• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.9-15
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• 2020

This paper investigates how economic freedom affected firm investment in Vietnam. In the globalization decade, economic freedom has been an important policy to support economic development in Vietnam. Improvements in economic freedom, such as capital freedom and domestic credit freedom, allow firms to access external finance more easily, so that the firm's investment depends less on internal cash flow. In a developing country, on the drawbacks, many small and medium firms likely have more challenges if the government would not give any subsidies. The higher level of freedom may exacerbate the financing constraints of less competitive firms. We analyze unique firm-level data from 2006 to 2016, which includes listed firms on two major stock exchanges and unlisted firms in the Unlisted Public Company Market. The article also considers how economic freedom affects small firms and large firms differently. Our results show that capital freedom and domestic credit freedom played an important role in investments for Vietnamese firms. However, we cannot find evidence that overall economic freedom relaxed the financial constraints on firms. Additionally, we suggest that small firms likely gain more advantage in access to external finance than do larger firms when the government removes restrictions from capital movement and the domestic credit market.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Information Technology Applications Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.365-368
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• 2005

While the goal of new IT adoption in small and medium sized firms is to choose an optimal system to fit with their own environments and conditions, that of IT post-adoption usage is to fully implement new IT and maximize their benefits from it. Therefore, the decision-making environments of new IT adoption is definitely different from those of post-adoption. Also, The direct experience of IT usage can provide some learning effect and the change of users' beliefs on new IT. From this point of view, this study attempts to figure out the differences of influencing factors on IOS usage intention between adopters and non-adopters. The results show that there are clear differences of influencing factors between two groups. Non-adopter group shows that perceived financial cost and ability of use have significant influences on IOS usage intention, while relative advantage and perceived risk in adopter group have statistically significant influences on post-adoption usage of IOS.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.19-44
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• 2015

This paper examines the effect of the global financial crisis on corporate investment in Korea. Specifically, the crisis was considered to have possibly constrained firm-level investment as the negative shock to the credit supply dramatically unfolded. As Duchin et al. (2010) demonstrated, if a negative supply-side shock is evident during a crisis period, larger cash holdings before the crisis will lead to fewer constraints to corporate investment, or vice versa. In order to investigate the supply-side effect of the crisis, we use firm-level financial data, including firms listed on the Korean stock market as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. We find that corporate investment declined significantly after the crisis, even if we control for factors associated with the demand side, such as contemporaneous capital productivity and cash flow. More importantly, the decline is positively and significantly related to cash holdings before the crisis, implying the negative effect of a credit supply shock. Small and medium enterprises experienced relatively sharp investment declines compared to those of larger firms, and the relationship between pre-crisis cash amounts and the degree of investment decline is greater than that in large firms. Additionally, we examine whether the negative effect persists up to the present, finding evidence that the cash-investment relationship continues in small and medium-sized enterprises.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.25-47
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• 2010

Over the past 20 years new and small firms have been identified as significant components of economic strategies for job and wealth creation. Implicit in these strategies has been the search for policies which will increase the supply of new firms, and will encourage established firms' growth. Yet the majority firms spend the whole of their economic life within the small firm sector. The aim of this paper is to suggest a multidimensional approach to the understanding of the comparative characteristics of the small firm by providing evidence as to the factors which describe firms of different sizes, regions and industries. And I discuss in the context of policy options for regional economic development in Korea. The results from the analyses are summarized as follows. The size of the small firms in the sample measured in terms of both number of employees and sales revenue are characterized by regions, export performance and R&D. There is also some indication that growing firms may develop more complex environment. These results are based upon a multi-dimensional analysis of the strategic profile of a sample of small firms using KIS. From this observation of the firms during the data collection period, this is a conclusion that I find intuitively appealing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.173-176
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• 2004

Understanding the fact that more spending for R&D is merely a necessity, not a factor of success, managing technological development efforts effectively and efficiently for higher R&D productivity and sustainable growth has become an important issue for contemporary firms. Based on a survey on small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms, this paper explores the relationships of leadership positions, technological contents and acquisition methods of korean firms. This paper has identified several findings from Korean manufacturing firms: (1) five different patterns are identified in the technology strategy of medium-sized companies; (2) a significantly positive relationship exists between a firm's leadership position and the aggressiveness in technological contents of their acquisition methods; (3) a significantly positive relationship of some technology acquisition methods to the firms' leadership position exists,

• Journal of East Asia Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-49
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• 2020

In an intensively competitive global market, small-and medium-sized firms are puzzled about how to develop sustainable competitive advantages against global rivalries, thus leading satisfactory economic performance. However, despite the roles and contributions of such small-and medium-sized firms in the local community and national economies in Japan, little guidance has been offered to the practical issues related to their strategic behaviors toward global management. To fill this notable knowledge gap, this study aims to investigate the conditions in which how Japanese small-and medium-sized could dominates global market, which is one of key challenges in the literature of small business and entrepreneurship. To obtain better insights to this research area, this study undertakes an in-depth interview survey with I.S.T (Industrial Summit Technology) Corporation that shows off the highest global market share (40 per cent) with seamless polyimide tube product widely used in office automation equipment (e.g., copiers and printers). This method of survey is designed to deeply understand historical considerations about how I.S.T Corporation could dominate in the global market of such seamless polyimide tube product. Based on findings drawn from an interview, this study identifies five major factors enabling I.S.T Corporation to be a competitive global hidden company: vision sharing through founder's entrepreneurship, core competence, strategic network, risk management, and employee engagement. Specifically, to become a global hidden champion, sharing the vision motivating employees to partake in shaping company's future will be the first step on the road to global success through founder's entrepreneurship. However, in order to achieve such a vision, the importance of company's core competence cannot be overemphasized, which differentiates your customer solution with those of competitors. As such, a group of experts will be naturally formed and demonstrates your expertise in the global market, thereby building sustainable competitiveness. On the other hand, to maintain sustainable competitiveness, it is necessary to make up for the weaknesses small-and medium-sized firms suffer from competitive resources while strengthening their own strengths through strategic networks with external organizations. Here, every company has to understand the critical role of risk management, which is essential in this process of being global company so as not to lose your own strengths. Last but not least, do not forget the significant effects of employee engagement in firm performance. To enhance employees' engagement, a company has to create an ideal organization culture which fits into company's history and personality. In doing so, such organization culture can allow the vision and strategy to be implemented into detailed business tactics while facilitating employees to challenge the status quo by experimenting with creative ideas.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.55-75
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• 2011

Scant attention has been given to analyzing how knowledge sourcing strategies affect firm performance in SMEs and what are the differences between SMEs and large firms in the patterns of knowledge sourcing strategies adoption. This study attempts to advance the current literature by examining the impact of knowledge sourcing strategies on SMEs performance. The empirical segment of our work is based on data on knowledge sourcing strategies of SMEs and organizational performance from a sample of 166 Korean firms. Our results indicate knowledge sourcing adoption patterns of SMEs are different from large firms. In addition, the results confirm that substitutability between internal- and external-oriented, person- and external-oriented sourcing strategies. This study sheds new light on knowledge management (KM) research by identifying the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies and SMEs performance.

• World Technopolis Review
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.21-42
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• 2019

The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors influencing global expansion/scalability of Kenyan Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Factor analysis and multiple/multivariate regression analysis to determine the functional relationship between independent variables (factors) and the dependent variable was used. The independent variables were: innovation & technology, fitness/appropriateness of management, global marketing strategy; and support environment and the dependent variable, global expansion/scalability. Data was collected from a survey of randomly selected firms of 205, drawn from a population of 440 firms from Kenya Manufacturers Directory, with 175 firms responding. The key findings from the research in relation to Kenyan SMEs were that: there is a functional relationship between global market strategy and global expansion; there is a functional relationship between innovation and technology orientation and global expansion, there is no significant functional relationship between supportive environment of firms and their global expansion; and there is no significant functional relationship between fitness/appropriateness of management and global expansion/scalability. The implications for practice is that the ranking of the factors in order of priority supports focusing concern on the orientation of business strategy toward global market strategy, market research geared at obtaining foreign market intelligence, innovation and technology, product adaptation, service orientation, collaborative ventures, and long-range vision as key factors in making Kenyan firms successful in the international market. The implication for policy and practice is that there is need for collaboration between industry and government in pursuing policies for global expansion/scalability and among SMEs and large enterprises particularly in areas of rapid technological change.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.287-300
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• 2020

We investigate empirically the impact of IT exploration & exploitation capability and operational capability upon organizational agility, especially small and medium sized firms in the logistics industry in South Korea. Based on literature on the bilateral relationship between organizational agility and IT capability, we follow the established research model and propose hypotheses. This work takes an empirical methodology to test the hypotheses: design survey questionnaires, collect data, test reliability and validity of data, and finally test the hypotheses. Our results based on the data collected in 2018 present that IT exploration & exploitation capability significantly increases operational capability, and operational capability increases organizational agility. We find our contribution in updating previous research findings with recent data and in expanding the domain of research more specifically into small and medium sized firms in logistics industry in South Korea. Practically our work suggests that managers and policy makers should consider both fostering newly emerging IT exploration and existing IT resource exploitation capability in order to enhance organizational agility of those small and medium sized firms in logistics industry.