• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
• /
• 2002.05a
• /
• pp.294-301
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this research is to investigate the level of knowledge management in Korea small firms. The research scheme was experimented through a questionnaire survey answered by 150 firms. The research model was composed of five groups : 1) knowledge management and business strategic, 2) a culture and structure for knowledge management, 3) learning process and community 4) information technology to support knowledge management 5) a reward and performance measurement. The results of this research indicated that the level of knowledge management is different according to the characteristic of small firms. The result of the empirical analysis can be summarized as follows : First, the business culture for knowledge management is not performed pertinently. Second, the learning process for knowledge management and a reward and performance measurement is insufficient. Third, the characteristics of a firm should be considered for measuring the level of knowledge management.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.37-49
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this research is to investigate the level of knowledge management in Korea small firms. The research scheme was experimented through a questionnaire survey answered by 150 firms. The research model was composed of five groups : 1) knowledge management and business strategic, 2) a culture and structure for knowledge management, 3) learning process and community 4) information technology to support knowledge management 5) a reward and performance measurement. The results of this research indicated that the level of knowledge management is different according to the characteristic of small firms. The result of the empirical analysis can be summarized as follows : First, the business culture for knowledge management is not performed pertinently. Second, the learning process for knowledge management and a reward and performance measurement is insufficient. Third, the characteristics of a fm should be considered for measuring the level of knowledge management.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.49-67
• /
• 2009

As technological capabilities have enhanced, the patterns of innovation activities of latecomer firms changed to post catch-up mode. The purpose of this research is to analyze the post catch-up innovation patterns of technology-intensive small and medium firms of Korea. The innovation patterns can be divided into three types: the technology deepening innovation type, the new technology based innovation type and the architectural innovation type. The characteristics of the technology deepening innovation type are cumulative technological learning and the integration of new generic technology and existing technologies. The characteristics of new technology based type are the acquisition and revelations of new basic knowledges from former incubating organizations such as large firms and universities. The characteristics of the architectural innovation type are the learning of system architecture knowledge from former organization and interactive learning with user firms. These post catch up innovations also have some general characteristics. They effectively exploited the windows of opportunities which are opened in the middle of technological paradigm change.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.17-26
• /
• 2013

This research examines the effect of globalization of Korean economy on small and medium-sized entrepreneurial firms. When Korea underwent the Asian economic crisis in 1997, it reconstructed Korean venture industry and had helped fuel venture firms' rapid growth. Therefore, this study shows the changed structure of Korean economy and the change of venture ecosystem due to the Asian financial crisis. In spite of a favorable turn of the industrial structure toward venture firms, their globalization level is reported still being low. In this study, we also examine how the Korean economy's globalization affects to the venture environments, focusing on the degree of Korea venture's globalization and role of venture capital. This study indicates that the globalization of Korean economy has played a positive role in the growth of the venture firms. However, with the growth of venture firms, small and medium venture companies have received relatively little focuses in Korean economy because the government policy of economic development has been oriented to large companies for several decades.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.812-841
• /
• 2006

Previous studies have shown that the ex-ante financial ratios, mainly used by financial institutions for loan evaluation purpose, are related to the ex-post finn's performance of venture firm's. The main objective of this study is to examine whether non-financial variables such as 'technology', 'marketability', and 'other business indexes' have extra explanatory power in forecasting the ex-post firm's performance of small and medium size venture firm's in Korea. The implications and results of this study are expected to be useful in loan evaluation, investment decision and internal management decisions of venture firms. Among small and medium sized manufacturing firms funded in the year of 1999 through 2005, 416 firms are selected for our analysis. The relationship between evaluation indexes and firm's success/failure is investigated using binary logistic regression analysis and factor analysis with an aid of SPSS program. The summarized results are as follows. First, current evaluation model, used for loan evaluation purpose for small and medium size manufacturing firms show the same discriminatory power as previous prediction model. Second, among the tested additional variables, significant indices are 'technological capability of CEO', 'managerial capability of CEO', and 'business feasibility'. Third, while previous studies on evaluation structure had 3 factors, this study showed that valuation's structure has 6 factors.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.121-135
• /
• 1999

This study investigated the location conditions, spatial linkage structures, and firm specific problems of small firms of the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area by sectors and by areal distribution. The major locational advantages were closeness to customers and suppliers followed by accessibility to inter-state highways. These results were supported by spatial linkage structures in which within-region linkages occupied a greater portions of linkage, showing the importance of small firms in the regional economy. The linkage patterns showed distance decay effect with high elasticity. While there were no significant differences of locational conditions and spatial linkage structures of small firms between core and peripheral area, a slight difference was identified among sectors. Chemical related manufacturing firms show different locational conditions and spatial linkage structure with weak within-local linkages. The main locational disadvantages were lack of qualified labor, undesirable neighborhood, heavy tax, and space shortage. Considering the biggest problems such as lack of qualified labor, difficulties in sales/marketing, low accessibility to financial resource, and technological inability, the inter-related cooperative business networks among firms and regional institutions, consulting companies, chamber of commerce, and universities are needed to stimulate regional economic development and survival of small firms.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.35-50
• /
• 2017

The aims of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of firms financial status quo and the scale of financial support on SMEs overall performance. We have gathered the financial guarantee data from 1998 to 2013, provided by Korea Credit Guarantee Fund (KODIT), to analyze the effectiveness of Financial policy. To classify both financial status quo and scale of financial support, we utilized the following variables; Interest Coverage Ratio (ICR) and newly guaranteed amount ratio. To take the measurement of the overall performance, we employed profitability, growth ratio and activity index. To minimize the effect of repeated financial support (redundancy benefits), firms were selected based on the following criteria: firms that receive no financial support prior to implementing such policy over the last 3 years and no new financial support over the last 2 years. Results suggest that firms with higher ICR and large newly guaranteed amount influence on financial performance in terms of profitability index. Firms with lower ICR and large scale financial support showed a better performance compare to firms with small-scale financial support. Firms with large-scale financial support, irrespective of ICR inclined to have better performance to those of small-scale financial support in terms of growth index. For activity index, however, firms with large scale support led to higher performance in the short term. In turn, our analysis presents objective perspective with respect to the effectiveness of financial policy through credit guarantee on overall performance of SMEs. This study, therefore, implies that well-balanced SMEs supporting policy may lead to better directions.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
• /
• v.9 no.11
• /
• pp.93-104
• /
• 2018

Purpose - For small and medium sized firms, CEO characteristics are main factor influencing firms' prosperity as well as performance. So it is quite natural that many people are interested in factors of CEO that matters. In this research, CEO characteristics in terms of capabilities and skill or special knowledge necessary to run the business are invested for manufacturing firms. Precedent studies reveal that CEO characteristics such as psychological factors including desire to succeed, tendency to take risks, personal factors including age, year of running business, and task related factors including managing capability, communication skills, network influence firm performance for manufacturing firms. However, these studies simply verify whether or not those factors affect firm's managing performance. This study, however, goes further to investigate how is the affecting process from CEO's capabilities and organization characteristics to firm's core competence, and from core competence to advantages, and from advantages to managing performance. Research design, data, and methodology - We make a questionnaire and surveyed manufacturing firm CEO's in Gyeonggi-do area. General characteristics analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, and control effect analysis was conducted. SPSS 2.0 Win, version was used. Results - The CEO characteristics including basic capability, task capability, leadership, and organization characteristics affect core competence at the statistically significant level. And, core competence affect both price advantage and differentiation advantage at the significant level. Some unique finding is that while differentiation advantage affects both financial achievement and non-financial achievement, price advantage does not affect both financial and non-financial achievement. And firm characteristics mainly measured by CEO characteristics of skills has control effects on the trace from core competence to price advantage. Conclusions - For small and medium sized firms CEO characteristics is the most important factor influencing firm's prosperity. For manufacturing firms, whether CEO has the skill or special knowledge to run the firm is critical factor. The study results show that CEO's for manufacturing firms put importance on price and price advantage which seems to be familiar to them. However, the price advantage does not influential to financial and non-financial achievement. This result suggests that small and medium sized manufacturing firms' CEO's should make effort to improve other aspects of advantages to be more competitive.

• Journal of Labour Economics
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.39-81
• /
• 2018

This study focuses on whether non-standard workers are matched by voluntary contract with employers in the labor market and analyzes the factors of involuntary choice of non-standard employees that are diverse by firm size. For the analysis I consider non-standard employees as either voluntary or involuntary according to the push/pull theory based on labor mobility. The Economic Activity Census Added Survey data 2016 show that the proportion of involuntary non-standard employees is greater than voluntary ones as the firm size is smaller. As a result of the analysis, involuntary non-standard employees are not significantly discriminated from voluntary non-standard employees in large firms. However, in small and medium-sized firms and micro small-sized firms, workers are more likely to be involuntarily non-standard if they are older or less educated. In addition, they are more likely to be employed involuntarily in micro small-sized firms than in small and medium-sized firms. Therefore, we should take into account the mismatching problems of compensation, specialty, and career in order to establish policies on non-standard workers. In addition to the financial support for small and medium-sized and micro small-sized firms, it is necessary to provide workers with job information that matches their job skills and career experiences.

• International Commerce and Information Review
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.121-148
• /
• 2011

Korean small and medium sized firms are dramatically expanding during the past two decades. Since small and medium sized firms begun to invest overseas to cope with the external and internal business environment. the influencing factors should defined for the successful foreign investment. This paper presents the research model explaining successful knowledge transfer between Korean small and medium sized firms and partners for foreign investment. This model examines investing companies' organizational characteristics, partners' learning capability and relational characteristics between two partners. Detail variables include the learning culture and codifiability of investing companies, and absorptive capability of partners, and communication and trust as a relational factors between investing companies and partners. The result of empirical analysis of sample companies shows that knowledge culture and codifiability of investing companies, and communication from the relational factors are important for knowledge transfer. These results provide some implications for the successful foreign investment of small and medium sized firms. Firstly the investing company should develop its own learning culture and internal procedure for the successful foreign investment. And frequent communication channel is necessary for knowledge transfer and the trustful relationship between investors and partner.