• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.93-104
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• 2018

Purpose - For small and medium sized firms, CEO characteristics are main factor influencing firms' prosperity as well as performance. So it is quite natural that many people are interested in factors of CEO that matters. In this research, CEO characteristics in terms of capabilities and skill or special knowledge necessary to run the business are invested for manufacturing firms. Precedent studies reveal that CEO characteristics such as psychological factors including desire to succeed, tendency to take risks, personal factors including age, year of running business, and task related factors including managing capability, communication skills, network influence firm performance for manufacturing firms. However, these studies simply verify whether or not those factors affect firm's managing performance. This study, however, goes further to investigate how is the affecting process from CEO's capabilities and organization characteristics to firm's core competence, and from core competence to advantages, and from advantages to managing performance. Research design, data, and methodology - We make a questionnaire and surveyed manufacturing firm CEO's in Gyeonggi-do area. General characteristics analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, and control effect analysis was conducted. SPSS 2.0 Win, version was used. Results - The CEO characteristics including basic capability, task capability, leadership, and organization characteristics affect core competence at the statistically significant level. And, core competence affect both price advantage and differentiation advantage at the significant level. Some unique finding is that while differentiation advantage affects both financial achievement and non-financial achievement, price advantage does not affect both financial and non-financial achievement. And firm characteristics mainly measured by CEO characteristics of skills has control effects on the trace from core competence to price advantage. Conclusions - For small and medium sized firms CEO characteristics is the most important factor influencing firm's prosperity. For manufacturing firms, whether CEO has the skill or special knowledge to run the firm is critical factor. The study results show that CEO's for manufacturing firms put importance on price and price advantage which seems to be familiar to them. However, the price advantage does not influential to financial and non-financial achievement. This result suggests that small and medium sized manufacturing firms' CEO's should make effort to improve other aspects of advantages to be more competitive.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.15-23
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of non-bank depository institutions (non-bank financial corporations) lending to firms. The paper aims to contribute to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence from firm-level data and unveiling factors related to access to non-bank financial corporations by firms. Research design, data, and methodology - We used the data on borrowing by firms from CRETOP from years 2008 to 2011. Using the manufacturing industry, we examined what firm-level characteristics explained the increase in borrowing from non-bank financial corporations rather than the banks. Results - Analyzing the firm-level data from 2008 to 2011, we found that firms were more likely to borrow from non-bank financial insti­tutions as the size of the firm increases, implying that large firms have more access to non-bank financing than small and medium-sized firms. In addition, it also showed that small and medium-sized firms moved to non-bank financial corporations for loans. Conclusion - Non-bank depository institutions are not a sub­stitute for bank lending to firms. More specifically, they replace bank lending to firms mostly for large firms rather than small and medium-sized firms. Also, collateral and other firm-level characteristics do not matter in accounting for non-bank lending to firms.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.72-81
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• 2015

This paper studied the differences of the inventories asset turnover change ratio and several characteristics variable between large and small manufacturing firm group. Large and small firm group were determined based on number of labors and asset size. Several characteristics variable of firms such as assets size, sales growth rate, return on assets, leverage ratio, credit rating and age of firm were used to find out the differences of firm group. As a result, the inventory asset turnover change ratio of large firm was 5.16% and that of the middle and small firm was 9.3%. For the large firm, sales growth rate, ROA and credit rating affect inventory assets turnover change ratio. For the middle and small sized firm, Assets size, sales growth rate and credit rating affect inventory assets turnover change ratio. Using this result, we can say that manufacturing company need to consider their firm size and their characteristics to make their own operation strategy of inventory.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2022

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine firm-level attributes related to Korean manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs') decisions to implement smart factories. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses the provided by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups of Korea and the Korea Federation of SMEs. Manufacturing SMEs' decisions to implement smart factories in 2018-2019 were analyzed using multinomial logit and ordered logit models. Findings - The findings of this study suggest that firms' decisions to implement smart factories were positively related to firm size, R&D intensity, international market scope, and transactional relationships with customers. However, smart factory implementation decisions were not related to firm age and CEO gender. Research implications or Originality - This study illuminates firm-level attributes that may drive organizational innovation in the era of Industry 4.0 and thus contributes to the innovation adoption literature. This study also contributes to growing research on smart factories by analyzing the actual, progressive decisions to implement smart factories, as opposed to perceived intentions to implement them.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2006

With the diffusion of the Internet, firms try to electronically collaborate with their partners in order to cut costs and gain profits. This, electronic Partnership, called 'Collaborative IT' is quite popular between large purchase enterprises and small-to-medium sized sub-contractors. This study investigates such relations. This study proposes three groups of research variables-interorganizational relationship, collaborative IT activity, and firm performance. the interorganizational relationship consists of trust, commitment, and asymmetry of commitment. Collaborative IT activity is composed of information sharing and workflow integration. The ultimate dependent variable is firm performance. It is hypothesized that the relationship factors influence the level of collaborative IT activity, while the latter in turn affects the firm performance. The relationship factors nay also directly affect the dependent variable. In addition, collaborative IT motive, as a moderating variable, may influence the causal relationship. By means of survey, ore hundred and eighty-two responses were obtained. Most sample companies are small-sized, in the manufacturing sector. The analysis of data reveals that both trust and commitment positively affects the level of collaborative IT activity, while asymmetry of commitment has negative effects. The workflow integration is significantly related with firm performance. Information sharing, however, has no signific3nt effects. Furthermore, asymmetry of commitment shows reverse relationship with firm performance. Collaborative IT motive works as a moderating variable between information sharing and firm performance. Finally, workflow integration is believed to mediate between relationship factors and firm performance.

• 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.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2022

The paper aims to examine the impact of exports on the growth of Vietnamese manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by exploring the information of 36,053 enterprises across 24 manufacturing sectors from the Vietnam Annual Enterprise Survey (VAES) in the period 2014-2019. To deal with the problem of variable variance, autocorrelation, and endogeneity of the model, the paper uses the OLS regression method with a strong standard error method and system GMM. Export participation by SMEs is positively associated with business growth in terms of sales and total assets, according to the findings. The GMM estimate shows that the rate of sales growth among exporters is 36.5 percent greater than that of non-exporting enterprises in the case of the sales growth measure. Exporters' average total asset growth rate is 19% greater than the rate estimated for non-exporting businesses. The study's findings indicate the need of adopting policies that promote SMEs in transition economies like Vietnam to engage in exporting activities. Furthermore, the findings show that financial assistance and suitable ownership would enable SMEs to take advantage of export opportunities to increase sales and total assets.

• 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.

• 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.