• Korean small business review
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.209-223
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• 2010

Korea's business is composed of a few large-sized enterprises (which can be abbreviated as LSE) and a majority of small-sized enterprises (SSE). Although there has been a growing recognition of the need for the development of medium-sized enterprises (MSE) which can serve as a link between SSE and LSE, as yet there has not yet been a consensus on the definition, characteristics and the function of the MSE in Korea. Nowadays, the world is being globalized, and Japan and China are in competition to ne a great economic power. While East Asia is experiencing rapid changes, promoting MSE which can secure flexibility and efficiency through covering up the limitation of LSE and SSE is needed in order to respond the global market which is being specialized. The features of MSE in Japan can be listed as follows. First, the MSE in Japan is developing the company through getting into niche markets which are hard for major companies to enter rather than developing markets in order to compete against major companies directly. While MSEs are endeavoring to build the business firmly in the domestic market, they can possess special and competitive technical skills through trials and errors; so that they can get a chance develop their business through independent business system rather than putting their effort to compete against major companies. Second, from the MSEs with competitive edge in the market, there are many contributions to the national exportation. Those MSEs produce in domestic and maintain the quality of high price products which need cutting-edge technology, while they relocate the low and middle priced goods to the country where manufacturing costs are low, so that they can maintain the price competitiveness. Third, the industrial structure in Japan is formed from dual structure between major companies and small sized companies. In other words, in Japan's industrial structure which are composed of subcontract structure, this dual structure has taken a major role of small sized companies' growth and manufacturing businesses' international competitive power. Forth, MSE in Japan adopt a strategy of putting their value on qualitative scale growth rather than quantitative scale growth. In this paper, the case of Japanese MSE is analyzed. Along with its long history of Industrialization, Japan has a corporate environment where the SSEs can develop as a MSE and later a LSE through a full-support system. Among its SSEs, there are a number of world class corporations equipped with a large domestic market, win-win cooperation with the LSEs and an independent technology development. It can also be observed that these SSEs develop into MSEs with sustainable growth potentials. This study will focus on the condition under which the MSEs of Japan have been developed, and how they have survived the competition between SSEs and LSEs. Through this study, this paper attempts to offer solutions to Korea's polarization between the SSE and LSE, while providing the basis for SSEs revitalization. In general, if both extremities phenomenon deepen between LSE and SSE, there are possible fears of occurring disutility in national economy by the monopolization of LSE. For that reason, enterprise group, which can make SSE or MSE compete LSE in some area and ease the monopoly and oligopoly problem, is needed. This awareness has been shared for ages long. Nevertheless, there is no legal definition for MSE in Japan, and there is no definition about the enterprise size or unified view of MSE between scholars, but it is defined differently by each of academical person or research institution and study meeting. For that reason, this paper will organize the definition of MSE in Japan, and then will propose the characteristics of the background which has made MSE secure competitiveness and sustainable growth in global market. This study focus on that because through this process, the positive change to the awareness of MSE can be proposed in Korea and to seek the policy direction for building institutional framework which can make SSE become MES. Through this way, the fundamentals for SSE to become MSE can be managed and some appropriate suggestions which will be able to make MSE enter the global market in the future can also be proposed. Due to these facts, this study is very important and well timed task. In a sense of this way, this study will examine the definition and role of MSE in Japan. after this examination, this study will deal with the status, special feature, and promotion policy for MSE. Through this analysis of MSE in Japan, the foundation which be able to set the desirable role model for MSE in Korea can be proposed. Also, the political implication which is needed to push ahead to contribute to creating employment and economic growth through sustainable growth of MSEs in economic system of Korea can be offered through this study. It has been found that Japan's MSE functions as an indispensable link among various industrial structures by holding a significant position in employment rate, production and value added. Although the MSEs took up less than 1% of the entire number of businesses with 2700 manufacturing firms and 7000 non-manufacturing firms, its employment ratios are about 15%, while taking about 25% of the manufacturing industry's exports. In industries such as machinery and electronics which is considered Japan's major industry, the MSEs showed a higher than average ratio of manufacturing exports and employment rate. It can be analyzed that behind Japan's advantageous industries, close and deeply knit MSEs exist. Although there are no clearly stated policies geared towards the MSEs by the Japanese government, various political measures exist such as the R&D Project and the inducement of cooperation between enterprises which gives room for MSEs to participate in the SSE policies. In relation to these findings, the following practical measures can be considered in order to revitalize Korea's MSEs: First, there is a need for a legal definition of MSE and the incentives to provide legal support for its growth. Second, if a law to support the MSEs is established, it could provide a powerful inducement for the SSE to grow as a MSE, rather than stay as a SSE. Third, there is a need for a strategy of MSEs to establish a stable base in the domestic market and then advance to the global market with the accumulated trial and error and competitiveness. Fourth, the SSE themselves need the spirit of entrepreneurship in order to make the leap to a MSE. Because if nothing is to be changed about the system on the firms that grew, and the parts of the past custom was left to be managed alone, confusion and absence of management can take place. No matter how much tax favors the government will give and no matter how much incentive there could be through the policies, there are limits for industries to higher the ability to propagate. And because of that it is a period where industries need their own innovative skills to reform their firms.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.245-270
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• 2011

It is known that weak competitiveness of micro enterprises can be overcome when they are organized with enterprise associations, franchise systems, and joint affiliation. In this paper, we empirically analyze the determinants of organization of micro enterprises, and propose the policy implementations to enhance the competitiveness of micro enterprises as a measure to reduce trade conflict due to SSM entry restrictions. Logit estimation results based on survey data consisted of 467 samples, show that insufficient labor force and high material costs had negative effects on organization. The unexpected findings generally support the rationale that organization is not helpful to solve insufficient labor force and high material costs. However, the decrease in sales due to the economic recession and the decreasing number of customers due to customer transition to large enterprises had a more positive effect on organization than usually expected. There are differences in estimation results between two types of business(restaurants and retail). In case of the restaurant business, insufficient labor force, high material costs and a decreasing of number of customers are important factors for organization, while the sales decrease is a relatively important factor in the case of retail businesses.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.29-58
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• 2022

Startups lack resources and manpower to build internal capabilities to strengthen market competitiveness; external cooperation such as joint research and networking plays is important. In this study, we analyzed the effect of startups' industry-university cooperation on organizational learning capability and innovation performance. Empirical results demonstrate the mechanism by which government R&D investment strengthens organizational learning capability and creates innovative results by promoting cooperation between startups and universities. First, industry-university cooperation strengthened organizational learning capability. An empirical analysis shows that startups increase internal capabilities through external cooperation. Second, startups' organizational learning capability had a significant effect on innovation performance. We analyze how organizations with high learning capabilities positively develop corporate innovation performance by having a culture of discovery and sharing new ideas. Finally, industry-university cooperation had different effects on organizational learning capability and innovation performance according to the previous experiences of startup founders. In particular, small- and medium-sized (startup) businesses and individual-based experience groups positively affected the creation of organizational learning capabilities and innovation performance through industry-university cooperation. Small- and medium-sized businesses and individual founders have a relatively small cooperative network with the outside world compared to founders of large companies, universities, and research institutes; therefore, they strengthen organizational learning capabilities through cooperation with universities. This study demonstrates that government should create policy inducements for cooperation with universities to maximize the R&D performance of startups. Criticism exists that lending support to startups and universities will hinder innovation performance; nevertheless, government investment plays a role in expanding intangible resources such as accumulating technologies, fostering high-quality human resources, and strengthening innovation networks. Therefore, the government should appropriately utilize the its authority to strengthen investment strategies for startup growth.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.89-98
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• 2017

The dynamic entrepreneurial activities of small businesses or individual entrepreneurs seeking to enter the global market based on innovative ideas and challenging spirit in the modern society, which is trending in entrepreneurial capitalism according to the times, Leading to new growth engines. In order to promote the establishment of universities in Korea, the government has been working on 'Five-Year Plan for University Entrepreneurship Education(2013-2017)', 'Efficiency of Government Start-up Support in 2015', and 'Five-Year Basic Plan for Activation of Industry-University Cooperation(2016-2020)'. However, there are still practical limitations in spite of the efforts made by universities and research institutes to revitalize start-ups. As a way to overcome these limitations, this study aims to systematize the entrepreneurship education of the university, and examines the role of changing universities and theory of clusters and the entrepreneurship education. In addition, we will look at the factors of creative university culture centering on the representative cases of the Innovation University in US, and present a conceptual framework for cluster-based entrepreneurship education for the purpose of 'successful entrepreneurship' which is different from 'start-up success'. The conceptual framework of cluster-based entrepreneurship education is based on the establishment of 'Integrated Entrepreneurship Education Platform' to revitalize start-ups centered on university technology. At the same time, this framework focuses on the three factors of talent, technology, and culture based on the relevant theories and examples, and emphasizes the clustering of entrepreneurial resources, entrepreneurial policies and leadership that should be involved in entrepreneurship education.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.53-63
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• 2017

With increasing the importance of venture startup in the national economy, a trend shows that the government's policy support for venture startup is not only strengthened, but also entrepreneurial enthusiasm is increasing. In order for this trend to continue as an ongoing phenomenon, not a temporary phenomenon, venture startups should continue to grow with survival competitiveness. In this respect, there is a time when it is necessary to study the factors affecting the success of venture startups more than ever. There is a limit to seeing main factors, which affect the entry into the growth stage with survival competitiveness for the success of venture startups, as only 'entrepreneur capacity' and 'differentiation strategy' claimed by existing previous studies. As a more fundamental factor, entrepreneurial behavior is important in terms of opportunity discovery and opportunity utilization, but research into this falls short of expectations. This study is intended to look into success factors of venture startup. To achieve this, a survey was empirically carried out to CEOs in 100 small and medium venture startups through AHP analysis. The results are as follows. As stated above, entrepreneurship of success factors in venture startups is considered most critical, followed by innovation, economics, and technology. And 'entrepreneur's competency', 'positive entrepreneurial motivation', 'creative technology utilization', and 'continuous investment in technical development' are considered most critical for 'entrepreneurship', 'innovation', 'technology', and 'economics' as sub-factors, respectively. Consequently, entrepreneur's entrepreneurship that has been required in general startups is a critical factor to be also in common required in venture startups. This means that they can secure the competitiveness of venture startup along with continuous investment support in business startup with a positive mindset and their own technological competence as innovators to overcome the risk and uncertainty of business startup as entrepreneurship that marks the start of a new enterprise.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.135-154
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• 2020

This paper analyzes the 5,521 samples of the small and medium-sized businesses(SMBs) obtained from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund. From January 2014 to September 2019, 85% of the SMBs have 5 or fewer full-time employees. The proportion of SMBs is overwhelmed by the elderly men, and most founders are the CEO. Also, about 87% of the workplace types are rented, while 64% of the CEO's residence types are owner-occupation. 47% of the financial grade score is less than 10 points out of 100 and 80% of SMBs have less than 200 million won of the loan guarantee. In particular, the total guarantee loan amount or the days of net guarantee have significantly positive relations with the working period of the CEO in the same industry, the number of employees, the operation period of SMBs, and the corporate business type. In the case of the financial grading score which has the highest weight in overall credit rating gets higher with the higher number of employees, the longer the operation period, and the corporate business type. However, the quantified non-financial grading score has no significant relationship with other explanatory variables, except for the corporate business type. This implies that a non-financial grade score is measured by other determinants that are not observed by the Korea credit guarantee fund. The pure non-financial grade score has positive relations with the working period of the CEO. Overall, this paper would help Korean SMBs upgrade their credit ratings and expand the money supply when there is no standardized credit rating model or no publicly available evaluation criteria for SMBs. We expect this paper provides important insights for further research and policy-makers for SMBs. In particular, to address the financial needs of thin-filers such as SMBs, technology-based financial services (TechFin) would use alternative data to evaluate the financial capabilities of thin-filers and to develop new financial services.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-207
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• 2012

Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.97-115
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• 2008

Introduction The e-government is concerned with using Internet and Web technologies to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses and other related organizations, and it centers on three functions, namely informational, interactive, and transactional [UN, 2001]. Many developed countries like the U.S. have been actively involved in e-government projects, since they enable both more effective public services for citizens and more efficient internal operations. Korea is among these leading countries that are planning to leverage computer and communication technologies to provide for integration of work processes and information as well as convenient access to information and services. For this reason, evaluating e-government projects is becoming a crucial issue for both researchers and policy-makers. However, most research to date has primarily focused on a model of success of an e-government system designed for citizens, overlooking internal systems specifically created for employees working in a public organization. This paper is intended to propose a model to measure the success of a Web-based information system designed for use by internal users at Chungwadae, the executive branch of Korea's central government. The paper is also aimed at applying the model to the assessment of the present system being used at Chungwadae in comparison with the preceding system. Evaluating an e-Government System The most widely cited model of information systems success today is that of DeLone and McLean[1992, 2003, 2004]. The original model states that the success of an information system can be measured using six dimensions, including system quality, information quality, use, user satisfaction, individual impact, and organizational impact. Although the ultimate success of an information system may be reflected in the impact that the system has upon individuals as well as an organization, aspects of using the system such as system use and user satisfaction can play an important role in determining the system success, because the system would be a sheer failure if users don't like and use the system. As a response to criticisms given by numerous researchers, the authors adapted their model to fit the emerging Web-based environment. The revised model[DeLone and McLean, 2003] they offered included an additional quality dimension, namely service quality, and combined individual and organizational impacts into net benefits which can also influence user satisfaction. The e-government system success model can be built around this updated model. Our model incorporates information quality, system quality, and service quality as in the DeLone and McLean model. However, the 'system use' dimension has been replaced by perceived usefulness, as suggested by Seddon[1998]. In addition, because the e-government systems that this paper focuses on are internal public systems used in government agencies, the 'net benefits' dimension has been replaced by perceived work efficiency. Based on the proposed model, a total of nine hypotheses have been formulated which we tested using an empirical analysis. Methods A questionnaire form has been created with items that are designed to examine the relationships among the variables in the model. The questionnaire has been handed over, in person, to 65 members of Chungwadae staff who are now actively using the E-Support System, the present information system created to support internal work at Chungwadae. We made arrangements to meet with each individual who agreed to participate in our survey, and helped to fill out the survey form with explanations. Of the 65 copies that were delivered, only 33 were returned, and 30 responses of these have been adopted for our analysis, since three were not valid. The extremely small sample size was due to the limited number of staff members who had adequate experience required of this study. Results We gathered data from the questionnaire survey and analyzed them using a regression analysis to test the hypotheses. As shown in the table below, the results indicated that all three dimensions of an information system’s quality are positively related to user satisfaction. However, information quality and system quality were found to be positively related to perceived usefulness, while service quality was not. In addition, perceived usefulness is not positively related to user satisfaction, implying that a user may find a system useful, but may not be satisfied with it. Finally, user satisfaction and perceived usefulness both are positively related to perceived work efficiency. This suggests that workers' positive experience with the system is important to guarantee favorable work efficiency. Conclusions We conclude that the proposed model proved useful in measuring the success of an internal information system used by a government agency. To demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the model in the paper, we applied the model to the assessment of the present internal system used at Chungwadae in comparison with the preceding system. The results showed that the present system outperforms the preceding one in a statistically significant way. Future research will have to focus on applying the model to Korea's governmental agencies other than Chungwadae and examine whether it proves applicable in different types of governmental organizations.