• Korean Business Review
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• v.17
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• pp.153-183
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• 2004

The Gaisong Merchants can be regarded to playa pioneering role to activate the Korea's trade with foreign countries. In the early period of Yi-Dynasty, the Gaisong Merchants focused on personal trade, but in the middle period of Yi-Dynasty, they entered to the realm of governmental trade. Furthermore, their business activities widened to various forms of trades, for example, smuggling. Utilizing accumulated capital, Gaisong merchants expanded their trading activities to their neighboring countries such as Japan and China. In recent times, it is necessary for modem Korean companies to diversify risks through the establishment of corporations for production, marketing and R&D abroad or through joint venture, M&A and strategic alliance with foreign companies in order to reduce the risks originated from volatile economic and political situations. In this study, we utilize tools of comparative study to compare Gaisong Merchants' foreign trade strategies with those of modem companies such as AMOREPACIFIC, HANILCEMENT and SHINDORICO. The purpose of the paper is to test the hypothesis that modem Korean companies grew up by following the cases of Gaisong Merchants' business activities. We summarize our main findings as follows. First, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common functional core capability in the field of marketing, manufacturing technology, R&D, and human resources development. Second, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common organizational core capability. Third, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common infrastructures such as planning, finance, accounting and MIS. It constitutes the infrastructure of Korea's foreign trade sector. Fourth, both Gaisong Merchants and modem companies have common organizational culture in the field of management policy and philosophy. Actually, those factors are evaluated to be driving forces of Koera's success in foreign trade. In conclusion, the business activities of Gaisong Merchants who represented the peculiarity of Korean business spirit are partially inherited to current Korean business management. The value system and behavior pattern of modern Korean companies is succeeded from the spirit of Gaisong Merchants and it playa major role to specify the identity of Korean business administration.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.131-144
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• 2021

The organizational ambidexterity is an organizational strategy designed to pursue exploration activities to seize new opportunities and exploitation activities to efficiently use resources. Most of these ambidextrous structures have been studied for large corporations with slack resources, and there are still not many studies on the necessity of an ambidextrous structure for startups with relatively low-level resources. However, recently, the startup ecosystem is being advanced globally, and the amount of VC investment is rapidly increasing. This is a time when a lot of venture fund is invested in startups and a startup-friendly environment for rapid growth is created. This is the time to discuss the necessity and applicability of an ambidextrous organizational structure for startups. Therefore, this study conducted a hypothesis test whether the importance and necessity of balance that startups solving market problems with new ideas and utilizing accumulated resources have. To conduct this study, we analyzed 140 startups data gathered from the survey and the moderation effect was also analyzed. As a result of the study, it was verified that the balance of startup exploration and exploitation had a significant effect on startup performance, and the moderating effect of environmental dynamics was found to have a significant effect on the relationship with non-financial performance. Therefore, for startups with insufficient resources, it was concluded that the surplus resources generated in the process of a firm's growth should be effectively utilized and the balance between exploration and exploitation should be balanced from the initial stage of searching for a new business. In other words, it was confirmed that it is important for continuous growth and survival to seek the structure of an ambidextrous organization in order to internalize a mechanism that enables startups to pursue both effectiveness and efficiency in the long term. This study suggests a strategic direction for the growth of startups from the perspective of organizational structure. We expect that this meaningful results on the relationship between the ambidextrous capabilities of startups and performance contribute to the growth of startups in the rapidly growing startup venture environment.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.345-366
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• 2012

The country using factoring actively today is England. The history of factoring could throw back to the Middle Ages, but modern factoring was developed in colonial age of the United States and it was known throughout England in 1960s. At the beginning, it performed mercantile agent who works in local area in order to get rid of uncertainty and inconvenience of a distant trade, but it was getting developed into a today's factoring system which focusing more on financial function. The factoring is called 'account receivable financing' in the United States and it is started out as sales agent and getting developed to 'del credere agent' who guarantee the payment. The activities of factors have been expanded to not only consignment sale and payment guarantees but also advance financing service. However, at the end of the 19th century, the direct sales(direct marketing) was expanded by the development of telecommunication and transportation technology, and then the marketing service by factor was degraded, but the collection of payment and advance finance had been maintained until now and developed into today's factoring system. Especially, the establishment of Uniform Commercial Code in 1931 had formed the basis for activating factoring in the United States through preparing a legal basis of factoring. Due to changes of international trade environment, most of commercial bank in Korea have to deal with export factoring as a trade finance service and it is desirable to specialize as a financing for small and medium company.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.60-68
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• 2012

The past IMF foreign exchange crisis and subprime financial crisis had a big influence on variability of macroeconomics, even if the origin of its occurrence might be different. This not only had a significant infrequence on the overall industries, but also produced many insolvent companies by being closely linked with a management environment of an individual construction company leading the construction industry. Actually, the level of default risk of construction companies before and after fluctuation of macroeconomics gets to experience a rapid changing process, and a difference in reaction against shock exists according to each company. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to confirm the fluctuation process of the default risk of construction companies under the fluctuation of macroeconomics such as the IMF financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis. As an analysis result, it is judged that the subprime financial crisis gave bigger shock to construction companies than the foreign exchange crisis, and it is expected that this would have a relation with the construction market before shock of macroeconomics. In addition, it was analyzed that when comparing insolvent companies with normal companies, the recovery speed of normal companies is faster. It is judged that this was affected by a difference of internal business capacity between insolvent companies and normal companies.