• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.191-217
• /
• 2014

The Purpose of this study is to find the effect factors of R&D investment in SMEs which plays an important role in the national economy, and the differences of the effect factors by the type of SMEs. The subject of this study is about 3,400 SMEs mentioned in "The survey of technical statistics on SMEs in 2007" by Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business. The effect factors are related with the size of business, the infrastructure of R&D and the activities of R&D which have been studied by many researchers. The methods of analysis are regression analysis, moderating effect analysis and the software package used is SPSS 12.0. The results of the study are as fallow. First, it was found that unlike in previous studies which show the effect of the elements of business's size, research infrastructure, research activities on R&D investment, one element alone can't be considered for meaningful result but the various elements have effect on R&D investment at the same time. In other words, the number of employees and the sales as the elements of business's size, the ratio of researchers, the technical ability, the ratio of equipment possession and the intellectual properties as the elements of R&D infrastructure, the activity of ideas and joint research as the elements of R&D activities have positive(+) effect, whereas the participation of CEO in the activity of R&D as the elements of R&D activities activity has negative(-) one. The number of employees, the ratio of researchers, and the sales had relatively high influence whereas equipment possession, technical ability, intellectual properties, the participation of CEO in the research, the activity of idea, joint research had relatively low influence. Next, it was also found that there are differences of the effect factors over the types of SMEs. SMEs were classified into 19 types by eight criteria such as start-ups and existing business by business age; small business and medium business by size; manufacturing business and service business by product type;independent business and subcontractor business by dealing type; businesses in the entering, growing, maturing and restructuring stage by growth stage; businesses with low, medium and high technology by technological level; pioneering business and non-pioneering business by industrial type; and businesses with state-of-the-art technology and non-advanced business by the level of business activities. The meaning of this study lies in the fact that it found the various effect factors should be considered at the same time when conducting study on SMEs' R&D investment, and the differences by the type should be acknowledged. This study surpassed the limitations of the previous studies which focused on a couple of factors and types. This study result can also be considered for other studies on achievement, organization, marketing and others. Moreover, it shows that a differential policy by business type is needed when formulating SME policy.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.1-33
• /
• 2019

The small and medium sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are already at a competitive disadvantaged when compared to large companies with more abundant resources. Manufacturing SMEs not only need a lot of information needed for new product development for sustainable growth and survival, but also seek networking to overcome the limitations of resources, but they are faced with limitations due to their size limitations. In a new era in which connectivity increases the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment, SMEs are increasingly urged to find information and solve networking problems. In order to solve these problems, the government funded research institutes plays an important role and duty to solve the information asymmetry problem of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the differentiating characteristics of SMEs that utilize the public information support infrastructure provided by SMEs to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs, and how they contribute to corporate performance. We argue that we need an infrastructure for providing information support to SMEs as part of this effort to strengthen of the role of government funded institutions; in this study, we specifically identify the target of such a policy and furthermore empirically demonstrate the effects of such policy-based efforts. Our goal is to help establish the strategies for building the information supporting infrastructure. To achieve this purpose, we first classified the characteristics of SMEs that have been found to utilize the information supporting infrastructure provided by government funded institutions. This allows us to verify whether selection bias appears in the analyzed group, which helps us clarify the interpretative limits of our study results. Next, we performed mediator and moderator effect analysis for multiple variables to analyze the process through which the use of information supporting infrastructure led to an improvement in external networking capabilities and resulted in enhancing product competitiveness. This analysis helps identify the key factors we should focus on when offering indirect support to SMEs through the information supporting infrastructure, which in turn helps us more efficiently manage research related to SME supporting policies implemented by government funded institutions. The results of this study showed the following. First, SMEs that used the information supporting infrastructure were found to have a significant difference in size in comparison to domestic R&D SMEs, but on the other hand, there was no significant difference in the cluster analysis that considered various variables. Based on these findings, we confirmed that SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure are superior in size, and had a relatively higher distribution of companies that transact to a greater degree with large companies, when compared to the SMEs composing the general group of SMEs. Also, we found that companies that already receive support from the information infrastructure have a high concentration of companies that need collaboration with government funded institution. Secondly, among the SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure, we found that increasing external networking capabilities contributed to enhancing product competitiveness, and while this was no the effect of direct assistance, we also found that indirect contributions were made by increasing the open marketing capabilities: in other words, this was the result of an indirect-only mediator effect. Also, the number of times the company received additional support in this process through mentoring related to information utilization was found to have a mediated moderator effect on improving external networking capabilities and in turn strengthening product competitiveness. The results of this study provide several insights that will help establish policies. KISTI's information support infrastructure may lead to the conclusion that marketing is already well underway, but it intentionally supports groups that enable to achieve good performance. As a result, the government should provide clear priorities whether to support the companies in the underdevelopment or to aid better performance. Through our research, we have identified how public information infrastructure contributes to product competitiveness. Here, we can draw some policy implications. First, the public information support infrastructure should have the capability to enhance the ability to interact with or to find the expert that provides required information. Second, if the utilization of public information support (online) infrastructure is effective, it is not necessary to continuously provide informational mentoring, which is a parallel offline support. Rather, offline support such as mentoring should be used as an appropriate device for abnormal symptom monitoring. Third, it is required that SMEs should improve their ability to utilize, because the effect of enhancing networking capacity through public information support infrastructure and enhancing product competitiveness through such infrastructure appears in most types of companies rather than in specific SMEs.