• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.3-21
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• 1992

By localizing the production of core parts and intermediate goods previously imported from Japan, Korean firms have been striving to increase their market share and profit in the final goods market in which Japanese firms are dominating. Korean producers' efforts, however, have often been thwarted by Japanese suppliers' "strategic" behavior. This competitive strategy involves Japanese exporters supplying parts and intermediate goods at very high prices until Korean firms must locally develop them, and then setting the prices far below the previous level so that the profitability of localization is dramatically reduced, or even means a loss for the Korean manufacturer. This paper intends to explain the strategic behavior of Japanese firms through the concepts of strategic interactions and joint economies. Strategic interactions can be aggressive or accommodating depending on whether competitors are dealing with strategic substitutes or complements. Joint economies exist in multi-stage competition when competition in the previous state favorably influences "profits" of the ensuing stage. Competiton between Korean and Japanese firms (a two-stage game involving production and technology rivalries) can be characterized by joint economies and strategic substitutes: joint economies since technological improvement results in more profits in the production stage; and strategic substitutes since an increase in marginal profits of one firm brings about a decrease in marginal profits of the other in a duopolitic production stage. This implies that the flood of "low price" Japense substitutes is an almost "natural" phenomenon in the context of the duopolistic market described in this paper. In the technology competition stage, on the other hand, technology development and technology transfer can be either strategic complements or substitutes. This implies that, in typical comparative static analyses, the effect of changes in exogenous variables cannot be expected a priori. Thus it becomes very difficult to determine the desirability of applying various policy measures such as countervailing duties, R&D subsidies, and creating demand for localized products. For these reasons, it is indeed likely that the measures suggested as means of circumventing the strategic behavior of Japanese firms (and enhancing technological development of Korean firms) may not work.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.17 no.32
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• pp.155-162
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• 1994

The Japanese "Just-In-Time" technique reduces inventory and unnecessary factors. This technique makes the success of Japanese firms, therefore many Korean firms try to apply it to their situation. But the technique doesn't bare the same success in Korean firms. This paper, therefore, considers the different situations between Korean rim and Japanese firm, then simulates the Pull system and Push system for a multiline, multistage production system. This paper drives the different results of simulation according to variable processing times, variable demand, set-up time and shortages in Pull system and Push system using GPSS. The results show that the performance of Pull system is lower than Push system's in variable master production scheduling and variable processing times.ing times.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.183-211
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• 2010

This paper empirically investigated whether the dependence of manufacturing firms effects the influence strategies and long-term orientation based on the data from manufacturing firms in Korea. U.S., and Japan. Also, the proposed model was proven by the structural equation model with the data gathered from 105 manufacturing firms in Korea, 103 in U.S., and 83 in Japan. The findings were as follows. First, the dependence of all of manufacturing firms, regardless of country, positively affected the coercive influence strategies of distributors, whereas the dependence positively affected the noncoercive influence strategies in U.S. and Japan but in the case of Korea, it showed the reverse direction and were not statistically significant. Second, the dependence of Korean manufacturing firms positively affected the long-term orientation but American manufacturing firms showed the reverse direction and it was not statistically significant. In the case of Japanese manufacturing firms, the direction predicted in the paper was shown but was not statistically significant. Third, the coercive influence strategies positively affected the long-term orientation in Korea but it showed the negative relationship in Japan. Fourth, the noncoercive influence strategies positively affected the long-term orientation in all countries. Lastly, a few implications, limitations and future study issues were discussed.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.105-113
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• 2022

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the ratio of non-controlling shareholder interests (minority equity ratio, MER) and the measurement error in real activities manipulation (RM) proxy for Japanese firms. Many Japanese firms have practiced stakeholder-oriented corporate governance systems. Previous studies suggest that the higher the MER, the more Japanese businesses tend to employ management techniques for the group's sales growth while also reallocating resources inside the group to reduce principal-principal conflicts. Such differences in management strategies by firms could lead to measurement error in the RM proxy. The analysis uses 16,450 firm-years listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The results of our analysis show that there is a positive relationship between MER and the RM proxy, and high persistence of RM proxies, suggesting that the RM proxies may contain measurement error. We also find that MER is correlated with variables associated with management strategy and that controlling for these variables can reduce the measurement error of RM proxy in firms with large MER. This study extends previous research on measurement error in RM proxy by relating them to ownership structure and corporate governance. This paper would contribute to researchers examining issues related to RM.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-221
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• 1994

This study investigates the wealth effect of foreign acquisition of U.S. based firms. Contrary to previous studies, this analysis demonstrates that after appropriate control of domestic-acquired targets, the wealth gains to the shareholders of targets in foreign takeovers are similar to those in domestic takeovers. This paper investigates the validity of the competitive acquisition market in cross-border takeovers and concludes that : 1) in cases of inward foreign direct investment into the U.S., foreign firms do not realize significant net benefits from acquisitions; and 2) the foreign acquirer is as well informed as its U.S, counterparts about the target's market. The results of this study are consistent with the view that each country has different motivations for investing in the U.S. market. Consider, for example, Japan. The evidence suggests that Japanese companies pay a considerable price for U.S. targets which have performed poorly before the takeover. While there is no specific rationale to explain why Japanese firms buy the most volatile and worst performing firms, international barriers may provide a possible reason for these anomalies. Overall, the evidence of this paper supports the view that foreign takeovers occur in a competitive acquisition market.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 1997

Japanese firms have been so successful in the world market especially in the 1980s due to their invocation technique, Kaizen. In the past decade, however, some countries, such as the United States, have recovered their competitiveness since they have benchmarked Japanese firms. The objective of this research is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Kaizen and suggest a checklist during its implementation in order to recommend future directions of Kazen for Korean firms so that those firms adopting it can prevent possible failures and gaim competitive advantage. Recommended future directions include the strong leadership of the top management during the implementation of Kaizen and employees' willingness to put the vision of their company first and their own interests second.

• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.129-137
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• 1991

In case a firm proceeds with TQC the activity of QCC, one of the activities concerned with TQC, is made first of all. There fore, in consideration that TQC could not be successful with the activity of QCC being unsuccessful a firm underlines activating QCC and makes considerable support of the educational discipline. However, as for the data of TQC having been introduced in domestic country no data related to construction industry have been found, all of them being concerned with manufacturing industry and it has happened that some firms of the construction industry make the negative reaction to the activity of QCC. So some of firms including our one have prepared and published their own texts and made them available by utilizing the translated Japanese data which were attained through Japanese construction firms. It is thought that a problem has been caused by the above-stated. While Japanese firms have made R & D of the features concerning to the most basic QCC activity for themselves, Korean ones have just followed and taken advantage of those originated by Japanese without being conscious of the basic idea, and this has caused the consequent failing of QCC activity. In other word, the emphasis of the results only rather than process has brought about the unsuccessful QCC activity.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.299-305
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• 2019

This study analyzed the relationship between the debt ratios of Korean and Japanese manufacturing firms with accruals and actual earnings managements after the global financial crisis. This study was conducted on Korean and Japanese firms from 2008 to 2015. As a result, the Korean firms, the higher (lower) debt ratio is, more up(down)side earnings management using discretionary accruals and operating cash flow. In contrast, the Japanese firms found that the higher(lower) the debt ratio is, more up(down)side through its actual activities (operating cash flows, manufacturing costs, discretionary costs) rather than accruals. This study establishes the academic basis for the decision-making of Korean-Japanese firmss by using the sample of each country to check what kind of decision-makers are making earnings managements at the present time when the relationship between Korea and Japan has suffered due to export restrictions. It is meaningful in that it was.

• STI Policy Review
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.17-39
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• 2016

Despite the importance of university-industry collaboration, issues pertaining to the characteristics of collaborating firms, their modes of interaction, and the relationship between these modes and outcomes are not well-researched. The impact of country's development on these issues is also unclear. This case study examines Japan and Thailand-respectively representing developed and developing countries-and features the following key findings: 1) the characteristics of firms affect modes, with large Japanese firms being more collaborative with universities, whereas Thai SMEs significantly collaborate more with universities; 2) the relationship between modes in Thai firms is stronger than those of Japanese firms because in Thailand, perhaps due to weak technological capacity, R&D collaboration is conducted alongside university consultancy services; and 3) in Japan, R&D and human resource development collaboration lead to product innovation, whereas different outcomes are expected from different modes in Thailand. Apparently, trivial informal collaborations do have significant impact on innovation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.70-83
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• 2018

Korea's five leading industries-chemical, automobile, shipbuilding, metal and electronics-have been the growth engines of the Korean economy for the last 30 years. However, with their performance weakening in the past few years, Korea's annual growth rate has dropped to less than 2%. Just as the Japanese economy struggled through the lost decades, Korea's leading industries have been facing signals of arriving at a Strategic Inflection Point ("SIP") since the mid-2000s. The objective of this study is to present an appropriate value strategy for Korean firms in leading industries to gain sustainable competitive advantages. This paper examines the following issues : First, it diagnoses the signs and timing of SIP for the five leading industries. Second, this study examines 78 Korean and Japanese firms in order to understand the adaptation strategies of the highest and lowest performing firms from a value strategy point of view. Third, it empirically analyzes the correlation between the indicators of value strategy and the accounting performances of the Korean and Japanese firms. The data set used in the cluster analysis were collected from KISLINE database of NICE Information Service and annual reports. The findings in the case analyses of high and low performing companies show that high value-added specialty chemical materials and electronic component manufacturers that had a strong focus on value creation were defined as high performing companies. And in the cosmetic and automobile industries, companies with a strong emphasis on value appropriation gained high performance. Furthermore, the study conducted a cluster analysis based on two indicators R&D and advertisement expense. The analysis shows that a significant gap exists in the operating incomes among three groups classified under the value strategy. The study recommends that Korean firms are requested to increase R&D expenditure, conduct M&A and collaborate with companies that own source technologies to narrow the technology gap and improve their segment portfolio from commodity to value-added products.