• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.225-237
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• 2021

The current study aims to classify what determines entrepreneurial leadership among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Saudi Arabian context. It also attempted to recognize the role played by entrepreneurial leadership by supporting SMEs in the nation's sustainable economic growth. The study is based on a primary survey administered among SMEs in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia. Overall, 152 responses were collected. However, after data cleaning, only 107 were found to be fit for final analysis. Structural Equation Modelling using SmartPLS® Software was applied for analysis. The findings emerged from the study immensely concluded that entrepreneurial leadership is an essential instrument for managers/owners of the SMEs sector who aim to improve the efficiency of tasks and contextual performance in Saudi Arabia. The study came across that "ability to absorb uncertainty," "ability to build commitment," "the ability to frame the Challenge," "the ability of path-clearing," and "ability to specify limits," are the five constructs that help frame the entrepreneurial leadership in the Saudi context. The study suggests that leadership trainers, SME policymakers must focus on precisely these skills to inculcate the ability of entrepreneurial leadership among Saudi entrepreneurs, SMEs owners, and managers.

• Journal of Wellbeing Management and Applied Psychology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.75-89
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• 2024

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of coaching leadership on ESG management performance through employee innovation behavior in the context of SMEs. Amid the lack of ESG-related research on SMEs, this study is significant in that it empirically verified that coaching leadership can contribute to the improvement of ESG performance of SMEs by inducing innovative behavior of employees. For the study, a survey was conducted on 244 employees of domestic SMEs. As a result of the study, it was found that coaching leadership partially had a positive (+) effect on ESG performance. Specifically, direction suggestion and competency development had a positive effect on the environment, social responsibility, and governance structure of ESG performance, but the relationship with performance evaluation did not have a significant effect. In addition, the direction of coaching leadership and competency development had a positive effect on innovation behavior, but performance evaluation was not significant. Innovative behavior had a significant positive (+) effect on all aspects of ESG performance (environment, social responsibility, and governance), and showed a significant mediating effect in the relationship between coaching leadership and ESG performance. This suggests that innovative behavior plays an important role in mediating the relationship between the sub-factors of coaching leadership and ESG performance. The theoretical significance of this study is to support the innovation behavior of members through coaching leadership in the SME field and to identify a path to increase ESG performance as a result. In addition, most previous studies on the relationship between ESG and innovation behavior have shown that innovation behavior is promoted by the influence of ESG, but this study confirmed that innovation behavior of SME members is an important factor in improving ESG performance. These results provided practical and policy implications for promoting ESG performance by leading the use of coaching leadership and innovation behavior in the SME field.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.231-248
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• 2021

This study aims to examine an effective path that links the use of export promotion programs(EPPs) to the export performance of SMEs. In particular, the study focuses on what role the export innovativeness of SMEs plays between EPPs and export performance. In order to verify the conceptual model, the structural equation modeling is applied, using the data collected from a sample of 152 Korean SME exporters. The study highlights the notion that the relationship between the use of EPPs and export performance is not direct and that higher performance can be achieved through export innovativeness, the ability to reconstruct internal resources and to respond quickly to changes in the export market. The results of the empirical analysis show that EPPs partially mediate the relationship between export market-orientation and export innovativeness, and that such mediated export innovativeness continues to fully mediate the relationship between EPPs and export performance. That is, if SMEs make good use of EPPs that meet their needs, they can be encouraged to re-bundle or strengthen their existing resources and capabilities, which in turn lead to higher export performance. The study thus helps extend understanding of EPPs and export performance literature.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.217-231
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• 2018

In Korea, small and medium sized domestic enterprises(SMEs) play an pivotal role in the national economy, accounting for 99.8% of all enterprises, 87.9% of total employment, and 48.3% of production. and SMEs were driving a real force of the development of national economy in many respects such as innovation, job creation, industrial diversity, balanced regional development. Despite their crucial role in the national development, most of SMEs suffer from a lack of R&D capabilities and equipments as well as funding capacity. Government-Supported Research Institute(GRI) can provide SMEs with valuable supplementary technological knowledges and help them build technological capacities. so, In order to effectively support SMEs, government and GRI must be a priority to know about the factors influencing the performance related to technology transfer and technological collaborations. The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of Innovative competences and CEO's entrepreneurship on Organizational performance in ICT small and medium enterprises, including the moderating effect of Social capital. This study adopted research variables such as Innovative competence, CEO's entrepreneurship as independent variables, with Organizational performance as a dependent variable, including the moderating variable of Social capital. 1,200 companies data which in the field of ICT SMEs were collected from the survey. The result of this empirical study is summarized as follows, First, CEO's entrepreneurship was confirmed to have a significant effect on organizational performance, and social capital variables were confirmed to have a moderating effect between entrepreneurship and organizational performance. Second, it was found that the company's Innovative competence was significantly affected the organizational performance. and also that social capital variables moderating effects. From these findings, it was confirmed that the Innovatibe competence plays an important role in influencing corporate performance.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.923-930
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• 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic weakened the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. The decline in turnover is one that is felt by the batik industry in East Java, and the decline in turnover in the batik industry is very drastic. This research was conducted to prove the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMEs in the batik industry. One model is proposed to prove the existence of an increase in the performance of the batik industry's SMEs by implementing a customer relationship management strategy, business strategy, and market orientation. The study population was the batik industry entrepreneurs in East Java, Indonesia, using SEM analysis based on Amos, purposive sampling method, and a sample of 180 respondents. The results showed that the model was accepted. The results also show that customer relationship management and business strategy contributed to the performance of SMEs, while market orientation did not contribute to the performance of SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. To be able to maintain the sustainability of the company, the steps taken by the company are to lay off some of the employees, and during the production period the production stops, and focus on selling goods that have been previously produced.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.109-118
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• 2023

Purpose - This research paper aims to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and government support programs (GSP) on new product performance in Korean Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME). We specifically focus on the interaction between these two factors and their influence on the new product performance of Korean SMEs. Research design, data, and methodology - We collected survey questionnaires from SMEs that are certified with Inno-biz by the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS 26 and AMOS to create an integrated model. Result - Based on the analysis, our findings indicate that the proactiveness and innovativeness dimensions of EO have a positive effect on new product performance. However, the risk-taking dimension of EO has a negative effect. Additionally, GSP exhibit both positive and negative moderating effects on different dimensions of EO. Conclusion - It is important to recognize that GSP are not a universal solution for all challenges faced by SMEs. Hence, it is crucial for policy-makers to have a clear understanding of SMEs' capabilities and the level of EO dimensions in order to identify types of GSP that could lead to positive outcomes, while minimizing the negative effects of GSP.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.123-150
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• 2015

The present study examined the moderating influences of firm type(B2B, B2C) on the relationships between SMEs' utilization of government export assistance programs, firm capabilities(marketing & technology capabilities) and export performances(financial and strategic performances). The results of regression analyses on 247 B2B and 137 B2C cases showed that the positive influence of utilization of export assistance programs on financial performance was greater for B2B than for B2C SMEs. This construct, however, had no influence on strategic performance for neither B2B nor B2C cases. Further, both marketing and technology capabilities have positive influences on each of financial and strategic performances. Marketing capability, however, had a greater influence on financial performance for B2C than for B2B SMEs. Technology capability had a greater influence on financial performance for B2B than for B2C SMEs. Implications, limitations, and future studies were also discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.70-79
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• 2019

Domestic SMEs play a key role in production and employment, accounting for 98.9% of total enterprises, 74.4% of employment, 50.8% of production, and 49.0% of value added (as of 2016). However, they are faced with difficulties of survival because of continuous decrease in profitability, shortage of funds and manpower, insufficient accumulation of technology, minimum wage increase, and 52-hour workweek. In order for SMEs to continue to develop in such a difficult environment, we must constantly innovate our organization by making full use of our knowledge, information, experience and ability. To do this, CEO (management) leadership is very important to ensure that the best people are focused on the organizational innovation and management performance without moving the company. In this study, we wanted to establish empirically how the newly emerging compassionate rationalism leadership of SMEs business managers affected the innovation activities and management performance of companies. Research has shown that management's compassionate rationalism leadership has a positive and significant causal relationship with the innovation activities and management performance of the enterprise. Therefore, SMEs managers need to learn the bottom eight strategic factors of compassionate rationalism leadership and use them strategically to make efforts to create positive emotions for the organization so that members can be immersed in innovative activities and management performance creation.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.41-62
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• 2016

This study made an analysis of the effects of performance and learning orientation for the existing FTA on the intention to use a trilateral FTA among Korea, China and Japan. The results of the empirical analysis of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs) located in Gwangju and Jeonnam provinces are as follows. First, there is a positive correlation between the effects of performance for the existing FTA and intention of a trilateral FTA. This result suggests that SMEs' performance feedback can be used as an asset of corporate experience and will be helpful to increase the intention to use a trilateral FTA by contributing to have sustainable competitive advantage of companies. Secondly, there is a positive correlation between the SMEs' learning orientation about FTA and intention to use a trilateral FTA. This result indicates that SMEs have more learning orientation for FTA. They actively acquire and diffuse information. These activities can be helpful for having prior knowledge and absorptive capacity. In conclusion, this study is considered to provide useful theoretical and practical implications that can contribute to enhancing the using intention of a trilateral FTA by explaining the significance of performance feedback and learning orientation.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.107-125
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of FTA information learning in export SMEs. Therefore, this study has constructed an integrated model including the moderating effects of FTA information learning on the of export performance in SME. The relationship between SMEs' localization strategy, product innovation capacity, and FTA information learning was linked to export performance, and an empirical analysis was conducted on 195 export SMEs. The path analysis was performed using the structural equation model(SEM), and six hypotheses including the control effect were tested. As a result, the localization strategy of SMEs positively influenced product innovation capacity. On the other hand, FTA information learning did not show significant results. Product innovation capacity and FTA information learning as an antecedents showed significant results in terms of export performance. In the moderated effects analysis, the moderated effect between the localization strategy and FTA information learning did not show significant effect on the product innovation capacity. Whereas the moderated effect between the product innovation capacity and the FTA information learning significant influence on the export performance of SMEs.