본 연구는 기업이 현금흐름의 가치관련성이 높을 때 이를 경영자 보상계약에서 반영하는지 여부를 검증함으로써, 선행연구에서 상대적으로 소홀하게 다루었던 기업가치평가와 경영자 보상계약에서의 영업현금흐름의 정보적 가치를 분석하고 있다. 분석 결과, 영업현금흐름의 가치관련성이 높은 기업의 경우 경영자 보상계약에서 영업현금흐름의 가중치도 높은 것으로 나타났다. 이는 본 연구의 가설을 지지하는 결과로 영업현금흐름의 가치관련성이 높은 기업의 경우 그렇지 않은 기업에 비해 영업현금흐름의 증가에 경영의 초점을 맞추게 되고, 따라서 경영자로 하여금 영업현금흐름의 증가에 보다 많은 노력을 기울이도록 보상계약을 체결함을 시사하고 있다. 다음으로 재벌기업여부가 영업현금흐름의 가치관련성과 보상관련성 간의 관계에 미치는 영향에 대해 분석한 결과, 영업현금흐름의 가치관련성과 경영자 보상에서의 영업현금흐름의 가중치 간 유의한 양의 연관관계는 비재벌기업에서만 발견되고, 재벌기업에서는 유의성이 사라졌다. 이는 재벌기업에서는 지배구조의 특성에 기인한 비효율성이 존재하여 기업가치 극대화를 위한 경영자 보상계약 설계가 이루어지고 있지 않음을 보여 주고 있다. 본 연구는 경영자 보상계약에서 영업현금흐름에 대한 정보가 어떻게 역할을 하는지 보여 줌으로써 관련 연구의 확장에 기여함과 동시에, 영업현금흐름의 가치관련성이 설명변수로서 종속변수인 기업의 특성에 미치는 영향을 분석함으로써, 선행연구에 추가적인 공헌점을 가질 수 있다.

In this study, I investigate the role of cash flow from operation (CFO) in performance evaluation purposes. Earnings and CFO are the recognized accounting indicators of firm performance. Anecdotal and research evidence have established that earnings and cash flows have differential implications for firm performance. While the literature is replete with research that show the contracting role of earnings, evidence on the relevance of CFO in incentive contracting is sparse and weak. The incentive plans of noted companies justify the link between CFO and executive reward on the logic that CFO is a key driver of success and stock return. From a valuation point of view, CFO is useful because it is one of a key component of the firm performance. Market participants, therefore, use the signal to update their beliefs about the outcome. So from a contracting point of view, management cash compensation would be sensitive to value relevance of CFO. Using compensation and accounting data for a number of Korean firms over an 9－year period from 2001 to 2009, I find that pay－sensitivity of CFO is higher for firms that exhibit high value relevance of CFO. Next, I examine whether the association between value relevance and compensation weights of CFO is different between chaebol firms and non－chaebol firms. The controlling families of a chaebol group have been criticized for running the affiliated firms as a vehicle to enrich their own personal wealth, and not necessarily the wealth of shareholders in those individual companies. It has been alleged that a chaebol sometimes instructs its member firm to transfer wealth to a member firm under financial distress via illegal related－party transactions. Such ‘tunneling’ may be consistent with the interest of the controlling family and the group as a whole yet it is done at the expense of the minority shareholders of the firm. There are two papers closely related to my second project. Campbell and Keys (2002) show that chaebol firms underperform non－chaebol firms financially and that top executive turnover is not significantly related to firm performance for chaebol firms whereas it is for non－chaebol firms, suggesting that if group chairman or controlling shareholder mandates top executives to pursue the interest of chaebol as a whole, executive turnover might be insensitive to individual firm－level performance. Kato et al. (2007) have found that cash compensation of Korean executives is significantly related to stock market performance only for non－chaebol firms, not for chaebol firms. Such evidence suggests that if top executives of chaebol are mandated to pursue the interests of the overall group, and not the shareholders` interest of the firm they work for, their cash compensation would be less sensitive to value relevance of CFO, compared to those firms unaffiliated to any chaebol group. I find that the association between value relevance and compensation weights of CFO remains still significant only in non－chaebol firms, whereas the significance disappears in the chaebol firms, supporting for the hypothesis.