• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.91-116
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• 1991

Market liberalization progressing simultaneously with high and rapidly rising domestic wages has created an adverse business environment for domestic firms. Korean firms are losing their international competitiveness in comparison to firms from LDC(Less Developed Countries) in low-tech industries. In high-tech industries, domestic firms without government protection (which is impossible due to the liberalization policy and the current international status of the Korean economy) are in a disadvantaged position relative to firms from advanced countries. This paper examines the division of roles between the private sector and the government in order to achieve a successful structural adjustment, which has become the impending industrial policy issue caused by high domestic wages, on the one hand, and the opening of domestic markets, on the other. The micro foundation of the economy-wide structural adjustment is actually the restructuring of business portfolios at the firm level. The firm-level business restructuring means that firms in low-value-added businesses or with declining market niches establish new major businesses in higher value-added segments or growing market niches. The adjustment of the business structure at the firm level can only be accomplished by accumulating firm-specific managerial assets necessary to establish a new business structure. This can be done through learning-by-doing in the whole system of management, including research and development, manufacturing, and marketing. Therefore, the voluntary cooperation among the people in the company is essential for making the cost of the learning process lower than that at the competing companies. Hence, firms that attempt to restructure their major businesses need to induce corporate-wide participation through innovations in organization and management, encourage innovative corporate culture, and maintain cooperative labor unions. Policy discussions on structural adjustments usually regard firms as a black box behind a few macro variables. But in reality, firm activities are not flows of materials but relationships among human resources. The growth potential of companies are embodied in the human resources of the firm; the balance of interest among stockholders, managers, and workers of the company' brings the accumulation of the company's core competencies. Therefore, policymakers and economists shoud change their old concept of the firm as a technological black box which produces a marketable commodities. Firms should be regarded as coalitions of interest groups such as stockholders, managers, and workers. Consequently the discussion on the structural adjustment both at the macroeconomic level and the firm level should be based on this new paradigm of understanding firms. The government's role in reducing the cost of structural adjustment and supporting should the creation of new industries emphasize the following: First, government must promote the competition in domestic markets by revising laws related to antitrust policy, bankruptcy, and the promotion of small and medium-sized companies. General consensus on the limitations of government intervention and the merit of deregulation should be sought among policymakers and people in the business world. In the age of internationalization, nation-specific competitive advantages cannot be exclusively in favor of domestic firms. The international competitiveness of a domestic firm derives from the firm-specific core competencies which can be accumulated by internal investment and organization of the firm. Second, government must build up a solid infrastructure of production factors including capital, technology, manpower, and information. Structural adjustment often entails bankruptcies and partial waste of resources. However, it is desirable for the government not to try to sustain marginal businesses, but to support the diversification or restructuring of businesses by assisting in factor creation. Institutional support for venture businesses needs to be improved, especially in the financing system since many investment projects in venture businesses are highly risky, even though they are very promising. The proportion of low-value added production processes and declining industries should be reduced by promoting foreign direct investment and factory automation. Moreover, one cannot over-emphasize the importance of future-oriented labor policies to be based on the new paradigm of understanding firm activities. The old laws and instititutions related to labor unions need to be reformed. Third, government must improve the regimes related to money, banking, and the tax system to change business practices dependent on government protection or undesirable in view of the evolution of the Korean economy as a whole. To prevent rational business decisions from contradicting to the interest of the economy as a whole, government should influence the business environment, not the business itself.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.61-72
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• 2013

This research aims to identify promising IT items from the perspectives of Korean SMEs and further to development a policy for SMEs in the IT industry. For this purpose, we adopted a bottom-up approach by discovering IT items on high demand by SMEs as their now growth engines and thus used a survey method. We also analyzed the ecosystem characteristics for the items to help policy-makers establish customized strategy to support their growth. We believe that this research is timely when the concept of ecosystem has emerged and the role of SMEs is emphasized in the IT industry. And the research results are expected to produce valuable information to make a policy for promoting IT items for SMEs and ultimately leading to balanced growth of large firms and SMEs.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.379-389
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• 2019

The study empirically investigates financial factors that may influence on corporate R&D intensity during the post-era of the global financial turmoil (from 2010 to 2015) to mitigate possible spillover effect associated with the crisis. Concerning the empirical research settings of the study, chaebol firms listed in the KOSPI stock market are used as sample data with adopting various econometric estimation methods to enhance validity of the results. In the first hypothesis test, it is found that there exist inter-industry financial differences in terms of the ratio of R&D expenditure across all the sample years, but the statistical differences may arise from only a few domestic industries beloning to the high-growth sector. Moreover, it is also interesting to identify that, for the high-tech sector, 3 explanatory variables such as R&D intensity in a prior year, firm size and change in cash holdings are proved to be financial factors to discriminate between chaebol firms and their counterparts of non-chaebol firms, whereas a proportion of tangible assets over total assets as well as the former two variables are shown to be significant factors on the R&D intensity for the low-tech sector.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.39-59
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• 2007

The international involvement of a firm has been described as a gradual development process "a process in which the enterprise gradually increases its international involvement in many studies. This process evolves in the interplay between the development of knowledge about foreign markets and operations on one hand and increasing commitment of resources to foreign markets on the other." On the basis of Uppsala internationalization model, many studies strengthen strong theoretical and empirical support. According to the predictions of the classic stages theory, the internationalization process of firms have been recognized and characterized gradual evolution to foreign markets, so called stage theory: indirect & direct export, strategic alliance and foreign direct investment. However, termed "international new ventures" (McDougall, Shane, and Oviatt 1994), "born globals" (Knight 1997; Knight and Cavusgil 1996; Madsen and Servais 1997), "instant internationals" (Preece, Miles, and Baetz 1999), or "global startups" (Oviatt and McDougall 1994) have been used and come into spotlight in internationalization study of technology intensity venture companies. Recent researches focused on venture company have suggested the phenomenons of 'born global' firms as a contradiction to the stages theory. Especially the article by Oviatt and McDougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs, on international new ventures, and on their importance in the globalising world economy. Since venture companies have, by definition. lack of economies of scale, lack of resources (financial and knowledge), and aversion to risk taking, they have a difficulty in expanding their market to abroad and pursue internalization gradually and step by step. However many venture companies have pursued 'Born Global Strategy', which is different from process strategy, because corporate's environment has been rapidly changing to globalization. The existing studies investigate that (1) why the ventures enter into overseas market in those early stage, even in infancy, (2) what make the different international strategy among ventures and the born global strategy is better to the infant ventures. However, as for venture's performance(growth and profitability), the existing results do not correspond each other. They also, don't include marketing strategy (differentiation, low price, market breadth and market pioneer) that is important factors in studying of BGV's performance. In this paper I aim to delineate the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenons of venture companies' internationalization strategy. In order to verify research problems, I develop a resource-based model and marketing strategies for analyzing the effects of the born global venture firms. In this paper, I suggested 3 research problems. First, do the korean venture companies take some advantages in the aspects of corporate's performances (growth, profitability and overall market performances) when they pursue internationalization from inception? Second, do the korean BGV have firm specific assets (foreign experiences, foreign orientation, organizational absorptive capacity)? Third, What are the marketing strategies of korean BGV and is it different from others? Under these problems, I test then (1) whether the BGV that a firm started its internationalization activity almost from inception, has more intangible resources(foreign experience of corporate members, foreign orientation, technological competences and absorptive capacity) than any other venture firms(Non_BGV) and (2) also whether the BGV's marketing strategies-differentiation, low price, market diversification and preemption strategy are different from Non_BGV. Above all, the main purpose of this research is that results achieved by BGV are indeed better than those obtained by Non_BGV firms with respect to firm's growth rate and efficiency. To do this research, I surveyed venture companies located in Seoul and Deajeon in Korea during November to December, 2005. I gather the data from 200 venture companies and then selected 84 samples, which have been founded during 1999${\sim}$2000. To compare BGV's characteristics with those of Non_BGV, I also had to classify BGV by export intensity over 50% among five or six aged venture firms. Many other researches tried to classify BGV and Non_BGV, but there were various criterion as many as researchers studied on this topic. Some of them use time gap, which is time difference of establishment and it's first internationalization experience and others use export intensity, ration of export sales amount divided by total sales amount. Although using a mixed criterion of prior research in my case, I do think this kinds of criterion is subjective and arbitrary rather than objective, so I do mention my research has some critical limitation in the classification of BGV and Non_BGV. The first purpose of research is the test of difference of performance between BGV and Non_BGV. As a result of t-test, the research show that there are statistically efficient difference not only in the growth rate (sales growth rate compared to competitors and 3 years averaged sales growth rate) but also in general market performance of BGV. But in case of profitability performance, the hypothesis that is BGV is more profit (return on investment(ROI) compared to competitors and 3 years averaged ROI) than Non-BGV was not supported. From these results, this paper concludes that BGV grows rapidly and gets a high market performance (in aspect of market share and customer loyalty) but there is no profitability difference between BGV and Non_BGV. The second result is that BGV have more absorptive capacity especially, knowledge competence, and entrepreneur's international experience than Non_BGV. And this paper also found BGV search for product differentiation, exemption strategy and market diversification strategy while Non_BGV search for low price strategy. These results have never been dealt with other existing studies. This research has some limitations. First limitation is concerned about the definition of BGV, as I mentioned above. Conceptually speaking, BGV is defined as company pursue internationalization from inception, but in empirical study, it's very difficult to classify between BGV and Non_BGV. I tried to classify on the basis of time difference and export intensity, this criterions are so subjective and arbitrary that the results are not robust if the criterion were changed. Second limitation is concerned about sample used in this research. I surveyed venture companies just located in Seoul and Daejeon and also use only 84 samples which more or less provoke sample bias problem and generalization of results. I think the more following studies that focus on ventures located in other region, the better to verify the results of this paper.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.37-56
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• 2016

The purpose of this research is to present the implication for Korean firms' entry into the power market in Myanmar. This study investigated the characteristics of the Myanmar power market and analyzed SWOT, focusing on energy policy, power supply and demand, energy relations with neighboring countries and climate change issue. Opportunity factors are changes in energy strategies, the launch of an energy integration organization, changes in the power energy portfolio, rapid economic and power demand growth, and a clean development mechanism. The threats are high nonfulfillment of a contract, high power loss rates and low electricity distribution rates, increased energy exports to neighboring countries, and vulnerability to climate change. We suggest the use of CHP (Combined Heat and Power), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Multilateral Development Bank (MDB).

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.85-95
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• 2016

Generally a venture capital aims at investment and support Venture businesses that signifies a start-up which has high technologies but frailty of the economy so that raise fund from financial agencies at high risk rate, it has high risk but when the venture businesses launch into general orbit, the venture capital guarantee high-rate profits. Venture capital do not just provide risk capital but also takes a role as a mentor for continuous growth with total consulting service at business and technical management. Also it offers in-depth support to reform the supported enterprise in order to enhance the competitive. Venture capital receives attention for years as a principal agent to be promoted strategically at national level. Bio venture, a major concern of venture capital and one of core industries in Korea, is different from other industries because it needs long-term and large scale of investment. these factors bring about difficulties in an investment and growth. Therefore, it is very important to identify growth and profitability of start-ups and small and venture businesses with long-term appreciation above all other industries. This research analyze management results of bio venture businesses empirically by investment from venture capital. according to the results, bio venture businesses need huge capital and a long gap of time, henceforth, formation of model for growth is necessary with angel investing as well as venture capital. Since, there are not many listed bio venture businesses, significant statistical result would be limited. This research studied at only economic focus but further study need to examine a question from various angles.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.77-98
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• 1998

In general, spatial imbalance in regional growth is a major cause of social and political conflicts within a state. In Korea, this inequality has functioned as a threat to the state's integration. With the economic development policies by regional industrialization over the past three decades, most of the industrial activities have been concentrated in Seoul and Pusan metropolitan areas, which are surrounded by Kyonggi, Kyongnam provinces respectively. Compared to these areas, Chonnam and Chonbuk provinces have lagged behind in economic development. Therefore, in order to increase the regional economic development of the southwestern region in Korea, the central government has been enforcing several policies aimed at regional industrialization since the 1980s. The purpose of this study focuses on the regional economic impacts of a newly established industrial estate-Yulchon industrial complex- which would act as a regional growth center in the Kwangyang bay area. The Kwangyang bay area consists of several industrial estates such as Kwangyang Iron and Steel Co. and its related industrial complex, Chuam rural industrial estate, Yeochon industrial complex, and so on. In addition, the Kwangyang container port was constructed in 1997. The Kwangyang bay area has been changing to a new industrial district in the southwestern part of Korea as a result of industrialization policies which were activated by central government. The Yulchon industrial complex, which is expected to be completed in 2001, would draw many manufacturing plants. For example, Hyundai Motors Co. has a plan to locate a new automobile assembly plant within the estate. As the plan has high probability to be realized, it will be interesting to study the effects a new automobile assembly plant and its related production linkages have on the region. This study is to estimate the expected structural characteristics of automobile production activities in Yulchon. The following details will be discussed: the regional economic impacts of a new automobile industry in Yulchon industrial complex, the production linkage formation via hierarchical subcontracting systems, the alternative strategies to promote the growth of regional economies, and the scheme to improve the auto-parts and components industry in Kwangju and Chonnam provinces by establishing auto-mobile production function. Automoblie industry generally gives great influences on not only regional economies but the related industries, for example, the firms producing automotive components. If a new plant producing automobiles and its related firms producing components are to be established in Yulchon, they will affect on the regional development directions and change the regional characteristics of industrial structure. In order to increase the spread effects of the new industry in Yulchon industrial complex, almost all of the automobile production processes must be organized concurrently within a limited range of distance. There is an imperative that the co-operation system should be structured between the assembly firm and many firms producing its components. In addition to those, it would be required such as the effective division of labors between the firms, much more capabilities in the technical innovations, and the reconstruction of interrelationship between the labor unions and the firms' managers.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.736-737
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• 2015

In these days, international construction market including construction companies has much grown due to globalization and economic boom in the mid 2000's. The size of international construction market, measured with overseas revenue of 225 construction firms, has expanded 2.7 times from 2003 to 2008 according to the ENR. However, after the global financial crisis of 2008 it has faced condition of low growth. In this research, major changes of international construction market and top contractors have been studied. In this study, changes of international construction market have been analyzed in the aspect of region and product including general buildings, transportation, petroleum, etc. Then, in order to find the changes of top contractors which obtained good accomplishment, business performance of companies have been examined by the compound annual growth rate, profit margin and international revenue by comparing the data before 2008 and after. The purpose of the study is to understand major changes of international construction market. Also, strategy changes of top contractors against market stagnation, profit depreciation, high competition have been inferred through the study. The result of the study would contribute to analyzing the strategies of construction companies in international market.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2012.11a
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• pp.125-126
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• 2012

Domestic architect office from a period of high growth from the 1970s to the '80s has been established as some of the large corporations or publicly traded corporation. 1997 IMF has pointed out there is a lot of need for improvement activities in accordance with the construction recession since the 2008 global financial crisis. In order to address these causes, the company's continuous efficient operation for accurate efficiency and competitiveness analysis was required. Leverage financial ratio indicators Study Using Data Envelopment Analysis Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, how to find a benchmark for the improvement of the efficiency of inefficient enterprises in various sectors being. In this study, a comparison of the conventional DEA model and the DEA-AR model is used to analyze the efficiency and domestic architect office is to improve the management efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 1999

A rapid growth of science parks worldwide since 1980s is caused by both the widespread perception that technological innovation is the essential element for the economic development and the notified cases of successful high technology cluster like Silicon Valley. Analyzed in terms of R & D employment and expenditure, new product launches, patent registration, qualifications of the founder, self-rated technological level and the like, the technological level of the science parks in the U.K. reveals very high. While nealy half of the firms on the science parks are represented to be formally linked with universities, the use of the library is referred most frequently among the types of the linkages. R & D links such as contract research, sponsored research, test and analysis were rarely mentioned. Summing up, science parks play an important role for the development of high-tech industries with superior technological characteristics. But in reatlity, there remains so much difference among the individual parks and their location. In addition the individual parks and their location. In addition, institutionalization of the technology transfer with univeristies that only when the science parks are based on the innovative environment they can be successful in the capability of the technological innovation.