• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.97-124
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• 1992

The recent sharp increase in wages has driven many Korean manufacturing firms to move into technology-intensive fields. The task of industrial restructuring is, however, rather difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises (hereafter, "SMEs") which suffer from limited R&D resources. If the R&D activities of SMEs are left unattended, industrial restructuring process may be retarded. Hence, the government-sponsored programs can be justified when used to promote the technological level of SMEs. Because of the limited internal R&D resources of SMEs, in particular human resources, the government-sponsored programs that depend on financial subsidies to stimulate the R&D activities of SMEs may not be recommended. Rather, a more desirable policy is programs to subsidize outside sourcing of SMEs. Basic principles of the program are; (i) that the government should establish R&D laboratories which are specialized in joint researches with SMEs in each industry; (ii) research projects of the laboratories should be funded by SMEs; the government's support covers only fixed costs such as construction costs in order to avoid moral hazard problem. (iii) technology adviser programs sponsored by the government should be improved; geographical distribution is to be expanded and the activities are to be monitored by local governments. Also foreign networks need be strengthened.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.281-303
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• 2007

This paper examines the mainbank relationships of SMEs after the 1997 financial crisis in Incheon-Kyunggi and Daejeon-Chungnam regions where local banks have been merged by national banks. The results are as follows. First, national banks(except Industrial Bank of Korea and Kookmin bank) are reluctant to be mainbanks of regional SMEs. Second, those firms which have mainbank relationships with national banks borrow from relatively large number of banks. Third, their size measured by employees are relatively large. These tendencies become clearer after the 1997 financial crisis. It is the Industrial Bank of Korea and Kookmin bank that play important roles as mainbanks of regional SMEs. National banks including the Industrial Bank of Korea and Kookmin bank cannot be relationship lenders to SMEs due to the Williamson-type organizational diseconomies. It means that to ease the regional financial problems regional financial institutions are expected to play more active roles.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.169-183
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• 2017

As global competition is heating up and product life cycle has been rapidly shortened, each company pursues a variety of competitive technology innovations through different means of innovation. In this study, we assume that open innovation can be a shift motive of the technology innovation paradigm of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) being beyond the limitations of R&D within a company. We analyze the process and content of open innovation and performance. In addition, we identify the problems generated in the open innovation process and analyze the ways to strengthen open innovation. This study is based on the investigations into the technological competitiveness of local SMEs. The innovation ecosystem is analyzed from the perspective of product/service innovation, organizational innovation, and marketing innovation. Situational analysis is presented on the relationship between the innovation capabilities of information and communication technology SMEs and innovation performance.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.731-746
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• 2011

The successful and sustainable growth of SMEs depends on their ability of strengthen their competitiveness in quality and cost and service more than anything else as a fundamental of operation. Among these key competitive factors of SMEs, quality is the most critical factor in manufacturing business fields. Because quality strongly influence cost and service performance on this manufacturing business field. There are many different ways to improve the quality performance but it needs proper management decision to choose the best way what can maximize outputs with minimum inputs. And it needs effective measurement methods and some indicators to analysis the quality performance properly. The quality cost is one of the simplest key indicators to measure the quality performance and the effectiveness of quality related management decisions. The major purpose of this study is to diagnose the categorized current level of actual quality cost of local SMEs to maximize their quality management effectiveness through comparing their level with others what's expressed in early studies. In this study, through survey on local SMEs, we found that their average annual quality cost ratio versus turnover - Total amount of annual quality cost divided by annual turnover - is around 3.69% excluded some SME's performances what have different quality control measures with others. And we found some results what corresponded with the early studies on the correlations between those categorized quality costs factors and some discrepancies between some of the literature model and the early case study results as follows. There were negative correlations between the Prevention costs and the External failure costs, and the Appraisal costs and the External failure costs, and there was positive correlation between the Appraisal costs and Internal failure costs same as early studies. But, we couldn't found any strong negative correlations between the Cost of control - Preventive costs & Appraisal costs - and the Cost of Failure of control - Internal & External failure costs -. It reveals not only the lack of effectiveness on their preventive or appraisal activities but also it can reveal there were so many effective ways to prevent the failure costs properly such as some innovative investment on Factory automation includes Error Proofing and more preventive actions to improve the effectiveness of the typical management methods likes CE (Concurrent Engineering), APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning), FMEA (Failure Mode & Effect Analysis) etc.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.69-77
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• 2012

GNTECH-ICEE, which this study seeks to investigate and evaluate, demonstrates a new system of training innovative engineers. An essential component of this operation is a Small Engineering Group (SEG) that links professors, students and industrial experts together, to study and apply different techniques in determining the processes and products that relate industrial sectors needs. As an education program, SEG also provides a right direction for educating students, and generates industry-university link based human resources. Through these efforts, GNTECH-ICEE has effectively trained creative, professional, and practical engineers, by operating a variety of programs for meeting industrial needs and enhancing engineering education. SEG has many merits that have influenced its success so far, but the program also faces some challenges. The merits include; strong group bondage, practical ability incubation, and efficient administrative support. In terms of demerits, it is evident that sufficient theoretical education and local small-middle size enterprises (SMEs)' sustainable participation cannot be warranted. Thus, we propose that initiative strategies have been helpful to maximize GNTECH-ICEE's goal of making students into multi-player engineer, but continuously financial and administrative strategies be put into place in order to guarantee SMEs' long-term devotion to the program, and to help create a sustainable network between students and the companies involved.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.95-105
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• 2017

The Purpose of This Study is to Develop a Checklist Model of Evaluation Diagnosis to Increase the Competitiveness of SMEs in Local Governments. The Evaluation Diagnostic Check Sheet Development Procedure Proceeded in the Order of Preliminary Investigation (Major Company Survey, Analysis of Characteristics of the Industry, Selection of Core Functions, etc.), Research and Development (Development of Core Function Check Sheet, Development of Core Function Improvement Tools). The Evaluation Model is divided into Five Categories (Vision and Strategy System, Quality Assurance and Product Safety, Field Management Level, Statistical Process Control, Improvement Activities), and 1) Recognition, 2) System, 3) Operation, 4) Review and Supplement. This Evaluation Model is expected to Contribute to the Selection of the Mainstream SMEs among the Companies Scattered within the Local Autonomous Entities, thereby Enhancing the Competitiveness of SMEs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.811-814
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• 2014

There is increasing interest in the introduction of smart work as a flexible working form to perform a task without restrictions of time and place by using the information and communication technology as a creative innovative capacity has become an important element of enterprise competitiveness. However, because of the lack of understanding about smart work and concrete practices, most local SMEs are staying at the beginning of introducing the smart work. It is required to provide the standard of a smart work common structure and interface to quickly develop smart work services in a standardized way for SMEs and promote the deployment of the smart work in this environment. In this paper, we present standard development directions for the smart work service common structure and component interface to develop specialized services according to the size, the purpose and the needs of local SMEs.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.969-980
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• 2020

This study examines the acceptance factors, barriers, benefits, and strategies for resolving Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption and usage problems based on the different demographic characteristics of SMEs. The demographic characteristics investigated are gender, educational qualifications, age, managerial status, and years of business experience. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to examine a more comprehensive demographic characteristics in the context of ICT adoption. A survey using self-administered questionnaires was conducted to retrieve information from SME owners/managers in Pekalongan, the local city of Indonesia. The items in the questionnaire were discussed with various experts in the field and a pilot study was conducted prior to the distribution of the research instrument. The study made some interesting findings. No significant differences were found in the SMEs' adoption factors between the demographics of gender groups and educational qualifications. However, significant disparities were found to exist among the age compositions, managerial status, and years in business. Additionally, younger managers/owners of SMEs find it easier to understand the background factors of ICT adoption. Lastly, older managers/owners are more likely to stick to the organizational status quo, be less able to learn new technology, and more likely to avoid risky decisions.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.81-94
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• 2021

In SMEs, technological innovation is recognized as an important tool in terms of sustainable growth. This study analyzed the determinants of technological innovation by using the information of the corporate panel DB composed of local SMEs. The internal factors were added with technological innovation capacity and production capacity and the industrial cluster environment was first applied to external factors. Also, whether the industrial cluster environment influences technological innovation through R&D capabilities, the mediating effect was tested with the Sobel Test. Among the internal and external factors, the most important determinant was marketing ability, and a policy was proposed to develop measures to increase R&D capability with mediating effect. Among the technological innovation variables, which are dependent variables, the most determinant factor was the proportion of new product sales. For this, it is considered that additional research such as longitudinal research with the concept of repetition and parallax using the corporate panel DB is necessary.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.21-36
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• 2022

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the enterprise's score index calculated from atypical data and corrected data. Research design, data, and methodology: In this study, news articles which are non-financial information but qualitative data were collected from 2,432 SMEs that has been extracted "square proportional stratification" out of 18,910 enterprises with fixed data and compared/analyzed each enterprise's score index through text mining analysis methodology. Result: The analysis showed that qualitative data can be quantitatively evaluated by region, industry and period by collecting news from SMEs, and that there are concerns that it could be an element of alternative credit evaluation. Conclusion: News data cannot be collected even if one of the small businesses is self-employed or small businesses has little or no news coverage. Data normalization or standardization should be considered to overcome the difference in scores due to the amount of reference. Furthermore, since keyword sentiment analysis may have different results depending on the researcher's point of view, it is also necessary to consider deep learning sentiment analysis, which is conducted by sentence.