주체, 환경, 자원, 메커니즘 요인이 경영성과에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Research affecting corporate performance or concerning competitive advantages is being conducted in a variety of areas related to organizations and management strategy. These research deal with management factors from a comprehensive perspective, and makes suggestions as to which management factors have significant impact on corporate performance and what strategic implications high-performing corporations show compared to under performing corporations. In addition, some recent researches perceive factors of subject, environment, and resources as a basis of strategies for securing dynamic competitive advantages. However, most of such research on comprehensive mechanism is confined to particular themes for explaining internalization or theoretical research without a basis of empirical research. Even in case an empirical research is conducted, they are limited in the sense that they fail to explain and present the factors of subject, environment, and resources and mechanism factors from a comprehensive point of view. This study intends to conduct an empirical research on mechanism factors with regards to how the subject of business management at the center of a corporation’s decision making process selects the resources that need to be invested for corporate activities under specific environments, how the subject coordinates the timing and target of such resource input, and how such a process is generated and expanded within the corporation. Through this research, we expect to overcome the limits of existing research up to a certain level by verifying whether each of the factors significantly affect corporate performance, based on comprehensive approach to the existing ser-M framework. Moreover, we plan to contribute to developing factors for analysis of mechanism factors by presenting feasibility of the measurement criteria for mechanism factors. This study conducted empirical test using 150 firm level samples to analyze the effect of firms' performance which is derived from subject, environment, resource, and mechanism factors-selecting, learning, and coordinating. And also these mechanism factors which are provide integrated concept of subject, environment, and resource components. In terms of the subject factors, results showed that there is no significant effect for firms' performance. However, the strength of competitive environment makes significant effect to the firms' performance. The resource factors were analyzed have strong effect to the tangible and intangible business performance. In terms of selecting mechanism, the selection for business partners or new business was negative effect to the firms' performance. Learning mechanism factors were useful components to get high performance for tangible business records. It means that the knowledge creation, acquisition, diffusion, and management activities are one of the most important sources of competitive advantage. Coordinating mechanism factors didn't have effect on the tangible business performance, and internal coordination factors were analyzed that it can make effect on the intangible business performance. Verification of our supposition through the analysis led to rejection of the hypothesis that the subject factor will impact corporate performance. This is in line with the existing research, and supports the conclusion asserted by authors of the existing research that most of the small-and-medium-sized venture companies in Korea have a horizontal communication structure, and selection and execution of strategy is carried out by agreement among managers rather than authority of the CEO. Considering the fact that more than 80% of the research samples of this study are small-and-medium-sized venture companies, the result is convincing. However, such a conclusion is not suitable for generalization, as there are research showing that subject factor does have meaningful impact on corporate performance. The hypothesis regarding environment was partially supported. In terms of quantitative performance, the factor had positive correlation with performance as the environment became more uncertain and as the competition became fiercer, but the qualitative performance regarding the stability of business management perceived by the manager was the higher as the corporation’s competitive environment was more stabilized. This implies that as the competitive environment is more stable and less fierce, the factor has meaningful effect on both the qualitative and quantitative business performance, and a comprehensive interpretation of such results shows that the hypothesis on the environment factor was partially supported as the supposition should be dismissed for quantitative performance and accepted for qualitative performance. The hypothesis on the resource factor was partially supported. Securing capable managers and team members and resources needed for sales and marketing strongly affects qualitative and quantitative business performance, while securing Capital Expenditures and funds does not impact corporate performance from the managers’ point of view but only impacts the quantitative business performance. The hypothesis on selection mechanism was not supported. Among the selection mechanism factors, selection of suppliers and new businesses had negative impact on the stability of management as perceived by the managers. We can also conclude that the hypothesis on learning mechanism was not supported. This is said to be meaningful in quantitative performance model with only the mechanism factors, but in a model into which all of the factors were incorporated, the factor did not have meaningful impact on qualitative nor quantitative performance. However, this is only a comprehensive interpretation for verification of the suppositions, and the learning mechanism regarding the process of establishing business plans, and generating, absorbing, and spreading new knowledge would have meaningful impact on a corporation’s quantitative performance. The hypothesis on the coordination mechanism can be said to have been partially accepted. As the analysis in this research shows, the stability of business management perceived by the corporation’s manager is very much impacted by the coordination factor for resolving problems within the organization or mediating among the team members. This study includes several implications for research as well as business fields. First contribution, in terms of research methodology, this study linked up the existing ser-M framework with firms’ performance researches in order to overcome the limitation of ser-M framework which is hard to measure for empirical analysis. And also, this contribution can be understood suggest more integrated analysis framework against the existing partial research factors of ser-M framework. Second, results from this study based on mechanism-based view, we presented partly for the perspective of mechanism that how the firm selects and uses their valuable resources to adapt its’ surrounding competitive environment. Furthermore, in terms of learning mechanism, this study indirectly implies that the firm’s competitiveness can be obtained while manage and diffuse the knowledge of members within the organization. Third, for the top management team, this study gives the direction that how to identify what are the important determinants of performance and how to manage of subject, environment, resource, and mechanism factors to achieve business performance Aside from the three implications presented herein, there are limitations to this research as illustrated in the below. First, the core of the ser-M framework is that the factors of subject, environment, and resources mediate through mechanisms to have meaningful impact on corporate performance. However, this study fails to present a method for verification of this assertion. Second, this study fails to reflect the difference in the size and environment of each company in accordance with the stages of growth and conducted empirical research instead, potentially incurring criticism on the rigorousness of the research results. Third, we admit that the samples in this research are mostly corporations in urban regions such as Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and more than 80% of the samples are small-and-medium-sized venture companies, while the medium-sized companies between large corporations and SMEs are relatively small in size, which may lead to problems in generalization of the results. Furthermore, by industries, the IT industry accounts for 46%, while manufacturing industry accounts for 20%, and consulting industry accounts for 12.7%, meaning that the research does not include the overall industries but specialized in particular sectors. In addition, in selection of the mechanism factors, accepting the factors used in this study as the criteria for measuring mechanism would be deemed unreasonable. This leaves room for disputes as there have not been sufficient empirical researches based on mechanism presenting method to secure qualitative competitive advantage. To overcome such limits, we suggest the following directions for future research. First, a more detailed classification of the factors of subject, environment, resources, and mechanism may be conducted. Second, through verification of mechanisms’mediation effects, an empirical research may be conducted regarding the assertion that the mechanism factors explain subject, environment, and resources from a comprehensive perspective according to the ser-M framework. Despite many limitations of the research, we hope to provide entrepreneurs with perspective as to the areas on which corporations should concentrate their management efforts, and provide a stepping stone to researchers for an expanded research model development.