This paper suggests a contingent perspective for analyzing critical success factors of information systems by organizational characteristics in Korean small and medium firms. The contingent perspective includes such corporate characteristics as industry, strategy, value-added application function, and information systems level.
This research analyzed 110 firms in various industries, and found that the domestic small and medium firms consider some issues -support of top management, formalization of standard architecture, user involvement, high quality software, etc.- as the necessary ones. It also found through ANOVA that organizational characteristics highly influences the critical success factors of IS the corporations face.

The purpose of this paper is to have a look at the determinant and characteristics of Korean small firms' FDIs in terms of subject, environment, resources and mechanism paradigm. This paper analyzes Korean small firms' FDIs in SER-M approach with minor alterations.
This paper analyzed 54 cases for which sufficient information was obtainable either by interviews with relevant companies or by published cased to confirm the level and/or contents of competitive advantage for Korean small firms' FDIs. The main sources of competitive advantage discovered in the cases were entrepreneurship, accumulated managerial resources from exporting experience, appropriate technology suited to developing countries, the adaptability to the local economy, localized marketing activities etc. But all of these factors mentioned above is not overwhelmingly excellent compared with those of competitors.
Korean small & medium firms embrace the four main types of FDI, namely, entrepreneurship-oriented FDI, competitive advantage complementary FDI, competitive advantage exploiting FDI and competitive advantage creating FDI. Most cases in Korean small firms' FDIs consist of the first and/or second type FDI. The third and/or fourth type FDI are few in Korean small firms' FDIs.
Consequently, it is necessary for a firm establish a mechanism connecting the subjects, the environmental changes and the resource-based capabilities. Also, it is important to accumulate managerial resources and share the foreign experience through mechanism. Conclusively, it if of importance to perform FDI which can be called as competitive advantage creating FDI in the light of SER-M paradigm.

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This paper examines the financial difference between the large public firms and the small-medium sized private firms in the U.S. The useful 13 financial ratios are ed to represent liquidity, activity, leverage and profitability. The data are collected from manufacturing industries by SIC code. First, the paper analyzes the mean difference of financial ratios by t-test. The result indicates that there is significant differences between the two groups in 7 ratios representing liquidity, activity, and leverage.
Second, principal component analysis were used to reduce ratios to several principal componetns which have no correlation. The result shows 4 principal components. Finally MANOVA is carried out seperately for 4 principal components and 4 ratios which have the highest factor loading. The results find the significant difference in liquidity, activity, and leverage as whole. Particularly small and medium sized firms show high sales-fixed assets ratio and low current ratio. Therefore this study identifies the financial characteristics of small and medium sized firms indicating that they are efficient in asset operation and poor in liquidity.
The results suggest that stakeholders should identify proper industry average ratios for the small and medium sized firms and the management of them should focus on maximizing activities and obtaining liquidity.

A causal investigation of Korean small and medium synthetic textile exports, using the Day and Wenley's Sustainable Competitive Advantage(SCA) model, provides an industry-specific examination of determinants of export prorfitability. Results substantially support previous studies' predictions and indicate that; 1) price advantage is the major determinant of export profitability at this moment of time; (2) firms' marketing capability significantly influences both differentiation advantage and profitability;(3) improving technology level can be a way of enhancing firms' differentiation advantage in export markets;
(3) characteristics of production equipments, including levels of automation and production capability, have crucial effects on levels of both price advantage and differentiation advantage. Theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed for further contributions to international marketing research.

This study analyzed the relationship between export bottleneck factors and export performance among Korean small and medium sized firms. In literature review, previous studies about export marketing were examined and suggested the bottleneck factors for the export activities of small and medium sized firms; external environmental factors, export policy factor, and internal company ability factor. In empirical part of the study, a LISREL model consisted of export bottleneck factors, export competitiveness, and export performance was tested with 167 small firms in Korea. As the results, the bottleneck factor relating to the export marketing activity most negatively influenced export performance. So, first of all, export marketing activities(e.g. new market development, advertising, market research, and marketing experts) should be improved for successful export in Korean small and medium sized firms. Implications of the study and further research issues were discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine how small and medium exporting firms decide to expand exporting activities. Specifically, this study was designed to develop an integrated model that identifies the influence of internal and external factors on the export expansion decision. A national survey was conducted by mailing questionnaires to 930 manufacturing firms drawn from five major industries. Based on 276 responses, 13 hypotheses were tested. Results indicate that ed variables of internal and external factors influence the attractiveness of exporting. Once top management perceives that exporting is attractive in achieving business goals, organizational commitment to export marketing and, in turn, the export expansion decision follow.

Through the survey and investigation of the status of small-medium sized firms of measuring instrument industry in Korea. countermeasures to solve the firms' problems and to enhance their competitiveness in this field in this field has suggested in this study. It is also expected that this study will be utilized for making policy to strengthen the quality competitiveness of Korean measuring instrument industry.

This study aims to classify the Business start-up factors and measuring the weight. To measure the weight, Business start-up factors are classified into 5 factors(marketing, economic, technological, governmental regulations, and managerial factor). When all these factors are reclassified into the second step, each factor consist of 5 detailed factors.
The content of this study can be summarized as follows:
(1) For the starting a small business, business start-up factors are classified by AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process) and its factors verified by factor analysis.
(2) In computing the weight of business start-up factors, pairwise comparison method in AHP is used.
(3) According to the results of the computing, among business start-up factors from the first step classification, marketing factor is evaluated as the most important factor by 0.24008. Followed by technological factor(0.22642), economic factor(0.21076), governmental regulation factor(0.18292), managerial factor(0.13983). Among business start-up factors from the second step classification, production technology, market share, profitability, price competitiveness, tex support factor are evaluated as the important factors.

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The failure of a business organization brings an economic loss on the concerned and decreased social wealth with the depression of the regional and national economy and the waste of economic resources.
The Purpose of this study is to develop the business failure prediction model through the financial statements of small businesses.
The multivariate statistical technique known as discriminant analysis was used to classify firms as failed or unfailed.
38 firms were used for the sample of this study as failed firms from 1992 to 1994 and unfailed firms matched by similar size of the same industry and fiscal year.
In this study, Financial ratios used in Pre-studies were found to be significant indicators of business failure, and the cash flow ratio was used in this study, which has recently been used as an important indicator of debt redemption capacity by financial organizations, With the use of 29 variables, two failure prediction models were constructed for the prediction of failure one year and two years before the failure occurs.
The findings of this empirical study are as follows:
(1) The financial statements of the small businesses have the predictable capacity to discriminate between failed and unfailed firms.
(2) The financial statements of small businesses made one year before their failure is much more predictionable than those made two years before their failure.
For better prediction of business failure, More advanced and intensive researches both theoretical and empirical are required.

This paper supports Vesper's assertion that most new venture ideas are discovered or encountered by happenstance or chance. The support comes from the conclusions derived from the analysis of new venture ideas of the 71 successful startups done in Korea. Articles in the papers and anecdotal and book stories were collected from various sources including PC communications on the 190 startup companies and strained out to save only the 71 sample startups that contained useful information for this study. The new venture idea sources are broken down into four dimensions, namely: Entrepreneur's prior intentions, entrepreneur's background, cues of startup ideas, and chance. These dimensions were further classified into elements that were believed to be suitable for this kind of study. And the collected valid information was content analysed by the author according to the classification. The theoretical underpinning is almost entirely based on Veper's scheme for new venture idea sources.
More than 77% of the successful startups included in this study obtained the now successful venture ideas either by chance or by the side-street effects. The rest of the startups were initiated by the ideas that were deliverately sought by the entrepreneurs. Prior job stands out to be the area that bred most ideas, education followed next but was not significant. Slightly more than half the new ventures under study were started up by entrepreneurs who had no prior intention to go into business.
The findings imply a need for more effective idea search behaviors for would-be entrepreneurs. Imposing search behaviors into the direction of easy discovery of new venture ideas is clearly one powerful option, which is expounded by Vesper. Before taking actions of imposition, however, we need to know more about why and how the phenomenon of the chance-like encounter really happens. The author believes that C.C Jung's theory of synchronicity should help here.

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This study is focused on the elements of organization management and its practice in business in SMEs, and tested by four main aspects:managerial strategy, organizational structure, leadership, and R&D activities. These were tested with questionnaire data from a random sample of 189 firms in both the UK and Korea. Most of the SMEs in both countries surveyed showed that the major characteristics are always considered by them, and impacted on their existence as a manufacturing firm. Results from simple statistics on each issue showed that the UK SMEs have focused on more the corporate growth and financial conditions, the democratic leadership, decentralisation in organizational structure, but somewhat less the technology development plans, than ones in Korea.