해외매출비중이 경영자의 자원조정 의사결정에 미치는 영향

The Effect of Foreign Sales on Management’s Resource Adjustments: Focusing on Sticky Cost Behavior

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how the portion of foreign sales affect management’ decisions in resource adjustment. Specifically, we examine whether foreign sales influence sticky cost behavior, and whether the impact of foreign sales on cost stickiness is industry-specific. Design/Methodology/Approach The sample consists of 9,166 firm-year observations from 2002 to 2019. We categorize operating costs into selling, general, and administrative costs (SG&A), cost of goods sold (CGS), and total costs (TC) and test research hypotheses across four major industries: manufacturing, construction, merchandising, and service. Data were collected from the regulatory annual reports filed by listed companies on the Korea Exchange. Findings First, SG&A, CGS, and TC are sticky in the manufacturing industry, whereas these costs are anti-sticky in the service industry. Second, our results revealed that the impacts of foreign sales on sticky cost behavior vary across industry. Foreign sales reduce the cost stickiness in the manufacturing industry, whereas they drive the stickiness of costs in the service industry. Third, foreign sales mitigate cost stickiness when the absolute change in sales is beyond 30 percent in the manufacturing industry, whereas they increase the sticky cost behavior when sales decrease over 30 percent in the construction and service industries. Research Implications The results suggest that even in industries where we find sticky cost behavior, foreign sales affect the cost stickiness when the magnitude of change in sales is large, meaning that managers in companies with a high portion of foreign sales do not adjust their economic resources for small changes in total sales.