• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.21-39
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• 2023

The study investigates the impact of family ownership heterogeneity on the internationalization decisions of family-owned enterprises from ICT sectors in South Korea. The study uses prospect theory to explore the relationship between ownership structure and internationalization. The study finds that as performance improves, the ultimate owner (CEO) is negatively related to internationalization, while other family members are positively related, demonstrating the heterogeneous behavior of family members. The study suggests that the ultimate owner (CEO) tends to avoid risks associated with internationalization, while other family members are willing to take risks. To better understand the various risk behaviors of family firms regarding internationalization, the inherent heterogeneity of family firms, particularly in light of different risk behaviors between the ultimate owner (CEO) and other family members, may explain the inconsistent results in studies on the effect of family ownership on internationalization.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.177-189
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• 2022

This study proposes policy recommendations for the Korea New Exchange ("KONEX"), which is a financial platform for SMEs and startups that relied on indirect and policy financing in the past. SMEs and venture firms with limited human and physical listing resources can grow through market incubation, and venture capitalists expect an early exit or return on investment. However, the lack of liquidity and sluggish trading volume have weakened the function of the market. Despite prior policy efforts, the number of newly listed companies has decreased while listing demand for KOSDAQ and K-OTC has increased. This study aims to suggest short- and long-term improvements in regulations and throughout the KONEX firms' listing life cycle. First, the minimum deposit requirement on individual investors should be abolished to increase the number of investors. Second, information disclosure should be conducted by firms so that the nominated advisor can focus on discovering and supporting new listed companies. Third, in order to increase trading volume, the 5% dispersion rule should be changed to 25% dispersion incentive principle. Fourth, a new track without profit condition in expedited transfer listing should be introduced because the KOSDAQ relaxes the profit realization requirements for listing. Lastly, transfer listing without additional review for firms that fulfill ownership dispersion, information disclosure, and investor protection will strengthen the incubating role of the KONEX.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.113-137
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• 2015

Many scholars have addressed the technological convergence of small-medium sized firms in Korea and their impact on the economic growth of nation. Nevertheless, most studies have been investigated the relationship between entrepreneurship and venture creation, and a few studies have analyzed the innovation and technological convergence of SMEs. The purpose of this research is to gain industrial insight into the technological convergence and to suggest a dynamic growth policy for entrepreneurs of SMEs to improve their convergence performance based on IT and BT. Therefore, we intend to propose solutions to these key questions in convergence such as; what are the key patterns in the process of technological convergence of SMEs on IT and BT, and what kinds of strategy do their need? In order to answer these research questions, we adopt network analysis using patent citation information. Results of network analysis revealed that building ecosystem based on government and universities is one of the most important factors for the future growth of SMEs in Korea. Also, the fit between technological convergence direction of SMEs and division of convergence structure of government and universities will be positively associated with dynamic growth of SMEs in Korea. In conclusion, this research extends the current studies on important aspects of SMEs in the technological convergence process by proposing their growth in convergence process to a newly converging context, IT and BT, and shed light on the integrative perspectives of crucial roles of SMEs on innovation performance in the IT and BT technological convergence.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.75-88
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• 2022

Purpose - This study investigates the effects of going public on the innovation of KOSDAQ firms. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses firms that go public from 2007 to 2011 in Korea. We compare a firm's innovation performance over five years before and after IPO. Findings - We find that firm's innovation declines after an IPO. After going public, both the quality and the quantity of patents are decreased. However, this decrease is alleviated in high-tech industries or concentrated industries where innovation is expected to be more valuable. When comparing firms with venture capital(VC), which are more likely to window dress, to firms without VC, VC backing has no meaningful impact on changes of innovation. Research implications or Originality - As the KOSDAQ market was established to provide small and medium enterprises(SMEs) with funds for firm's investments and growth, it is necessary to verify whether the capital raised at the IPO encourages innovation. Thus, our study contributes to the literature by examining empirically whether an IPO boosts a firm's innovation.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.636-662
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• 2018

Recently, the Moon administration established the Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Startups, as part of its national strategy for start-up and innovation growth led by small and medium-sized venture companies. In a slowing economy, as venture companies with excellent internal competencies are seen to be favorable to growth, the government funding for technology development is becoming increasingly important. Previous studies examine the internal competence factors that can strengthen competitiveness through self-efforts and the influence structure of growth stage, which is an important factor in industrial environment, on business performance. As the government support for venture firms has been strengthened, the effect of government funding on the management performance and technological innovation performance of venture firms have been recently discussed in various ways. However, there is a lack of precedent research on the moderating effect of the utilization of government funding on the existing influence structure in which firm's internal competence and growth stages affects business performance. Therefore, this study examined whether the internal competencies of the venture firms and the stage of growth have direct effects on business performance and analyzed the moderating effect in connection with government funding utilization under these influence structures. The results of the study are as follows. First, the utilization of government funding in the venture firms whose R&D personnel ratio is relatively low, not to have own brands and showed an increase of employees has a significantly positive influence on business performance. Second, the moderating effects of the government funding utilization at the high growth stage of the venture firms are shown significantly. These results suggest that the venture policy linked to the job creation of the present government requires not only the support considering R&D personnel but also the necessity of supporting human resources policy to a greater extent and further study on the effectiveness of venture firms in the high growth stage.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2017

By applying the AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process), we have analyzed the importance and the order for priorities to the management risk factors of Korean SMEs & Venture companies in China. The major management risk factors of manufacturing companies were the rise in labor costs followed by fierce competition in the marketplace, problems involved with human resource management and the rise in the cost of materials. In the case of companies manufacturing electronic products, the rise of labor costs and alteration in government's tax policy were seen as the main risk factors. In the case of chemical product manufacturing companies, the reinforcement of environmental protection law and in automobile component manufacturing companies, apart from the rise in labor cost, the increase in raw materials costs were analyzed as the main risk factors. While considering the time period, the main risk factors of the companies that entered China in the 1990's were fierce competition and alteration in government's tax policy and for the companies that entered China in the 2000's, increase in raw material cost, the rise in labor cost etc were analyzed to be the main risk management factors.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.1105-1117
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• 2015

During the last decade, the business infrastructure has become digital with increased interconnections among products, processes, and services. Across many firms spanning different industries and sectors, digital technologies are fundanmentally transforming business stratiges, business processes, firm capabilities, productes and services, and key interfirm relationships in extended business networks. With the emergence of smartphones, the paradigm of the ICT industry is rapidly changing as the line between global and local markets are being blurred. In the changing global environment, although some game companies are accelerating the improvement of their global competitiveness and cases of successes of venture enterprises by developing biosimilar technology are being discovered, majority of ICT companies are focusing on limited marketing activities to get subcontracts or projects from large companies. Thus the aim of this study is to find out how digital ecosystems evolve and how business models and strategies have changed of individual companies according to the evolution of the digital ecosystems.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.27-37
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• 2015

Start up a company is critical to the regional economy and job creation and so get support from government and other organizations, but there are still exist of high rate of failure and CEO's stressful fear of failure. New firms are of utmost importance for the vitality of national economic driving forces but for those failed firms, they caused social and economic problems directly and indirectly, and brought frustration to the founders. The many education and research programs about entrepreneurship and venture creation were undertaken by the country and organizations, but the education and research about the vigilance of failed to start up company were almost ignored. If the attention can be put into the research about failed companies and the research can make the founders and pre-CEOs aware the failure of establishing a company, that would be very valuable as scenarios to see the company risks. This case study shows the finding the reasons which caused the failure of small venture companies and it's implications in the filed of establishing companies. The technology based venture company which had run 10 years in Daedeok's IT field was selected as the research object. The results show that the important factors such as entrepreneur characteristics(lack of communication and management knowledge), business management(lack of business expertise) and technology(loss of unique feature of product and lack of product extension) were the root cause of failures.

• 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.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.67-82
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• 2018

Lately, recognition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been changing. CSR turned out to be a powerful tool which a company incorporates to improve its image. Nowadays, it is no longer an option, but a shared sense which is a source of corporate growth and competitiveness. CSR has changed with times and the economic environment, especially as the global value chain (GVC) came to be more vital, it became accepted as an effective means of growth strategy for small and medium exporters. For SMEs exporters, participating in GVC requires that they meet international standards for CSR demanded by global enterprises. Reflecting this trend, exporters should strive to achieve both goals of social responsibility fulfillment and efficient growth through CSR activities. As one of the key measures for a sustainable growth of an organization, the following are the policy implications. First, it is necessary to establish a national organization dedicated to CSR for small businesses. The central government should establish an organization which is exclusively responsible for CSR of SMEs and oversee the task of CSR of small businesses. Second, the development and verification of the CSV evaluation model should be promoted. The international trend of CSR should be promptly spread out to individual firms and supported to maximize economic effects through consultancy. Third, it should be linked to global advancement. CSR reports by small and mid-size businesses will have to be written to ensure that they have a real effect on the global value chain.