• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.47-65
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• 2023

As stakeholder demands and sustainable finance grow, ESG management and ESG evaluation are becoming important. SMEs should also prepare for the trends of ESG rating practices that affects supply chain management and financial transactions. However, SMEs have no choice but to focus on survival first, so there are restrictions on putting into ESG management. In addition, there is a lack of research on the legitimacy of ESG management by SMEs, and volatility in ESG evaluation systems and rating grades is also increasing. Accordingly, it is necessary to review ESG evaluation trends and practical guidelines along with the review of previous studies. As a result of the exploratory study, SMEs need to implement ESG management and make efforts to specialize in ESG related new businesses under conditions in which their survival base is guaranteed in terms of implementation strategies. In addition, it is necessary to focus on the strategic use of various evaluation results along with accumulating information favorable for ESG evaluation through organizational learning and software management. The implications of this study are that various studies such as the classification criteria for SMEs and the relationship between ESG evaluation grades and long-term survival rates are needed in ESG evaluation of SMEs. At the government policy level, it is time to consider the ESG evaluation system exclusively for SMEs so that ESG management can be implemented and ESG evaluation at different levels by industry and size.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-77
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• 2022

The importance of start-ups and venture companies in the Korean economy is growing. However, the successful growth of startups and venture companies are still challenging as 70% of startups fail within 5 years. A new perspective on innovation is essential to overcome the liability of newness and the liability of smallness in the existing market and obtain the competitive advantage. Recent phenomenon in the Korean startups ecosystem is the remarkable growth of unicorns and future unicorns. Their business models, types of business, and success cases serve as a good example. Neverthless, the process of unicorn and future unicorn startups making new industries and innovative business has poorly understood. In this paper, we first define 175 unicorns and future unicorn startups participating in the K-unicorn project as a unicorn group and analyze current trends of the group. Then the in-depth analyses of industry sectors are conducted. Specifically, focusing on the unicorn forming the new market, we examine the unicorn making the processes of industry category innovation through the business innovation model. Lastly, broadening the scope of the analysis to the unicorn group, policy implications in startups and venture ecosystem are suggested.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.55-69
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• 2021

For the national economic development, the participation of women in the social and economic activities is crucial. The popularization of start-ups, digital transformation, and WEconomy trends have lowered the barriers to opportunities for women to start a business and provide an environment in which women can grow faster. This paper examines the significance and process of success of women entrepreneurs and the characteristics of innovation strategies and achievements by linking the recently changing business environment of a company, factors influencing the success of women entrepreneurship, and innovation activities. To this end, four companies' cases were analyzed in the fields of distribution/service and consumer products/services, which are areas of large investment among female startups. The result shows that women entrepreneurs recognize the meaning of success as creating and continuing to create a 'corporate value through establishing a trust relationship with customers' within the 'balance between personal life and work.' In terms of the business ecosystem, women entrepreneurs strive for 'business activities based on the win-win growth of consumers, producers and sellers' for success, and rather 'focus on the process with a problem-solving approach' rather than achieving performance-oriented goals. Also through excellent power of observation, flexibility, and execution power, women entrepreneurs conduct business by adapting to changing trends. In terms of innovation activities, the innovation strategy of women-led companies puts priority on 'creating the value customers want' and focuses on innovation in the 'customer-centric business model' rather than technological innovation. As such, women-led companies show several differentiated characteristics, which enable them to create corporate value and achieve sustainable growth. The barriers to challenges and opportunities for women to start a business have been lowered, and an ecosystem has been created for female startups to grow. But why are there still so few women entrepreneurs, and the answer to where we need to close these gaps is ultimately a close analysis and investigation of the field. We must present milestones for growth steps through the accumulation of case studies of women startups that have exited. In addition, women can stand as economic agents only when the policy targets are subdivided and specific approaches to child-rearing and childcare for women entrepreneurs must be taken. This paper expects to serve as basic data for follow-up studies and become the basis of research for women entrepreneurs to grow as economic agents.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.69-80
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• 2015

This can be promoted collaboration environment for the system and the system is very important for competitiveness, it is equipped. If so, could work in collaboration with members of the organization to promote collaboration what factors? Organizational collaboration and cooperation of many people working, or worth pursuing common goals by sharing information and processes to improve labor productivity, defined as collaboration. Factors that promote collaboration are shared visions, the organization's principles and rules that reflect the visions, on-line system developments, and communication methods. First, it embodies the vision shared by the more sympathetic members are active and voluntary participation in the activities of the organization can be achieved. Second, the members are aware of all the rules and principles of a united whole is accepted and leads to good performance. In addition, the ability to share sensitive business activities for self-development and also lead to work to make this a regular activity to create a team that can collaborate to help the environment and the atmosphere. Third, a systematic construction of the online collaboration system is made efficient and rapid task. According to Student team and A corporation we knew that Cloud services and social media, low-cost, high-efficiency services could achieve. The introduction of the latest information technology changes, the members of the organization's systems and active participation can take advantage of continuing education must be made. Fourth, the company to inform people both inside and outside of the organization to communicate actively to change the image of the company activities, the creation of corporate performance is very important to figure. Reflects the latest trend to actively use social media to communicate the effort is needed. For development of systematic collaboration promoting model steps to meet the organizational role. First, the Chief Executive Officer to make a firm and clear vision of the organization members to propagate the faith, empathy gives a sense of belonging should be able to have. Second, middle managers, CEO's vision is to systematically propagate the organizers rules and principles to establish a system would create. Third, general operatives internalize the vision of the company stating that the role of outside companies must adhere. The purpose of this study was well done in collaboration organizations promoting factors for strategic alignment model based on the golden circle and collaboration to understand and reflect the latest trends in information technology tools to take advantage of smart work and business know how student teams through case analysis will derive the success factors. This is the foundation for future empirical studies are expected to be present.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.191-211
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• 2022

As the value of highly sustainable companies increases, ESG(Environmental, Social, and Governance) has emerged as the biggest topic of discussion for companies around the world. In addition, as domestically, more research is being done on ESG in line with global trends, it is necessary to examine ESG research trends. Accordingly, ESG academic papers that have been published for the past 10 years were collected for each year, and frequency analysis was conducted using text mining techniques regarding key themes and thesis titles. This paper analyzed the number of selected publications by year and the cumulated number of studies through bibliometric analysis. The findings suggested that the number of ESG papers is increasing each year and that academic interest in ESG-related issues continues to abound. Next, according to the results of frequency analysis of the keywords and titles of the research papers, the words- "ESG", "company", "society", "responsibility", "management", "investment", and "sustainability"- were extracted. This analysis identified the research fields and keywords that have been relevant to ESG in the past 10 years. As a result of comparing the major ESG issues presented in recent overseas studies and the common factors of the ESG key keywords presented in this study, it was confirmed that the environment is the focus of recent studies compared to previous studies. Third, it was found that the data used by domestic ESG studies mainly include the KEJI index, the KRX index, and the KCGS ESG evaluation index. After identifying the main research subjects of ESG papers, research found that 8 out of 152 domestic ESG studies were focused on SMEs. Through this study, it was possible to confirm the ESG research trend and increase in research, and future researchers divided the research topics and research keywords and presented basic data for selecting more diverse research topics. Based on both, the arguments of previous ESG studies conducted on SMEs and the results of this study, there is a lack of studies on guidelines for ESG practice and their application to SMEs, and more ESG research regarding SMEs will need to be conducted in the future.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.113-124
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• 2018

The objective of this study is to examine the effectiveness of signals and advancing our understanding of the relationship between ratings and audience decisions based on the signaling theory. Though many studies argue that information asymmetry affects decision making, few studies have examined two key signaling factors: its potential to have multiple sources and the effect of time on its effectiveness. This study examined how experts' and the general audience's ratings affect decision making. We also considered change patterns in ratings to explore how time effect on ratings affect selection behavior. We tested our hypotheses using the latent growth model based on signaling theory and behavior approaches. The results show that a general audience's ratings is perceived as more credible than are those of experts and that audience members are significantly affected by upward patterns in ratings. The findings suggest that general audiences play a critical role as signal providers. Thus, market participants such as producers should pay more attention to the general audience's ratings in order to increase revenues. They should also consider the time effect of signaling, such as upward trends in ratings.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.37-50
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• 2013

Typical areas of recent changes in IT field is the progress of the Green & Smart IT. The primary purpose of this study is to establish information strategic planning for Green & Smart IT of government-supported research institutes. To this purpose, we developed the information strategic planning for Green & Smart IT environment based on the comprehensive analysis about the status of the related policy trends and relevant organizations' business. In particular, the establishment of information strategic planning was to target K research institute, a representative institute in the field of information analysis and distribution in Korea. And we developed implementation projects and long-term road-map for its effective and efficient promotion. Through the evaluation of priority testing based on their importance and viability of business to targe derived implementation projects, 12 critical implementation projects were selected. Then the target system and concrete action plan for each critical implementation project were presented. Based on the results of this study, we provide government-supported research institutes with useful implications for establishing a correct orientation for the introduction and promotion of Green & Smart IT in the future.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.147-161
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• 2017

Korea is a country having shortage of natural resources, but to overcome this issue and to nurture national competitiveness it is challenging for national-lead economic policy, citizen's dedicated efforts and technological innovation for achieving economic growth. Since the financial crisis, the government has boldly promoted policies to nurture venture companies to make structural adjustments for the sophistication of the industrial structure and job creation. Various policies for establishing the foundation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in which the process of start-up, growth, recovery and reinvest are virtually circulated are presented by the Business Incubators. Recently the Business Incubators neither present a direction differentiated from the vocation of Business Incubator, and nor the operating methods for leading the changing of Business Incubator environment, which threatening the role of Incubating and growing early startup companies. In order to explore the development change of the business incubator, in this research we analyzed the published papers from 1998 to 2016 of business incubator government polices, research methods, related research topics and other major variables. The analysis of the research trends of business incubator revealed the lack of depth case studies, diversity of research topics, and the study of certain limited variables. For the development of the business incubator, case studies of the institutions which carried out excellent incubator and research on the incubation system of the institutions, that are similar to the incubation center are required. This research suggest further research on the case studies of excellent business incubator and agencies, and the center director and manager, which is the center of human resources, and hopes for the revitalization of business incubator researches.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.113-127
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• 2020

Based on the social exchange theory and innovation diffusion theory, this study is to identify the correlation between factors influencing investor's funding intention in crowdfunding and to analyze moderating effect of trust in the relationship of shared value, communication and individual innovation. The purpose of this study is to consider the funding trends of crowdfunding investors from a personal point of view through the results of the study and to help fundraiser of crowdfunding establish specifically strategies for financing. In order to conduct empirical analysis, an online survey was conducted on people who had participated in crowdfunding, and a total of 228 questionnaires were collected and a total of 186 responses were finally analyzed, excluding outliers. For data analysis, structural equation model analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. The results of this study showed that shared value in the relationship between fundraiser and investors has a significant effect on the perceived risk. High level of communication between fundraiser and investors showed positive effects on the level of commitment of the crowdfunding project and the innovation of the individual investor. And commitment had a positive effect on the funding intention. According to the results of this research, trust has moderating effect only in relationship between shared value and perceived risk. It is significant that investors share the value of fundraiser together is a motivation factor to fund in crowdfunding and an opportunity to recognize the risk. Through this study, it is expected to utilize them in establishing strategies for start-ups and marketing plans to raise funds through crowdfunding and to empirically identify factors influencing the funding intention through individual levels of crowdfunding investors.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.1-30
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• 2003

The recent experience about self-employment shows three main trends: first, its share out of the total workers has steadily increased, recording 37.6% in 2001, implying its prevalence and importance; second, its share out of male workers has caught up female workers', implying its importance to males as well as females; and finally, during the recent Economic Crisis when there was mass layoff and large scale bankruptcy, its share rapidly increased, reflecting its role of a buffer to economic fluctuation. However, there have been few studies on self-employment, mainly focusing on what makes someone choose it as an alternative to being employed. This study analyzes the determinants of the duration to terminate self-employment, by applying the proportional hazard model to the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey(KLIPS) by the Korea Labor Institute. The KLIPS started the first wave in 1998 with the 5,000 household sample (and about 12,000 individual sample of household members aged 15 and more). In this study, the first four waves are used for analysis. The average duration of 5,357 spells of self-employment is 130 months. It shows slight difference between males(124 months) and females(138 months) while it widely ranges over industries (296 months for agriculture industry while 50 months for restaurant and hotel industry). Estimates of the proportional hazard model of the self-employment duration show that females are more likely to terminate self-employment while it is not statistically significant. The effect of age at starting self-employment on the hazard shows the inverse V-shape, which implies that, until a certain age(47 years), the hazard become higher as aging while, since then, it become lower as aging. The level of education has a positive effect on the hazard, implying that more education is related to the higher probability to be employed. The measures of economic performances, annual sales and earnings, are positively related to continuing self-employment while hardship at the start of self-employment measured by several ways has a negative effect. Training before opening business has a positive effect on keeping on self-employment and its effects are different over its providers, significantly positive for public providers while insignificant for private providers. More and further research on self-employment is urgent in the rapidly ageing society. To help workers to be self-employed, more public assistance is necessary for education, training, financing, marketing, management, and human resource management in order to make the olders consider self-employment as a good alternative rather than an inevitable one.