• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.373-396
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• 2015

This study analyzed the determinants of high-growth firms using the technology appraisal data of the Korea Technology Finance Corporation. This study is differentiated from previous studies for three reasons. First, it analyzed the determinants of firms that will grow into high-growth firms in the future, not the characteristics of current high-growth firms. Second, it analyzed high-growth firms by dividing them in two aspects: sales and employment. In other words, they were divided into three types: the case in which a firm achieves high growth in both sales increase and creation of jobs, the case in which a firm achieves high growth in creation of jobs but low growth in sales increase, and the case in which a firm achieves high growth in only sales increase but low growth in creation of jobs. Third, this study applied the technology appraisal indicators of Kibo Technology Rating System(KTRS) by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation as the explanatory variable. As a result of analysis, it was found that a firm achieved high growth in both sales and employment if the position in the technology life cycle was appropriate and the technology readiness level was high. However, it turned out that the management system of technical manpower had conflicting effects on high growth of employment and sales. In other words, a firm that had well managed its technical manpower achieved high growth in terms of employment, but rather showed low growth in terms of sales. This result suggests the inference that firms showing high growth in employment may appear mainly in the high-tech industry where management of technical manpower is important. Accordingly, as a result of adding dummy variables that represent whether or not firms are in the high-tech industry, it was found that the result supported the inference, as firms in the high-tech industry were highly likely to achieve high growth in employment.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.73-88
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• 2009

This study examines the characteristics of 24 Korean hidden champions such as key success factors, core competences, strategic problems, and desirable future directions. The study categorized them into 8 types with Danny Miller's four trajectories and top manager's decision making style(rationality and passion). Danny Miller argued in his book, Icarus paradox, that outstanding firms will extend their orientations until they reach dangerous extremes and their momentum will result in common trajectories of decline. He suggested four very common success types: Craftsmen, Builders, Pioneers, Salesmen. He also suggested common trajectories of decline:Focusing(from Craftsmen to Tinkers), Venturing(from Builders to Imperialists), Inventing(from Pioneers to Escapists), Decoupling(from Salesmen to Drifts). In Korea, successful startups appear to possess three kinds of drive: Technology-drive, Vision-drive, Market-drive. Successful technology-driven firms tend to grow as craftsmen or pioneers. Successful vision-driven and market-driven ones tend to grow as builders and salesmen respectively. Korean top managers or founders seem to have two kinds of decision making style: Passion-based and Rationality-bases. Passion-based(passionate) entrepreneurs are biased towards action or proactiveness in competing and getting things done. Rationality- based ones tend to emphasis the effort devoted to scanning and analysing information to better understand a company's threats, opportunities and options. Consequently this study suggested 4*2 types of Korean hidden champions: (1) passionate craftsmen, (2) rational craftsmen, (3) passionate builders, (4) rational builders, (5) passionate pioneers, (6) rational pioneers, (7) passionate salesmen, (8) rational salesmen. These 8 type firms showed different success stories and appeared to possess different trajectories of decline. These hidden champions have acquired competitive advantage within domestic or globally niche markets in spite of the weak market power and lack of internal resources. They have maintained their sustainable competitiveness by utilizing three types of growth strategy; (1) penetrating into the global market, (2) exploring new service market, (3) occupying the domestic market. According to the types of growth strategy, these firms showed different financial outcomes and possessed different issues for maintaining their competitiveness. This study found that Korean hidden champions were facing serious challenges from the transforming economic structure these days and possessed the decline potential from their success momentum or self-complacence. It argues that they need to take a new growth engine not to decline in the turbulent environment. It also discusses how firms overcome the economic crisis and find a new business area in promising industries for the future. It summarized the recent policy of Korean government called as "Green Growth" and discussed how small firms utilize such benefits and supports from the government. Other implications for firm strategies and governmental policies were discussed.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2014

Private consulting firms that are currently participating in rural area development projects with a bottom-up approach are involved in nearly all areas of rural area development, and the policy environment that emphasizes the bottom-up approach will further expand their participation. Reviews of private consulting firms, which started out with high expectations in the beginning, are now becoming rather negative. Expertise is the key issue in the controversy over private consulting firms, and the analysis tends to limit the causes of the problems within firms. This study was conducted on the premise that the fixation on cause and structure results in policy issues in the promotion process. That is because the government authorities are responsible for managing and supervising the implementation of policies, not developing the policies. The current issues with consulting firms emerged because of the hasty implementation of private consulting through the government policy trend without sufficient consideration, as well as the policy environment that demanded short-term outcomes even though the purpose of bottom-up rural area development lies in the ideology of endogenous development focused on the changes in residents' perceptions. Research was conducted to determine how the problems of private consulting firms that emerged and were addressed in this context influenced the consulting market, using current data and based on the firms' business performance. In analyzing the types, firms were divided into three groups: top performers including market leaders (9), excellent performers (36), and average performers (34). An analysis of the correlation between the business performance of each type and managerial resources such as each firm's expertise revealed that there was only a correlation between human resources and regional development in excellent performers, and none was found with the other types. These results imply that external factors other than a firm's capabilities (e.g., expertise) play a significant role in the standards of selecting private consulting firms. Thus, government authorities must reflect on their error of hastily adopting private consulting firms without sufficient consideration and must urgently establish response measures.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.21-36
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• 2002

This study empirically examined the effects of data warehousing methodology on the success of data warehousing. Research model and two hypotheses were set up to identify the relationships among two types of data warehousing methodology(top-down/bottom-up, dw configuration) and success based on the investigations of such theories as data warehousing, data warehousing methodology, IS success and so forth. And the survey instrument(questionnaire) was developed to collect data. Ultimately 183 questionnaires from 61 korean firms were collected. Findings showed that two types of data warehousing methodology affect significant effect on the success of data warehousing.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.129-149
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• 2013

According to the development of new Information Technologies, firms consistently invest a significant amount of money in IT activities, such as establishing internal and external information systems. However, several anti-Information activities-such as hacking, leakage of information and system destruction-are also rapidly increasing, thus many firms are exposed to direct and indirect threats. Therefore, firms try to establish information security systems and manage these systems more effectively via an enterprise perspective. However, stakeholders or some managers have negative opinions about information security systems. Therefore, in this research, we study the relationship between multibusiness firms' performance and information security systems. Information security indicates physical and logical correspondence of information system department against threats and disaster. Studies on information security systems suggested frameworks such as IT Governance Cube and COBIT Framework to identify information security systems. Thus, this study define that information security systems is a controlled system on enterprise IT process and resource on IT Governance perspective rather than independent domain of IT. Thus, Information Security Systems should be understood as a subordinate concept of IT and business processes. In addition, this study incorporates information capability to information security system literature to show the positive relationship between Information Security Systems and Corporate Performance. The concept of information capability suggested that an interaction of human, information, technical and an effect on corporate performance using three types of capability (IT Practice, Information Management Practice, Information Behaviors and Values). Information capability is about firms' capability to manage IT infrastructure and information as well as individual employees who use IT infrastructure and information. Thus, this study uses information capability as a mediating variable for the relationship between information security systems and firms' performance. To investigate the relationship between Information Security Systems and multibusiness firms' performance, this study extends the IT relatedness concept into Information Security Systems. IT relatedness provides understanding of how corporations cope with conflicts between headquarters and business units to create a synergy effect and achieve high performance using IT resources. Based on the previous literature, this study develops the IT Security Relatedness model. IT Security Relatedness is our main independent variable, while Information Capability and Information Security Performance are mediating variables. To control for the common method bias, we collect each multibusiness firm's financial performance and use it as our dependent variable. We find that Information Security Systems influence Information Capability and Information Security Performance positively, and these two variables consequently influence Corporate Performance positively. In addition, this result indirectly shows that corporations under a multibusiness environment can obtain synergy effects using the integrated Information Security Systems. This positive impact of Information Security Systems on multibusiness firms' performance has an important implication to various stakeholders. Therefore, multibusiness firms need to establish Information Security Systems to achieve better financial performance.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.54-64
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• 2022

Since the interest in big data is growing exponentially, various types of research and development in the field of big data have been conducted in the construction industry. Among various application areas, cost estimating can be a topic where the use of big data provides positive benefits. In order for firms to make efficient use of big data for estimating tasks, they need to establish a strategy based on the multifaceted analysis of internal and external environments. The objective of the study is to develop and propose a strategy of the use of big data for construction management(CM) firms' cost estimating tasks based on the SWOT analysis. Through the combined efforts of literature review, questionnaire survey, interviews and the SWOT analysis, the study suggests that CM firms need to maintain the current level of the receptive culture for the use of big data and expand incrementally information resources. It also proposes that they need to reinforce the weak areas including big data experts and practice infrastructure for improving the big data-based cost estimating.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.2D
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• pp.247-253
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• 2011

In 2009, the Korean international construction industry showed a great performance, totaling 49.1 billion of contract and then this achievement has been considered a key milestone presenting that the international construction industry is one of the primary export industries of Korea. However, because of the construction firms' equalized levels of technology and price competitiveness, the competition among bidders is becoming more intensive. Moreover, this changing market circumstance leads construction firms to apply for bidding with the lowest price that could not meet the expected profitability of a project. Therefore, to develop various strategies based on project characteristics becomes one of the critical capabilities that construction firms should possess. Based on these motives, this study is aimed to investigate associations among number of bidders, contract award rate, profitability on international projects. For the correlation analysis, a set of data is structured by collecting all projects ranging from 1993 to 2009, excluding projects funded by official development and domestic funds. The number of bidders were grouped depending on project characteristics such as market regions, project types, bidding types, and order organization types. As the result of correlation analysis, contract award rate increases as the number of bidders increase, but the relationship between the number of bidders and profitability is negative. Understanding the correlations among variables can be employed in developing strategies to improve construction firms' competitiveness in the international construction market.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.3
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• pp.99-131
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to investigate relational benefits affecting the relationship quality and the existence of differences to which relational benefits are most important to the customers across the type of services that customer buys and customer's relationship orientation in how they orientate their relationships with service firms. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, all relational benefits, economic, social, psychological, functional benefits, is related the relationship quality. Second, There is a difference in the perceived relative importance of relational benefits that customers will lead to the establishment of a long-term relationship across the type of service. The more service is customized, the less economic benefits affect relationship quality and the more psychological benefits affect relationship quality. however there isn't a difference in the effect of functional benefits on relationship quality across the types of service, functional benefits are a important benefits both situations. Third, There is a difference in the perceived relative importance of relational benefits that customer will lead to the establishment of a long-term relationship across customers. The more customers orientate their relationships with service firms, the more psychological benefits affect relationship quality. The less customers orientate their relationships with service firms, the more economic and functional benefits affect relationship quality. However there isn't a difference in the effect of social benefits on relationship quality across customers. In addition to, relationship orientation is related to demographic facets such as sex-type, age and income. Male is higher relationship orientation than female. The more customers are older, the more they orientate their relationships with service firms and the more customers have income, the more they orientate their relationships with service firms.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.113-129
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• 1994

This study is designed to analyze the trends of professional services in Landscape Architecture during the past 5 years(1987-1991) in Korea. The data were collected from 1,117 projects from 56 engineering and landscape architecture firms. The findings are summarized as follows: 1) The projects have been increased annually by 19 percent in numbers and by 47 percent in money terms. 2) The main sources of projects are local governments and corporations. However the private sector comprise 31 percent in projects number and 46 percent in money terms. 3) The public park and tourism site development comprise a half of the projects. Recently recreational forest, golf, amusement and large housing site development have increased very rapidly. 4) In terms of workscope they are devided by 'complex' project which include extensive engineering works and 'simple' project which contain mostly planting design. The former include receational project with average 5 or 6 months contract period, and the later include housing and building site design with 2 or 3 months period. 5) Two types of consulting firms are typical. One is comprehensive engineering firms with urban planning section and few landscape section. The other is specialized professional firms with urban planning or landscape architecture. 50 percent of the project was done by comhensive engineering firms and 60 percent was done by urban planning section. The implication of these findings are broad: Firstly, We have to meet the demands in private secter mostly in recreation and leisure related projects. Secondly, landscape architects and project managers need more professional skills and coordination ability to deal with 'complex' projects. Thirdly, to enhance the quality of professional services it is required to have enough work time and higher service fee through legal and institutional enforcements.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.299-331
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• 2017

This research details firm knowledge search types based on the locus and features for Korean firms in the knowledge-based industry, and then analyzes differences in innovation performance according to the types from the view of a configurational approach. Existing research has mainly concentrated on establishing a relation between knowledge search and outcome variables. Consequently, firms have relatively insufficient understanding of how to systematize knowledge search. Hence, this research classifies knowledge search into four dimensions-external search breadth, external search depth, internal search breadth, and internal search depth-by the locus and features of search. Furthermore, the research draws actual types of knowledge search of firms and analyzes differences in innovation performance. The main result of the research is as follows. First, the research reasons out six clusters of firms which have a dissimilar knowledge search type. Each cluster shows differences while participating in every dimension of knowledge search or few dimensions. Second, as for innovation performance, each cluster shows different exploitative and exploratory innovation performance according to their knowledge search type. This research applies a configurational approach while existing research applied a reductionistic approach, thereby establishing the major contribution which enables us to study a phenomenon as it comes, not to analyze variables and relationships of variables. Lastly, the research suggests a future direction of research based on the result of this research.