Determinants of organizational performance: some implications for top executive leadership in Korean firms

ABSTRACT

Leadership, although commonly assumed to be greatly significant, is not typically studied in terms of structural characteristics accounted for in organizational performance. The effect of top executive leadership is explored here as a key factor that reflects organizational characteristics by offering a new framework and presenting an empirical test of Korean business firms. This research can be possibly made by focusing on the size of the leadership which explicates the difference between structural, resource and contextual variables in organizations. The multivariate regression analysis shows that firm size, leadership, debt and export significantly affect organizational performance, as measured by net income. The mechanism of Korean business firms needs to readjust to the new environment for organizational performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational performance
• top executive leadership
• structure
• resource
• context
• Korean firms

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2017S1A3A2067374). Acknowledgements are due to Robert Boyd and the late Robert Marsh for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript, and Joo-Hyun Oh for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2017S1A3A2067374).

Notes on contributors

Jungwon Yoon

Jungwon Yoon, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Division of Interdisciplinary Industrial Studies, Hanyang University in South Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology of Technology and Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. Her areas of expertise are in innovation policy and strategy, international business strategy and technology management. Her current research focuses on the structure of national innovation systems in North Korea. Recently, she has published across these areas including ‘Strategy of the Latecomer Retailer from Emerging Economies for Successful Catching-up in the Chinese Retail Sector’ and ‘Quintuple Helix Structure of Sino-Korean Research Collaboration in Science’. She is the recipient of the Best Paper Award in Korea Business Review from the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration.

Moon-Gi Suh

Moon-Gi Suh, Ph.D., is a professor of the Department of Information Sociology at Soongsil University, Korea. He received his degrees in Sociology from Brown University and Seoul National University, and worked at the University of Oxford as a Senior Associate Member. He is the recipient of many distinguished awards including the Korean Honor Scholar, the Incheon Memorial Fellow, and the Maekyung-Bit Fellow as well as the Best Teacher Award. He has published Developmental Transformation in South Korea (Praeger) and his recent publications include ‘Determinants of Corruption Perceptions: A Comparative Analysis of Asian Experience’ and ‘Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in Korea’.