• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.155-176
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• 2023

This paper employs datasets from the Enterprise Survey conducted by the World Bank to examine the relationship between four types of innovation defined by the Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005): product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, organization innovation, and the firm performance in the selected developing ASEAN economies. The main objective of this paper is to understand the characteristics of innovation activities at the firm level and how various innovation types affect firm performance. The empirical results from ASEAN manufacturing firms reveal that product innovation positively affects firms' performance, while non-technological innovations are negatively related to the performance of firms. The further employed quantile regression provides more insights into the roles of innovation types on different levels of firm performance: while product and process innovations actively contribute to the small and medium-size firms (below 25^th quantile and median), organizational and marketing innovations negatively affect them. Interestingly, the role of process innovation decreases when firm performance grows.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.289-306
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• 2021

This paper aims to investigate how and to what extent FDI impacts the relative demand for skilled labor within firms in the case of developing countries. The analysis uses a sizeable micro-level dataset for Malaysian manufacturing industries using the System-GMM estimators to control the estimations' endogeneity problems. For this purpose, the study uses foreign equity share at the firm level to investigate foreign ownership effects at the firm level and the Horizontal FDI index by Smarzynska Javorcik (2004) to analyze FDI intra-industry linkages influence on the structure of labor demand for Malaysian domestic firms. Our findings indicate that foreign ownership increases the skilled demand within Malaysian manufacturing through the learning process, exclusively for small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs). Conversely for foreign-owned firms, changes in their skilled-labor share do not associate with changes in firm-level foreign equity share. We conclude that foreign ownership per se is not the major contributing factor for skill upgrading in Malaysian manufacturing firms. Furthermore, the competitive pressures caused by foreign firms' presence within the same industry - namely horizontal FDI - has a significant negative spillover effect on the level of skilled-labor share for domestic firms in the Malaysian manufacturing sector within periods of the understudies.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.67-90
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• 2016

This study examines whether there is any significant relation between executive compensation and future firm performance for the Korean export manufacturing small and medium-sized firms. We sorted the whole sample firms into the sub-groups of 10 deciles by firm size and the KSIC standard. We found the following empirical results. First, Korean export manufacturing small and medium-sized firms typically showed lower or even negative profitability in terms of return on equity and operating profit ratio to sales. Foreign equity ownership is very low with an average of 3.77%. Second, for the firms with higher ratio of excess executive compensation to asset had lower future firm performance. It implies that the typical owner-manager in Korean export manufacturing SMEs earns excess pay, but do not contribute much to firm performance. Third, as for future cumulative abnormal returns for future one- and three-year periods, firms with higher owner-executive pay had lower returns compared with firms with lower pay. So the stock market investors set a lower value on them. Fourth, there is a positive relation between excess executive pay and executive overconfidence, and it implies that owner-CEOs with higher pay may become overconfident, thereby lowering future firm performance somehow.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.30-57
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• 2019

Purpose - This study analyzes the effect of internationalization represented as exporting on firm performance on the subject of SMEs operating in Masan Free Trade Zone which has shown poor performance recently despite its status as the oldest and largest free trade zone in Korea. We also analyze the effect of firm size on firm performance, and the moderating role of firm size in relation to internationalization and firm performance. Design/methodology - This study uses multiple regression models for unbalanced panel data as the empirical tools for the estimation of the effect that internationalization has on firm performance (ROA or ROS). Our sample consists of 91 manufacturing SMEs among all 110 companies located in Masan Free Trade Zone as of 2017. Findings - The degree of internationalization has a negative impact on firm performance. However, firm size turns out to have a positive effect and play a positive moderating role in the relation to internationalization and firm performance. This seems to be because most tenant companies operating in Masan Free Trade Zone are small firms whose costs of internationalization may exceed the benefits. Empirical results also show that longer CEO tenure has a greater negative effect on firm performance. Originality/value - The originality/value of this paper can be found in 3 aspects. First, we conducted an empirical analysis on the relationship between the internationalization and firm performance of SMEs in a specific region, namely, Masan Free Trade Zone. Second, while most previous studies focused on listed medium companies, most of the sample of this study are small and medium non-listed enterprises. Third, it is witnessed that firm size has a positive moderating effect on the relation between internationalization and firm performance.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.51-63
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• 2022

Purposes: The purpose of this study is to develop and test a possible model that investigates the relationships between green investment, CSR disclosure, social collaboration initiatives, and firm distribution performance to deal with environmental change because it's become the major stakeholder since it affects increasingly global company performance index. Research methodology: In this study a quantitative method was adopted. The 220 respondents were owners and managers of manufacturing enterprises from Indonesia. The structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses, and the Partial Least Square (SmartPLS) was used as the data analysis tool. Findings: The study's finding shows that green investment has a significant effect on CSR disclosure, and CSR disclosure has a positive relationship with social collaborative initiatives and the firm's distribution performance. Similarly, social collaborative initiatives also significantly impact a firm's distribution performance. Limitations: This study uses variables that are still abstract and have not been able to regress the dimensions contained there into conclusion variables for each antecedent variable. In addition, this study only used a sample with a small scope, namely Central Java Province, Indonesia. Contribution: The findings of this study contribute to the body of literature in the field of organizational management and support the agency and stakeholder theories. For the practical contribution, this study provides the way to build and implement green-based investment strategies as a competitive edge and improve firm's distribution performance.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.103-111
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• 2008

While the demand for ASP(Application Service Provider) focused on small and medium enterprises who are fully aware of needs of ICT readiness has been increasing, those who consider to adopt ASP are wondering whether their performance would be actually successful if they did. These concerns can be an important standard of judgement, when introducing new information systems, by analyzing ROI(Return on Investment) on the current enterprises. Therefore, to review the feasibility of investing IT and measuring the performance, this study suggests a framework for ROI analysis which estimates IT investment performance, through multi-criteria approach on both financial performance index and non-financial one. We applied methodology on ASP-based IT investment performance evaluation to sample manufacturing companies under 50 employees and deduced the main implications to be considered when introducing the system.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.102-112
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to suggest a direction of a investment policy to increase a competitive power for small firms. For this purpose, several hypothesis are established and tested (1) Whether the small firm's management resources and performance are different among industries\ulcorner (2) What resurces affect on the business performance\ulcorner (3) Whether the firm's management resources which affect the performance are different among industries\ulcorner (4) Whether the firm's resources level are different between high performance group and low performance group in same industry\ulcorner For the empirical study, the data is obtained from 1,338 small firms in Korea manufacturing industries. The results of this study are (1) the level of firm's management resources and performance are different among industries and (2) the management resources which affect the performance are different according the industry. And (3) the management resources level are different according to the firm's performance level in some industry.

• 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.