• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.19-36
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• 1996

This study is to examine the remained basis and the locational characteristics of manufacturing in Chonnam region. First, the locational characteristics of manufacturing in the peripheral region examined through theoretical discussions about manufacturing location. And the locational characteristics of the small and medium firms and large firms be studied as to understand the precedent characteristics of Chonnam region. Chonnam region have the precedent characteristics that the regional capital is not accumulated as Japen exploit agricultural products at a colonial period. And SOC, industry and technology are not developed as geographically Chonnam lesion turn aside the economics axis of Korea-Japen-America within a period of industrialization. Manufacturing firms have beer make up the traditional indigenous firms which base on local market, agriculture and marine products in Chonnam lesion. The characteristics of these firms mainly are food & drink, nonmetal industry that is composed of the small and medium sized firms. The industrial structure is changing to machinery, chemistry, electronics industry from food & drink, nonmetal industry. But these industry is making the simple products. In Chonnam region, these change of industrial structure was expanding to the inland or coast region from the neighhoring region of Kwangju metropolitan. The blanch factories of large enterprises that located in Chonnam region are not connected with small and medium sized firms. The small and medium sized firms are not developed. Because these large enterprises are the iron and steel industry or chemistry industry. So the large-manufacturing firms have characteristics of the capital intensive industry, and make up the monopolistic industrial space of fordist blanch factories.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.49
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• pp.379-405
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• 2011

With the fast growing of international trade and ever-changing trade environment Korea is facing more risks in international trade and they are getting more diverse and happen more frequent with high severity. Big firms of international trade are ready and treat the risks quite well, but small and medium size firms have hard time to manage the risks due to their poor understanding, not much capital to spend, and weak skills of risk management. Holding significant size of international trade of Korea, the small and medium size firms need systematic and integrated risk management and the K-sure(former Korea Export Insurance) can make a significant contribution to help them manage risks in international trade business. This study is proposing the adoption of ERM(Enterprise Risk Management) for international trade business of Korea. Especially for small and medium size firms of international trade, the K-sure may set up integrated risk management system to help them and promote the export growth, which is a great mission of K-sure.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.281-291
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• 2022

Purpose - We study whether the bullwhip effect is prevalent among Korean firms and how the characteristics of it differ from the ones in other countries. Design/methodology/approach - We obtained quarterly financial and operational information on KOSPI-listed firms in manufacturing, wholesale, and retail industries from 2013 to 2019. We explore the variation of the bullwhip effect across firms and validate hypotheses. Findings - First, we find that for the KOSPI-listed firms, the bullwhip effect is more prevalent compared with the production smoothing. We provide additional findings by using sub-samples of manufacturing firms, wholesaling and retailing firms, big-sized firms, small- and medium-sized firms, domestic-sales intensive firms, and export intensive firms. Second, we show that in general, the bullwhip effect of Korean firms increases with the days in inventory or the demand seasonality ratio. However, the persistence of demand shock does not affect the bullwhip effect of Korean firms. Research implications or Originality - We compare our results with those in other studies that use information on the U.S. and Chinese firms. Our findings show that factors explaining the bullwhip effect across Korean firms have similarities and differences compared with firms in the U.S. and Chinese firms.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.121-148
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• 2011

Korean small and medium sized firms are dramatically expanding during the past two decades. Since small and medium sized firms begun to invest overseas to cope with the external and internal business environment. the influencing factors should defined for the successful foreign investment. This paper presents the research model explaining successful knowledge transfer between Korean small and medium sized firms and partners for foreign investment. This model examines investing companies' organizational characteristics, partners' learning capability and relational characteristics between two partners. Detail variables include the learning culture and codifiability of investing companies, and absorptive capability of partners, and communication and trust as a relational factors between investing companies and partners. The result of empirical analysis of sample companies shows that knowledge culture and codifiability of investing companies, and communication from the relational factors are important for knowledge transfer. These results provide some implications for the successful foreign investment of small and medium sized firms. Firstly the investing company should develop its own learning culture and internal procedure for the successful foreign investment. And frequent communication channel is necessary for knowledge transfer and the trustful relationship between investors and partner.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.49-67
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• 2009

As technological capabilities have enhanced, the patterns of innovation activities of latecomer firms changed to post catch-up mode. The purpose of this research is to analyze the post catch-up innovation patterns of technology-intensive small and medium firms of Korea. The innovation patterns can be divided into three types: the technology deepening innovation type, the new technology based innovation type and the architectural innovation type. The characteristics of the technology deepening innovation type are cumulative technological learning and the integration of new generic technology and existing technologies. The characteristics of new technology based type are the acquisition and revelations of new basic knowledges from former incubating organizations such as large firms and universities. The characteristics of the architectural innovation type are the learning of system architecture knowledge from former organization and interactive learning with user firms. These post catch up innovations also have some general characteristics. They effectively exploited the windows of opportunities which are opened in the middle of technological paradigm change.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2013

This research examines the effect of globalization of Korean economy on small and medium-sized entrepreneurial firms. When Korea underwent the Asian economic crisis in 1997, it reconstructed Korean venture industry and had helped fuel venture firms' rapid growth. Therefore, this study shows the changed structure of Korean economy and the change of venture ecosystem due to the Asian financial crisis. In spite of a favorable turn of the industrial structure toward venture firms, their globalization level is reported still being low. In this study, we also examine how the Korean economy's globalization affects to the venture environments, focusing on the degree of Korea venture's globalization and role of venture capital. This study indicates that the globalization of Korean economy has played a positive role in the growth of the venture firms. However, with the growth of venture firms, small and medium venture companies have received relatively little focuses in Korean economy because the government policy of economic development has been oriented to large companies for several decades.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.812-841
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• 2006

Previous studies have shown that the ex-ante financial ratios, mainly used by financial institutions for loan evaluation purpose, are related to the ex-post finn's performance of venture firm's. The main objective of this study is to examine whether non-financial variables such as 'technology', 'marketability', and 'other business indexes' have extra explanatory power in forecasting the ex-post firm's performance of small and medium size venture firm's in Korea. The implications and results of this study are expected to be useful in loan evaluation, investment decision and internal management decisions of venture firms. Among small and medium sized manufacturing firms funded in the year of 1999 through 2005, 416 firms are selected for our analysis. The relationship between evaluation indexes and firm's success/failure is investigated using binary logistic regression analysis and factor analysis with an aid of SPSS program. The summarized results are as follows. First, current evaluation model, used for loan evaluation purpose for small and medium size manufacturing firms show the same discriminatory power as previous prediction model. Second, among the tested additional variables, significant indices are 'technological capability of CEO', 'managerial capability of CEO', and 'business feasibility'. Third, while previous studies on evaluation structure had 3 factors, this study showed that valuation's structure has 6 factors.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.93-104
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• 2018

Purpose - For small and medium sized firms, CEO characteristics are main factor influencing firms' prosperity as well as performance. So it is quite natural that many people are interested in factors of CEO that matters. In this research, CEO characteristics in terms of capabilities and skill or special knowledge necessary to run the business are invested for manufacturing firms. Precedent studies reveal that CEO characteristics such as psychological factors including desire to succeed, tendency to take risks, personal factors including age, year of running business, and task related factors including managing capability, communication skills, network influence firm performance for manufacturing firms. However, these studies simply verify whether or not those factors affect firm's managing performance. This study, however, goes further to investigate how is the affecting process from CEO's capabilities and organization characteristics to firm's core competence, and from core competence to advantages, and from advantages to managing performance. Research design, data, and methodology - We make a questionnaire and surveyed manufacturing firm CEO's in Gyeonggi-do area. General characteristics analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, and control effect analysis was conducted. SPSS 2.0 Win, version was used. Results - The CEO characteristics including basic capability, task capability, leadership, and organization characteristics affect core competence at the statistically significant level. And, core competence affect both price advantage and differentiation advantage at the significant level. Some unique finding is that while differentiation advantage affects both financial achievement and non-financial achievement, price advantage does not affect both financial and non-financial achievement. And firm characteristics mainly measured by CEO characteristics of skills has control effects on the trace from core competence to price advantage. Conclusions - For small and medium sized firms CEO characteristics is the most important factor influencing firm's prosperity. For manufacturing firms, whether CEO has the skill or special knowledge to run the firm is critical factor. The study results show that CEO's for manufacturing firms put importance on price and price advantage which seems to be familiar to them. However, the price advantage does not influential to financial and non-financial achievement. This result suggests that small and medium sized manufacturing firms' CEO's should make effort to improve other aspects of advantages to be more competitive.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 2023

Purpose - This study investigates whether the inventory levels of Korean manufacturing firms increased or decreased from 2000 to 2019. We also explore the relationship between inventory levels and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach - We use panel data on KOSPI-listed firms in the manufacturing industry. We measure days in inventory as a proxy for inventory levels, and firm performance is measured by return on assets, return on sales, and EBITDA ratio. The panel data regression method is employed in our analysis. Findings - We find that days in inventory of Korean manufacturing firms significantly increased from 2000 to 2019, especially for raw materials and finished goods inventory. In addition, while days in inventory of large- and medium-sized firms were less than those of small-sized firms, the change in days in inventory of large- and medium-sized firms was positively significant over time. Moreover, the increase in days in inventory was more prevalent among industries related to foods, clothes, chemicals, and transportation. Finally, we show that the days in inventory are negatively related to firm performance. Research implications or Originality - While the Korean manufacturing industry has enormously grown over the last 20 years and managing inventory is critical in the manufacturing industry, our findings counter-intuitively show that the days in inventory of the Korean manufacturing industry had been gradually increased. We speculate that the increase in days in inventory is due to the Korean manufacturing firms' heavy reliance on global supply chains.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.169-183
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• 1994

Government provides for special considerations to technology transfer and cooperative R&D between Government-Supported Research Institutes(GSRI) and Private sector. Nevertheless, the results of many cooperative R&D stagnates in the innovation. This paper examines the reasons for the current low level of the effectiveness of cooperative R&D between GSRIs and small & medium firms. Recommendation are made to enhance the effectiveness of cooperative R & D.