• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.105-118
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• 2015

Purpose - Currently, strengthening small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in terms of competitiveness is a key economic issue. However, the problem is that many SMEs lack the internal competence required to cope with a rapidly changing market structure. Such problems can act as an obstacle to economic development, yet most SMEs in Korea are dealing with this problem today. A company's source of competitive advantage is changing from quantity to quality, facility to knowledge, and hardwork to creativity. Under such circumstances, a company should place learning and sharing of knowledge and continuously creating new knowledge as its priority. This study aims to identify the effect of a chief executive officer's (CEO) compassion and forgiveness - positive factors in organizational emotion - on learning organization activities and organizational performance, through a theoretical comparison. Research design, data, and methodology - For this study, SMEs based in Daejeon and Chungcheong area were selected. To secure credibility of the data, the subjects were selected among those who have been working at the business for six months or longer. The survey was conducted for 30 days from March 5, 2015 to April 5, 2015. Both offline and online surveys were conducted. Fifty companies were chosen and 700 questionnaires were distributed, with 506 used for analysis. Fifty subject companies (25 from Daejeon, 10 from Chungnam, 10 from Chungbuk, and five from Sejong) were selected and the objective, target, and survey content were explained to a manager at each company either face-to-face or on the phone. Of the total of 700 questionnaires distributed via mail or e-mail, 78.6% or 550 copies were returned. Excluding 44 insufficient questionnaires, the remainder, 506 questionnaires, were used for analysis. Results - This study analyzed how the CEO's compassion and forgiveness affects learning organization activities and organizational performance. First, compassion of the CEO at the SMEs directly affected the learning organization activities and indirectly affected the organizational performance. Second, forgiveness of the CEO at the SMEs did not affect the learning organization activities and organizational performance directly or indirectly. Conclusions - The study conclusions are as follows. First, CEO compassionate behavior at the SMEs was a significant variable that directly and indirectly affected learning organization activities and organizational performance. Therefore, the CEO of an SME can create a positive organizational atmosphere through compassionate behaviors in the organization. Second, the forgiving behavior of the CEO did not have direct or indirect effects on learning organization activities and organizational performance. However, the reason for a CEO to continue his or her forgiving behavior is because it strengthens employee resilience, commitment, and self-efficacy to protect the organization from negative influences such as layoffs, risks, and wrongdoings. The action of forgiveness does not have direct or indirect effects. However, the CEO shall continue such behavior to strengthen members' physiological resilience, commitment, and self - effectiveness, and to protect the organization from risks including layoff and external negative factors.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.115-140
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• 2012

From a point of knowledge based view, IUI(Industry-University-Institute) R&D collaboration is recognized as an important way to acquire lacking technology and knowledge. In this study, we investigated firm performance of IUI R&D collaboration on national R&D project. That is, we identified whether a collaborative research really affects firm performance, and whether firm performance is differed by types of collaboration. To test our hypotheses, we selected 250 Korean SMEs(Small and Medium Enterprises) which were funded from government R&D for 2006-2009, and we verified relations between the ratio and/or types of R&D collaboration and firm performance. Firm performance was measured by number of patent applied and ROA(Return on Assets) after completion of the project (in year t+1). Findings showed that the relationship between the ratio of R&D collaboration and technological performance was inverted U-shape. Among types of R&D collaboration, though inter-industry collaborative research was negatively related to technological performance, IUI collaborative research was positively related to technological performance. However, the ratio and types of R&D collaboration had no relation to economic performance. The results of this study will contribute to the strategy of SMEs as well as the policy of a government with regard to IUI R&D collaboration.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.57-84
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• 2013

New product development(NPD) is imperative management activity for growth and survival of the firm. In the context of the small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs), the firm became further dependent upon NPD with the increasing turbulence in environments. This research suggests the role of entrepreneurship orientation(EO) and absorptive capacity(ACAP) that affect the success rate of NPD in SMEs. Although each of them has been highlighted as critical resources in the aspect of the sustainable competitive advantage, the relationship and the effect between EO and ACAP have received scant attention. Based on the sample of 261 Korean SMEs, this study examines the direct/indirect effect of EO and ACAP on NPD performance. While innovativeness of EO has the direct effect on NPD performance, both risk-taking and proactiveness of EO show no significance. While realized ACAP has the positive influence on NPD performance, potential ACAP shows no significant influence. In addition, we found that the impact of innovativeness on NPD performance was being partially mediated by ACAP whereas the relationship between proactiveness and NPD performance being fully mediated by ACAP. These findings would provide generic insights that both exploration and exploitation regarding knowledge and resources in SMEs are necessary in order to increase NPD performance and two activities have to align with EO.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.387-397
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• 2015

In this paper, the determinants of the number of job changes in the SMEs (small and medium enterprises) youth-intern project is analysed, utilizing SMEs youth-intern DB and employment insurance DB. Since the number of job changes are count data which take integer values other than negative values, general linear regression analysis becomes inappropriate. Therefore, four models such as Poisson regression model, zero inflated Poisson regression model, negative binomial regression model and zero inflated negative binomial regression model are tried to fit count data. A zero inflated negative binomial regression model is selected to be the best model. Major results are the followings. First, the number of job changes is shown to be significantly smaller in the treatment group than in the control group. Second, the number of job changes turns out to be significantly smaller in the young-age group than in the old-age group. Third, it is also shown that the number of job changes of man is significantly greater than that of woman. Lastly, the number of job changes in the bigger firm is shown to be significantly less than that of the smaller firm.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.731-746
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• 2011

The successful and sustainable growth of SMEs depends on their ability of strengthen their competitiveness in quality and cost and service more than anything else as a fundamental of operation. Among these key competitive factors of SMEs, quality is the most critical factor in manufacturing business fields. Because quality strongly influence cost and service performance on this manufacturing business field. There are many different ways to improve the quality performance but it needs proper management decision to choose the best way what can maximize outputs with minimum inputs. And it needs effective measurement methods and some indicators to analysis the quality performance properly. The quality cost is one of the simplest key indicators to measure the quality performance and the effectiveness of quality related management decisions. The major purpose of this study is to diagnose the categorized current level of actual quality cost of local SMEs to maximize their quality management effectiveness through comparing their level with others what's expressed in early studies. In this study, through survey on local SMEs, we found that their average annual quality cost ratio versus turnover - Total amount of annual quality cost divided by annual turnover - is around 3.69% excluded some SME's performances what have different quality control measures with others. And we found some results what corresponded with the early studies on the correlations between those categorized quality costs factors and some discrepancies between some of the literature model and the early case study results as follows. There were negative correlations between the Prevention costs and the External failure costs, and the Appraisal costs and the External failure costs, and there was positive correlation between the Appraisal costs and Internal failure costs same as early studies. But, we couldn't found any strong negative correlations between the Cost of control - Preventive costs & Appraisal costs - and the Cost of Failure of control - Internal & External failure costs -. It reveals not only the lack of effectiveness on their preventive or appraisal activities but also it can reveal there were so many effective ways to prevent the failure costs properly such as some innovative investment on Factory automation includes Error Proofing and more preventive actions to improve the effectiveness of the typical management methods likes CE (Concurrent Engineering), APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning), FMEA (Failure Mode & Effect Analysis) etc.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.368-377
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• 2018

The n-nitrilotris(methylene) phosphonic acid (NTPA) potassium salt was synthesized as a draw solute for forward osmosis. NTPA-4K, NTPA-5K and NTPA-6K were synthesized by varying the content of KOH added to NTPA and confirmed by $^1H$-NMR and $^{13}C$-NMR. The osmotic pressure, viscosity, water flux and reverse salt flux were measured to characterize the draw solute. In the forward osmosis process when distilled water was used as a feed solution and 0.5 M of NTPA-4K, NTPA-5K and NTPA-6K were used as a draw solution, the water flux was 35.8, 38.8 and 42.2 LMH, the reverse salt flux was 5.4, 6.9 and 7.4 gMH, respectively. It was confirmed that the water flux was lower than the conventional NaCl draw solution, but the reverse salt flux was much lower. In order to recover the diluted draw solution, nanofiltration was conducted. The results showed that the draw solute could be retained by above 90%.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.457-467
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to develop New-IT internship and to search for the way to reduce quality mismatch and unemployment ratio and to ultimately enhance its effectiveness of university-industry collaboration(UIC) in the field of information technology in Korea. To achieve the goal of this study, we tried to come up with more job creation than educational UIC. The survey(based on CIPP model) based on the reaction of companies and interns participating in IT internship program promoted by MKE(Ministry of Knowledge and Economy) shows that intern experience helped them to get jobs and longer intern period gave them to find job more easily. This program is designed to focus on intern matching between students' major and their intern jobs, and requires new employees' level of job quality. They(56%) preferred to hire local college students majoring in special technology area related to regional innovation industry cluster. It also found that intern companies(87%) wanted to participate in this program again and hired intern students(61%) as showing the possible connection of internship and employment. IT Internship program affected students(68.3%) good images about small and medium enterprises(SME) after finishing internship.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.26
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• pp.157-172
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• 2012

In order to overcome the limits of domestic image content market, entering the global market is inevitable and expanding our market volume in foreign market as in domestic market is an important factor that determines the future of Korea image content industry. Suggestions and discussions on policy for investments on domestic image content should be carried out to resolve such situation. Specially, the reason why cooperative system of central government and local government is in dire need is because cultural content industry support measures of central government is unsatisfactory and local government is not adequate enough to respond to the global environment because investment resources of small and medium enterprises in cultural content is insufficient. This paper intends to study cases of policy promoted by domestic local government and support cases of foreign countries when domestic image content industry is expanding into the global market, and to search for solutions from integrated functional perspective of central government and local government for international co-production environment. This study suggests the necessity of political connection in terms of central government strengthening assistance policy on dispersed policy of local government who operates 11 cultural industry promotion districts throughout the country. First, this study suggests the possibility of expanded international co-production by central government and local government through investment(fund).

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.341-366
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• 2013

The term, Mittelstand, has no exact english translation for the definition, but, today, Mittelstand refers to small and medium-sized enterprises(SME), mostly family-owned firms in Germany. The Mittelstand is called the backbone of the German economy because it drove the economic miracle after World War II. During the global recession and the euro zone's debt crisis in recent years, in which european businesses have faced the near-collapse of competitiveness particularly in manufacturing, the German exports are booming and exceeded exports of China in 2012. Most importantly, the Germany economic performance has been widely attributed to the strength of the Mittelstand. Many of countries, even some leading public companies are seeking to emulate the success of the Mittelstand. Investors evaluate that many of Germany's investable "hidden champions" are Mittelstand companies. The purpose of this study is to present some of answers to the following questions: Firstly, what makes the German Mittelstand so successful? Secondly, what does the success of the German Mittelstand mean for the Korean SMEs in global competitiveness? Thirdly, what Korean government has to do improve the global competitiveness of the Korean SMEs? Some discussions in this study mention the managerial implications for Korean exporting SMEs particularly in manufacturing. Several factors that account for the success of the German Mittelstand are technological excellence and the tradition of family-owned management, concentration on niche market and globalization, and institutional supports. There are some of important lessons to be learned from the German Mittelstand. If the purposes of Korean SMEs want to remain in the sustainable competitive advantage and withstand unforeseen economic turbulences in the future, they must be able to meet the followings: 1) Technology that meets the global standard or exceeding it 2) Competitiveness in price in the global market 3) Active involvement in the globalization process, utilizing various entry modes Innovative products at globally competitive price are a crucial point for Korean exporting SMEs to achieve their competitive edge over others in the target markets abroad. It is time for Korean SMEs to cultivate a core competence in manufacturing in order to position Korea as a global manufacturing hub with SMEs leading.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.153-172
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• 2013

Small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) have limited human and material resources than large firms. SMEs are characterized by high risk and dynamic working environments. Thus human resources having knowledge and technologies are very important factor for survival and performance in SMEs. Recently, as core employee group is a key asset to firm competitiveness, many SMEs attend to set up core employee policy and system. The purposes of this research are to examine the effect of core employee policy and core employee management system on competitiveness of human resource and organizational commitment in SMEs. The major findings of the research are core employee policy have non-significant influence core employee management system, core employee policy have positive influence competitiveness of human resource, core employee management system have non-significant influence competitiveness of human resource, and competitiveness of human resource have positive influence organizational commitment in SMEs.