• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.661-670
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• 2020

This paper investigates the influence of the economic integration exemplified by the Eurasian Economic Union on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Kazakhstan corporate sector. Using data collected from 204 small-, medium-, and large-sized Kazakh companies, the researchers analyzed the collected data with percentile. Findings of this study show that small- and medium-sized enterprises, especially in the tertiary sector of the Kazakh economy, are not that much affected by regional integration, whereas large firms have been significantly impacted. The originality of the paper is threefold. First, the research explores the entrepreneurial ecosystems in its focus on geographic location or digital technologies that came across mainly from the ICT space. This is becoming pervasive across mechanical systems, communications, infrastructure, and the built-up environment. Second, the originality of the paper lies in focusing on the entrepreneurial ecosystems' influence on the business processes by clearly understanding the regional, national, and international trends in different markets. Third, the paper is first of its kind to contribute an updated perspective on the entrepreneurial ecosystem's influence on economic integration to the policymakers of Kazakhstan. Policymakers will gain expertise on how to manage network effects while planning investment projects, as well as transactions, modes, and fixed nodes, acquisition, and greenfield investments.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.1 s.45
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• pp.243-252
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• 2007

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this study, we investigate the relationship among ERP software qualify, vendor support, user information satisfaction. and performance of ERP implementation. The empirical findings of this paper will allow SMEs to identify the importance of relationships with vendors and software itself for the successful implementation of ERP systems. The results provide a useful basis for the SMEs which have limited information capability to focus their attention on the software quality and vendor support in overcoming difficulties and obstacles facing the ERP implementation.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.67-77
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• 2019

Many small and medium-sized enterprises are deploying Smart Factory without due consideration of the circumstances in which the entity is in or outside of the entity, such as environmental changes and the capabilities of its members. Therefore, utilization and effectiveness are also low after deployment. This study verifies 'the establishment of a Smart Factory through the environmental factors and absorption capabilities of small businesses' through empirical research. The survey was received by people working for small and medium-sized companies that have established Smart Factory. The results of the study showed that first, environmental factors within and outside the company had a positive effect on the absorption capacity within the company. Second, the absorption capacity within a company has had a positive effect on the deployment of a Smart Factory. Based on the above proof, it has been proved to be effective if the core areas of the Smart Factory are built on the basis of the company's internal and external environmental factors and absorption capabilities when constructing Smart Factory in small businesses. In the future, we will study the achievements of smart factory construction.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.843-862
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• 2018

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop quality innovation techniques specialized for the small and medium-sized businesses. which account for the majority of Korean companies, were having a hard time utilizing the widely recognized quality innovation techniques due to resource constraints. Methods: First, we do review the existing Single PPM and 6 Sigma. And investigate the utilization of these methods including Toyota Production System. Second, we devised a four-step problem-solving methodology based on recent trends in quality innovation such as Simple, Speedy, and Smart. Third, we do survey on frequently used tools for quality innovation. Many opinion leaders including quality consultants and professors answered and gave us valuable comments about our selected quality tools. Finally, we do specify and map tools to each step of PASS. Results: In 2017, 167 companies participated in the quality innovation support business for small businesses according to the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry. We conducted performance checks on 167 companies that had completed the "PASS" projects. For the purpose of evaluating improvement performance, the survey was carried out using a structured questionnaire during the field visit of these companies mentioned above. For the reference, 165 out of 167 companies (98.8 % response rate) responded to the questionnaire and conducted performance analysis based on it. According to the survey, 97.6 percent of the respondents were very satisfied with their overall satisfaction with the quality innovation support projects for small and medium sized enterprises in 2017. Also, 93.3 % of the respondents were satisfied with the results of level of the target achievement. As a result, 160 companies (97.0 % of the participating companies) hope to partic ipate in the quality improvement project using "PASS" once again. Conclusion: In this paper, we introduce the new quality innovation methodology, which is named as 'PASS', It could support the long-range business plan of the small and medium-sized businesses to achieve total customer satisfaction resulting in increased market share and improved profit margin. The most small companies can use this "PASS" technique more easily, quickly and most efficiently than their existing known quality innovation techniques such as Six Sigma and Single PPM, etc.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.65-91
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• 2016

Although the success of industrial clusters largely depends on whether clustering firms can achieve economic performance, there has been less attention on investigating factors and conditions contributing to the performance enhancement for clustering small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Along this vein, we adopt the theories of social capital and organizational learning as those success factors for clustering SMEs. This study thus aims at examining what effect social capital accrued in the relationships among actors within clusters has on firm performance of clustering SMEs and what role organizational learning plays in the linkage between social capital and firm performance. For the empirical analysis, we operationalized the variables and their measures to develop questionnaires through the theoretical reviews on literatures. As a sample of 227 clustering SMEs, our collected data was analyzed by hierarchical regression analysis. The results confirmed that a high level of social capital, represented by network, trust, and norm, has positive effect on firm performance of clustering SMEs. We also found that clustering firms presenting high organizational learning, represented by absorptive and transformative capability, achieve better performance than those placing less value on organizational learning. Furthermore the significant relationship between social capital and firm performance is mediated partially through organizational learning. These findings imply not only that the territorial agglomeration of industrial cluster does not guarantee the performance creation of clustering SMEs but that they need to develop social capital among various actors within clusters, facilitating their knowledge diffusion. In order to absorb and mobilize the shared knowledge and information into strategic resources, the firms should improve their capability associated with organizational learning. These expand our understanding on the importance of social capital and organizational learning for the performance enhancement of clustering firms. Differentiating from major studies addressing benefits and advantages of industrial cluster, this study based on the perspective of firm-internal business process contributes to the literature advancement. Strategic and policy implications of this study are discussed in detail.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.205-244
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• 2015

In response to the recent rapid technological and market changes, the importance of the design of ambidextrous organization has been increasingly emphasized as one of the dynamic capabilities. Firms that show a high performance in the rapid technological and market changes appear to design and implement ambidextrous organization successfully. They have achieved both exploitative competence for continuous innovation with product development and exploratory competence for discontinuous innovation with new market and new technologies. We have examined why and how to design and operate ambidextrous organizations and the effects of ambidextrous organizational characteristics on the performance from structural, contextual and leadership perspectives. We conducted case studies on 3 Korean firms that showed different characteristics of industrial product, company size, etc. Longitudinal case studies exhibit different processes of design and operating ambidextrous organization according to innovative strategy and industrial characteristics.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.87-96
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• 2014

The first, this study analyzed empirically the effects of the ties(structural) and the trust(relational) between the clients(small and medium sized enterprises) and consultants on the consulting performance, the second, verified the moderating effects of the consultant's competence and the client's participation in the effect of the ties and the trust on the consulting performance. The result of empirical analysis was as follows. The ties and the competence based trust had a positive effects on the consulting performance. Meanwhile, the client's participation had no moderating effect, the consultant's competence moderated the effect of the ties and the trust on the consulting performance. From the above empirical analysis, we appreciated that the building of the strong ties and the trust between the client and consultant is very important to promote consulting performance with the enhancing the consultant's competence.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.115-128
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• 2019

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are being faced with rapid changes in their business environments due to evolution of technologies and innovation in societal eco-systems. Particularly, dynamic interactions between such environments and enterprise activities have become significant, so technology planning, which is a process of identifying appropriate directions regarding product and technology development, has received much attention to cope with such dynamics proactively. However, SMEs typically have limits in performing independent, strategical and systematical technology planning activities due to the lack of human, material and financial resources. This paper proposes the development of a product roadmapping method so that SMEs carry out efficient technology planning activities with interconnections of external business environments. The present work provides product roadmap templates that directly accommodate the influence of business environments on the product's system and its associated super/sub-systems with the use of external environment analysis techniques including TRIZ methodology, PEST and 5Forces analysis. These templates are useful to efficiently forecast the directions of product's development and evolution, which arise from changes in external environments. Consequently, the present work enables SMEs to flexibly cope with the era of the next R&D generation, which pursues value creation through mutual interconnection between business environments and technology development.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.87-105
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• 2015

This research confirms a non-linear relationship between R&D investment and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises and measures the adequate level as threshold value. Although previous studies did not consider the time lag and estimated indirectly the level using the R&D investment squared term, this study assumes 2 years time lag and uses the threshold estimation model to measure directly. We find that there is the S-curve relationship between the profit rate as R&D output and R&D intensity and the ratio of researchers to employees as R&D input. Also, we estimate the adequate levels of R&D investment, 6.4% for R&D intensity and 13% for the ratio of researchers to employees. This relationship and measurement of the level can offer basic facts and implications about R&D policy and strategy.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.1-18
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• 2021

Purpose - In this study, we explore the relationship between the degree of internationalization (DOI) and firm performance (DOI-P) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector. Specifically, we investigate whether the costs and benefits dynamics concerning the internationalization of SMEs differ between high-tech and non-high-tech industries. Design/methodology - We extend the prior literature on this relationship by employing 5-year data on 589 Korean SMEs in the manufacturing sector and examining the moderating impact of the industry characteristics. Our findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between the DOI and SME performance. High-tech SMEs demonstrate an inverted U-shaped relationship, whereas non-hightech SMEs exhibit a U-shaped relationship. Findings - Our findings illustrate the importance of the industry factor in testing the performance impact of the internationalization of Korean SMEs. By incorporating industry dynamics, our results indicate that the DOI-P relationship depends on the context of the industry in which an SME operates. High-tech SMEs also display a higher DOI but are outperformed by non-high-tech SMEs for the entire internationalization path, which implies that high-tech SMEs face more challenges than non-high-tech SMEs while seeking internationalization. Originality/value - The findings strongly validate that significant benefits exist for SMEs undertaking internationalization. We also employ the contextual framework contributing to increasing the understanding of the intrinsic value of internationalization and resolving the mixed results issue on the DOI-P relationship, by illustrating that the industry factor leads to different dynamics of costs and benefits of SME internationalization; it also determines the shape and direction of the relationship.