Industrial Clustering not only enables firms to achieve economies of scale around co-operation, innovation, compete in global markets but it also enables them to face exogenous shocks and recover from them. Exogenous shocks like economic or political turmoil or natural disasters can produce contrasting effects on clusters of firms, an increase in co-operation or a disarticulation of networks. This paper attempts to study the changes in collective action in an earthen pottery making cluster based in Mashiko, Tochigi prefecture of Japan after it suffered severe damage in the Great East Japan earthquake of March 11th, 2011. The results of the preliminary survey indicate that this crisis can in fact be perceived as an opportunity for the cluster firms as it led to the creation of a new platform for inter-firm interactions and exchange and helped to strengthen the inter-firm ties that were very weak before the earthquake.

The influence of culture on entrepreneurship has a popular agenda in many global economies. This paper examines the empirical linkage between national culture and entrepreneurial activity and provides a practical analysis on the motives of entrepreneurs. First, this paper assesses the traditional hypothesis that entrepreneurship is facilitated by cultures where there are high levels of individualism thrive, low levels of uncertainty avoidance, low levels of power-distance, and high levels of masculinity. Contrary to the traditional belief, individualism and Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity Rates (TEA) were found to be negatively related. Then, this paper explores the correlation between the motives of entrepreneurs and national culture. As expected, entrepreneurs in developed countries would start businesses with “improvement-driven opportunity” motives as opposed to “necessity” motives. On the contrary, the necessity motives seem to influence more strongly in developing countries because there are no other work options. This paper proposes a new conceptual framework that aims to provide a better understanding on how entrepreneurial motives relate to national culture. This paper suggests that in each individual country, the ascendancy of improvement-driven opportunity motive over necessity motive is associated by high levels in individualism, low levels of masculinity, and low levels of uncertainty avoidance.

This study examines public policy history of inheritance and gift tax in Korean family enterprises from 2006 to 2008, utilizing on Dahan’s 4Ps. It draws four conclusions. First, as far as policy on Korean family enterprises is concerned, problem-solving is made easier when the cause of a ‘problem’ is bigger. Second, good understanding of ‘procedures’ for a problem is the key for successful public policy on family enterprises. Third, ‘comparative cases’ in other countries and ‘existing policies’ can illuminate much about policy on family enterprises. Fourth, policy on family enterprises is much more effective when dealing with groups and championing issues rather than with individuals. Future studies can take this study further by examining political tendencies of the government party and their impacts on public policy, finding alternatives to improve negative public opinion toward family enterprises, and developing sophisticated theories for various policy arenas.

In this paper, we conducted the empirical study on what effect the level of cash holdings by large enterprises and small-medium sized enterprises have on the results of financial performance of those enterprises based on many theoretical and prior empirical papers. For the study, large enterprises and small-medium sized enterprises in the non-financial sector covering the periods in 5 segments of 5-year periods between 1982 and 2011 have been ed from Korean Stock Exchange and KOSDAQ market. In particular, this empirical analysis was performed in separate periods by segmenting the period following the IPO’s into 5 separate periods of 5 years.
The empirical implications are as follows:
First, we verified that there is a positive relationship between the level of cash holdings and the profitability(ROA) of those enterprises. In large enterprises, we found significance in all the periods, and we believe it was mainly due to the Liquidity Preference Theory. In small-medium sized enterprises, our study found significance in certain periods only, which is consistent with the Agency Cost Theory. Second, we were able to confirm insignificantly negative relationship between cash holding levels and growth rate (SGRO). This finding is different from the prior studies, but for large enterprises this is in line with Transaction Cost Model. Third, we confirmed the positive relationship between cash holding levels and corporate value (Tobin Q). This result is identical to prior studies, and we were able to verify that as the level of cash holdings increase, the impact on the corporate value increased as well. In particular, for small-medium sized enterprises, it was more significant during the initial period following the IPO’s, and we believe it would be the result of an effort to increase corporate values through expansion of cash holdings for the sake of corporate growth.
In addition, we were able to confirm that there is a difference by periods between the results of large enterprises and small-medium sized enterprises. For large enterprises, the impact of cash holding levels showed evenly over each period, while in small- medium sized enterprises, the impact was concentrated in certain periods, in the areas of profitability and corporate value. In particular, for small-medium sized enterprises it was more significant during the growth period following the initial IPO’s. The relationship between the cash holding levels and corporate values became most distinctive during the initial IPO’s and after the growth period, which is different from the results of the large enterprises.

Blogs are increasingly becoming important sources of news and commentary and regarded as the primary force significantly changing the media environment. In particular, this type of social media is very important for SMEs to promote their presence and improve their communication with consumers. Given the critical role of blog-based content networks in information sharing and providing a new media ecosystem, we set out to understand the factors that affect the centrality of a blog in the online content network by extending the notion of competing for attention. First, we identified a set of variables essential to establish credibility, unity, and interactiveness in the blog-based content network. Among the research variables, quantity and quality of postingsare related to credibility, concentration of postings in a topic area is associated with unity, and interactiveness is linked to the feeling of being connectedness. Second, we empirically tested the proposed model with a set of data collected from a blog site run by a biggest portal company in Korea. This study has found strong support for the proposed research model. The proposed model is believed to advance the understanding of blog use behavior to attract attention from the other bloggers in online social network, which has little academic attention. Further results and implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.