• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.157-180
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• 2018

This paper empirically analyzes how working conditions of employees and executives affect Korean companies' survival. To this end, a survival analysis based on the accelerated failure time model is conducted from the end of December 2012 to the end of September 2018 on the 2012 year-end financial data for corporations whose common stocks have ever been listed either in the KOSPI market or in the KOSDAQ market with fiscal year ending at the end of December. The analysis shows that the average wage level per employee and the number of executives relative to the number of employees threaten while the average duration of service for female employees prolongs firm survival. Here, the average wage level per employee has turned out to worsen firm survivability regardless of the gender of employees in question while the average duration of service improves firm survivability only in case the employees are female: the average duration of service for male employees or the entire employees has turned out not to have any statistically significant influence on firm survival. The average compensation per executive and the percentage of temporary employees have turned out not to have any statistically significant influence on firm survival while the percentage of female employees has shown statistically significant positive influence on firm survival in some, although not all, models employed in our study. These results are expected to be a good reference in the course of our reaching agreements regarding the improvement of working conditions either between firms and employees or among the members of the entire society.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.363-377
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• 2010

Although the importance of the service sector has been highlighted recently, service innovation remain under-researched by scholars. Innovation research based on manufacturing sector suggests that innovation strategy varies according to the objectives of innovation and has a positive influence on firm performance. To investigate the path that links the objectives of innovation, innovation strategy used and firm performance, this study develops a conceptual model of service innovation from the literature and tests the Structural Equation Model(SEM) using STEPI (Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute) data. We could identify the causal relationships both between the objectives of innovation and innovation strategy and between innovation strategy and firm performance in service as in manufacturing, but we also found that the results of the empirical study for the service industry, in particular, the empirical results on the relationship between the aims of innovation and innovation strategy used, are quite different from those for manufacturing.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.307-317
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• 2012

We investigate the long-term effect of servitization strategy on firm value. Manufacturing companies recognize servitization as their competitive strategies. While most of existing literature have focused on developing theory, presenting framework, or cases, only a few papers examine effects of servitization strategy empirically. We aims to empirically test the long-term relationship between servitization strategy and firm value. Service ratio and Tobin's q are used to measure the degree of servitization and firm performance, respectively. Data set covers 130 manufacturing companies for 12 years from 1998 to 2009.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.95-112
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• 2009

The paper investigates the determinants of firm's standardization activity in the Korean service industry. Standardization variables as dependent ones are standardization management at the firm level, domestic standardization activity, and international standardization activity. The independent variables include innovative activities(R&D intensity and patent application), firm size, export ratio, network, and firm's organization characteristics. We estimated the logistic regression model, using the data from 102 Korean service firms. The empirical findings are as follows. First, R&D intensity has a positive effect on international standardization activity, but not on the standardization management at the firm level and domestic standardization activity. Second, patent application has a negative effect on the standardization management at the firm level. Third, firm size doesn't have any influence on firms' standardization activities in the service sector. Fourth, the level of chief executive officer's interest on standardization is a very important factor in determining firms' efforts to participate standardization process, regardless of types of standardization activity.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-63
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• 2011

The aim of this paper is to consider the process of supplying trained workers with knowledge and skills for upcoming business opportunities and the process of training apprentices to be prepared to meet future demands in an IT service firm. As the demand for new workers fluctuates, a firm should employ a buffer workforce such as apprentices or interns. However, as a result of rapid business development, the capacity of the buffer may be exceeded, thus requiring the company to recruit skilled workers from outside the firm. Therefore, it is important for a firm to map out a strategy for manpower planning so as to fulfill the demands of new business and minimize the operation costs related to training apprentices and recruiting experienced workers. First, this paper analyzes the supply and demand of workers for the IT service in a knowledge-intensive field. It then presents optimal human resource planning strategies via the familiar method of stochastic process. Also, we illustrate that our model is applied to the human resource planning of an information security service firm in South Korea.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.173-193
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• 2005

ASP service that is emerging as a new form of application outsourcing has the advantage of lower cost and risk. Therefore, ASP service may be attractive for small firms and even some new companies. However, studies about ASP service are rare in academic and professional journals, and most of the articles about outsourcing were considering mainly large enterprises. The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of the some context variables of Korean small businesses on ASP service usage pattern, and the effect of ASP service usage pattern on user satisfaction and firm performance. The analysis results show that firm size has a positive impact on IT need of small businesses, and IT need of small businesses have a positive impact on training period and past usage period. Also, firm size, IT need, training period has an positive impact on ASP service usage pattern. However, ASP service usage period has no relationship on ASP service usage pattern. Finally, ASP service usage pattern has a positive impact on firm performance and user satisfaction, and user satisfaction has an impact on firm performance.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.123-137
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• 2007

The advent of the Internet and related Web technologies has created an easily accessible link between a firm and its customers, and has provided opportunities to a firm to use information technology to support supplementary after-sale services associated with a product or service. It has been widely recognized that supplementary services are an important source of customer value and of competitive advantage as the characteristics of the product itself. Many of these supplementary services are information-based and need not be co-located with the product, so more and more companies are delivering these services electronically. Net-based customer service, which is defined as an Internet-based computerized information system that delivers services to a customer, therefore, is the core infrastructure for supplementary service provision. The importance of net-based customer service in delivering supplementary after-sale services associated with product has been well documented. The strategic advantages of well-implemented net-based customer service are enhanced customer loyalty and higher lock-in of customers, and a resulting reduction in competition and the consequent increase in profits. However, not all customers utilize such net-based customer service. The digital divide is the phenomenon in our society that captures the observation that not all customers have equal access to computers. Socioeconomic factors such as race, gender, and education level are strongly related to Internet accessibility and ability to use. This is due to the differences in the ability to bear the cost of a computer, and the differences in self-efficacy in the use of a technology, among other reasons. This concept, applied to e-commerce, has been called the "e-commerce divide." High Internet penetration is not eradicating the digital divide and e-commerce divide as one would hope. Besides, to accommodate personalized support, a customer must often provide personal information to the firm. This personal information includes not only name and address, but also preferences information and perhaps valuation information. However, many recent studies show that consumers may not be willing to share information about themselves due to concerns about privacy online. Due to the e-commerce divide, and due to privacy and security concerns of the customer for sharing personal information with firms, limited numbers of customers adopt net-based customer service. The limited level of customer adoption of net-based customer service affects the firm profits and the customers' welfare. We use a game-theoretic model in which we model the net-based customer service system as a mechanism to enhance customers' loyalty. We model a market entry scenario where a firm (the incumbent) uses the net-based customer service system in inducing loyalty in its customer base. The firm sells one product through the traditional retailing channels and at a price set for these channels. Another firm (the entrant) enters the market, and having observed the price of the incumbent firm (and after deducing the loyalty levels in the customer base), chooses its price. The profits of the firms and the surplus of the two customers segments (the segment that utilizes net-based customer service and the segment that does not) are analyzed in the Stackelberg leader-follower model of competition between the firms. We find that an increase in adoption of net-based customer service by the customer base is not always desirable for firms. With low effectiveness in enhancing customer loyalty, firms prefer a high level of customer adoption of net-based customer service, because an increase in adoption rate decreases competition and increases profits. A firm in an industry where net-based customer service is highly effective loyalty mechanism, on the other hand, prefers a low level of adoption by customers.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.343-368
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• 2006

The rapid expansion of regionalism has resulted in the creation of blocs of the global economy, so that those countries not belonging to one or more blocs can be discriminated. The purpose of this paper is to examine the competition policy theoretically, international background with issues, and discussion trend of global enterprise. By doing them, this paper suggests the responsive plan, future prospects, and policy directions for the competition policy by distribution service. There is not a statistically significant relationship between international diversification strategy and firm performance. However, we observed some tendency that the larger the firm size, the higher the firm performance, assuming the degree of international diversification or multinationality to be constant. However, the export productivity increase after 1~2 years, and there exits a clear evidence that the innovation investment increases a firm's export competitiveness as time goes on.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.185-203
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• 2017

Call center service is enabled by the use of a firm's various information technologies (IT) and accumulated knowledge. IT and knowledge resources have been considered a fundamental infrastructure for developing a firm's business capabilities. Recognizing this, this study examines whether a firm's IT and customer knowledge resources enhance its customer service process capability and thereby contribute to creating superior customer service, at the level of customer service representatives (CSRs). That is, constructs in this study were measured on a basis of CSRs' perception. Moreover, this study verifies the moderating role of CSRs' computer self-efficacy on the relationships between IT and customer knowledge resources and customer service process capability. To test the proposed hypotheses, this study conducted partial least squares (PLS) analysis with a total of 234 data which were collected on CSRs working at four call centers. The key findings are as follows: first, IT infrastructure integration and customer knowledge integration are positively associated with customer service process capability. Second, customer service process capability is a key determinant of customer service performance. Finally, CSRs' computer self-efficacy has a moderating effect on the relationship between IT infrastructure integration and customer service process capability. The details of the findings and implications are presented.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.154-160
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• 2012

This paper reviewed the two proposed hypotheses. The first hypothesis is to test the relationship between knowledge management and incremental innovation, and the second hypothesis is to test the moderating effect of firm-size on that relationship. Data were gathered from 434 employees in service industry, and multiple regression analysis was used to test two proposed hypotheses. In the first hypothesis, it was appeared that knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer have positive effects on all incremental innovation factors (process innovation, operation innovation, service innovation). In the second hypothesis, it was appeared that firm-size has an positive interaction effect on incremental innovation in knowledge transfer, but not in knowledge acquisition. It means that knowledge transfer has more positive effect on incremental innovation in large firm-size than in small firm-size.