• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.77-88
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to confirm whether the current technology appraisal model for investment, which is designed to identify high-growth SMEs in sales, which is one of the characteristics of gazelle companies, has the possibility of expanding employment effects. For SMEs classified as technology investment adequate firms(TI1-TI6) through technology appraisal for investment between 2016 and 2018 were targeted. At this time, the employment effect was analyzed by dividing the absolute employment effect and the relative employment effect. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that the technology appraisal items for investment defined as innovation characteristics did not have significant explanatory power for the absolute employment effect. However, for the relative employment effect, among innovation characteristics, technicality(TC) was found to have significant explanatory power, and this is because the item appraised based on future growth potential. In particular, the relative employment effect is meaningful in terms of the actual employment effect, and the conclusion is drawn that the current technology appraisal model for investment is an appraisal model with the possibility of expansion in terms of employment effect.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.246-253
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• 2018

The main industries in Chungcheongbuk-do are the smart IT parts; bio-health; and transportation machinery, materials and parts. The transportation, machinery, materials and parts (TMMP) industry is a key source technology for environmentally friendly and intelligent vehicles related to future vehicles in the machinery sector. Business support projects to improve this industry are currently underway. In this study, the number of enterprises, number of employees, amount of shipment, and added value of the enterprises in Chungbuk area were analyzed for the downstream and rear industries of the transportation, machinery, materials, and parts industry to set targets and directions for the technical support projects during the enterprise support. In particular, for the SMEs with less than 50 employees, the changes in the value added per enterprise were analyzed according to the period from the year of foundation. In the case of the rear industry, the value added by companies within three years after foundation has decreased gradually each year, so technical support is needed at the beginning of the startup. Companies between the ages of five and nine years are showing a fluctuating trend each year. Therefore, it is necessary to support business diversification or find new items.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.51-78
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• 2021

Followed by 'start-up', the theme of 'scale-up' has been considered as an important agenda in both corporate and policy spheres. In particular, although it is a term commonly used in industry and policy fields, even a conceptual definition has not been achieved from the academic perspective. "Corporate Growth" in the academic aspect and "Business Growth" in the practical management field have different understandings (Achtenhagen et al., 2010). Previous research on corporate growth has not departed from Penrose(1959)'s "Firm as a bundle of resources" and "the role of managers". Based on the theory and background of economics, existing research has mainly examined factors that contribute to firms' growth and their growth patterns. Comparatively, we lack knowledge on the firms' growth with a focus on 'annual revenue growth rate'. In the early stage of the firms, they tend to exhibit a high growth rate as it started with a lower level of annual revenue. However, when the firms reach annual revenue of more than 100 billion KRW, a threshold to be classified as a 'middle-standing enterprise' by Korean standards, they are unlikely to reach a high level of revenue growth rate. In our study, we used our sample of 333 companies (6.7% out of 5,000 'fastest-growing' companies) which reached 15% of the compound annual growth rate in the last three years with more than USD 100 million. It shows that sustaining 'high-growth' above a certain firm size is difficult. The study focuses on firms with annual revenue of more than $100 billion (approximately 120 billion KRW) from the 'Inc. 2020 fast-growing companies 5,000' list. The companies have been categorized into 1) Fast-growing companies (revenue CAGR 15%~40% between 2016 and 2019), 2) Hyper-growing companies (40%~99.9%), and 3) Super-growing (100% or more) with in-depth analysis of each group's characteristics. Also, the relationship between the revenue growth rate, individual company's strategy choice (market orientation, generic strategy, growth strategy, pioneer strategy), industry/market environment, and firm age is investigated with a quantitative approach. Through conducting the study, it aims to provide a reference to the 'Hyper-Growing Model' that combines the paths and factors of growth strategies. For policymakers, our study intends to provide a reference to which factors or environmental variables should be considered for 'optimal effective combinations' to promote firms' growth.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.39-58
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• 2018

This study explores the effects of business consulting on the business performance of firms by using a unique survey for various industry sectors in Korea. We attempt to build a consulting model that shows the structural relationship between consulting factors and consulting performance. Moreover, through the consulting model, we conduct the analysis of elasticity of consulting factors and the group analysis based on firm age. First, the findings show that all consulting factor has a positive impact on the consulting performance, but in the results of factor elasticity, they have a somewhat different impact. Second, while the support of CEOs is relatively more elastic than other consulting factors with respect to the completion of consulting projects, the institutional condition for consulting is relatively more elastic than other factors with respect to the contribution to business performance. Third, since the high-firm age group has a greater capacity to absorb and utilize external knowledge and resource, the consultant competency and institutional conditions have a more impact on the consulting performance than the low-firm age group. On the other hand, in the low-firm age group, the result indicates that the support of CEOs has a more impact in the consulting performance than the high-firm age group. According to the total effect, the support of CEOs in the entire model has the highest impact on the consulting performance. Thus, it is probably difficult to achieve the improvement of business performance through consulting as well as the successful consulting projects without the CEOs' commitment and awareness about the consulting projects.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.133-149
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• 2024

According to previous studies, the key factor in determining the loan interest rate for shipping companies is the default risk premium. Therefore, this study analyzes the determinants of the risk premium of shipping loans using a multiple linear regression model. With the risk premium as the dependent variable, a total of 10 independent variables are selected, including three factors: loan characteristics, borrower's creditworthiness, and economic situation. Samples are 82 shipping loans supported by Bank A from 2014 to 2022. As a result, borrower's creditworthiness(current ratio, debt ratio, firm age) and economic situation(freight index) affect the risk premium in analysis for all samples. It is found that borrower's creditworthiness has some influence on the risk premium for container ships(current ratio, cash holding ratio, debt ratio, operating income to sales) and bulk carriers(debt ratio, firm age). Market situation affects the risk premium in gas carriers. However, in the model targeting tanker ships, unlike previous studies, all factors have no effect on the risk premium.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.175-189
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• 2014

This study was intended to provide fundamental data concerning franchising companies' characteristics and performance in foodservice business by employing financial data from the firms' IDS(Information Disclosure Statements). Multiple regression analysis method was used to identify any correlations among franchising size, marketing competency, operational characteristics, and performance according to technique based upon 169 IDS data as of 2013. In terms of franchisor size and performance, the number of company-operated stores had statistically significant corelation with sales, net income, the total number of stores, and the number of franchisees. With respect to marketing competency and performance, advertising expenses showed statistically significant correlation with sales, the total number of stores, promotion expenses with sales, net income, and the total number of stores. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant correlation with current year's net income. At last, present study found significant correlations among business years, sales, current year's net income, and the total number of stores by regarding operational characteristics and performance, but there was no significant correlation between brands and performance. This study is cross-sectional study which is a limitation to be overcome in further studies. In addition, it is required to review the possibility for franchise management style to contribute to expanding the Korean traditional foods.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.73-86
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• 2022

Interest and investment in agri-food ventures is increasing worldwide. Agri-food venture startups are also increasing in Korea, but there are constraint factors due to industrial characteristics, and infrastructure and investment for growth are insufficient. This study confirmed the effect of technology commercialization capability and competitive strategy on the growth prospects of agri-food venture companies and the mediating effect of business model innovation. And, through comparison with previous studies, the industrial characteristics were identified by confirming the difference between all venture companies and agri-food ventures. For this, only agri-food ventures data were extracted from the original data of the Research on the Precision Status of Venture Firms 2021. And empirical analysis was conducted. As a result, manufacturing capability, cost leadership and product differentiation had a positive(+) effect on growth prospects. The mediating effect of business model innovation between manufacturing capacity, product differentiation and growth prospects was verified. Through the research results, factors affecting the long-term growth prospects of agri-food ventures were identified in consideration of industrial characteristics. In addition, practical implications in connection with business model innovation of agri-food ventures were presented. In future research, it is necessary to develop an objective measurement tool and to conduct a detailed analysis according to business history and company size.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.41-53
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• 2024

The Korean government's SME policy has shifted from the traditional focus of protecting SMEs against large business groups to foster innovative SMEs by upgrading their innovation base. From the government's policy perspective, innovative SMEs are defined as SMEs that can secure technological competitiveness or have the potential for future growth through technological innovation activities. Based on the resource-based theory and resource dependence theory, this study aims to explain whether both R&D capabilities of innovative SMEs and the acquisition of venture certification have a significant impact on enhancing global technological competitiveness. According to the resource-based theory, differences in a firm's tangible and intangible resources and R&D capabilities determine its innovation activities and performance. On the other hand, the resource dependence theory argues that government certification programs to support SMEs positively affect SMEs' innovation activities and performance by increasing their access to the external resources needed for innovation. Going a step further, this study examines the moderating effect of the product life cycle. As a moderating variable, the product life cycle is expected to have an opposite effect on the internal and external resource utilization. The results based on the SME Technology Statistics(2020) support the direct effect of both R&D capability and venture certification on global technological competitiveness and the differential moderating effect of product life cycle. The finding that the technological competitiveness effect of internal resource utilization is greater for longer product life cycles, while the technological competitiveness effect of external resource utilization is greater for shorter product life cycles suggests that product life cycle should be considered as an important contextual variable when studying the relationship between R&D, technological innovation, and performance. These results also suggest that in a global competitive environment where product life cycles are dramatically shortening, innovative SMEs that suffer the dual liabilities of newness and smallness should focus not only on strengthening internal R&D capabilities but also on strategically securing external resources.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.191-217
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• 2014

The Purpose of this study is to find the effect factors of R&D investment in SMEs which plays an important role in the national economy, and the differences of the effect factors by the type of SMEs. The subject of this study is about 3,400 SMEs mentioned in "The survey of technical statistics on SMEs in 2007" by Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business. The effect factors are related with the size of business, the infrastructure of R&D and the activities of R&D which have been studied by many researchers. The methods of analysis are regression analysis, moderating effect analysis and the software package used is SPSS 12.0. The results of the study are as fallow. First, it was found that unlike in previous studies which show the effect of the elements of business's size, research infrastructure, research activities on R&D investment, one element alone can't be considered for meaningful result but the various elements have effect on R&D investment at the same time. In other words, the number of employees and the sales as the elements of business's size, the ratio of researchers, the technical ability, the ratio of equipment possession and the intellectual properties as the elements of R&D infrastructure, the activity of ideas and joint research as the elements of R&D activities have positive(+) effect, whereas the participation of CEO in the activity of R&D as the elements of R&D activities activity has negative(-) one. The number of employees, the ratio of researchers, and the sales had relatively high influence whereas equipment possession, technical ability, intellectual properties, the participation of CEO in the research, the activity of idea, joint research had relatively low influence. Next, it was also found that there are differences of the effect factors over the types of SMEs. SMEs were classified into 19 types by eight criteria such as start-ups and existing business by business age; small business and medium business by size; manufacturing business and service business by product type;independent business and subcontractor business by dealing type; businesses in the entering, growing, maturing and restructuring stage by growth stage; businesses with low, medium and high technology by technological level; pioneering business and non-pioneering business by industrial type; and businesses with state-of-the-art technology and non-advanced business by the level of business activities. The meaning of this study lies in the fact that it found the various effect factors should be considered at the same time when conducting study on SMEs' R&D investment, and the differences by the type should be acknowledged. This study surpassed the limitations of the previous studies which focused on a couple of factors and types. This study result can also be considered for other studies on achievement, organization, marketing and others. Moreover, it shows that a differential policy by business type is needed when formulating SME policy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.193-208
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• 2020

In this study, we investigate the effects of technology innovation investments and employment on credit ratings of very small start-up businesses using the data period of 2009 till 2015 test two hypotheses: asymmetric information hypothesis or competence hypothesis. We use financial and non-financial data of 51,903 observations of 12,028 small businesses from a database of a commercial bank and fixed effects panel models and two-stage instrumental variable models. We find that in the short-run small size startups show lower credit ratings than non-startups, and that both technology innovation activities and employment capability improve their credit ratings. In the long-run, technology innovation investments do not improve their credit ratings of later years while employment capability improve their credit ratings of the subsequent year. In addition, the age of startups improves their credit ratings of the current year and until the subsequent two years while employee productivity, fixed ratio and ROA positively affect their credit ratings for up to three years. However, short-term and overall debt ratios, cost of borrowings and firm-size negatively affect their credit ratings for up to three years. The results of the study on credit ratings suggest that credit rating agencies seem to consider both technology innovation activities and employment capability in the credit ratings of small start-ups as 'competence factors' rather than 'asymmetric information factors' with inefficiency and cost burdens. The results also suggest that we must find ways to reflect properly the severe asymmetric information of the early-stage start-ups, and technology innovation activities and employment capability in the credit rating formula.