The information and telecommunication industry, the rapid growth and nation's infrastructure industry, will be a standards of the nation's international competitiveness in the 21century. Therefore, this study examined the industry's international competitiveness and found some recommendations through the examination of technology level, RAC index, trade intensive index, and total factor productivity.
The results show some problems of the industry. One is the technology gap between Korea and advanced countries, specially design and producing technologies. The other is quite low level of international competitiveness. To improve the competitiveness, the industry require the government's intensive investment and administrative support. And the industry should bring up by venture and small & medium size enterprise to have a great economic impacts to the other industries. Also, the increasing production and export promoting policy will be grown the industry and improved nation's the balance of trade.

The purpose of this research is to identify success factors of venture start-up assessed by successful entrepreneurs. For this purpose, we implemented in-depth interviews and research works on entrepreneurs who were ed by a panel. The panel is made up of researchers and specialists. Questionnaires were prepared by integrating previous research results, opinions of entrepreneurs, and assessment of researchers. Questions are categorized into two: (1) on the key success factors of venture start-up and (2) on the characteristics of entrepreneurs and strategies required for success. As a result, both qualitative and quantitative research method were utilized to determine success factors and compare them with earlier research results. A detailed discussion on these results is presented in the conclusion. The limitations of this research are also presented in the conclusion.

As the society becomes knowledge and information intensive society, most employees in the small and medium firms use a computer as a basic skill to acquire and share the new information. However, their computer skills may become obsolete in a short period time and must acquire the new information technology through training. Especially for the novice computer users, it is more difficult to get computer software skills for their tasks with training. Thus, it is necessary to develop effective and productive training materials to accommodate trainees whose cognitive traits are inferior. A field experiment is designed using assimilation theory and social learning theory to compare the effectiveness of instructional video and computer-based tutorial. The study also evaluates the effects of an individual's visual ability on training outcomes.

It is well known that the computerization level of Korean small firms is rather low even though there have been continuous supports from government institutions for the purpose of increasing the competitiveness of small firms. Another barrier against the adoption of information technology by small firms is a low-level utilization of IT after the adoption. This study proposes a research model integrating innovation adoption theories and characteristics of small firms management and tests hypotheses using data from the Korean small firms.
The research model has three characteristic groups of independent variables such as CEO, organization and environment while having the degree of IT adoption as the dependent variable. The model is empirically tested to the adoption of PC, spreadsheet, program, LAN and DBMS. The results of data analysis show (1) that organizational size has significant influences on the all of the adoptions (2) that CEO attitudes and knowledge have significant influences on the adoption of spreadsheet program, LAN and DBMS, and (3) that the level of organizational formalization has significant in influences on the adoption of PC and spreadsheet program.

This study analyzes the existence of price change and price volatility effects from NASDAQ market to KOSDAQ market. unlike earlier studies, we divide daily close-to-close returns into their close-to-open and open-to-close components. Daily opening and closing prices of NASDAQ and KOSDAQ stock market indexes are examined by using a GARCH(1,1)-M model.
This study finds that 1) there exists the positive spillover effects from NASDAQ market on the conditional mean of the close-to-open return (which reflect effects on opening prices in the KOSDAQ) during 2000-2001 period; 2) whereas there is no significant spillover effects from NASDAQ on the conditional mean of the open-to-close return(which reflect effects on prices in the KOSDAQ market after the opening of trading); 3) evidence of price volatility spillover from NASDAQ to KOSDAQ is observed during the 2000 period.
These findings are consistent with the hypothesis predicted by international asset pricing models.

This main purpose of this research is to identify three type of business scale suitable for each manufacturing industry in Korea; small business type, medium business type, and large business type. For this purpose, the current research tries to estimate minimum efficient scale(MES) for each industry at which average cost is minimized, using 5-digit firms' data and to transform the estimated MES to labor scale. Under the assumption of homothetic technology, it is shown that about 300 industries among 362 ones are small and medium business type industries.

Numerous countries promote business incubator programs to revitalize local economy, increase employment, and nurture high-tech industries. Recently, a number of business incubators have been established and operated with aims to adapt to changing environment and increase economic competitiveness in Korea.
This study based on the critical success factors, and we suggest followings:
1) goal/operations strategy, 2) physical/human resources, 3) incubator services, 4)networked program.
We analysed the weights of this factors by AHP (analytic hierarchy process). The weights of evaluation factors were compared with three group by tenants, graduated firm and manager of business incubator. Finally, we proposed some suggestions and expectations based on the findings of this research.

The emergence of electronic commerce has led to a rethinking of conventional marketing practices and strategies. The expanding size of the commercial activity on the Web indicates that there are perceived benefits in using such a medium. This article presents a new conceptual classification model for virtual markets, and a framework for Web-based marketing strategies. Such a model is earnestly needed in light of the uncontrolled explosion in the commercial use of the Web and the lack of similar models in electronic commerce literature. In addition, the proposed framework provides concrete Web-based marketing strategies to account for differences between products, such as the differences between goods and services, or between physical goods and information products.

This paper empirically analyzes the operating and cash cycles of small sized manufacturing firms for the period of 1994 through 2000. Using a data set composed of 863 annual observations, turnover ratios relating operating cycle are calculated for total sample, by year, and by industry. The relationships among the length of two cycles and the level of profitability and liquidity are also investigated.
Average length of the operating cycle for sample firms turned out 150 days. Pharmaceutic firms show the longest cycle, whereas paper and lumber firms indicate the shortest cycle. The cycle consists of 74 days of inventory on hand and 76 days of receivable collection period on average. However, sample firms fill one-third of the cycle with account payables and the remaining 96 days with their own working capital. If sample firm reduces its cash cycle by a single day, the firm can save \12 million of financing cost annually.
The empirical result show that the liquidity ratio measured by cash flows from operating activities is superior to the accrual basis ratios such as current ratio and quick asset ratio. \12 million of annual financing cost for a single day in cash cycle suggests that firm should take it into consideration when evaluate management performance. The relationship between operating cycle and profitability reveals that high turnover ratios contribute more to earning improvement than high gross profit margin.

This study investigates Korean small and medium sized enterprises' exchange rates pass-through behavior after the foreign exchange crisis in 1997. It aims to study the reasons for their partial pass-through behavior and to do t-test if the asymmetry comes from such behavior. For the purposes two surveys of 1,028 enterprises were conducted in May and December 2000, the one marking the period of considerably increased value of Korean won and the other, the opposite. The surveys show that pass-through degree of exchange rates 10% change at Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises reached 0.203 in the first survey, i.e. in the period of strong Won, while the degree went up to 0.269 in the period of weak Won.
Two findings follow the study. First, Korean small and medium sized-enterprises do not reveal any substantial pass-through behavior. Second, when the value of Won against the US dollar goes down exports price increases more than it decreases when the value of Won goes up, which implies a substantial asymmetry in pass-through behavior. The findings further imply that small-and-medium sized-enterprises face more price competition in foreign markets and thus have less bargaining power over price in negotiations with overseas buyers ; those firms have very limited adjustment to the imbalance of external trade.

The share of small and medium firms in the Korean economy and industrial activities has been pretty large and obviously will stay there for many years to come. However, their technological capability is very much limited and hence, under the ever changing business environment and increasing competition not only in the domestic market but also in the overseas markets, the future of the small and medium firms of Korea is not promising at all. This paper examines the sectoral production efficiency of Koran large manufacturing firms as well as small and medium ones, utilizing those data such as per capita value added and total assets per capita. Based on the empirical analysis of the efficiency issue, the paper tries to suggest various policy measures to promote the technological capability of the small and medium manufacturing firms and eventually to enhance the overall competitiveness of the Korean industry.

The purpose of this study is the efficiency analysis of manufacturing industry by using the DEA model. It also tries to provide pure DEA efficiency from the exclusion of technical change.
DEA model is non-financial approach method to measure relative efficiency by input factors and output. The panel data from 1996 to 1999 are used for the analysis.
Generally, DEA model have used to measure efficiency of services and public sectors, this study extends manufacturing industry.
The results is expected to provide the empirical evidence useful to enhancing the competitiveness of manufacturing industry in Korea.

The study in the integrated approach of combining the strategy, outsourcing, and the performance attempted to accomplish the purpose of the study as follows:
First, the purpose of the study was to analyze and to induce the types of the strategy of the growing firm in Korea.
Second, it was to find out the relationships among the types of strategy, outsourcing, and the performance, in the process of examining the strategic situation and the outsourcing of the organization according to each type of the performance.
Third, it was to find out the relationships between the adaptability of the managerial strategy and the performance of the firm, and outsourcing and the performance of the firm, in the process of identifying the effectiveness of organization.
The study tried not only to analyze the relationships between the types of the strategy and outsourcing and the performances of the firm but also to identify the integrated relationship among the type of the strategy and outsourcing.
In order to accomplish the purposes of the study, the study tried to measure the variables by collecting the positive data of the research questionnaire against the manufacturing firms. The measurable data returned was 141 of the respondents of the research questionnaire.
The findings of the study were summarized as follows:
First, the study found out the differences to the characteristics of the types of the strategy according to the environment. The characteristics of the innovational types was shown high in terms of the effectiveness.
Second, the study found out no differences in terms of the effectiveness according to the characteristics of the types of the outsourcing pattern.
Third, the study found out that the adaptive firm than the non-adaptive firm was shown high in terms of the effectiveness. For the effectiveness the differences was shown statistically significant.
In the conclusion, the findings of the study would give a contribution to accomplish the innovation of the outsourcing system of the firm in Korea.

This paper is an effort to examine theoretically the policy for Seoul's SMEs with the aim of assessing the important current policies, the organizational mechanism supporting them, and the main variables that have been shown to influence the status and growth of them.
The Seoul Municipal Government allocates budget for fostering the Seoul Model New Knowledge Industry including the venture capital business, animation and fashion industries. And the efforts will be made to secure the city's industrial competitiveness including attracting IT businesses into the Digital Media City, and supporting promising small and medium-sized companies.
In addition, the City of Seoul has been actively providing support and assistance for so called 'Seoul-type industries' which are non-polluting and considered to be particularly suitable for the geographic conditions of Seoul. They include culture-related industries like fashion, design, and animation, and information and communications-related ones like software and multimedia.
It is important raise SMEs and venture business in the future, so that the objective of The Seoul Municipal Government's policy must be restructuring of industry structure, the growth of knowledge-intensive SMEs, the mitigation of digital divided of SMEs, and the supporting and assistance for venture business.

The objectives of this paper are to analyse the R&D investment efficiency gap between SME(Small & Medium Enterprises) and large firms in Korean industries. We mobilize the production function framework using the cross section and pooling data for this analysis. The results are as follows. First, the R&D expenditure gap and efficiency gap between SME and large firms are widened during the 90s. Second, using the production function analysis, we find positive correlation between R&D intensity and R&D investment efficiency, which is more prominent in the electronic industries. Third, the estimation results show that the additional 1% increase of SME's R&D intensity will allow to reduce the 0.997% of efficiency gap between SME and large firms. Considering these estimation results, more investment to R&D by SME will reduce the efficiency gap in the future