최근 경기 침체기를 맞아 기업들은 원가절감을 통한 수익성제고를 우선시하는 양상을 보이고 있다. 그런데 전략적 프레임에 의해서 기업은 추구하고자 하는 경쟁우위와 여러 활동들을 결정하게 된다. 따라서 기업의 특성과 전략이 조화를 이루어야 양호한 기업 성과가 산출될 수 있다. 한편, 우리나라의 전체 기업 중 중소기업이 차지하는 비중은 2006년 말 현재 99.9%이며 지속적으로 증가하고 있는데 비해서 KOSPI 및 KOSDAQ 주식시장에의 상장률은 약 0.06%로서 대부분의 중소기업들이 비상장기업에 속하고 있다. 이러한 점을 감안할 때, 이들 비상장기업의 전략적 성향에 대한 연구는 학문적으로나 실무적인 측면에서 유용한 시사점들을 던져줄 수 있다. 특히 본 연구는 상장기업을 조사대상으로 하였던 기존연구와의 비교분석을 통하여 비상장 중소기업의 전략적 특징을 규명하고자 하였다.
Porter의 본원적 전략에 기초한 군집분석 결과 비상장 중소기업도 상장기업과 유사하게 4개 유형의 전략집단(원가우위 전략집단, 차별화 전략집단, 듀얼 전략집단, 무전략집단)으로 분류되었다. 흥미로운 것은 우리나라의 비상장 중소기업들은 원가우위 전략을 가장 많이 채택하고 있지만, 목표하는 기업성과를 제대로 거두지 못하고 있다는 점이다. 반면, 차별화 전략을 채택한 비상장 중소기업들은 상대적으로 양호한 기업성과를 거두고 있었다. 이러한 조사결과는 경쟁우위 및 기업능력 측면에서 설명될 수 있다.
본 연구는 특히 비상장 중소기업의 경쟁우위의 원천을 규명함으로써, 보다 효과적인 전략수립 방향과 그에 따른 조직관리 방향을 제시하였으며 무조건적으로 상장기업을 모방하는 전략수립 행태는 지양되어야 함을 시사하고 있다.
Firms should decide the competitive advantages and behaviors depending on the strategic framework.
Therefore the harmony of Firms’ characteristics with strategies can produce favorable performances.
Meanwhile, The ratio of Korean SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises) to total is 99.9% in 2006 and going up continuously. However, the ratio of IPO (Initial Public Offering) to KOSPI and KOSDAQ is only 0.06%, This means that most Korean SMEs are unlisted companies. Consideration of these aspects, the study on Korean unlisted companies can give lots of useful academic and managerial implications to us.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first attempt to generalize findings in the strategic tendencies of Korean unlisted companies through the comparative analysis with listed ones. Especially, this study tries to identify the strategic characteristics of Korean unlisted companies by comparative analysis to author’s prior study that investigated Korean listed companies.
The results of this study revealed that the Korean unlisted companies were similar to listed ones in some aspects, but different in another aspects. First of all, the performances of unlisted companies were inferior to those of listed ones in every indices. This is due to the characteristics of SMEs mostly consisted with Korean unlisted companies. Second, the result of cluster analysis on the basis of Porter’s generic strategy showed that the Korean unlisted companies were classified into four strategic types (Cost leadership group, Differentiation group, Dual group, Stuck-in-the-middle group), similar to listed companies.
However, the most unlisted companies were in Cost leadership strategic group. unlikely to listed ones. Meanwhile, the ratios of differentiation and dual strategic groups in unlisted companies were different with those in listed ones. That could be interpreted in the insufficiency of available resources, which was the characteristics of unlisted companies.
The Existing studies have insisted that the strategic tendencies of firms influenced upon performances like effectiveness and adaptiveness and efficiency. And this opinion was supported in the study of Korean listed companies. However, it was not supported in Korean unlisted ones, and this is the interesting findings of this study. That is, the unlisted cost leadership strategic firms pursue to increase efficiency but they have different characteristics from listed ones in aspect of the source of competitive advantages.
The result of it, they do not achieve favorable goals. On the contrary, the unlisted differentiation strategic firms achieved favorable goals very well. But the performances of them were inferior to those of listed differentiation strategic firms, though I expected better performances owing to the relative advantages.
The capabilities can be taken as the alternative explanation for this result, but further researches are needed for exact analysis.
This study has some fruitful implications. First of all, This study identified the relationships between firms’ performances and strategies. Especially, as identifying the sources of competitive advantages which should be important considerations for employment of strategy for unlisted companies, indicates the effective strategic direction which reflect the characteristics of unlisted companies, rather than strategic planning behavior of undifferentiated imitating listed ones. Also, this study implies the effective organization management ways to strategic planning by identifying the characteristics of unlisted companies’ performances based on Poter’s generic strategies. For examples, in the case of employment of differentiation strategy, it will be effective to manage organization focusing on market sensing. Meanwhile in the case of employment of cost leadership strategy, it will be effective to manage organization focusing on interaction within and between organizations.
This study has some limitations also. First, The points of data gathering time for Korean listed companies and unlisted ones were not accorded, so the effects of extraneous variables could be involved. Second, because this study was a cross sectional research, the inference of causality relationships between variables was limited. Third, subjective judgement could be involved because data collecting was depending on single informant.
Strategy can be forecasted on th basis of internal resources and capabilities of firm, so the researches on what strategy will be effective in what conditions are necessary. This is the matter of the capabilities of firm. Deep analysis on the requirements for IPO can give more effective comparative analysis frame by making the relative characteristics of Korean listed companies also. And considerations of control variables like the turbulence of environment in designing research models can increase the possibility of generalization of the researches.