opportunistic decision-making. Specifically, the case of Danone, a global food company, suggests that, in the current situation where ESG performance standards are ambiguous, a company's aggressive ESG activities can worsen financial performance and send negative signals to investors. Despite these implications, this study has the following limitations and problems that need to be supplemented. Specifically, since there is no sophisticated measurement of ESG performance, the question remains as to whether the ESG excellent companies assumed in the study are actually excellent companies. In addition, the problem of omitted variables may exist, and at the same time, endogenous is not considered. Therefore, it is expected that advanced research that solves this problem will be conducted in the future.