The purpose of this research is to investigate public policy-related characteristics of the Micro Business Development Center project of Korea. For this research, a survey on officials of Small and Medium Business Administration, Counselors of Micro Business Development Centers, experts of the center project was conducted to control sampling bias. The results of this research indicate that Micro Business Development Centers have the characteristics of welfare, distribution, and growth policy. The centers also are evaluated to have high degree of social profitability. More than 50 percent of the evaluators rate that the benefit/cost ratio of the center's service is greater than one. On conclusion, the study indicates that the Micro Business Development Center project is a public policy meeting the policy goals of welfare, distribution and growth, and is justifiable in terms of social profitability and benefit/cost ratio.

Information is a strategic resource in managing modern businesses. With the appearance of various new information technologies, most of companies initiate new IS projects in order to cope with severe world-wide competitions. For the planning of a new IS, the level of informatization of each company should be measured in advance as a starting point.
In this study, the level of informatization has actually been measured and analyzed. The data were collected from 28 manufacturing companies throughout the Choongbuk Province, Korea. The results shows that the level of informatization of small businesses in the Choongbuk Province fits to the 3rd stage in the Nolan's growth stage model. It means that the level of imformatization of small business in Choongbuk Province is relatively low.
In addition, the factors which affect the success in informatizing the small businesses are analyzed. It reveals that the experience in the IS development has a relationship with the user satisfaction. Though the size of sample and the range of the research is somewhat limited, this study provides the small businesses with valuable guidelines in promoting the informatization.

This paper examines the effects of internal funds on investments in Korean manufacturing. To estimate the sensitivity of investment spending to internal funds, regression methods are used. The regression results show that the investment spending in small & medium sized firms are more sensitive to internal funds than that in large sized firms. Also the results provide some support for information asymmetries as a source of the pecking order but indicate no significant role for transaction costs.

With Zohar(1980)'s research on safety climate and industrial safety, occupational safety and health literatures begin to emphasize the influence of organizational context. Based on this research trend, this paper tried to review the relationship between individual/ organizational factors and occupational accidents.
Based on the responses from 643 manufacturing workers, this paper reviewed the relationships among antecedents(safety knowledge, safety attitudes, job load, management commitment and safety precaution activity), safety motivation and safety participation. The results of statistical analysis showed that job load made a negative effect on safety motivation and participation behavior, and other climate factors have affirmative effects on them.

The purpose of this paper is two folds: The first is to estimate default risks of firms during the period in which Korea was placed under the IMF’s austerity program. The second is to analyze the effects on the expected default risks of firms induced by exchange rate fluctuations.
The methodology adopted in this paper utilizes the Black-Scholes model in which iterative optimization process is applied for the purpose of estimating the expected default risks of individual firms. Thus-estimated values of default risks are then employed in a straightforward fashion as inputs in a lagged model of trans-log function for empirical analysis. For this purpose, we also employ the Black-Scholes option model suggested by Jarrow & Deventer(1999) and Crosbie & Bohn(2001).

Using the set of data provided , we proceed to estimate effects of the foreign exchange changes on the increases of expected default risks employing the following trans-log form:
Ln(EDRt+i) = at + b∙ Ln(X)t+et
where
EDRt+ i= Average of monthly expected default risks of
firms at time t+i
X t = Average monthly rate of foreign exchange at time t
The empirical results from the above regressions are reported

The Relatedness of Governmental Support and Organizational Factors of SMEs


This article is focused on the relatedness of governmental support and organizational factors in Korean small firms. An approach on the theoretical background was attempted to discover some insights in association with corporate operation and its performance in local areas. As independent variables, organizational strategic factor, inner operating factor of the firm, and supporting process management factor were ed. The results showed definite corporate goal, proper resource's allocation, policy's reliance and transparency so positively affect toward the performance of government's financial support. Furthermore, quality management in supporting process was relatively very important factor compared to other variables. Finally, several conclusions and some implications were suggested

This study is focused on the effects of owners' characteristics, technological capability, and organizational structures on two kinds of financial performance, or return on equity(ROE) and return on sales(ROS). 77 cast iron material companies in Korea responded to this survey questionnaire. Results indicated that companies with core technology achieve both significantly higher ROE and ROS while owners' characteristics and organizational structures do not have any significant effect on both ROE and ROS. According to the findings of this research results, in order to achieve competitive advantage, organizations should retain technological capability, which, in turn, results in specialized products and thus higher market share. Further discussion, limitation of this study and future direction were suggested.

This study examines the relationship between small and medium-sized manufacturing firms' product diversification, international sales, organizational learning, and their performance. The findings show that product diversification by the small and medium-sized manufacturing firm has positive effects on firm performance. Results also show that organizational learning has statistically significant positive impacts on firm performance. Regression results show, however, that increasing international sales has no significant effects on firm performance in case of small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. Finally the findings suggest that transferring organizational knowledge across different units producing different products has negative influences on firm performance.

This research tries to introduce the direction of the firms through an longitudinal study between 1996 and 2002, centering on the designing activities in the process of developing automotive parts. According to findings Korean automotive parts firm increased their ability significantly in designing area and participate more in assemblers' designing processes now than 1990s. In competition among automotive parts firms, Korean automotive assemblers procure their parts and components based on more bidding than on previous relationships with automotive parts firms. This contradictory findings implies that in Korea there are moves toward mixed forms between trend of American automotive industry and that of Japanes automotive industry. But relatively low ratio of in-house making of parts by assemblers would cause problems. That is, automotive parts firms would focus on more price than quality of parts, which deteriorate overall quality level in Korea made cars.

This paper investigates the measures minimizing the amount of intervention by politicians in the allocation of government fund through the literature on its efficiency and corruption. First, the fact that facilities funds and operation funds take up the high percentage of the government fund is interrelated with results from the survey study that politicians give the pressure and ask the favor on its allocation more frequently. Second, due to X-inefficiency inherent in the firm, the probability that politicians will be detected and sued in the short run from their two bad actions is very low. Applying Banfield's corruption mechanism here, politicians maximize the vote and minimize the cost for it, by intervening in the allocation of the facilities fund and the operation. Third, the ex post evaluation system that consistently evaluates the performance of firms receiving government fund has to be built to reduce both the X-inefficiency and the corruption, caused by politicians in the allocation of two kinds of government funds.