• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.203-229
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• 2016

Korean general trading companies had started their business to benchmark and to adopt the successful new business models of the Japanese ones. Nevertheless, the strategic gaps between Korean and Japanese GTCs, Sogo-Shosha, still exist, including financial profitability and managerial competencies. In this regard, it is academically and practically required to find out the differences between Korean and Japanese GTCs. This study overviews the previous researches and the business cases to understand the features of GTCs and to get recent and meaningful factors which are related with the rebirth of Sogo-Shosha. Thereafter, in-depth interviews with industry experts and scholars and subsequent investigations were also conducted to suggest meaningful implications for both academicians and practitioners with the found factors. This study suggests four fundamental differences between the Korean and Japanese GTCs: ① the origin and growth path, ② business ownership, governance strategies and contracts management, ③ availabilities of investment portfolio and risk management, ④ business operation system and organizational culture. This study suggests meaningful implications for Korean GTCs to apply the experiences and lessons learned from Japanese Sogo-Shosha into their own business.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-15
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• 2023

Impact investment involves investing in companies that pursue both social value and financial returns. It focuses on addressing various social problems through innovative solutions while generating profits. The domestic impact investment ecosystem has experienced significant growth with the support of the government and public institutions. In 2021, it witnessed a 3.5-fold increase over three years, reaching a total of 700 billion won in operating assets. In order to foster qualitative growth alongside this quantitative expansion, it is crucial to conduct research specifically on impact investment, which sets it apart from conventional venture investment. This study aims to empirically analyze the unique factors that influence impact investment decisions. Firstly, the factors affecting investment decisions were identified through a literature analysis. Then, a consultation and Delphi survey involving 11 representatives and evaluators from impact investment companies was conducted to determine the major investment determinants. Subsequently, an AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) survey was carried out with 10 impact investment evaluators to ascertain the relative importance of these factors. The analysis revealed the following order of importance for the top factors: market>entrepreneur(team)>product/service>finance. Furthermore, the importance of specific factors was identified in the following order: market competition and entry barriers>new market creation>market growth and potential expansion>team expertise and capabilities. Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on general startup investment factors, this research demonstrates that impact investment places greater emphasis on market-related factors and considers the sustainability and profitability of the business model to be more important than the social impact of social ventures.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2010

Business entrepreneurs reflect their views of domestic and foreign economic activities on their operation for the growth of their business. The decision, forecasting, and planning based on their economic sentiment affect business operation such as production, investment, and hiring and consequently affect condition of national economy. Business survey index(BSI) is compiled to get the information of business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment for the analysis of business condition. BSI has been used as an important variable in the short-term forecasting models for business cycle analysis, especially during the the period of extreme business fluctuations. Recent financial crisis has arised extreme business fluctuations similar to those caused by currency crisis at the end of 1997, and brought back the importance of BSI as a variable for the economic forecasting. In this paper, the meaning of BSI as an economic sentiment index is reviewed and a GUIDE regression tree is constructed to find out the factors which affect on BSI. The result shows that the variables related to the stability of financial market such as kospi index(Korea composite stock price index) and exchange rate as well as manufacturing operation ratio and consumer goods sales are main factors which affect business entrepreneurs' economic sentiment.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.2529-2539
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• 2013

The Korean construction industry has led the miraculous economic boost of Korea by providing solid domestic infrastructures such as highway, roads, and airports. It also played a critical role in global construction market and eaned more than 500 billions dollars in terms of their accumulated international orders. However, domestic construction market has significantly decreased in recent years due to the domestic political environments and global economic crisis. Therefore, the importance of international construction market cannot be more emphasized to the Korean construction market in order for the sustainable growth. There has been, however, little research in the area of identifying required competency elements for the Korean construction industry to stay successful in the global market. The main purpose of this study is to identify elements of core competency to increase global competitiveness for Korean construction industry. Core global construction competency elements were derived from the internal and external environmental analyses along with the extensive literature review, expert interviews and a survey. This study utilized the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and a gap analysis in providing insights on the status competitiveness of the Korean construction industry in terms of required global core competency elements. The analysis shows that project management and financial management are the main areas for improvements required to engineering contractors while construction contractors need to take a more balanced approach among technical, project management, and financial management in order to increase their global competencies.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.37-45
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• 2015

Purpose - This paper's aim is to investigate whether or not gross profitability explains the cross-sectional variation of the stock returns in the Korean stock market. Gross profitability is an alternative profitability measure proposed by Novy-Marx in 2013 to predict cross-sectional variation of stock returns in the US. He shows that the gross profitability adds explanatory power to the Fama-French 3 factor model. Interestingly, gross profitability is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. By confirming the gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market, we may provide some implications regarding the well-known value premium. In addition, our empirical results may provide opportunities for the fund distribution industry to promote brand new styles of funds. Research design, data, and methodology - For our empirical analysis, we collect monthly market prices of all the companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) of the Korea Exchanges (KRX). Our sample period covers July1994 to December2014. The data from the company financial statementsare provided by the financial information company WISEfn. First, using Fama-Macbeth cross-sectional regression, we investigate the relation between gross profitability and stock return performance. For robustness in analyzing the performance of the gross profitability strategy, we consider value weighted portfolio returns as well as equally weighted portfolio returns. Next, using Fama-French 3 factor models, we examine whether or not the gross profitability strategy generates excess returns when firmsize and the book-to-market ratio are controlled. Finally, we analyze the effect of firm size and the book-to-market ratio on the gross profitability strategy. Results - First, through the Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regression, we show that gross profitability has almost the same explanatory power as the book-to-market ratio in explaining the cross-sectional variation of the Korean stock market. Second, we find evidence that gross profitability is a statistically significant variable for explaining cross-sectional stock returns when the size and the value effect are controlled. Third, we show that gross profitability, which is positively correlated with stock returns and firm size, is negatively correlated with the book-to-market ratio. From the perspective of portfolio management, our results imply that since the gross profitability strategy is a distinctive growth strategy, value strategies can be improved by hedging with the gross profitability strategy. Conclusions - Our empirical results confirm the existence of a gross profitability premium in the Korean stock market. From the perspective of the fund distribution industry, the gross profitability portfolio is worthy of attention. Since the value strategy portfolio returns are negatively correlated with the gross profitability strategy portfolio returns, by mixing both portfolios, investors could be better off without additional risk. However, the profitable firms are dissimilar from the value firms (high book-to-market ratio firms); therefore, an alternative factor model including gross profitability may help us understand the economic implications of the well-known anomalies such as value premium, momentum, and low volatility. We reserve these topics for future research.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.29-57
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• 2006

Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) face a number of different kinds of barriers to adopt information technology, including the lack of information, limited financial and technical resources, and absence of the well-trained work force in the realm of information technology. But application service provider (ASP)enables these SMEs to informatize. This paper is focused on studying the cases of the adoption and use of the ASP-based ERP systems that 7 SME shad adopted. The factors that influence the adoption and use of SMEs' ASP-based ERP systems are divided into the user companies that adopted the systems, the systems vendors, and environment. From the viewpoint of the user company, the successful adoption and use of the systems is significantly influenced by the clear motive of adopting the systems, the financial readiness, and the strong intention of CEO for pushing ahead with e-Business. From the systems vendor, it is influenced by the technical expertise of the vendor, the knowledge of the user company, and the experience of the systems development. From the perspective of environment, it is influenced by the push from the players in the value chains. The companies that had adopted the ASP-based ERP systems and that had extended the level of systems use had the benefits through reducing the cost, improving the internal business process, and achieving the learning and growth of the organization.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.249-273
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• 2016

Recently companies consider the patent activity as one of the critical factor for success in global economy even though one of the enterprise's competitiveness factor was productivity in past industry economy. Since there are so many patent dispute globally in IT industry, it is very important for companies to register and manage patents strategically. Therefore, this research analyze relationship between Financial result and 3 patent activity factors like productivity, effectiveness, and high-quality by investigating patent and financial data of 217 Korean IT enterprises. This paper get the following results after building research model and hypothesis based on resource-based theory and analysing the data sets using multiple regression model. First, effectiveness and high-quality of patents showed positive(+) effect on growth of total assets of IT enterprises. Second, three factors of patent activities do not have significant results with average increase rate of sales. Third, only high-quality of patents have positive(+) effect on average increase rate of net income. The differentiation factor of this research is that this paper categorized patent activity factors as quantitative and qualitative factors, and practically suggested strategic direction of patent activities of IT companies which face serious patent distribute globally.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.41-72
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• 2003

The purposes of this paper are to build theoretical and empirically testable model to identify determining factors of ownership structure, and to analyze this model empirically using th Korea Stock Exchange panel data, and to test the impact of opening the stock market on the determinants of ownership structure. The determining factors of ownership structure identified in this paper include debt ratio, dividend, asset characteristics, profitability, growth business risk, size, institutional investors and chaebol-non chaebol dummy variable. Empirical panel estimation test reveals that this model can explain about $9\sim11%$ of the cross sectional variance in the equity ratio of large shareholders. The reasons that this model has too explanatory power are that some variables were measured with errors, and that there were some omitted variables in tested model. The regression results on the model variables ar generally in line with predictions. But the coefficient estimates on size is never significant. And it appears that the exogenous variable which explains opening the stock market has positive effect on the determinants of ownership structure.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.103-135
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• 2008

We test the hypothesis whether foreign direct investments(hereafter "FDI") can affect the changes of the firm value. In this study, we use a newly developed event study technique, referred to as value-based event study approach(hereafter "VESA"), which is based on the seminal papers of M&M(1958, 1961, 1963) and Lee(2006, 2007). The empirical findings about the effects of FDI's on the intrinsic firm values, which can be measured by intrinsic Q(hereafter "IQ") values of the VESA, are as follows; First, the FDI's are carried out by healthy firms in terms of high IQ's. The IQ values become higher during the post-FDI period than prior to performing FDI's. Second, among the four components of IQ values, the value of assets-in-place, the value of intangible assets, and the value of growth opportunities are all increased during the post-FDI period, except the value of current earnings. Third, the same results are observed in all the samples classified by industry. In sum, thanks to the above findings in this study, we can conclude that the announcements of the FDI's are good and reliable indicators for the firm to signal to the market that the FDI firms are healthy in intrinsic firm values, and also that they have good chances to increase their firm values through the new investments abroad.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.109-147
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• 2007

According to the perspective of capital structure theory, we analyzed the dynamism of the capital structure determinants by using panel data of 244 KOSDAQ firms based on two-step GMM system methodology suggested by Blundell Bond(1998). This dynamic methodology had not been used to analyse capital structure determinants in Korea. In the dynamic model of capital structure, profit had negative effect on the book leverage and market leverage, which meant supporting pecking order theory. Growth opportunity (MBR) affected negatively to the market leverage. For the determinants of leverage, earnings volatility had significantly positive effect on KOSDAQ 50 firms. KOSDAQ and KOSDAQ 50 firms had the target leverage. The adjustment speed in KOSDAQ firms was 0.4958 on the book leverage, it was faster than in KOSDAQ 50 firm's 0.2863 on the book leverage and the adjustment speeds for the market leverage were 0.7651 for KOSDAQ firms and 0.5643 for KOSDAQ 50 firms. There was difference in adjustment cost between KOSDAQ firms and KOSDAQ 50 firms.