International diversification, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance: Evidence from Korea

We examine how multinational corporations’ (MNC) international diversification (ID) is related to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in the domestic market. We also investigate whether corporate governance, specifically the conglomerate (chaebol) structure, affects the relationship between ID and CSR activities in the domestic market. We perform empirical analysis using a sample of 606 firm-year observations of Korean-listed manufacturing MNCs from 2005 to 2010. We find that ID is negatively associated with CSR, and that this relationship is stronger for chaebol firms. These results are robust after controlling for various factors that affect measurements of ID. Our findings suggest that ID related to market diversification through exports and foreign affiliates appears to push MNCs to perform fewer CSR activities in the domestic market. Our findings also indicate that the effect of chaebol firms on the relationship between ID and CSR is greater than that of non-chaebol firms in Korean market. Our study contributes to the ID and CSR literature as the first study to provide empirical evidence on the association between ID and CSR activities in the domestic market for Korean firms using three aspects of ID measurement. Given that empirical evidence on this issue is very limited, our findings have implications for academics, practitioners, and policymakers in understanding the relationship between ID and CSR strategy.