• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.139-153
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• 2024

The importance of sustainable growth and cost reduction has increased globally, leading to the expansion of outsourcing by companies. Additionally, the spread of the platform economy has brought changes in the way we work, and the online outsourcing market, where tasks are mediated through platforms, is growing. Academically, while research on general outsourcing is actively conducted, studies on online outsourcing are relatively insufficient compared to its actual utilization. This study aims to analyze the factors and performance factors of online outsourcing utilization by startups, to identify the effects and concerns of using online outsourcing from multiple perspectives, and to suggest the roles of various stakeholders for effective utilization and industry development. For the research, a survey was conducted with 281 employees of startups who have experience in using online outsourcing, and the main findings are as follows. First, the enhancement of efficiency, profitability, and innovation through the use of online outsourcing positively affects organizational commitment and job satisfaction of startup members. Especially, the improvement of efficiency due to the use of online outsourcing has a significant effect on enhancing job satisfaction. Second, concerns about the burden of online outsourcing fees or uncertain outcomes negatively affect organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Third, there are perceptual differences in the motivations and performance regarding the utilization of online outsourcing depending on the job position. Practitioners perceive that the use of online outsourcing increases organizational commitment, whereas managers have relatively higher concerns about the uncertainty of outsourced task outcomes and information security. Through this study, the possibility that human resource shortages and employee management issues in startups can be improved through online outsourcing was confirmed. By verifying the influence of various factors of online outsourcing utilization, this study also provides meaningful implications for establishing business strategies for online outsourcing intermediary platform companies and for formulating startup support policies by government and other startup support organizations.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2024

This study empirically analyzed the factors affecting acceptance intention when introducing digital transformation in the passenger vehicle transportation business, and examined the moderating effect of corporate agility. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the technology-organization-environment (TOE) model, the study set introduction usability, ease of introduction, digital transformation capability, CEO support, customer demand, and competitive pressure as independent variables, and 316 effective samples were analyzed by setting corporate agility as a modulating variable. As a result of the analysis, ease of introduction, digital transformation capability, CEO support, customer demand, and competitive pressure all had a significant influence on the intention to accept digital transformation, and in particular, digital transformation capability had the greatest influence. This suggests that the ability of companies to effectively utilize digital technology is an essential factor in the success of digital transformation. On the other hand, the usefulness of introduction did not significantly affect the intention to accept, which means that concerns about costs and risks can have a greater impact on the introduction of digital transformation. In addition, corporate agility showed a positive moderating effect in the relationship between acceptance intention and independent variables, and it was shown that the more agile the company can effectively solve the challenges that arise in the process of introducing digital transformation. In particular, when corporate agility is high, the effect of usefulness of introduction changes positively. This study is the first attempt to systematically analyze digital transformation in the passenger vehicle transportation business, and in practice, it has great academic significance and confirmed the importance of digital transformation capabilities and CEO support. However, since the scope of the study is limited to the passenger vehicle transportation business, there is a limit to generalization, research expanded to various industries and fields is needed in the future.

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.57-75
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• 2024

This study examined how ESG activities of convenience stores, affect consumers' store loyalty. Using 300 valid samples of convenience store users collected through an online specialized agency (Company M), this study empirically analyzed the effects of environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) activities among ESG on trust and store loyalty, and the mediating effects of trust and the moderating effects of eco-friendly values, social media activity, and consumer-company identification. The results of the analysis showed that, first, governance activities had a positive effect on trust, and environmental activities and trust had a positive effect on store loyalty, but social activities had no effect Second, trust had a moderating effect only on the relationship between governance activities and store loyalty, and third, in the relationship between ESG activities and trust, eco-friendly values and social media activity had moderating effects on environmental, social, and governance activities, and consumer-company identification had moderating effects on environmental and governance activities, but not on social activities. Therefore, convenience store brands should further strengthen their environmental and social activities to build consumer trust, especially environmental activities, which only directly affect store loyalty, so they should be more cautious and proactive. In addition, intensive marketing activities are needed to build trust among consumers who have high eco-friendly values, social media activity, and consumer-company identification. Therefore, this study confirms the critical view of consumers despite the social contribution activities of convenience store brands, and suggests that in order to improve them, it is necessary to strengthen social activity efforts, actively participate in ESG activities of on-site franchisees who are customer contact points, and educate employees.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.23-42
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• 2023

This study is to investigate the influence relationship between ethical management activities and organizational effectiveness of logistics companies and the regulatory role of organizational trust and self-esteem in the relationship between the two variables. An empirical study was conducted through a survey of 270 employees of a logistics company, and the results of the study are as follows. First, the hypothesis that ethical management activities of logistics companies will affect organizational effectiveness was adopted. Among the ethical management activities of logistics companies, personnel management activities influenced organizational commitment and turnover intention, and external ethical management activities affected customer orientation and organizational commitment. Second, the hypothesis that trust and pride in an organization will affect organizational effectiveness was adopted. Trust in the company influenced organizational business and intention to leave, and trust and pride in superiors affected customer orientation and organizational commitment. Third, in the relationship between ethical management activities and organizational effectiveness of logistics companies, organizational trust and self-esteem have a role in controlling. The hypothesis was partially accepted. Organizational trust and pride of workers in logistics companies have the largest moderating effect on turnover intention in the relationship between ethical management activities and organizational effectiveness. In particular, it can be confirmed that self-esteem has a moderating effect on all variables such as customer orientation, organizational commitment and turnover intention. Based on the above analysis results, logistics companies can see the effect of increasing organizational effectiveness (customer orientation, organizational commitment, turnover intention) through ethical management activities, organizational trust and pride. In relation to effectiveness, since the role of controlling the turnover intention of employees of logistics companies is the greatest, it is necessary to apply this to the organizational management program to increase the efficiency of organizational management through fair and transparent continuous operation.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.65-78
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• 2024

This study investigates the correlation between financial constraints and investment activities in Korean logistics firms. A sample of 340 companies engaged in the transportation sector, as per the 2021 KSIC, was selected for analysis. Financial data obtained from the DART were used to compile a panel dataset spanning from 1996 to 2021, totaling 6,155 observations. The research model was validated, and tests for heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation in the error terms were conducted considering the panel data structure. The relationship between investment activities in the previous period and current investment activities was analyzed using panel Generalized Method of Moments(GMM). The validation results of the research indicate that Korean logistics firms tend to increase investment activities as their level of financial constraints improves. Specifically, a positive relationship between the level of financial constraints and investment activities was consistently observed across all models. These findings suggest that investment decision-making varies based on the financial constraints faced by companies, aligning with previous research indicating that investment activities of constrained firms are subdued. Moreover, while the results from the model examining whether investment activities in the previous period affect current investment activities indicated an influence of investment activities from the previous period on current investment activities, the investment activities from two periods ago did not show a significant relationship with current investment activities. Among the control variables, firm size and cash flow variables exhibited positive relationships, while debt size and asset diversification variables showed negative relationships. Thus, larger firm size and smoother cash flows were associated with more proactive investment activities, while high debt levels and extensive asset diversification appeared to constrain investment activities in logistics companies. These results interpret that under financial constraints, internal funding sources such as cash flows exhibit positive relationships, whereas external capital sources such as debt demonstrate negative relationships, consistent with empirical findings from previous research.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.269-288
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• 2024

The main objective of this study is to empirically explore how the organizational culture influences financial performance of companies. To achieve this, 58 companies included in the KOSPI 200 were selected from an online job platform in South Korea, JobPlanet. In order to understand the organizational culture of these companies, data was collected and analyzed from 81,067 reviews written by current and former members of these companies on JobPlanet over a period of 9 years from 2014 to 2022. To define the organizational culture of each company based on the review data, this study utilized well-known text analysis techniques, namely Word2Vec and FastText analysis methods. By modifying, supplementing, and extending the keywords associated with the five organizational culture values (Innovation, Integrity, Quality, Respect, and Teamwork) defined by Guiso et al. (2015), this study created a new Culture Dictionary. By using this dictionary, this study explored which cultural values-related keywords appear most often in the review data of each company, revealing the relative strength of specific cultural values within companies. Going a step further, the study also investigated which cultural values statistically impact financial performance. The results indicated that the organizational culture focusing on innovation and creativity (Innovation) and on customers and the market (Quality) positively influenced Tobin's Q, an indicator of a company's future value and growth. For the indicator of profitability, ROA, only the organizational culture emphasizing customers and the market (Quality) showed statistically significant impact. This study distinguishes itself from traditional surveys and case analysis-based research on organizational culture by analyzing large-scale text data to explore organizational culture.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.231-241
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• 2024

Discovering innovative startups that use public technologies from universities and government-funded research institutes is crucial for maintaining national competitiveness. Advancing public R&D technology, discovering entrepreneurs from research institutes, and fostering and investing in deep-tech startups are very important at the national level. However, there is a lack of research on activating startups using public technologies, and research analyzing each governance entity is needed to activate the innovation startup ecosystem. Therefore, this study conducted an empirical analysis of the priorities for revitalizing the innovation startup ecosystem among researchers, research institutes, innovative startups, and the government, which constitute the public technology governance. The results of this study revealed that the sustainability of innovative startups (0.308), government innovation startup activation (0.298), research institutions discovering and fostering startups (0.221), and researcher's characteristics (0.173) were the most significant factors in the public R&D technology innovation startup ecosystem. And the sub-factors of researcher's characteristics, seizing business opportunities (0.305) was most important, and creating a startup-friendly culture (0.293) was most important among the sub-factors of research institutions discovering and fostering startups. Investment funds and procurement (0.373) was the most critical sub-factor for the sustainability of innovative startups, while a dedicated fund for public technology (0.305) was the most important among the sub-factors of government schemes for promoting innovative startups. A total of 20 factors were analyzed sequentially according to their importance in the weights for evaluation factors and sub-factors. By sub-factor, investment and financing for innovative startups (0.115), dedicated government fund for public technology (0.091), securing high-quality human resources for innovative startups (0.078), improving government regulations and permits related to innovative technologies (0.074), and creating a startup-friendly culture in research institutions (0.065) were the most important. This result emphasizes the significance of securing competitiveness to become a sustainable public technology startup. In addition, based on entrepreneurship experience, 'dedicated funding for public technology' was most important for the group with startup experience, while the group with no experience needed more 'investment and funding'. Furthermore, By region, 'improving government regulations and permits' was the highest priority in the Seoul metropolitan area, while 'attracting investment and financing' was the most important in Daejeon. Therefore, the results of this research, it is important to give policy priority to innovative startup companies in order to activate the innovation startup ecosystem in the public technology sector. The political and practical implications were derived that long-term (10 years or more) investment and funding for deep tech companies and the establishment of public technology-only funds are the most urgent and important.

• 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.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.175-191
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• 2011

With the MICE(Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention, Exhibition) industry coming into the spotlight, there has been a growing interest in the domestic exhibition industry. Accordingly, in Korea, various studies of the industry are being conducted to enhance exhibition performance as in the United States or Europe. Some studies are focusing particularly on analyzing visiting patterns of exhibition visitors using intelligent information technology in consideration of the variations in effects of watching exhibitions according to the exhibitory environment or technique, thereby understanding visitors and, furthermore, drawing the correlations between exhibiting businesses and improving exhibition performance. However, previous studies related to booth recommendation systems only discussed the accuracy of recommendation in the aspect of a system rather than determining changes in visitors' behavior or perception by recommendation. A booth recommendation system enables visitors to visit unplanned exhibition booths by recommending visitors suitable ones based on information about visitors' visits. Meanwhile, some visitors may be satisfied with their unplanned visits, while others may consider the recommending process to be cumbersome or obstructive to their free observation. In the latter case, the exhibition is likely to produce worse results compared to when visitors are allowed to freely observe the exhibition. Thus, in order to apply a booth recommendation system to exhibition halls, the factors affecting the performance of the system should be generally examined, and the effects of the system on visitors' unplanned visiting behavior should be carefully studied. As such, this study aims to determine the factors that affect the performance of a booth recommendation system by reviewing theories and literature and to examine the effects of visitors' perceived performance of the system on their satisfaction of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. Toward this end, the unplanned behavior theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. Unplanned behavior can be defined as "behavior that is done by consumers without any prearranged plan". Thus far, consumers' unplanned behavior has been studied in various fields. The field of marketing, in particular, has focused on unplanned purchasing among various types of unplanned behavior, which has been often confused with impulsive purchasing. Nevertheless, the two are different from each other; while impulsive purchasing means strong, continuous urges to purchase things, unplanned purchasing is behavior with purchasing decisions that are made inside a store, not before going into one. In other words, all impulsive purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulsive. Then why do consumers engage in unplanned behavior? Regarding this question, many scholars have made many suggestions, but there has been a consensus that it is because consumers have enough flexibility to change their plans in the middle instead of developing plans thoroughly. In other words, if unplanned behavior costs much, it will be difficult for consumers to change their prearranged plans. In the case of the exhibition hall examined in this study, visitors learn the programs of the hall and plan which booth to visit in advance. This is because it is practically impossible for visitors to visit all of the various booths that an exhibition operates due to their limited time. Therefore, if the booth recommendation system proposed in this study recommends visitors booths that they may like, they can change their plans and visit the recommended booths. Such visiting behavior can be regarded similarly to consumers' visit to a store or tourists' unplanned behavior in a tourist spot and can be understand in the same context as the recent increase in tourism consumers' unplanned behavior influenced by information devices. Thus, the following research model was established. This research model uses visitors' perceived performance of a booth recommendation system as the parameter, and the factors affecting the performance include trust in the system, exhibition visitors' knowledge levels, expected personalization of the system, and the system's threat to freedom. In addition, the causal relation between visitors' satisfaction of their perceived performance of the system and unplanned behavior and their intention to reuse the system was determined. While doing so, trust in the booth recommendation system consisted of 2nd order factors such as competence, benevolence, and integrity, while the other factors consisted of 1st order factors. In order to verify this model, a booth recommendation system was developed to be tested in 2011 DMC Culture Open, and 101 visitors were empirically studied and analyzed. The results are as follows. First, visitors' trust was the most important factor in the booth recommendation system, and the visitors who used the system perceived its performance as a success based on their trust. Second, visitors' knowledge levels also had significant effects on the performance of the system, which indicates that the performance of a recommendation system requires an advance understanding. In other words, visitors with higher levels of understanding of the exhibition hall learned better the usefulness of the booth recommendation system. Third, expected personalization did not have significant effects, which is a different result from previous studies' results. This is presumably because the booth recommendation system used in this study did not provide enough personalized services. Fourth, the recommendation information provided by the booth recommendation system was not considered to threaten or restrict one's freedom, which means it is valuable in terms of usefulness. Lastly, high performance of the booth recommendation system led to visitors' high satisfaction levels of unplanned behavior and intention to reuse the system. To sum up, in order to analyze the effects of a booth recommendation system on visitors' unplanned visits to a booth, empirical data were examined based on the unplanned behavior theory and, accordingly, useful suggestions for the establishment and design of future booth recommendation systems were made. In the future, further examination should be conducted through elaborate survey questions and survey objects.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.111-137
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• 2010

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate perceived quality and service personal value affecting the result of long-term relationship between service buyers and suppliers. This research presented a constructive model(perceived quality affecting the service personal value and the moderate effect of NFC) in the on off line and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of service. Data were gathered from respondents who visit at the education service market. For this study, Data were analyzed by AMOS 7.0. We integrate the literature on services marketing with researches on personal values and perceived quality. The SERPVAL scale presented here allows for the creation of a common ground for assessing service personal values, giving a clear understanding of the key value dimensions behind service choice and usage. It will lead to a focus of future research in services marketing, extending knowledge in the field and stimulating further empirical research on service personal values. At the managerial level, as a tool the SERPVAL scale should allow practitioners to evaluate and improve the value of a service, and consequently, to define strategies and actions to address services for customers based on their fundamental personal values. Through qualitative and empirical research, we find that the service quality construct conforms to the structure of a second-order factor model that ties service quality perceptions to distinct and actionable dimensions: outcome, interaction, and environmental quality. In turn, each has two subdimensions that define the basis of service quality perceptions. The authors further suggest that for each of these subdimensions to contribute to improved service quality perceptions, the quality received by consumers must be perceived to be reliable, responsive, and empathetic. Although the service personal value may be found in researches that explore individual values and their consequences for consumer behavior, there is no established operationalization of a SERPVAL scale. The inexistence of an established scale, duly adapted in order to understand and analyze personal values behind services usage, exposes the need of a measurement scale with such a purpose. This need has to be rooted, however, in a conceptualization of the construct being scaled. Service personal values can be defined as a customer's overall assessment of the use of a service based on the perception of what is achieved in terms of his own personal values. As consumer behaviors serve to show an individual's values, the use of a service can also be a way to fulfill and demonstrate consumers'personal values. In this sense, a service can provide more to the customer than its concrete and abstract attributes at both the attribute and the quality levels, and more than its functional consequences at the value level. Both values and services literatures agree, that personal value is the highest-level concept, followed by instrumental values, attitudes and finally by product attributes. Purchasing behaviors are agreed to be the end result of these concepts' interaction, with personal values taking a major role in the final decision process. From both consumers' and practitioners' perspectives, values are extremely relevant, as they are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people's lives. While building on previous research, we propose to assess service personal values through three broad groups of individual dimensions; at the self-oriented level, we use (1) service value to peaceful life (SVPL) and, at the social-oriented level, we use (2) service value to social recognition (SVSR), and (3) service value to social integration (SVSI). Service value to peaceful life is our first dimension. This dimension emerged as a combination of values coming from the RVS scale, a scale built specifically to assess general individual values. If a service promotes a pleasurable life, brings or improves tranquility, safety and harmony, then its user recognizes the value of this service. Generally, this service can improve the user's pleasure of life, since it protects or defends the consumer from threats to life or pressures on it. While building upon both the LOV scale, a scale built specifically to assess consumer values, and the RVS scale for individual values, we develop the other two dimensions: SVSR and SVSI. The roles of social recognition and social integration to improve service personal value have been seriously neglected. Social recognition derives its outcome utility from its predictive utility. When applying this underlying belief to our second dimension, SVSR, we assume that people use a service while taking into consideration the content of what is delivered. Individuals consider whether the service aids in gaining respect from others, social recognition and status, as well as whether it allows achieving a more fulfilled and stimulating life, which might then be revealed to others. People also tend to engage in behavior that receives social recognition and to avoid behavior that leads to social disapproval, and this contributes to an individual's social integration. This leads us to the third dimension, SVSI, which is based on the fact that if the consumer perceives that a service strengthens friendships, provides the possibility of becoming more integrated in the group, or promotes better relationships at the social, professional or family levels, then the service will contribute to social integration, and naturally the individual will recognize personal value in the service. Most of the research in business values deals with individual values. However, to our knowledge, no study has dealt with assessing overall personal values as well as their dimensions in a service context. Our final results show that the scales adapted from the Schwartz list were excluded. A possible explanation is that although Schwartz builds on Rokeach work in order to explore individual values, its dimensions might be especially focused on analyzing societal values. As we are looking for individual dimensions, this might explain why the values inspired by the Schwartz list were excluded from the model. The hierarchical structure of the final scale presented in this paper also presents theoretical implications. Although we cannot claim to definitively capture the dimensions of service personal values, we believe that we come close to capturing these overall evaluations because the second-order factor extracts the underlying commonality among dimensions. In addition to obtaining respondents' evaluations of the dimensions, the second-order factor model captures the common variance among these dimensions, reflecting the respondents' overall assessment of service personal values. Towards this fact, we expect that the service personal values conceptualization and measurement scale presented here contributes to both business values literature and the service marketing field, allowing for the delineation of strategies for adding value to services. This new scale also presents managerial implications. The SERPVAL dimensions give some guidance on how to better pursue a highly service-oriented business strategy. Indeed, the SERPVAL scale can be used for benchmarking purposes, as this scale can be used to identify whether or not a firms' marketing strategies are consistent with consumers' expectations. Managerial assessment of the personal values of a service might be extremely important because it allows managers to better understand what customers want or value. Thus, this scale allows us to identify what services are really valuable to the final consumer; providing knowledge for making choices regarding which services to include. Traditional approaches have focused their attention on service attributes (as quality) and service consequences(as service value), but personal values may be an important set of variables to be considered in understanding what attracts consumers to a certain service. By using the SERPVAL scale to assess the personal values associated with a services usage, managers may better understand the reasons behind services' usage, so that they may handle them more efficiently. While testing nomological validity, our empirical findings demonstrate that the three SERPVAL dimensions are positively and significantly associated with satisfaction. Additionally, while service value to social integration is related only with loyalty, service value to peaceful life is associated with both loyalty and repurchase intent. It is also interesting and surprising that service value to social recognition appears not to be significantly linked with loyalty and repurchase intent. A possible explanation is that no mobile service provider has yet emerged in the market as a luxury provider. All of the Portuguese providers are still trying to capture market share by means of low-end pricing. This research has implications for consumers as well. As more companies seek to build relationships with their customers, consumers are easily able to examine whether these relationships provide real value or not to their own lives. The selection of a strategy for a particular service depends on its customers' personal values. Being highly customer-oriented means having a strong commitment to customers, trying to create customer value and understanding customer needs. Enhancing service distinctiveness in order to provide a peaceful life, increase social recognition and gain a better social integration are all possible strategies that companies may pursue, but the one to pursue depends on the outstanding personal values held by the service customers. Data were gathered from 284 respondents in the korean discount store and online shopping mall market. This research proposed 3 hypotheses on 6 latent variables and tested through structural equation modeling. 6 alternative measurements were compared through statistical significance test of the 6 paths of research model and the overall fitting level of structural equation model. and the result was successful. and Perceived quality more positively influences service personal value when NFC is high than when no NFC is low in the off-line market. The results of the study indicate that service quality is properly modeled as an antecedent of service personal value. We consider the research and managerial implications of the study and its limitations. In sum, by knowing the dimensions a consumer takes into account when choosing a service, a better understanding of purchasing behaviors may be realized, guiding managers toward customers expectations. By defining strategies and actions that address potential problems with the service personal values, managers might ultimately influence their firm's performance. we expect to contribute to both business values and service marketing literatures through the development of the service personal value. At a time when marketing researchers are challenged to provide research with practical implications, it is also believed that this framework may be used by managers to pursue service-oriented business strategies while taking into consideration what customers value.