• Korea Trade Review
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.117-143
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• 2017

This study investigates how entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity influence strategic capabilities (technology, marketing, and market-linking capabilities), as well as how strategic capabilities affect performance in Korean export venture firms. To analyze this empirically, we hypothesized the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, absorptive capacity, strategic capabilities, and firm performance based on an existing resource-based review and empirical literatures. We collected data using questionnaires and used a partial least squares (PLS) structural equation model for hypothesis testing. The following results were obtained from the empirical analysis. First, entrepreneurial orientation has a significant positive impact on absorptive capacity. Second, entrepreneurial orientation has a significant positive effect on technology, marketing, and market-linking capabilities. Third, absorptive capacity has a significant positive influence on technology, marketing, and market-linking capabilities. Fourth, technology and marketing capabilities have a significant positive effect on firm performance. However, market-linking capabilities have no significant influence on firm performance.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.173-195
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• 2013

This study is to analyze the impact of the absorptive capacity and information technology (IT) on firms' innovation. The absorptive capacity is measured by R&D investment intensity, R&D manpower concentration, and the firm's size. We try to see the interaction effects between the absorptive capacity and IT usage on firms' innovation. We also look into the differences of the impacts between manufacturing industry and service industry as well as IT industry and service industry. We found that IT and R&D intensity have stronger interaction effect on innovation in manufacturing industry than in service industry, which shows that IT plays a more important role in the accumulation of knowledge in R&D activity in manufacturing industry. Contrarily, in service industry, IT and R&D manpower concentration has significant interaction effects on innovation. This means that the role of IT in service industry is sharing knowledge and experiences among employees in service industry. The interaction effect between firm's size and IT has positive impact on innovation in manufacturing industry, while it has negative impact on innovation in service industry. Finally, we found that the interaction effect is statistically significant in non-IT industry, while it is not statistically significant in IT industry.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.404-423
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• 2012

This study is aimed at exploring the impact of the characteristics of the firms on firm's networking. We develop a framework theorizing firm's networking according to sales, size, research facility, the percentage of R&D staff to total employees, the percentage of R&D investment to total sales, the number of the certification, the intention of attending seminars, the experience of participating in the government subsidy program. The results of the analysis show that research capacity, openness to a variety of information source, the experience of participating in the government subsidy program are significant in determining the firm's networking. The government needs to encourage the firms to improve their research capacity, and to train the coordinators to help the firms get higher openness to a variety of information source, use the government subsidy program.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.277-306
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• 2008

Knowledge1 is considered to be a key element of understanding how organizations gain and sustain competitive advantages. But very few firms are capable of creating the requisite knowledge and thus, firms should acquire and exploit new knowledge through knowledge transfer processes. The empirical part of this study involves examining relationships among adaptability of knowledge and knowledge transfer and marketing performance and testing the moderating roles of absorptive capacity, socialization and local marketing knowledge. This study is organized as follows: (1) Previous literature on knowledge, knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity is summarized, followed by the development of hypotheses derived from the knowledge-based view and absorptive capacity. (2) The hypotheses are tested with data collected from MNCs' subsidiaries performing marketing activities in Korea.Thestudyisclosedwithfindings,implications,andconclusions. Following six research hypotheses are drawn from literature review in related areas: H1: Adaptability of knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with knowledge inflows into the receiving subsidiary. H2: The level of marketing knowledge transferred from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries is positively associated with marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H3: Increases in potential absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H4: Increases in realized absorptive capacity will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. H5: Increases in socialization activity among the headquarters and subsidiaries will enhance the relationship between adaptability of knowledge and the level of marketing knowledge transfer. H6: Increases in the level of locally developed marketing knowledge will enhance the relationship between the level of knowledge transfer and marketing performance of the receiving subsidiary. The research framework that illustrates the proposed hypotheses is presented in figure 1. The unit of analysis for this study is knowledge transfer from the MNCs' headquarters and other subsidiaries to their subsidiaries operating in South Korea. The population for this study consists of subsidiaries established either as joint ventures or as wholly-owned subsidiaries. A group of 603 foreign firms were drawn from diverse industry organizations and business societies. After personal contact, telephone, fax, and e-mail to request that the respondents complete the questionnaire, 282 valid questionnaires from 133 initial sample companies were collected. The results of the empirical analyses significantly support all of the proposed hypotheses except hypothesis 3. Adaptability of external knowledge promotes knowledge transfer and the relationship is moderated by a firm's potential knowledge absorptive capacity. On the other hand, knowledge transfer improves a firm's marketing performance and a firm's realized knowledge absorptive capacity and local marketing knowledge moderate the relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings in this study are as follows: (1) firms must take seeking, transferring, sharing and exploiting of external knowledge into serious consideration, while simultaneously creating knowledge to support the necessary business operations, remain competitive, and achieve superior performance. (2) Firms should continuously seek to develop their knowledge absorptive capacity (both potential and realized capacity) to absorb, learn and utilize valuable external knowledge. (3) Firms should emphasize not only absorptive capacity, but also development of local knowledge. Firms with strong absorptive capability and local knowledge can learn and transfer more external knowledge, which can be translated into greater levels of competence and performance.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.224-232
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• 2012

The paper proposes a non-parametric methodology, data envelopment analysis, for measuring efficiency and productivity in service delivery systems with capacity constraints. The methodology provides allocation approaches for studying behaviors of firm and customers in service delivery strategy. The experimental study is carried out to investigate allocation behaviors and conduct an objective tradeoff between efficiency approach and productivity approach. The experimental result indicates that the efficiency approach allocates resource via maximizing customer efficiency rather than firm productivity as in the productivity approach. Moreover, the experiment reveals that there exists an objective tradeoff between the efficiency approach and the productivity approach. These findings provide strategic options for allocation policy in service delivery systems.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.255-263
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• 2003

A multi-agent system designed to represent newly deregulated electricity markets in the USA is aimed at testing the capability of the multi-agent model to replicate the observed price behavior in the wholesale market and developing a smart business intelligence which quickly searches the optimum offer strategy responding to the change in market environments. Simulation results show that the optimum offer strategy is to withhold expensive generating units and submit relatively low offers when demand is low, regardless of firm size; the optimum offer strategy during a period of high demand is either to withhold capacity or speculate for a large firm, while it is to be a price taker a small firm: all in all, the offer pattern observed in the market is close to the optimum strategy. From the firm's perspective, the demand-side participation as well as the intense competition dramatically reduces the chance of high excess profit.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

Purpose - Based on transaction cost perspective and institution-based perspective, this research attempts to investigate the effect of outsourcing on a firm's performance and how it interacts with institutional context in which the firms operate. Research design, data, and methodology -With a sample of 164 manufacturing firms form South Korea, we examine the direct effects of outsourcing on the a firm's level of product innovation and internationalization and the moderating effects of competitive pressure and property right protection as important external factors that could affect the effectiveness of outsourcing decision. Result - The findings show that outsourcing not only enhance a firm's capability to concentrate on its core competencies, but also to increase a firm's combinative capacity to acquire external knowledge. Furthermore, we finds that in a highly competitive environment, potential knowledge spillovers to other competitors may attenuate the potential benefits of outsourcing. Conclusion - Outsourcing can enhance a firm's innovation activities by providing valuable access to external knowledge and also to complementary resources from the external partners, which in turn enables firms to focus on core competences.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.5-19
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• 2015

Literatures on open innovation have two major limitations. First, either on a firm level or on an industry level did they analyze the open innovation issues. The results of a firm's innovation can be diffused through the whole network and the firm can learn back from the network knowledge. Prior literatures did not consider the feedback loop among firms and network in which the firms are involved. Second, most open innovation research had a static perspective on firm's innovation performance. Since the diffusion, spill-over and learning among network members are involved over time, the open innovation is intrinsically dynamic. From the dynamic perspective, we can appreciate the fundamental attributes of the open innovation network which involves diverse firms, research institutes, and universities. In order to overcome the limitations, we suggest a dynamic model for open innovation network. We build an agent-based model which consists of heterogeneous firms. The firms are connected through a scale-free network which is formed by preferential attachment. Through the diverse scenario of simulation, we collect massive data on the firm level and analyze them both on firm and industry level. From the analysis, we found that, on industry level, the overall performance of open innovation increases as the internal research capability, absorptive capacity, and learning curve coefficient increase. Noticeably, as the deprecation rate of knowledge increases, the variability of knowledge increases. From the firm level analysis, we found that the industry-level variables had a significant effect on the firm's innovation performance lasting through all the time, whereas the firm-level variables had only on the early phase of innovation.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.354-384
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• 2018

This paper aims at analyzing the effect of the relationship between innovation intermediaries and firms on firms' absorptive capacity from the perspectives of social capital. And it also analyzes how firms' innovation environment influences on their absorptive capacity in this process. For this purpose, we carry out an empirical analysis on 200 firms in the Daedeok Innopolis, which is the representative innovation cluster in Korea. According to this study, firm's absorptive capacity is positively affected by the reliability and frequency of firms' communication with innovation intermediaries. However, the geographic proximity does not have significant influence. Also, the innovation environmental factors play a positive moderating role in the absorptive capacity of firms, and the social factors have a distinct significant influence on it directly. Based on these findings, this paper would make a contribution to recognize the importance of innovation intermediaries in innovation process and their role as preceding factors to firms' absorptive capacity, as well as innovative environment in the innovation process.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-63
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• 2011

The aim of this paper is to consider the process of supplying trained workers with knowledge and skills for upcoming business opportunities and the process of training apprentices to be prepared to meet future demands in an IT service firm. As the demand for new workers fluctuates, a firm should employ a buffer workforce such as apprentices or interns. However, as a result of rapid business development, the capacity of the buffer may be exceeded, thus requiring the company to recruit skilled workers from outside the firm. Therefore, it is important for a firm to map out a strategy for manpower planning so as to fulfill the demands of new business and minimize the operation costs related to training apprentices and recruiting experienced workers. First, this paper analyzes the supply and demand of workers for the IT service in a knowledge-intensive field. It then presents optimal human resource planning strategies via the familiar method of stochastic process. Also, we illustrate that our model is applied to the human resource planning of an information security service firm in South Korea.