• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.213-227
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of SMEs' technological competitiveness and technology marketing on commercialization performance. For this, we conducted a survey targeting 204 people who are in charge of new product or technology development in SMEs which possess corporate R&D center authorized by the government on technological competitiveness, technology marketing and commercialization performance. The paper studied the effects of technological competitiveness on technology marketing and commercialization performance, technology marketing on commercialization performance. Empirical analysis shows follow results. First, technological competitiveness which includes technology innovation capability, technology commercialization capability and R&D intensity (investment on R&D personnel) have a positive effect on technology marketing. Second, technology commercialization capability have a positive effect on commercialization sales performance & commercialization non-sales performance, R&D intensity (investment on R&D physical) have a positive effect on commercialization non-sales performance. Third, high core technology and enabling technology on technology marketing result in better commercialization performance. As a result, technology-centered SMEs need to make continuous efforts to elevate technological competitiveness factors such as technology innovation capability, technology commercialization capability and R&D intensity.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.109-129
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• 2009

This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of SME's R&D system empirically. Specifically, this study analyze the relationships among R&D inputs(R&D investment, R&D human resource management), process(R&D planning, external network, internal cooperation), and output(technological innovation). A questionnaire was developed to measure the above variables. To test these relations, data were collected from the small and medium-sized IT firms located in Daegu-Kyungbuk region. The survey data of 154 firms were integrated as the empirical base for testing the relations. Most respondents were from the managers. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to examine the relations. Major results are as follows: Firstly, R&D HRM was positively and significantly influenced on the R&D planning. Secondly, R&D planning was positively and significantly affected on the external network, internal cooperation, and technological innovation. Thirdly, the both relations between R&D investment and R&D planning, and external network and technological innovation were not significant statistically. These results suggest the following implications. First, R&D human resource management is very important for IT SMEs. Secondly, internal cooperation mediates R&D inputs and technological innovation by approaching the other department's unique resources and by sharing the cost of new resource development. Several future researches need to overcome the limitations of this research. First, this study's sample was based on the small and medium-sized IT firms just located in Daegu-Kyungbuk region. This limitation may imply that empirical results can not represent overall small and medium-sized firm's situations. Therefore, future research needs to include different samples. Secondly, this study depends on the latitudinal study.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.3421-3429
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• 2011

This is an exploratory study intended to clarify any mutually influential relationship among the political skills, social network and entrepreneurial performance of SMEs entrepreneurs who are known to have the most important influence upon the business performance. The results of this study show that as entrepreneur's social competence, political skills have significant influence on both social network and entrepreneurial performance, and that only some sub-factors of social network have significant influence on entrepreneurial performance. Especially, it was found that the source of weak ties mediates completely political skills and entrepreneurial performance. The above-mentioned results are meaningful in the light of considering any relationship between the capabilities and performance of SMEs entrepreneurs who have critical influence upon performance creation, and also clarifying concretely the bridging role of entrepreneur's social network between his/her social competence, or political skills and entrepreneurial performance. In addition, it is considered that this study has made a theoretical contribution in the light of introducing a concrete and new antecedent variable of political skills and establishing the role of social network, as well as a practical contribution in the light of presenting the real-world information on development of entrepreneur's competence which corresponds to a preparatory stage for performance creation.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.95-116
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• 2006

Traditionally, foreign labor inflow into Korea has been rare and, hence, issues on foreign workers did not draw much attention. However, changing economic conditions of the Korean economy, such as "labor-shortage" problem in SMEs in manufacturing sector, has made the Korean government open its door to the foreign workers since the early 1990s through the Industrial Trainee System. The inflow of foreign workers, on the other hand, has generated various social and economic problems, such as substantial increase of illegal over-stayers, illegal utilization of foreign unskilled workers by domestic SMEs, to name a few. Against this background, the Employment Permit System was implemented from 2004. This new system aims at supplying foreign workers to SMEs as well as protecting them as legal 'employees'. In any case, it is very important to understand how and to what extent the inflow of foreign workers have affected the Korean economy in order to establish long-term policy stance. This paper aims to empirically assess the economic impact of foreign workers on domestic workers in the manufacturing sector during 1997~20001, focusing on the Industrial Trainee System. The empirical results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, there is some evidence that male semi-skilled workers are the group that is likely to have been displaced by industrial trainees. Second, we were unable to find any strong evidence suggesting that the inflow of foreign industrial trainees decreased wages of less-skilled Korean workers.

• Korean small business review
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.49-75
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• 2019

Market instability offers opportunities as well as the need for careful innovation strategies and learning for a company's survival. Companies that find new opportunities decide to carry out innovation and decide on the size of their investments by considering their position in the market they are aiming for and the intensity of competition. This study was conducted to check whether obstacles to innovation face by SMEs in the manufacturing sector vary depending on the stage of corporate growth and to identify the impact of the government support system on the decision-making process on the performance of innovation. According to the analysis, there were differences in obstacles to innovation depending on the stage of corporate growth. It was found that more innovative SMEs are, more obstacles they face, and to overcome such obstacles, they try to access government support systems more. In addition, the use of a government support system eliminated obstacles to innovation, and the positive and significant effects of investing in innovation were identified. This study is meaningful in that it explicitly approached these hypotheses by applying a multistage model to the process of innovation carried out by SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.203-232
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• 2018

Gobizkorea is an online B2B matching platform operated by the Small & Medium Business Corporation. Gobizkorea provides an opportunity for resource-poor SMEs to promote their products and exploit new market opportunities at low cost. The successful operation of Gobizkorea will contribute to the increased exports of Korean SMEs. Accordingly, the present study examined determinants of foreign buyer loyalty toward Gobizkorea.com focusing on country image, e-service quality, and satisfaction. One hundred two survey questionnaires were collected from U.S. buyers registered with Gobizkorea.com. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed three dimensions of e-service quality including information & efficiency, reliability & privacy, and prompt communication & delivery. The path analysis results showed that the country image of Korea significantly and positively affected these three dimensions of e-service quality. Information & efficiency and reliability & privacy positively influenced buyer satisfaction. Reliability & privacy and satisfaction had a positive impact on buyer loyalty. This study enhances the understanding of the foreign buyers use of the domestic e-market platform by examining of determinants of U.S. buyer loyalty toward Gobizkorea.

• Design Convergence Study
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.1-16
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• 2017

As the local manufacturing industry has entered a phase of stagnation, service and product design based on user experience has been highlighted as an alternative for the innovation. However, SMEs(Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) are still struggling to overcome the current crisis. One of the reasons is that SMEs do not have enough contact points with the validated UX firms and experts. Thus, SMEs has a high barrier to invest in new opportunity area, user experience. In this study, we aim to figure out UX experts' competence to perform the UX method to solve the UX problems based on the KSA framework(Knowledge, Skill, Attitude). Based on the literature review and expert workshop, we grouped the UX method according to the similarity of the competence required to conduct the method. With cluster analysis, 5 different groups of UX method were defined based on the competence, Panoramic Analysis, Meticulous Observation and Analysis, Intuitive Interpretation, Agile Visualization, and Logical Inspection. The results would be applied to compose a portfolio of UX experts and to implement a mechanism that could recommend the professional experts to the company.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.1-16
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• 2012

Under the international business circumstance, global supply chain management is considered a vital strategic challenge to small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) suffering from deficient resources and capabilities to exploit overseas markets comparing with large corporations. That is because they can expand their business domains into overseas markets by establishing strategic alliances with global supply chain partners. Although a wide range of previous researches have emphasized the cooperative networks in the chain, most are ignoring the importance of developing relational characteristics such as trust and reciprocity with the partners. Besides, verifying the relational factors influencing firms' export performances, some studies proposed different and inconsistent factors. According to the social capital theory, which is the social quality and networks facilitating close cooperation of inter-individual and inter-organization, provides the integrated view to identify the relational characteristics in the aspects of network, trust and reciprocal norm. Meanwhile, a number of researchers shows that global entrepreneurship is the internal and intangible resource necessary to promote SMEs' internationalization. Upon closer examination, however, they cannot explain clearly its influencing mechanism in the inter-firm cooperative relationships. This study is to verify the effect of social capital accumulated within global supply chain on SMEs' qualitative and quantitative export performance. In addition, we shed new light on global entrepreneurship expected to be concerned with the formation of social capital and the enhancement of export performances. For this purpose, the questionnaires, developed through literature review, were collected from 192 Korean SMEs affiliated in Korean Medium Industries Association and Global Chief Executive Officer's Club focusing on their memberships' international business. As a result of multi-regression analysis, the social capital - network, trust and reciprocal norm shared with global supply chain partner - as well as global entrepreneurship - innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking - have positive effect on SMEs' export performances. Also global entrepreneurship affects positively social capital which has mediating effect partially in the relationship between global entrepreneurship and performances. These results means that there is a structural process - global entrepreneurship(input), social capital(output), and export performances(outcome). In other words, a firm should consistently invest in and develop the social capital with global supply chain partners in order to achieve common goals, establish strategic collaborations and obtain long-term export performances. Furthermore, it is required to foster the global entrepreneurship in an organization so as to build up the social capital. More detailed practical issues and discussion are made in the conclusion.

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2021

On November 17, 2019, an infectious disease with symptoms of pneumonia, called the Wuhan virus at the time, occurred in Wuhan, China. Since then, the name has been changed to COVID-19, and the virus has spread all over the world, and the WHO has declared the highest warning level for infectious diseases, "Pandemic". The coronavirus has also caused great confusion in South Korea. This resulted in large infected people.The first confirmed cases occurred on January 20, 2020, and the number of infected patients is steadily increasing after experiencing several waves, and many corona confirmed cases are also occurring in 2021 after the year. As the whole world enters a pandemic, walls are created between people and people, companies and businesses, and countries and countries, and all growth stops or declines, including human relationships, domestic companies and industries, and foreign industries. As a result, society in general is experiencing a lot of stagnation. Among them, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are the basis of all growth in Korea, and youth who are trying to contribute to the national development by entering society, are struggling to find jobs. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, the difficulty of job hunting and the prospect of small and medium-sized businesses were not very good. In this situation, as the country's overall economic situation is poor, the vitality of SMEs has decreased a lot, the prospects are not good, so jobs are reduced, and there are many difficulties due to reluctance to hire new employees. In this study, with 2019 before the corona era and 2020 after the corona era, we compare SMEs before and after the corona era and overall job search and job search activities through average difference analysis, and whether they are affecting through correlation analysis. Through this, it suggests a direction to increase job search through corporate and government policies after raising the prospects of SMEs first.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.31-36
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• 2019

New technologies are being created and resulted as new types of fusion complex as the barrier between technology and industries are being broken and convergence is becoming more activated in the global economy of the era of fourth industrial revolution. Korea government is trying to foster innovative technologies for new technologies and new services to prepare for the fourth industrial revolution and gain global competitiveness, but many regulations make it difficult to verify and commercialize them. In response, the Korea government is pushing for the introduction of a regulation-free special zone system in which sandboxes are applied so that new technology and new service-based innovation projects can be freely commercialized through experiment and demonstration. This study aims to examine the limitations of the special zones for regional specialization development applied to the zones that are applied uniformly throughout the country and suggest ways for the deregulation special zone to be fostered as an empirical test bed based on new technologies and as a base for regional innovation.