• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.76-91
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• 2019

There have been many studies to examine the patterns in innovations reflecting industry-specific characteristics from an evolutionary economics perspective. The purpose of this study is to identify industry-specific differences in product innovation patterns and determinants of innovation performance. For this, Korean manufacturing is classified into high-tech industries and low-tech industries according to technology intensity. It is also pointed out that existing research does not reflect the decision-making process of firms' R&D implementations. In order to solve this problem, this study presents a Heckman sample selection model and a double-hurdle model as alternatives, and analyzes data from 1,637 firms in the 2014 Survey on Technology of SMEs. As a result, it was confirmed that the determinants and patterns of manufacturing in small and medium-size enterprise (SME) product innovation are significantly different between high-tech and low-tech industries. Also, through an extended empirical model, we found that there exist a sample selection bias and a hurdle-like threshold in the decision-making process. In this study, the industry-specific features and patterns of product innovation are examined from a multi-sided perspective, and it is meaningful that the decision-making process for manufacturing SMEs' R&D performance can be better understood.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.111-127
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• 2022

With the progress of the 4th industrial revolution, interest in smart factories is increasing. The government is implementing a smart factory support project for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. Therefore, in this study, factors influencing small and medium-sized enterprises(SME's) intention of smart factory acceptance were analyzed. In particular, it focused on how the perception of government support affects intention of smart factory acceptance. For the empirical analysis, a research model was established by reflecting the characteristics of SMEs and the technical factors of the smart factory centering on the technology acceptance theory. Based on the model set in this way, a questionnaire survey was conducted for employees of SMEs. In this study, a total of 231 samples of valid data were used for analysis. The empirical analysis results are as follows. It was analyzed that performance expectancy, social influence, technology utilization capability, CEO will, and employee resistance to innovation, all introduced as research variables, had a significant effect on the use intention of smart factory acceptance. In particular, it was found that employees' resistance to innovation had a negative (-) effect on their use intention. Meanwhile, to analyze the moderating effect of government support, it was divided into a group with high expectations for government support and a group with low expectations. As a result, it was found that there was a difference in the effect of CEO's will, employees' resistance to innovation, and social influence on the use intention. On the other hand, no significant difference was found in the relationship between performance expectancy, technology utilization capability on the use intention. Based on the empirical analysis results, the academic and practical implications of this study were presented.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.118-143
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• 2008

This paper examines the effect of innovation strategy and R&D organization on the innovation performances in the Korean small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs). For the SMEs with limited resources and capabilities, the one of key strategic issues is to allocate innovation resources to the exploitation of existing technological capabilities and/or the exploration of new technological capabilities. Based upon survey data from 769 SMEs, this study investigated relationships among exploitation and exploration strategies, the existence of R&D organization, and innovation performance. Exploration is positively related to product and process innovation performances across the industrial sectors. However, exploitation is positively related only to the process innovation performance in the traditional manufacturing sectors. The existence of R&D organizations has positive effects on the product innovation performance and not on the process innovation performance. Finally, it discusses the managerial implications, the limitations of this study and the future research directions.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.75-95
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• 2020

Smart Factory is the decisive factor of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and is a key field for national competitiveness. Until now, most smart factory research has focused on policy and technology. In order to spread more technology, it is necessary to study what factors influence the adoption of smart factory technology in the enterprise. Nevertheless, little research has been done. In this study, based on the UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology), which has been proved through many years of research, I have studied the factors that influence the acceptance of smart factory technology. As a result of research, performance expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions of UTAUT model had a positive(+) effect on behavior intention. Their relationship of influence was in the order of performance expectancy (β = .459)> facilitating conditions (β = .212)> social influence (β = .210). However, it was found that the effort expectancy did not affect the behavior intention, and the impact of the newly perceived risk on the behavior intention to use was not confirmed. The main reason is that the acceptance of smart factory technology is not a matter of personal interest but a matter of organizational choice. Trust, on the other hand, was found to be partially mediated between performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, social influence and behavior intention. For many years, many researchers have validated the UTAUT, which has been validated through various empirical studies. It is academically meaningful to begin the study of factors affecting the acceptance of smart factory technology in terms of the UTAUT. In practice, it is necessary to provide SME employees with more information related to the introduction of smart factories, to provide advanced services related to the establishment of smart factories, and to establish a standardized model for each industry.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.199-228
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• 2013

Globalization has been accelerated in today's business environment. In this situation, the opening of economies can be either an opportunity or a treat for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) who have limited resources. Especially, managerial perception to the opening of economies carries on significant meaning because managerial perception determines future responses and strategies. Therefore, this study examined which innovation activities are related with SMEs' positive perception to the opening of economies. The activities of innovation are classified by types of generic strategy. Also, this study scrutinized the moderating effects of external search strategy and market entry strategy. In order to test hypotheses, this study analyzed data on Korean manufacturing firms collected in the Korean Innovation Survey (KIS). As a result, SMEs conducting innovation for differentiation strategy perceived the opening of economies positively. Search breadth and search depth moderated this relationship negatively and the first entry strategy moderated this relationship positively.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.73-94
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• 2013

The prinary cause of the decreasing SME's competitiveness in technology is the intensifying human resource shortages. The government supports a part of labor costs for SMEs as a means of policy. There are two ways of supporting labor costs for R&D personnel. One is to hire R&D personnel first then support their partial labor costs. The other is to support labor costs first for R&D personnel in national R&D programs then hire R&D personnel. This study analyzes the effectiveness of two different ways by classifying sales, no. of employees, R&D expenditure, no. of researchers, and no. of MA/Ph.D. researchers. In terms of employing researchers with MA or Ph.D., the effectiveness on employment subsidy is significantly higher than that of R&D subsidy. Its effect has been relatively high in non-metropolitan areas and manufacturing industry.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.185-193
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• 2011

The successful and sustainable growth of SMEs depends on their ability of strengthen their competitiveness in quality and cost and service more than anything else as a fundamental of operation. Among these key competitive factors of SMEs, quality is the most critical factor in manufacturing business fields. There are many different ways to improve the quality performance but it needs proper management decision to choose the best way what can maximize outputs with minimum inputs. And it needs effective measurement methods and some indicators to analysis the quality performance properly. The quality cost is one of the simplest key indicators to measure the quality performance and the effectiveness of quality related management decisions. In this study, through survey on local SMEs, we found that their average annual quality cost ratio versus turnover - total amount of annual quality cost divided by annual turnover - is around 3.69% excluded some SME's performances what have different quality control measures with others. And we found some results what corresponded with the early studies on the correlations between those categorized quality costs factors and some discrepancies between some of the literature model and the early case study results as follows. There were negative correlations between the Prevention costs and the External failure costs, and the Appraisal costs and the External failure costs, and there was positive correlation between the Appraisal costs and Internal failure costs same as early studies. But, we couldn't found any strong negative correlations between the Cost of control - Prevention costs & Appraisal costs - and the Cost of Failure of control - Internal & External failure costs -.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.79-106
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• 2005

This study, by adopting case study methodology, is focused on examining the present state and analyzing the cause of the digital divide, and suggesting policies for bridging the divide, specifically in view of SMEs. We have taken cases of manufacturing companies, visiting and interviewing 18 SMEs in 10 APEC member economies which show sharp difference in usage of ICT. In order to analyze the digital gap among SMEs, we used 5 variables that are composed of computer hardware, computer software, Internet, readiness of ICT, and performance of ICT adoption, while categorizing the cases into low and high tier based on the national ICT index. From a computer hardware perspective, the high tier (0.66) has almost double the number of PC’s per employee, compared with the low tiers (0.34). This gap can be explained by financial availability of low income and high tariff in the developing economies. In the computer software perspective, the SMEs in the low tier had some restrictive use of computer applications such as financial and accounting management and document management, while those in the high tier enjoyed more diversity in the use of applications such as inventory management, sales management, financial and accounting management, procurement management, CRM, and ERP. In view of the readiness of ICT, the difference in ICT infrastructure and financial status between the low and high tier was far wider than any other variables. As a result of ICT adoption, SMEs benefited in view of learning and growth, internal business processes, customer service, and financial affairs. To effectively bridge the digital divide between the low and high tier, actions such as setting up a secondary market of used computers among cooperating developed and developing countries, developing and diffusing good business applications, and building speedy, low-cost telecommunication infrastructures should be taken.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.11-26
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• 2004

Software for analyzing documents on the net to detect specific categories of occurrences is in great demand. In the current world where detecting terrorist threats is critical there is a great need for such systems. One of the critical application areas of such software is the automatic detection of a national infrastructure emergency. In this research an agent-based generic architecture for emergency warning systems is proposed and implemented. This system, called the National Infrastructure Emergency Warning System (NIEWS), is designed to analyze given documents, to detect threats, and to report possible threats with the necessary information to the appropriate users autonomously. In addition, a systematic analysis framework to detect emergencies on the subject of defensive information warfare is designated and implemented through a knowledge base. The developed system along with the knowledge base is implemented and successfully deployed to Strategic Crisis Exercise (SCE) at the United State Army War College (USAWC), saving a good amount of money by replacing human SMEs (subject matter experts) in the SCE.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.30-57
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• 2019

Purpose - This study analyzes the effect of internationalization represented as exporting on firm performance on the subject of SMEs operating in Masan Free Trade Zone which has shown poor performance recently despite its status as the oldest and largest free trade zone in Korea. We also analyze the effect of firm size on firm performance, and the moderating role of firm size in relation to internationalization and firm performance. Design/methodology - This study uses multiple regression models for unbalanced panel data as the empirical tools for the estimation of the effect that internationalization has on firm performance (ROA or ROS). Our sample consists of 91 manufacturing SMEs among all 110 companies located in Masan Free Trade Zone as of 2017. Findings - The degree of internationalization has a negative impact on firm performance. However, firm size turns out to have a positive effect and play a positive moderating role in the relation to internationalization and firm performance. This seems to be because most tenant companies operating in Masan Free Trade Zone are small firms whose costs of internationalization may exceed the benefits. Empirical results also show that longer CEO tenure has a greater negative effect on firm performance. Originality/value - The originality/value of this paper can be found in 3 aspects. First, we conducted an empirical analysis on the relationship between the internationalization and firm performance of SMEs in a specific region, namely, Masan Free Trade Zone. Second, while most previous studies focused on listed medium companies, most of the sample of this study are small and medium non-listed enterprises. Third, it is witnessed that firm size has a positive moderating effect on the relation between internationalization and firm performance.