Korean Academic Society of Business Administration
[ Article ]
korean management review - Vol. 51, No. 2, pp.543-564
ISSN: 1226-1874 (Print)
Print publication date 30 Apr 2022
Received 26 Oct 2021 Revised 06 Dec 2021 Accepted 29 Dec 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2022.51.2.543

한국 중소기업의 국제화가 혁신에 미치는 영향: 비선형관계 및 조직의 여유자원의 조절효과

Xiaoyuan Li ; Eunmi Lee
(First Author) Yonsei University, School of Business xiaoyuan.li@yonsei.ac.kr
(Corresponding Author) Yonsei University, School of Business tatum@naver.com
Internationalization and Innovation of Korean Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Curvilinearity and the Moderating Role of Organizational Slack


Copyright 2011 THE KOREAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have rapidly expanded their market share and explored technological capability through internationalization. However, after a certain critical point, the overall costs originating from internalization may outweigh the benefits. In this study, we hypothesize that there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between internationalization and innovation. We also posit that the organizational slacks, financial slack and human resource slack, moderate this relationship. By empirically testing the panel data of 95 Korean SMEs, our results demonstrate that SMEs’ internationalization and innovation have an inverted U-shaped relationship. Our findings also suggest that the financial slack of SMEs negatively moderates the relationship between internationalization and innovation, whereas HR slack is not significant. This study provides vital theoretical implications that the benefit of internationalization diminishes after a certain critical point, and the financial slack weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship.

Keywords:

Internationalization, Innovation, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), Financial slack, Human resource slack

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the ‘BK21 FOUR (Fostering Outstanding Universities for Research)’ in 2022.

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∙ The author Xiaoyuan Li is currently attending the Ph.D. in International Business at Yonsei University. Her research interests lie in international business, international HRM and emerging market, etc.

∙ The author Eunmi Lee is currently attending the Ph.D. in International Business at Yonsei University. Her research interests lie in international business and finance, Chinese firms’ international market strategy, innovation, etc.