This study examines the association between a firm’s donation activity and its tax avoidance behavior, using KOSDAQ-listed companies. There are several reasons behind managers’ decisions to contribute (e.g. political issue, adverting incentives, tax saving incentives and etc.). Among these, we focus on firms’ intention to diligently perform their corporate social responsibilities through donation. Specifically, we view that donation by non-large firms may have a more ethical intention than that by large firms, because they will be less likely to be exposed to the social pressure for donation and have less resources to contribute for the purpose of advertising. Our prediction is that if a firm conducts a social contribution activity through donation, it will show a similar pattern of behavior in tax compliance, which we view as another line of activity relevant to corporate social responsibility. Analyzing 1,868 firm-year observations during the period of 2000-2008 for KOSDAQ-listed companies, we document evidence that firms which engage in donation activity tend to pay more taxes. And the result is robust even when we use the two-stage model suggested by Heckman (1979). This suggests that ethical corporate culture which is measured through donation activity influences firms to faithfully comply with tax liability.

This study aimed to examine the effect of excessive competition between small enterprises on entry and exit rates, By developing an estimation model, we were able to draw the following conclusions: First, the entry rate of small enterprises showed a significant effect on the exit rate of small enterprises in a positive (+) direction. Second, the rate of economic growth showed a significant effect on the proportion of the exit rate in a negative (-) direction. Third, an unemployment rate showed a positive (+) effect on the exit rate of small enterprises. The prediction model of the study can be utilized as an economic indicator for estimating the exit rate of small enterprises in Korea and will be served as a matter of impotence for the government's policy making and forecasting.

Cooperative activities can contribute to enhancing the profitability of suppliers. However certain types of cooperative activities, which are required for each of relationship stages, must be implemented. This paper argues that current policy, which focus on short-term relationship improvement through fair trade and reasonable pricing, is not relevant in the Korean high-context culture. This incongruency explains why current policies partly succeeded to improve SMEs’ performance through the large firm-SME cooperation. This paper examines this hypothesis by surveying SMEs and reviewing current policies that support LE-SME cooperation and provides policy implications and cross-cultural solutions.

The primary goal of this study is to elaborate and test of how commitment-based HR practices affect the innovative capacity of firms. While a remarkable wealth of knowledge has been accumulated on what accounts for small firm innovation including various internal and external factors, a void still remains in our understanding on how a firm’s human resource management efforts make a difference. This study attempts to fill this hole in the literature by empirically testing which human resource practices are positively related to the innovative capacity of entrepreneurial high technology firms. In particular, this research is interested in the effects of job security on the innovative capacity because retaining knowledgeable and skilled workers is critical, for an entrepreneurial firm’s success. In doing so, this study builds its theoretical framework on commitment-based human resource management. Using data from a survey of small-sized software development firms in Seoul conducted by Korea Internal Promotion Agency in 2004, this study performs a logistic regression to determine predictors of innovation in small software firms. The results show that the existence of high skilled workers (high human capital); and job security for managers (measured by the percentage of full time managers) and non-software technicians are highly correlated with innovation. Job security for software technicians is not significant. These results reflect the reality that under highly competitive markets and rapidly changing technological environments, the existence of committed managers who can identify new marketable products and the right time to launch them on the market might be more critical than technological prowess itself. However, other HR incentives such as high compensation (measured by annuated average wage), off-site training and prime office location, which are typically positively related to a large firm performance, are not significantly related to innovation. This study contributes to the small firm innovation related literature by confirming that job security is positively related to the innovative capacity of a firm. This study also demonstrates how a contextualized approach helps understanding the specific conditions that govern the effects of HR practices.

This study investigated the relationship between market orientations and firm innovativeness in Korean manufacturing SMEs with the moderating effects of technological and market turbulences on the relationship between them. Building on previous literatures, the study constructs and tests a research model using hierarchical regression analysis for data collected from 326 Korean manufacturing SMEs. The results reveal that market orientation has a significant effect on firm innovativeness. In terms of moderating effect, market turbulence appears to negatively moderate the relationship between market orientation and firm innovativeness. Other finding also reports that technology turbulence moderates the relationship between market orientation and firm innovativeness in a positive way. In addition, we found that both technological and market turbulences had a significant moderating role in the relationship between competitor orientation and firm innovativeness. The paper shows that how SMEs in emerging countries have different features of strategic orientation and environmental conditions that may be particularly important for firm innovativeness. Further discussion, implications, limitation of this study and future direction were suggested.

The core of Entrepreneurship studies is to discover new business through creative ideas and achieve the yield of high-efficiency compared to investment. The development of research and education programs for young people envisioning start-ups to discover business ideas and new business opportunities through creative thinking is needed. In venturing entrepreneurship studying start-up in various fields, the solution to this problem can be found through fusion and new understanding on design playing a creative role in industries.
In order to combine Design Thinking in venturing entrepreneurship for creative business ideas, this study performed studies of three steps. The first, the need to strengthen creative thinking is examined by analyzing the creative characteristics and current status of entrepreneurship education programs and research topics. Second, it provided a methodological point of view that can be applied to venturing entrepreneurship by analyzing the creativity and process of Design Thinking which is one of the design methodology. Third, the possibility that Design Thinking can be converged to the role of business idea plan through creative thinking and exploration of business opportunities was presented and an case study was demonstrated for business creation with Design Thinking.