• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.147-172
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• 2020

This study presents the determinants of R&D efficiency as the focus on CEO's competency, which influences R&D competency and R&D efficiency. The research samples are 6,708 technology-innovation small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The independent variable is the R&D competency(existence of R&D organization, level of R&D personnel, R&D personnel management, R&D investment), the dependent variable is R&D efficiency. The moderator is the CEO's competency(experience level in its own industry, technical knowledge level, technology management strategy, management ability). R&D efficiency measures the relationship between inputs(level of R&D personnel, R&D investment) and outputs(patent applications, prototype) by the DEA. and the determinant analysis uses Tobit regression. As a result of the analysis, the existence of R&D organization and R&D personnel management is positively significant, level of R&D personnel and R&D investment is negatively significant for R&D efficiency. The moderating effect of CEO's competency on the relationship between the R&D competency and R&D efficiency is significant determinants of CEO's experience(experience level in its own industry, technical knowledge level) and technology management strategy. The finding is to measure the efficiency of R&D performance, and to analyze its determinants as the moderating effect of CEO's competency, using the technology appraisal data. In the conclusion session, the limitations of the research and future research directions were discussed.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.155-172
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• 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic not only posed an enormous human crisis, but also had a profound impact on firms' survival. Social distancing and global lockdown measures designed to protect human lives have paradoxically impaired the business environment. As a result, firms that sought to gain competitive advantage by leveraging external resources were cut off from the external world and faced unexpected challenges. Under these circumstances, researches were conducted in the early stage of the pandemic to explore how certain firms survived while others fell, but they were limited to re-examining business performance using traditional financial factors. However, this study aims to investigate the role of entrepreneurs' competency in crisis situations from the Resource-Based View (RBV), as such competency plays an important role in improving business performance and subsequently the probability of startups' survival. Specifically, we evaluated the performance as of end of 2019 of 1,127 startups evaluated by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KOTEC), which provides policy financing based on technology assessment, in 2016. We then conducted an empirical study to determine the mediating role of business performance in the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and firm survival by verifying how many of the sample firms were still in operation at the end of June 2023, when the Korean government declared COVID-19 as an endemic. For this purpose, we defined technological, financial, and marketing competencies as the sub-factors of entrepreneurial competency, and sales growth rate and employment growth rate as the sub-factors of business performance. The results of the empirical analysis showed that technological and financial competencies of the entrepreneur had a positive impact on both business performance and firm survival, and that sales growth rate and employment growth rate mediated the relationship between technological competence and firm survival. However, the positive influence of entrepreneurs' financial competence of the survival of startups was only evident through the growth of employment. This study is the first study in South Korea to define the survival factors of startups in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is expected to contribute to the theoretical and practical discussions on the importance of entrepreneurs' competency as a firms' survival factor based on RVB.