• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.101-114
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• 2019

E-business enables SMEs to reduce transaction costs and maintain export competitiveness in rapidly changing overseas markets. It is required to raise the entrepreneurial awareness of e-business of exporting SMEs. This study examines the characteristics of enterprises that play an important role in the introduction and utilization of e-business by domestic export SMEs. It explores the mechanisms that search and exploit these opportunities in an entrepreneurial way, and examines the process leading to export performance. We conducted a survey for empirical analysis and analyzed the data from 316 companies using e-business in Korea. As a result, both the international entrepreneurial orientation and the IT competence tended to be significant for the perception of e-business entrepreneurs and showed a different pattern in terms of size of influence. In addition, cooperation and operation among e-business entrepreneurs' perceptions have a direct impact on the export performance of SMEs.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.9
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• pp.527-536
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• 2020

International business research presents a broad consensus on the importance of dynamic capabilities in the internationalization of SMEs. However, there is a lack of research on assessing the impact of dynamic capabilities and the level of SMEs' internationalization operating in a turbulent and dynamic business environment. This study examines the impact of environmental dynamism and three sets of dynamic capabilities, namely, sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capabilities on internationalized SMEs' geographic scope. In addition, this research examines the association between internationalized SMEs' characteristics: SME's age, size, and SME owner/manager's international experience and SMEs' geographic scope. This study used a quantitative research and employed survey questionnaires to collect data from 305 internationalized Malaysian manufacturing SMEs. Anova tests and Chi Square tests were employed to analyze data collected from respondents using SPSS. Research findings revealed that environmental dynamism and dynamic capabilities have a significant impact on internationalized SMEs' geographic scope, however, none of the internationalized SMEs' characteristics had a significant relationship with their geographic scope. The result of this research suggest internationalized SMEs owner/managers need to possess sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capabilities, and monitor business environmental dynamism to increase their geographic scope. This paper ends with drawing a set of concluding remarks and recommendations.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.61-67
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• 2020

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the interaction effect of customers relationship management (CRM) on the competitive advantage (CA) of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in Yemen. Research design, data and methodology: This study applied a quantitative approach in dealing with the interaction effect of CRM dimensions and SMEs' competitive advantage in Yemen. The research uses a sample of 247 manufacturing SMEs surveyed in Yemen. Results: The results indicate that only three dimensions of CRM, namely (TCM), (KM) and (CRMO), have a significant effect on SMEs' competitive advantage, but not that between (KCF) and SMEs' competitive advantage. Conclusions: The findings of this study offer important insights for owners and managers of SMEs, researchers and policymakers to further understand the effects of CRM on SMEs' competitive advantage. SMEs should also be encouraged to develop their CRM to improve their competitive advantage. Lastly, this study makes several contributions to the literature, the first of which is the provision of evidence concerning the major role of CRM as a dependent variable and competitive advantage as an independent variable. The second contribution pertains to its pioneering status in examining the direct relationship between CRM dimensions and the competitive advantage of SMEs in a Middle Eastern country.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.41-50
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• 2020

The paper investigates the factors that affect the demand for a voluntary audit of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. A structured questionnaire survey of 284 SMEs was employed, preceded by in-depth interviews with auditors and SMEs' managers. The research used logistic regression estimator to address econometric issues and to improve the accuracy of the regression coefficients. The results show that the degree of director's view on voluntary audit, related stakeholder, degree of recommendation, and firm size have a statistically significant positive effect on audit decisions of SMEs while degree of audit fee has a statistically significant negative effect, and degree of subjective norm does not affect. This indicated that SMEs are more likely to have an external audit if they have some typical features: it is becoming larger in terms of size, and the directors consider that the audit has a relative benefit outweighing its cost. The research results suggested that Vietnam Government should make a statutory audit of SMEs' financial statements rather than make it an option for SMEs. The auditing firms were also recommended to actively take their audit services to SMEs rather than waiting for the SMEs' managers to contact them for their services.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.959-968
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• 2020

Research underlined that Small and Medium Enterprises' performance is enhanced by different types of innovation capabilities. This research tends to present a comprehensive model to explain the relationship between innovation capabilities and SMEs' financial and operational performance. Specifically, this study tends to achieve three objectives: explores the set of product, process, organizational and marketing innovation capabilities possessed by owners/managers of SMEs and their impact on Chinese manufacturing SMEs' operational and financial performance dimensions, identify the determinants of innovation capabilities, and determine the contextual factors that moderate innovation capabilities and SMEs' performance. This research employed a qualitative research method using in-depth interviews with eight owners/managers of Chinese manufacturing SMEs. Research findings revealed that product and marketing innovation capabilities have a significant impact on SMEs' financial performance while process and organizational innovation capabilities positively influence SMEs' operational performance. The major determinants of innovation capabilities involved availability of sufficient organizational resources, entrepreneurial orientation, knowledge development and external networks. The contextual moderating factors on the relationship between innovation capabilities and SMEs' performance involved internal factors which are: SME size, SMEs' owner/manager work experience, entrepreneurial mindset; and external factors: market dynamism and cooperation strategies. This paper ends by drawing some concluding remarks and proposing future research avenues.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.411-422
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• 2021

Technological adaption and innovative activities foster small and medium enterprises (SMEs) growth, especially women-owned SMEs in Pakistan, However, the impact of technological adaption and innovative activities on SMEs growth in the context of Pakistan has been examined by very researchers. This study aims to identify the effect of technology and open innovation policies on the growth of women-owned SMEs and the present trends and management challenges for successful full implementation of open innovation. The study considered a sample of 693 women enterprises located in different cities in Pakistan. Open innovation is measured through eight innovative practices, reflecting the exploration and exploitation of technology in SMEs. Study findings revealed that women enterprises were involved in several open innovation policies during the last five years. Moreover, the study indicated no significant differences between manufacturing and service SMEs regarding open innovation practices; however, women enterprises are more impressively engaged in open innovation practices. Findings also reveal that women-owned SMEs follow open innovation, mainly for market-related intentions, to compete with competitors and meet customers' demands. Thus, it is suggested that government policy relating to thriving SMEs owned by women should be innovation-oriented. The study contributes to the theoretical and practical implications. Further, the study is helpful for SMEs, researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.195-210
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• 2020

This study describes the structure of the capital markets for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startup companies in Korea, which is an emerging market that has experienced drastic changes. The overall capital market can be divided into private and public capital markets. In the private capital market, most of the demand for capital comes from non-listed private firms, including startups and SMEs. In the case of SMEs and startups, the KOSDAQ, the Korea New Exchange (KONEX), and primary collateralized bond obligations (P-CBOs) are part of the public capital market. SMEs and startups are generally incapable of raising sufficient capital owing to their low credit ratings, and they largely have limited access to primary markets to issue shares and borrow money. The Korean government has developed a systematic financial aid program to provide funds to these companies. The fund for SMEs has significantly contributed to the development of the venture capital market. Many Korean banks provide substantial lending to SMEs, but this lending is available only because of the Korean government's loan recovery guarantee. Furthermore, SMEs can issue corporate debt in the form of primary collateralized bond obligations through government guarantees, but such debt issuances have placed increasing pressure on public guarantee institutions.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.24-27
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• 2005

Development of a 600 kJ class Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) system is being in progress by Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute(KERI). High temperature superconducting (HTS) wires are going to be used for the windings for the SMES system is presented in this paper. We considered BSCCO-2223 wire for the HTS windings and the operating temperature of the winding was decided to be 20 K which will be accomplished by conduction cooling method using cyro-coolers. Auto-Tuning Niching Genetic Algorithm was adopted for an optimization method of the HTS magnets in the SMES system. The objective function of the optimal process was minimizing total amount of the HTS wire. As a result, we obtained output parameters for optimization design of 600 kJ class SMES under several constrained conditions. These HTS windings are going to be applied to the SMES system whose purpose is stabilization of the power grid.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.113-137
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• 2015

Many scholars have addressed the technological convergence of small-medium sized firms in Korea and their impact on the economic growth of nation. Nevertheless, most studies have been investigated the relationship between entrepreneurship and venture creation, and a few studies have analyzed the innovation and technological convergence of SMEs. The purpose of this research is to gain industrial insight into the technological convergence and to suggest a dynamic growth policy for entrepreneurs of SMEs to improve their convergence performance based on IT and BT. Therefore, we intend to propose solutions to these key questions in convergence such as; what are the key patterns in the process of technological convergence of SMEs on IT and BT, and what kinds of strategy do their need? In order to answer these research questions, we adopt network analysis using patent citation information. Results of network analysis revealed that building ecosystem based on government and universities is one of the most important factors for the future growth of SMEs in Korea. Also, the fit between technological convergence direction of SMEs and division of convergence structure of government and universities will be positively associated with dynamic growth of SMEs in Korea. In conclusion, this research extends the current studies on important aspects of SMEs in the technological convergence process by proposing their growth in convergence process to a newly converging context, IT and BT, and shed light on the integrative perspectives of crucial roles of SMEs on innovation performance in the IT and BT technological convergence.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.61-72
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• 2013

This research aims to identify promising IT items from the perspectives of Korean SMEs and further to development a policy for SMEs in the IT industry. For this purpose, we adopted a bottom-up approach by discovering IT items on high demand by SMEs as their now growth engines and thus used a survey method. We also analyzed the ecosystem characteristics for the items to help policy-makers establish customized strategy to support their growth. We believe that this research is timely when the concept of ecosystem has emerged and the role of SMEs is emphasized in the IT industry. And the research results are expected to produce valuable information to make a policy for promoting IT items for SMEs and ultimately leading to balanced growth of large firms and SMEs.