이사회의 적극적인 감시기능은 항상 주주가치를 개선시키는가?

Does the Intensive Board Monitoring Always Improve the Shareholder Wealth?

본 연구는 이사회의 감시기능을 둘러싼 역학관계를 보다 엄밀히 파악하기 위해 감시위원회의 구조와 기업특성 간의 상호작용효과에 주목한다. 실증분석결과, 감시위원회에 소속된 사외이사 비중의 상승은 기업가치에 긍정적인 효과를 갖는 것으로 확인되었다. 하지만, 이러한 효과는 기업업력, 부채비율, 현금흐름의 불확실성, 경쟁위협과 대주주 지분율이 상승할수록 약화되는 반면, 잉여현금흐름, 자산구조의 불투명성과 기관투자자 지분율이 상승할수록 강화되는 것으로 관찰되었다. 이는 기업에 내재한 대리인문제 발생 가능성, 성장확대 전략의 필요성 등에 기초한 다양한 제약조건에 따라 이사회 감시기능의 주주가치 제고효과가 변화될 수 있음을 시사한다. 한편, 배당정책에 미치는 효과를 확인한 결과, 기업업력, 현금흐름의 불확실성, 대주주 지분율과 이사회의 감시기능 간 상호작용효과는 앞선 기업가치 관련성과 동일하게 관찰되었다.

This study investigates the effect of intensive board monitoring, which is measured by the structure of monitoring committees (audit committee, outside director nomination committee, and compensation committee) in the board, on the shareholder wealth in Korea. More importantly, we confirm how this effect can be changed by the various firm characteristics related to the managerial incentives and the efficiency of corporate control mechanisms. Based on this approach, we provide the alternative arguments to the multilateral views to understand the benefits and costs of board monitoring in emerging markets. Empirically, we find that the high proportion of outside directors in monitoring committees has the positive effect on the firm value. However, this effect decreases or disappears as firms’ age, leverage ratio, volatility of cash flow, competitive threats, and the ownership of controlling shareholders increases, while the effect gets stronger as firms’ free cash flow, the opaqueness of assets and the ownership of institutions become greater. These results mean that the value enhancing the effect of board monitoring depends on the firm characteristics which are closely related to the possibility of agency problem and the necessity of growth strategy of the firm. Additionally, confirming the effect on payout policy, we obtain the similar result in the interaction between board monitoring and firms’ age, volatility of cash flow, and ownership of controlling shareholders. Looking beyond this study, our results support the argument of prior literature which suggests that the one size does not fit all: the agency problem will not be solved by one specific control mechanism, therefore we should consider the practical complexity of corporate management and various factors.