• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.144-149
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• 2017

This study empirically analyzes the effect of IT SME ventures' external information network diversity on their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development. This research constructs a mediating model based on the open innovation perspective and tests it with the 138 samples of South Korean IT SME ventures based on the ordinary least squares regression. This research is expected to make a good contribution by shedding a new light on the following three points about the critical role of IT SME ventures' external information network diversity in increasing their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development which has scarcely been illuminated in the extant studies in the field of the management of technology for SMEs. First, IT SME ventures' external information network diversity positively influences their production period reduction. Second, the external information network diversity positively influences IT SMEs' ventures' productivity improvement. Third, IT SME ventures' production period reduction partially mediates the influence of IT SME ventures' external network diversity on their productivity improvement. These three fresh points are expected to provide useful theoretical and practical implications. Related to the theoretical implication, this research provides a fresh implication that IT SME ventures' external information network diversity positively influences not only their production period reduction but also productivity improvement generated from technology development. Concerning the practical implication, this study suggests that the CEOs in IT SME ventures make strategic efforts to use more diverse external information sources in order to increase their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development.

• Journal of Koreanology Reviews
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2023

The primary objectives of this study is to examine and identify the historical factors that have significantly contributed to the growth/ expansion and prosperity of SMEs in the Republic of Korea and to evaluate and assess the impact of historical factors on the economic progress/ development, innovation, and job creation within SMEs in South Korea. To achieve the purpose of the current study, the present author has investigated the comprehensive literature investigation and figured out a total of four Key historical factors of SMEs for Economic Growth in the Republic of Korea, such as (1) Government Policies, (2) Technological Advancements, (3) Access to Finance, (4) International Trade. In conclusion, this study has undertaken a thorough investigation into the four critical historical factors that have significantly affected the development and achievements of SMEs in the Republic of Korea. By addressing a notable gap in current scholarly work, this study not only adds to the existing pool of knowledge but also provides valuable insights for various stakeholders. Practitioners/ professionals should proactively participate in government support initiatives/ programs and financial aid. SMEs can benefit from monetary incentives and donations/ grants intended to stimulate research and development, creativity, and international trade ventures.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.225-232
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to explore the necessity of technology commercialization aiding service from government-supported R&D institutions and find key success factors for market performance improvement of business ventures and SMEs. For this aim, we researched relevant theories and KICET(Korea Institute of Ceramic Engineering and Technology)'s "Ceramic Hidden Champion Supporting Project. As government-supported R&D institutions, KICET is not only providing its original main service which is technology advising and development, but also providing a full range of technology commercialization aiding service for business ventures including diagnosis, strategy planning, capital procurement, overseas marketing activity. Qualitative analysis based on relevant theories and meta-analysis framework suggest that such expansion of services is desirable for government-supported R&D institutions to increase market performance of business ventures and SMEs. To lead this business to success, we should develop effective management system and incentive system for external supporting companies and client companies. Also, coordination between team member's activities and budget procurement issue should be solved for further performance creation.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.481-500
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• 2009

This paper investigates the Moderating effect of entrepreneurship on the relationship between market orientation and international performance in Korean Ventures. Literature revealed that an appropriate alignment between firm strategic orientation and market positioning is critical because of its impact on firm performance. The alignment is especially crucial for SMEs as a result of their limited resource base. However, studies have not adequately accounted for the joint effect of entrepreneurship and market orientation on firm performance in different environments as foreign markets. Drawing upon a sample of 217 internationalized Korean Venture Business, it presents evidence related to mainly moderating effects of entrepreneurship on market orientation-international performance. The Key conclusion from the evidence is that market orientation, alone and in conjunction with certain entrepreneurship dimensions, is positively related to firm international performance. More specifically innovativeness and proactiveness have positively moderated the relationship between market orientation and international performance in Korean Ventures.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.69-84
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• 2021

As industrial structural changes in the 4th Industrial Revolution have recently led to the need for fostering high-tech industries and high-tech manufacturing industries have been showing high value-added creation, the importance of high-tech manufacturing ventures has increased a lot as well. As a result of this, the government is actively supporting and fostering them. However, it appears that high-tech manufacturing ventures seem to have a lot of difficulty in securing competitive advantages due to the lack of internal core competencies and experience in the rapidly changing international economic conditions. In order for high-tech manufacturing ventures to strengthen internal core competencies, external collaborations with other companies or institutions which have diverse experience, technology skills and abundant resources are actively promoted. Accordingly, based on resource-based theory and transaction cost theory, the authors analyzed the effects of the high-tech manufacturing ventures'external collaborations on internal core competencies and management performance in this study. In order to verify the hypothesis of this study, the 2020 data on"The Research on the Precision Status of Ventures'compiled by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups since 1999 were utilized. According to the results of this study, the experience of external collaborations had a positive impact on the internal core competencies and non-financial management performance, while there was no direct impact on financial management performance. Moreover, the relationship between the experience of external collaborations and management performance is mediated by the internal core competencies. Additionally, it was found that the internal core competencies positively affected both non-financial and financial management performances, and non-financial management performance again had a significant impact on the financial management performance. Finally, the experience of external collaborations had a positive impact on both development, manufacturing, and marketing factors forming the internal core competencies. However, the impacts of individual factors were different in the management performance. Development and marketing factors were shown to have a significant impact on both non-financial and financial management performance, while the manufacturing factor had a significant impact only on financial management performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.249-267
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• 2021

The use of big data accumulated along with the progress of digitalization is bringing disruptive innovation to the global agricultural industry. Recently, the government is establishing an agricultural big data platform and a support organization. However, in the domestic agricultural industry, the use of big data is insufficient except for some companies in the field of cultivation and growth. In this context, this study identifies factors affecting the intention to use big data in terms of technology, organization and environment, and also confirm the moderating effect of technical field, focusing on agricultural ventures which should be the main entities in creating innovation by using big data. Research data was obtained from 309 agricultural ventures supported by the A+ Center of FACT(Foundation of AgTech Commercialization and Transfer), and was analyzed using IBM SPSS 22.0. As a result, Among technical factors, relative advantage and compatibility were found to have a significant positive (+) effect. Among organizational factors, it was found that management support had a positive (+) effect and cost had a negative (-) effect. Among environmental factors, policy support were found to have a positive (+) effect. As a result of the verification of the moderating effect of technology field, it was found that firms other than cultivation had a moderating effect that alleviated the relationship between all variables other than relative advantage, compatibility, and competitor pressure and the intention to use big data. These results suggest the following implications. First, it is necessary to select a core business that will provide opportunities to generate new profits and improve operational efficiency to agricultural ventures through the use of big data, and to increase collaboration opportunities through policy. Second, it is necessary to provide a big data analysis solution that can overcome the difficulties of analysis due to the characteristics of the agricultural industry. Third, in small organizations such as agricultural ventures, the will of the top management to reorganize the organizational culture should be preceded by a high level of understanding on the use of big data. Fourth, it is important to discover and promote successful cases that can be benchmarked at the level of SMEs and venture companies. Fifth, it will be more effective to divide the priorities of core business and support business by agricultural venture technology sector. Finally, the limitations of this study and follow-up research tasks are presented.

• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.117-137
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• 2020

We examine the current status of smart factory deployment and diffusion programs in Korea, and seek to promote manufacturing innovation from the perspective of SMEs. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows. First, without additional market creation and supply chain improvement, smart factories are unlikely to raise profitability leading to overinvestment. Second, new business models need to connect "manufacturing process efficiency" with "R&D" and "marketing" in value chain in smart factories. Third, when introducing smart factories, we need to focus on the areas where process-embedded technology is directly linked to corporate competitiveness. Based on the modularity-maturity matrix (Pisano and Shih, 2012) and the examples of U.S. Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII), we establish the new smart factory deployment policy measures as follows. First, we shift our smart factory strategy from quantitative expansion to qualitative upgrading. Second, we promote by each sector the formation of industrial commons that help SMEs to jointly develop R&D, exchange standardized data and practices, and facilitate supplier-led procurement system. Third, to implement new technology and business models, we encourage partnerships, collaborations, and M&As between conventional SMEs and start-ups and business ventures. Fourth, the whole deployment process of smart factories is indexed in detail to identify the problems and provide appropriate solutions.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.87-100
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• 2012

This study is to determine the key factors of internal situational characteristics, affecting the motivation and performance for overseas expansion of Korean venture business in global markets and to investigate the moderating effect of them on the relationship between entrepreneurship and overseas expansion. To meet the research purpose, by reviewing previous researches, we categorized internal factors into four situational factors of firm size with sales growth, firm age with main product's life cycle, overseas experience and organizational structure and into three entrepreneurship sub-categories of innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking. As result of the statistical analysis of 289 small and medium-sized enterprises with Korean Venture Certificate, it is verified that the motivation for globalization has been influenced by firm size, entrepreneurship, and overseas experience. On the other hand, all factors excepting firm size have positive effects on globalization performance overseas. And, it also verified that there are positive moderating effects of internal situational factors on the relationship of entrepreneurship and the performance of globalization, wheres overseas experience only plays positive moderating effects on the relationship between entrepreneurship and the motivation of globalization. On the basis of these results, we discussed and suggested practical and political issues and implications in order to vitalize globalization of Korean SMEs in the conclusion.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.235-243
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• 2020

The more consumers feel the brand as authentic, the better the brand image and the higher the purchase intention, so companies actively seek to build brand authenticity. On the other hand, the quality of products perceived by consumers comprehensively in consideration of various factors such as performance, durability, and materials can affect brand authenticity. The purpose of this study is to present useful implications by building a research model for quality and brand authenticity from a marketing point of view, and empirical analysis. For this, product quality and brand authenticity were theoretically defined, the relationship between them was identified, and ultimately the influence of these concepts on brand image was examined. In detail, a survey was conducted on a total of 286 consumers to find out the quality of the product, authenticity of the brand, and brand image, and the product to be surveyed was S20, the latest mobile phone of S Electronics. As a result of empirical analysis, although quality had a statistically significant positive effect on brand authenticity, the degree was not greater than expected. In addition, quality had a statistically significant positive effect on brand image, and its degree was large, but when quality and brand authenticity were considered together, it was found that the regression coefficient of brand authenticity was larger than that of quality. This means a partial mediating effect of brand authenticity. Therefore, in order to enhance the brand image and purchase intention of SMEs/Venture companies, a strategy that build brand authenticity simultaneously in consideration of the components presented in this study will be more effective than a strategy that focuses only on quality. This study proposes a variety of theoretical and practical implications by empirically examining the relationship between brand authenticity and brand image perceived by consumers through quality from a marketing perspective, based on a research model that was not discussed in previous studies. In particular, this study proposes a plan to build brand authenticity from the perspective of SMEs/Ventures.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

Purpose - Entrepreneurship promotion is emerging as an important economic growth agenda. However, in Korea, entrepreneurship has weakened because of the collapse of the venture bubbles of the 2000s and the global economic recession in 2008, which have induced the business community to choose stability over risk. The Korean government has been implementing several support projects to inspire and promote youth entrepreneurship through various means including financial assistance; however, the perpetuation rate of young entrepreneurship is still low as compared to advanced economies such as the US and EU. This case study focuses on the Youth Start-Up Business Support Program of the Small & Medium Business Corporation, and explores practical alternatives. Further, it aims to suggest managerial factors and a conceptual model for change management factors affecting the business performance creation of a startup company, based on the Small and medium Business Corporation's young venture startup fund. Research design, data, and methodology - Many studies examine the current progress and issues of startup firms, for example, a lack of systematic cultivation of entrepreneurship and startup business training, lack of commercialization funding for youth startup businesses, lack of mentoring, and inadequate infrastructure. From prior research, we address four factors, namely, personal managerial capabilities, innovative business model, sufficient cash flow, and social network, affecting startup companies' business performance. This study involved a sample survey of 200 young entrepreneurs to investigate casual relations between the four factors and business performance. A regression analysis was used to verify the hypotheses. Results - First, in relation to differences in the founder's personal characteristics, age, sales amount, and number of employees significantly impact business performance. Second, regarding the causal relation between the four factors for creating business performance, an innovative business model and social networking have supported the hypotheses, revealing that the more that a start-up founder has an innovative business model and social networking, the more the start-up firms are likely to have better performance (e.g., sales volume, employment, ROE, ROI, etc.). Although the founder's competency and sufficient cash flow have no significant relationship with business performance, the mean value was higher performance for high founder's competency and sufficient cash flow. Conclusions - This study provides basic data on policy support strategies of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, to help young entrepreneurs achieve their start-up business goals. It shows that young entrepreneurship startup firms should strive to explore ideas to satisfy customers' needs, and that changes in customer value and the continuous innovation of business model differentiation are required to actively respond to change management. Moreover, at the infant startup stage, they should activate social network programs to share information, thereby offsetting resource scarcity and managing business risk. Further, the establishment of a long-term vision and the implementation of training programs in related specific fields should be supported to strengthen founders' personal capabilities.