• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.71-94
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• 2020

Purpose - Multi-National Enterprises (MNEs) tend to face a high level of institutional pressures in regions with high institutional development level. When complying with institutional pressures, firms try to make decisions to maximize profit while minimizing the risks to them. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the institutional development level on institutional compliance timing by MNEs and the relationship between compliance speed and corporate performance. Design/methodology - The research focuses on three main variables, which are the institutional development level (as a determination of the institutional pressure level), the firm's compliance speed (as a determination of the compliance timing), and the firm's financial performance (as a determination of the corporate performance). We collected 19,869 firm-level data from CSMAR (the China Stock Market and Accounting Research), 6,922 CSR data from RKS (the Rankins CSR Ratings), and province and city-level data from the NERIM (National Economic Research Institute Index of Marketization) and NBSC (National Bureau of Statistics of China). The firms in China were chosen for analysis, and the analysis period was from 2008 to 2017. Random Effects GLS Regression was used to test the relationships among the variables. Findings - This study examined the effect of the institutional development level on the firm's compliance speed, together with the effect of compliance speed on the firm's financial performance of the MNEs in China. We found that the institutional development level positively influenced firms' financial performances, which means the firms' financial performances are better in the region with a high institutional development level. The compliance speed of institutional practice by firms was faster in the higher level of institutional development. However, the firm's delayed compliance led to better financial performance. Originality/value - Studies in the resource dependence view of Institutional Theory often fall short in understanding the theory by overlooking the firm's active decision-making. Thus, the findings do not present a full scope of corporate performance in this regard. This study not only found a way to test the role of a firm's independent decision-making (i.e., compliance timing) when facing the institutional pressure but also prove the significant role of the compliance timing on corporate performance. Also, we were able to test the effect of institutional development level, controlling location-specific variables because we used CSR performance data for MNEs operating in China. Lastly, by doing the above, the findings of this study suggest practical implications to the industry practitioners in MNEs.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.33-52
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• 2020

Patents are widely used in the literature as a measure of firm-level innovation. It is regarded that patents improve a firm's operational environment and ultimately increase the value of the firm. However, the relationship between patents and firm value in Korea is under-explored in the literature due to the difficulty of constructing datasets. This paper examines whether patents in Korea increase the market value of a firm. To do this, I exploit novel data on firm-level patents and financial information of all listed Korean companies during the period of 1993-2015 and estimate the non-linear production-function type of Tobin's q equations on R&D, patents, and citations. Surprisingly, I find that patents and citations are weakly associated with firm value, while R&D is strongly associated with an increase in firm value. These results direct imply that policymakers in Korea should enhance patenting incentives to encourage firms to innovate.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.91-117
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• 2020

This study aimed to understand the relationships among the institutional pressure and the level of compliance and corporate value. The research focuses on four main variables, which are regulatory pressure, normative pressure, and cultural-cognitive pressure as the institutional pressure, and the CSR score as the level of the firm's compliance. We examined the impact of the institutional pressure on the firm's compliance-level, together with the effect of compliance level on the corporate value. We analyzed the 3,792 CSR data listed in China's A market and 31 province and city-level data from China. Results showed that institutional pressure had a positive influence on the firm's compliance level. The corporate value was greater with a high compliance level when the institutional pressure was high. The firm's compliance level negatively influenced corporate value when the institutional pressure was low. This study took into account a level of institutional pressures in three dimensions when investigating the effect of CSR compliance level on the corporate value. Thus, this study has a unique academic contribution by demonstrating that CSR activities can have a positive or negative effect depending on the institutional environment for each firm. The findings of this study also provide valuable insights to industry practitioners by suggesting the importance of considering the institution-specific condition when deciding to comply with the institutional pressure.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.201-217
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• 2015

In this paper, we report computational testing result to examine the validity of firm's bankruptcy risk estimation through quantification of supply chain risk. Supply chain risk in this study refers to upstream supply risk and downstream demand risk, To assess the firm's risk affected by supply chain risk, we adopt unit of analysis as industry level. since supply and demand relationships of the firm could be generalized by the industry input-output table and the availability of various valid economic indicators which are chronologically calculated. The research model to estimate firm's risk level is the linear regression model to assess the industry bankruptcy risk estimation of the focal firm's industry with the independent variables which could quantitatively reflect demand and supply risk of the industry. The publicly announced macro economic indicators are selected as the candidate independent variables and validated through empirical testing. To validate our approach, in this paper, we confined our research scope to steel industry sector and its related industry sectors, and implemented the research model. The empirical testing results provide useful insights to further refine the research model as the valid forecasting mechanism to capture firm's future risk estimation more accurately by adopting supply chain industry risk aspect, in conjunction with firm's financial and other managerial factors.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.5-19
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• 2015

Literatures on open innovation have two major limitations. First, either on a firm level or on an industry level did they analyze the open innovation issues. The results of a firm's innovation can be diffused through the whole network and the firm can learn back from the network knowledge. Prior literatures did not consider the feedback loop among firms and network in which the firms are involved. Second, most open innovation research had a static perspective on firm's innovation performance. Since the diffusion, spill-over and learning among network members are involved over time, the open innovation is intrinsically dynamic. From the dynamic perspective, we can appreciate the fundamental attributes of the open innovation network which involves diverse firms, research institutes, and universities. In order to overcome the limitations, we suggest a dynamic model for open innovation network. We build an agent-based model which consists of heterogeneous firms. The firms are connected through a scale-free network which is formed by preferential attachment. Through the diverse scenario of simulation, we collect massive data on the firm level and analyze them both on firm and industry level. From the analysis, we found that, on industry level, the overall performance of open innovation increases as the internal research capability, absorptive capacity, and learning curve coefficient increase. Noticeably, as the deprecation rate of knowledge increases, the variability of knowledge increases. From the firm level analysis, we found that the industry-level variables had a significant effect on the firm's innovation performance lasting through all the time, whereas the firm-level variables had only on the early phase of innovation.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.51-76
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• 2017

Although much attention has been paid to customer satisfaction (CS) as a leading indicator of firm performance, few studies have investigated the role of CS distribution across individual customers. With 10 years of National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) data in Korea, we examine the relationship between the variance of CS and key corporate performance measures such as revenue, profit, Tobin's q, and stock return. There are three main findings. First, we confirm the findings of previous studies that the average CS for a firm is related to the firm's economic performance. Second, we find a moderating effect of CS variance such that the relationship between the level of CS and firm performance is attenuated by the variance of CS. Finally, the variance of CS is found to directly affect firm performance over and above the CS level effect. More specifically, the variance decreases sales and stock return.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.261-279
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• 2013

Using firm-level panel data for Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs), we make a distinction between being the only affiliate of a parent firm and being one of the multiple affiliates of a parent firm. In particular, we attempt to find a correlation between the sales of foreign affiliates and the productivity of multinational firms. Our main empirical results in this paper suggest that productive Korean MNEs would enlarge the number of affiliates in the host country.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.9
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• pp.287-300
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• 2021

The study is conducted to find out the impact of the country- and corporate-level governance and firm internationalization on stock liquidity of 120 listed firms in Japan, Hong Kong, Pakistan, and India. Panel data is used in the current study. The annual time span covered in the current study is 10 years. The current study explores results based on secondary data. The findings of the 'robust panel corrected standard error' estimator shows that the internationalization strategy of firms positively influences the stock liquidity. The internationalization strategy of multinational corporations proves to be an effective methodology for improving stock liquidity in the home market as well as abroad. The study also shows that a stronger relationship exists between stock liquidity and internationalization in those countries where the regulatory settings are effective, the judiciary system is efficient and shareholders' rights are protected. Corporate governance and stock liquidity are negatively associated. The study also finds a negative relationship between country-level governance mechanisms and stock liquidity. Whereas the 'robust panel corrected error' estimator shows a positive association between corporate governance mechanisms and firm internationalization. The study depicts that effective corporate governance motivates multinational companies to expand their business abroad.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.127-152
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• 2008

This study sought to explore how SMEs are utilizing EC. Drawing on existing research on IT and EC related field, this study presented the framework of EC utilization level and analyzed its affecting factors in the point of organizational perspectives; strategy and competency. The impact of EC utilization on firm performance was also examined by employing BSC. Structural equation model was applied to test the relationships among the theoretical constructs with data from 171 SMEs. The results showed that the rate of EC utilization in SMEs is growing quite rapidly. However, manufacturing related firms still remain at a lower level compared to service related firms. As for the two affecting factors of EC utilization level, it was found that the level of EC utilization appeared to be driven not by strategy but by competency. This result implicates that EC utilization in SMEs doesn't reach to strategic purpose yet, while it is dependent on firm's competency. As far as the impact of EC utilization on firm performance, the study showed that the level of EC utilization has significant relationship with all perspectives performance indicators of BSC. This study can provide the managers with current EC utilization pattern and the guidelines as to where to put the efforts in the EC utilization and how to get an effective EC utilization strategy in the future.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.509-530
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• 2007

This paper examined the relationship between innovation and firm performance by integrating industry competitive context and firm-level knowledge constructs. After controlling for firm site, age, and the presence of a union, cross-section analysis of survey data from 1,419 medium sized manufacturing firms yielded following findings. The first was the expected positive relationship between firm-level innovation and firm knowledge and also industry dynamism, as measured by the intensity of industry-level R&D. This results indicate that industries with greater aggregate levels of R&D intensity are home to higher rates of firm-level innovative activity and managers must increase their numbers of technical staff and the level of training. But the interaction between firm knowledge and industry dynamism was non-significant. Second, innovation was not significantly related to firm performance, as measured by revenue growth. This relationship was not moderated by industry dynamism and firm level knowledge. In high and low technology sectors, the relationship between innovation and performance was non-significant, consistent with the full-sample analysis. The results suggest that the effects of firm-level knowledge assets and investments in training don't work in different ways in different industry settings. This research used three control variables to analyze innovation and firm performance. Firm age was negatively associated with firm performance and did not significantly predict innovation. Firm size was positively associated with innovation and performance in the low-technology sector. The presence of a labor union was not a significant with respect to innovation.