Gwangho Kim

We attempt to provide a more nuanced view of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm financial performance using a competitive-action perspective. We argue that competitive action should be considered as an important contingency that determines the effects of CSR activities on firm financial performance. Using data for 113 publicly listed U.S. firms in the software industry between 2000 and 2005, we found that socially responsible activities (positive CSR) enhance

Abstract Extending social comparison theory to the context of interfirm competition, we investigate whether and under what conditions firms may benefit by deviating from consumers' views concerning firm comparisons. Based on all of the possible dyadic competitive comparisons among the 26 automakers in the United States, we found that: (1) a focal firm enjoys a greater increase in sales than the target firm when it compares itself with a more reputable target firm, even though consumers do not pe

We theorized and tested the performance implications of the lateral hiring by professional service firms (i.e. law firms). Using a longitudinal dataset of lateral partner hires in 148 US law firms between the years of 2004 and 2008, the results indicated that the size of lateral hiring had a reversed U-shape relationship with the financial performance of a firm. In addition, the leverage ratio (i.e. the ratio between associate lawyers and partners) significantly moderated the reversed U-shape re

Abstract Premised on the assumption that strategic alliance is a type of competitive action toward rivals, this study explores how a firm uses alliances differently with respect to rivals. I distinguish between two types of alliances that directly involve rivals: alliance with a rival and with a rival's partner. The former and the latter reflect cooperative‐ and competitive‐orientations respectively. Further, I investigate what drives a focal firm to adopt a particular alliance rather than anoth

This paper aims at analyzing the practice of job rotation in the Korean government and putting forward policy suggestions. The Korean government is often accused of low capacity and weak competitiveness, which mainly result from the low expertise of public officials. Considering the high quality of human resources flowing into the public sector in Korea, solutions should be found from the structure of the system. This paper regards frequent position changes due to excessive job rotation as a key

This paper offers an explanation for the discrepancy between Downs' prediction of convergence to the median and the real world observations of nonconvergence. We modify Palfrey (1984) by introducing valence characteristics and show that there exist equilibria with entry in which the entrant may choose to be an extremist.

This paper aims to put forward some policy suggestions regarding the goal and strategies of the regional development policy in Korea. We first survey past regional policies and examine the regional disparity in Korea. It is found using the OECD data that although population and income are highly concentrated, inequalities of income and other living standards do not seem as problematic as to call for strong government intervention. Moreover, recent development in the new economic geography implie

We propose a simple and general framework for nonparametric estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects under fairness constraints. Under standard regularity conditions, we show that the resulting estimators possess the double robustness property. We use this framework to characterize the trade-off between fairness and the maximum welfare achievable by the optimal policy. We evaluate the methods in a simulation study and illustrate them in a real-world case study.

Firms spend enormous amounts of resources for human resource development (HRD) based on the belief that HRD contributes to firm performance by enhancing employees' capabilities. However, whether investment in HRD actually creates value to firms is inconclusive. We explore whether and when a firm's HRD investment pays off by investigating the relationship between the monetary amount spent for HRD and a firm accounting‐based performance measure (ROE). Using a representative sample of 309 Korean fi

Foreign direct investment (FDI) may influence host countries, not only their economy but also their institutions such as political and economic systems. This study comprehensively explores these diverse impacts of FDI in the most centralized economy in the world, North Korea, by focusing on the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC). The GIC is a special economic zone for FDI, especially from South Korea. Based on the thorough analysis of literature and data on the GIC, this study found a significant

The purpose of this study is to analyze Frank Lloyd Wright’s concept of prospect. The characteristics of his concept are completely unique according to the interpretation of relationship between object and subject; land and building, nature and self, people and self, as one unit. This thesis can be summarized as follows;1) In the composition of the basic form for the prospect, Wright used the 'box breaking' technique regarding the building and land as one unit on the basis of the organic idea of

We examine how employee mobility influences firms’ performance by focusing on lateral partners in law firms. We also examined how the effect of lateral partner hiring on law firm performance would change with the leverage ratio which is a human capital structure between partners and associates. Using data from large U.S. law firms, we find an inverse U-shape relationship between the number of lateral partners and law firm performance. We also find that the leverage ratio influences the non-linea