• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.13-24
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical basis for future studies by systematically integrating existing empirical studies that examine the relationship between the entrepreneurs' competencies and business performance. As the results of empirical studies examining the relationship between the entrepreneurs' competencies and business performance are mixed, this study tries to derive different results from individual studies through meta-analysis into standardized statistics(effect sizes). To accomplish the purpose, this study developed hypotheses about the positive effects of the entrepreneurial competencies including opportunity recognition competency, managerial competency, technical-functional competency, strategic competency, and relationship competencies on the business performance through theoretical reviews of the literature. Also, this study conducted meta-analysis with 15 sample data using open source based statistical program 'R'. The results of this study are as follows. The opportunity recognition competency, managerial competency, technical-functional competency, strategic competency, and relationship competency were found to significantly affect financial business performance. Also, each of the factors had a moderate effect size on the performance. Among these competencies, the most effective factor was the strategic competency, followed by the opportunity recognition competency, technical-functional competency, and relationship competency. There is still no study using meta-analysis on the relationship between the entrepreneurs' competencies and business performance in South Korea. Therefore, the results of this study are expected to provide implications for developing the theoretical basis of future studies.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.59-68
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• 2017

This study is a study on the entrepreneurial characteristics of entrepreneurship by marketing competency. This study examines the relationship between the characteristics of entrepreneurs and their marketing competence, and examines the effects of these characteristics on entrepreneurial performance. The results of the empirical analysis show that the characteristics of entrepreneurs influence on entrepreneurship performance. Second, marketing competence affects entrepreneurial performance. Third, it is found that the characteristics of entrepreneurs influence the entrepreneurial performance according to marketing competence. Therefore, this study confirms that the characteristics of entrepreneurs and marketing competence affect the performance of entrepreneurship, and that the characteristics of entrepreneurs influence the entrepreneurship performance according to marketing competence. Therefore, It is significant to provide theory and implications.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.119-131
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediated effects of entrepreneurship and market orientation on organizational culture and management performance as the cause of the reversal phenomenon of startups defeating traditional giants. Through the research method of bootstrapping proposed by Hayes (2013), the total effect, direct effect and indirect effect analysis were conducted. As a result, there was no direct impact relationship between organizational culture and management performance, but it was confirmed that it had a positive impact on management performance by mediating both entrepreneurial behavior and market orientation in the relationship between organizational culture and management performance. This study is meaningful in that it is linked to existing theories such as entrepreneurship and market orientation and it extends the scope of competency targets required for business performance to an organizational culture. Companies need to create an innovation-oriented organizational culture for management performance and value creation, and they have to open up their culture with entrepreneurial behavior and market orientation by breaking away from the inertia of organization.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.145-157
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• 2017

SMEs play an important role in the domestic economy. Regarding competency to respond flexibly to unpredictable changes, agility of SMEs is more emphasized. Entrepreneurship orientation is an important factor in the source of SMEs that enable such competency. Entrepreneurial orientation refers to the tendency of a CEO or a member of a corporation to be innovative, risk-taking, and active in the face of various market opportunities. In other words, it refers to the tendency to be expressed in the activities of the entire company without regard to specific technologies or industries. Entrepreneurial orientation has a direct or indirect effect on business performance. Therefore, in this study, we conducted theoretical and empirical studies on the effect of entrepreneurial orientation of SME managers on business performance. Research hypotheses were derived through theoretical research. We focused on the mediating effect of innovation activity and tried to identify the mechanism that entrepreneurial orientation leads to business performance through product innovation and service innovation activity. We investigated whether innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, which are sub-variables of entrepreneurial orientation, affect business performance through product innovation and service innovation. We conducted a survey of SMEs in Busan and Kyungnam regions to examine the research hypotheses. The results show that product innovation and service innovation have mediating effects. The results of the study are as follows. Product innovation has mediating effect of innovativeness and risk-taking on business performance. Service innovation has been found to mediate innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking on business performance. There was a difference in the mediation effect between the two innovations. Product innovation showed a low mediating effect and a large direct effect. On the other hands, service innovation is relatively more mediating than product innovation. The implications of the research results are derived in relation to the essential differences between product innovation and service innovation. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are presented.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.87-100
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• 2022

Early start-up companies have an inherent limitation of lack of resources. Despite these limitations, in order to survive, the entrepreneur's personal ability to efficiently use limited resources is required. In the marketing field, various studies are needed to reduce the business failure rate through establishing growth strategies and innovation. Accordingly, it is necessary to apply the concept of entrepreneurial marketing, which has been researched and developed overseas for 30 years, to fit the domestic reality. According to the flow of this study, an empirical study should be preceded to clarify the influence relationship between entrepreneurial marketing orientation, marketing competency, and management performance, along with a theoretical theorem on entrepreneurial marketing that is suitable for early start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) and can respond innovatively to changes. The establishment of entrepreneurial marketing orientation and the processes from which this concept leads to business performance through the organization's marketing capabilities and its effects will be empirically verified. For an empirical survey, a survey was conducted on founders of 220 companies, and path analysis using structural equations was used for hypothesis verification. The findings are as follows. First, it was found that the entrepreneurial marketing orientation had a positive effect on both the organization's marketing capabilities and management performance. Second, it was found that the organization's marketing capabilities also had a positive effect on management performance. Third, as a result of empirical analysis of the mediating effect of the organization's marketing capabilities on the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing orientation and management performance, it was found that marketing capabilities showed a greater mediating effect on non-financial performance than financial performance. On the other hand, it was confirmed that marketing performance had a stronger mediating effect on financial performance than non-financial performance. By confirming and presenting the concept and constituent factors of entrepreneurial marketing orientation of domestic start-ups, which were academic gaps for the purpose of this paper, the academic research is differentiated in that they were verified as six components of entrepreneurial marketing. The practical implications of the research results will be that the entrepreneurial marketing-oriented mindset of small and medium-sized companies will optimize market analysis capabilities, network with various stakeholders, and increase the organization's ability to demonstrate marketing capabilities.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1-13
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• 2015

The purpose of this research is to do exploratory analysis on the relationships between demographic characteristics of entrepreneurial candidates and their developmental level of entrepreneurial traits as well as the choice of business field. We analyzed gender, age, and educational level of the entrepreneurial candidates and their developmental level of entrepreneurial traits such as achievement tendencies, degree of awareness, planning skills, sincerity, interpersonal relationship, and problem-solving skills. Industry fields were classified into 4 types: restaurants, retail, services, internet business. Descriptive statistical analyses, logistic regressions, and variance analyses were performed about the sample data gathered from 1,441 persons since the year 2002 to 2014. Males and highly educated above university preferred service industry than restaurant, retail, and internet business. Females preferred internet business, retail, and restaurants than service industry field. The young persons under 20 showed higher probability to choose internet business. The college level and high school graduates preferred retail and restaurants than service industry. The developmental level of entrepreneurial traits were higher in male and highly educated. By this study, we could find the divide between groups with high and low probabilities of failure: restaurants and retail field showed higher failure probability than service industry in the business fields of self-employed. Furthermore, we could identify that entrepreneurial traits also had been developed differently depending on the groups. It is necessary to refrain from entering into the fields with high failure probabilities as well as to provide supporting policies to build the systems and environment to reduce the cases to begin new business without special knowledges and know-hows. The competency development training should be provided in the early stage of start-ups considering their entrepreneurial traits and aptitudes. Not only the assessment of the entrepreneurial traits but also professional counseling from initial stage are necessary.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.89-106
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• 2022

Recently, in Korea, the number of unemployed people who have lost their jobs involuntarily due to closure of workplaces, layoffs, and poor management stood at 788,000 in October 21, an increase of 44,000 from last August (Statistics Office, 2021). The average retiring age of workers is 49.7, so regardless of their intention, they often end up retiring early unavoidably. Meanwhile, it has been found that eight out of ten workers have startup intention; therefore, now their startup is regarded to be essential, not selective. The purpose of this study is to investigate if workers' entrepreneurial orientation, continuous learning, satisfaction with remuneration, and employment prospect are correlated with entrepreneurial intention and examine if innovative behavior mediates the relations. To sum up the results, first, innovativeness and risk sensitivity in entrepreneurship are found to have positive effects on workers' entrepreneurial intention. Restless challenges and innovative thinking at work are crucial variables to enhance entrepreneurial intention. Second, satisfaction with remuneration influences entrepreneurial intention positive effects, and continuous learning and employment prospect, too, have positive effects on entrepreneurial intention. As employment instability is increasing at work due to the rapidly changing corporate environment, Considering whether the current organization will strive for survival or prepare to start a business for sustainable economic activity, it is judged that there is a willingness to start a business for better compensation even if the satisfaction of compensation is high. In addition, it was confirmed that the possibility of employability with the career desired by the organization as well as the securing of practical competency and expertise through continuous learning are important variables in increasing the will to start a business. Third, relations between entrepreneurial orientation, satisfaction with remuneration, continuous learning, employment prospect, and entrepreneurial intention are found to be mediated by innovative behavior; however, its mediative effect in relations between innovativeness, risk sensitivity, and entrepreneurial intention in entrepreneurship is dismissed. Innovative behavior at work are found to be major variables to elevate entrepreneurial intention in relations between continuous learning, employment prospect, and satisfaction with remuneration.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.155-172
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• 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic not only posed an enormous human crisis, but also had a profound impact on firms' survival. Social distancing and global lockdown measures designed to protect human lives have paradoxically impaired the business environment. As a result, firms that sought to gain competitive advantage by leveraging external resources were cut off from the external world and faced unexpected challenges. Under these circumstances, researches were conducted in the early stage of the pandemic to explore how certain firms survived while others fell, but they were limited to re-examining business performance using traditional financial factors. However, this study aims to investigate the role of entrepreneurs' competency in crisis situations from the Resource-Based View (RBV), as such competency plays an important role in improving business performance and subsequently the probability of startups' survival. Specifically, we evaluated the performance as of end of 2019 of 1,127 startups evaluated by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KOTEC), which provides policy financing based on technology assessment, in 2016. We then conducted an empirical study to determine the mediating role of business performance in the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and firm survival by verifying how many of the sample firms were still in operation at the end of June 2023, when the Korean government declared COVID-19 as an endemic. For this purpose, we defined technological, financial, and marketing competencies as the sub-factors of entrepreneurial competency, and sales growth rate and employment growth rate as the sub-factors of business performance. The results of the empirical analysis showed that technological and financial competencies of the entrepreneur had a positive impact on both business performance and firm survival, and that sales growth rate and employment growth rate mediated the relationship between technological competence and firm survival. However, the positive influence of entrepreneurs' financial competence of the survival of startups was only evident through the growth of employment. This study is the first study in South Korea to define the survival factors of startups in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is expected to contribute to the theoretical and practical discussions on the importance of entrepreneurs' competency as a firms' survival factor based on RVB.

• 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.13 no.4
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• pp.233-244
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to improve awareness of network marketing business in South Korea, which takes a quite negative view of network marketing, to raise awareness of "starting up a business" as independent business owners, to assist them in building their own subjecthood in network business and entrepreneurial identity, and ultimately to give some suggestions on how to improve their self-directed entrepreneurial competency and the quality of their business management. To make an empirical analysis of 121 independent business owners of Korean native network marketing, the personal and background variables of the entrepreneurs were selected as independent variables, and entrepreneurship was selected as a mediator variable. The selected dependent variables were financial and non-financial business performances. A multiple regression analysis was conducted by inputting the variables. The findings of the study were as follows: It produced an effect of more financial performance when the innovation of the independent business owners of network marketing was better, and this innovation was possible to have only when they improved in entrepreneurial efficacy and locus of control. In contrast, only authenticity had an effect on boosting non-financial business performance among the factors of entrepreneurship. To have authenticity, it's necessary to strengthen achievement needs and awareness of locus of control among the personal characteristics of the independent business owners of network marketing. Among the factors of entrepreneurship, there was better authenticity when their personal networks were broader among their background characteristics. In addition, self-efficacy that was one of personal characteristics made a direct contribution to the enhancement of non-financial performance. As a result, independent business owners of network marketing are required to hold a strong belief in their own business, to be active in business activities and to have a high efficacy as spontaneous principal agents, and they also are required to have more adventurous, planned, active and propulsive achievement needs that enable them to attain the goals of their business and keep moving forward. Besides, they should foster their locus-of-control competency that is to control, endure and be responsible for a variety of phenomena or incidents that they face, and there will be better financial performance or non-financial performance only when they demonstrate their self-belief and confidence and when they have faith in and conviction about themselves. For independent business owners of network marketing, a consumer-centered thinking that entails authenticity and trustworthiness and touches the hearts of customers is a more effective marketing strategy than an egocentric thinking as sellers when they approach customers. And they are expected to make progress in terms of the quality of business management when their business attachment or enthusiasm is great enough to match their own efficacy with entrepreneurial identity or strike a balance between them.