• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.231-240
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• 2023

This empirical analysis investigates the impact of consultant competency and project manager (PM) competency on business performance. Two hundred and twenty four chief executive officers and executive members at small and medium sized firms in the manufacturing sector were surveyed, yielding several outcomes. First, consultant competency positively affects consulting performance. Second, consultant competency positively affects business performance. Third, PM competency does not have a significant influence on consulting performance. Fourth, PM competency does not have a significant impact on business performance. Fifth, consulting performance does not have a significant effect on business performance. Finally, regarding the mediation effect of consulting performance on the influence of consultant competency and PM competency on business performance, consulting performance had no significant impact. Thus, expertise and insight are crucial for a consulting business to enable the growth of professional consultants. Furthermore, this study is expected to enhance the consulting performance of small and medium sized manufacturing firms by providing useful data to consultants and project managers when carrying out consulting projects.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.151-163
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• 2013

It goes without saying that the technology innovation plays an important role in the sustainable growth of the firm in the global economy. It, however, is not easy to fulfill this simple and obvious fact. Because there are a lot of barriers hindering innovation activities of firms and innovations are interrupted or don't even attempts by this barriers. So in this paper, I study barriers of firms that try to innovation and how much negative impact exist on firm's innovation performance by that. And also I try to find influence on firm's performance because of declined innovation activities. To prove this, KIS(Korean Innovation Survey) 2008, which was surveyed by STEPI(Science and Technology Policy Institute), is used to find relationships among variables; innovation barriers, innovation activities and firm's performance. In the result, I find that financial barrier influence negatively to the process innovation with small business, capable barrier influence negatively to the process innovation with large business and organizational barrier influence negatively to the process innovation with both small and large business. And, it also appear that organizational barrier has not moderating effect but process efficiency has moderating effect significantly with small business that have more positive effect.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

Purpose - Entrepreneurship promotion is emerging as an important economic growth agenda. However, in Korea, entrepreneurship has weakened because of the collapse of the venture bubbles of the 2000s and the global economic recession in 2008, which have induced the business community to choose stability over risk. The Korean government has been implementing several support projects to inspire and promote youth entrepreneurship through various means including financial assistance; however, the perpetuation rate of young entrepreneurship is still low as compared to advanced economies such as the US and EU. This case study focuses on the Youth Start-Up Business Support Program of the Small & Medium Business Corporation, and explores practical alternatives. Further, it aims to suggest managerial factors and a conceptual model for change management factors affecting the business performance creation of a startup company, based on the Small and medium Business Corporation's young venture startup fund. Research design, data, and methodology - Many studies examine the current progress and issues of startup firms, for example, a lack of systematic cultivation of entrepreneurship and startup business training, lack of commercialization funding for youth startup businesses, lack of mentoring, and inadequate infrastructure. From prior research, we address four factors, namely, personal managerial capabilities, innovative business model, sufficient cash flow, and social network, affecting startup companies' business performance. This study involved a sample survey of 200 young entrepreneurs to investigate casual relations between the four factors and business performance. A regression analysis was used to verify the hypotheses. Results - First, in relation to differences in the founder's personal characteristics, age, sales amount, and number of employees significantly impact business performance. Second, regarding the causal relation between the four factors for creating business performance, an innovative business model and social networking have supported the hypotheses, revealing that the more that a start-up founder has an innovative business model and social networking, the more the start-up firms are likely to have better performance (e.g., sales volume, employment, ROE, ROI, etc.). Although the founder's competency and sufficient cash flow have no significant relationship with business performance, the mean value was higher performance for high founder's competency and sufficient cash flow. Conclusions - This study provides basic data on policy support strategies of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, to help young entrepreneurs achieve their start-up business goals. It shows that young entrepreneurship startup firms should strive to explore ideas to satisfy customers' needs, and that changes in customer value and the continuous innovation of business model differentiation are required to actively respond to change management. Moreover, at the infant startup stage, they should activate social network programs to share information, thereby offsetting resource scarcity and managing business risk. Further, the establishment of a long-term vision and the implementation of training programs in related specific fields should be supported to strengthen founders' personal capabilities.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Information Systems Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.183-197
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• 2003

This paper introduces the public-oriented e-Hub construction for strategic alliances in the community. The public-oriented e-Hub can link with all Participating internet firms on the ba business models, and consequently help them share their core competence, management resource Based upon this perspective, this paper presents the procedures corresponding with social network strategic alliances of small and medium internet firms. In addition, this paper tries to analyze th among degree of competition, potential of strategic alliance, and financial performance. The resu the firms with more easily accepting various strategic alliances make higher financial performance competitive environment. This suggests that strategic alliances through the public-oriented e-Hub virtual community provide the internet firms with various opportunities

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.165-178
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• 2003

This paper introduces the public-oriented e-Hub construction for strategic alliances in the B2B virtual community. The public-oriented e-Hub can link with all participating Internet firms on the basis of their business models, and consequently help them share their core competence, management resources, and so on. Based upon this perspective, this paper presents the procedures corresponding with social network analysis for strategic alliances of small and medium internet firms. In addition, this paper tries to analyze the relationships among degree of competition, potential of strategic alliance, and financial performance. The results show that the firms with more easily accepting various strategic alliances make higher financial performance under more competitive environment. This suggests that strategic alliances through the public-oriented e-Hub in the B2B virtual community provide the internet firms with various opportunities.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.223-233
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• 2009

This study was aimed at analyzing the structural relationship among such factors as industrial environment, technological cooperation, technological innovation performance and management performance that are essential to technological innovation of small and medium-sized companies. For this aim, an analysis was conducted to determine which of the factors in industrial environment has impact on technological cooperation of small and medium-sized companies. An empirical analysis was also performance to find what kind of effects the technological cooperation may have on technological innovation and management performance. From the analyses, it became known that: first, changes in industrial environment have influence on technical cooperation factors including production technology, technical information, technical manpower and fund for technology that are assorted by means of factorial analysis; second, the technological cooperation of small and medium-sized companies has impact on their technological innovation performance; and third, the technological cooperation of small and medium-sized companies has impact on management performance.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.505-521
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• 2015

Using small and medium sized firms located on 3th seongseo industry complex in Daegu, this study investigated the effects of technology development factors on innovation performance, and suggested the implications in terms of technology policies. Technology development factors are categorized into both fundamental based factors and external cooperation based factors as independent variables. According to the research results, external cooperation based factor positively affects innovation performance, and this positive effect is reported in firms having more than average firm size. Under environment uncertainty, external cooperation based factor plays a key role to increase innovation performance to firms having more than average firm size. Therefore, policy making should be focused on external cooperation, not on fundamental base such as people and infrastructure, and also dissimilar policy suggestion based firm size is needed to be considered.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.63-105
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• 2018

This paper analyzes the effects of three factors on the firm-size wage premium which have not been considered in previous studies: the worker compositions within firms, the wage differentials between contractors and subcontractors, and the performance pay and rent-sharing behaviors of firms. The main results are as follows. First, even after controlling for the various worker characteristics, the differences in shares of highly educated workers, managers, and professionals between large and small firms make the size-wage premium larger. Secondly, wage differentials between contractors and subcontractors also affect the size-wage premium in the manufacturing sector. Thirdly, high performance pay and active rent-sharing behaviors of large manufacturing firms make the size-wage premium larger. These results imply that a positive matching effect among skilled workers, a structural problem between contractors and subcontractors, and differences in rent-sharing behaviors between large and small firms have affected the firm-size wage premium in the South Korean labor market.

• 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.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.103-124
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• 2022

For venturing into international markets, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have not only emphasized internal resources but entrepreneurial orientation has also become the need of the day due to its significant role in increasing firm's competitive capabilities. Although research indicates that the competitive strategies can significantly impact export performance, minor attention is given to the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, business competitive strategy and export performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study scrutinizes the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation (i.e., innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness) and each of generic competitive strategies (i.e., cost leadership and differentiation) on the export performance of Chinese SMEs. And we investigated the moderating effect of entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between the competitive strategies and export performance. We surveyed 217 Chinese SMEs through a structured questionnaire. For the data analysis and hypotheses testing, we used AMOS. 27. The findings display that differentiation and cost leadership strategies significantly improve export performance. The innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness also spur Chinese SME's export performance. Further we find that adding entrepreneurial orientation significantly improves our model of the relationship between the competitive strategies and export performance. Thus, our study extends the entrepreneurial orientation literature and provides interesting new insights into how entrepreneurial orientation helps firms create more successful export operations.