Academic Experiences
Publications
Lee, K. & Roh, T. (2020) Proactive Divestiture and Business Innovation: R&D Input and Output Performance Sustainability 2020, 12(9), 3874
- This paper investigates the impact of proactive divestitures on innovative activities at a firm-level. Research concerning the relationship between proactive divestiture and innovation performance remains unexplored and requires a close investigation. Furthermore, the paper argues that proactive-divestiture is an essential means to achieve corporate sustainability by fostering innovation outcomes. To explore such a relationship, this study integrates research on knowledge-based view and organizational inertia and encompasses the model of financial distress. The paper hypothesize that proactive divestiture increases both the firm’s R&D intensity and the number of patents and propose that prior divestiture experiences and divested-unit size would moderate this relationship. Results indicate that proactive post-divestiture firms have increased in R&D inputs but not significantly in output. The paper found mixed results for such a relationship as prior experiences increased, but interestingly, the relationship revealed to be more significant for both input and output as divested-unit size decreased. This study contributes to our understandings of how proactive divestiture can reinforce knowledge capacity, distant from a traditional resource-based view that mainly regarded divestiture as a mere responsive action vis-à-vis financial pressure.
Bae, Y., Lee, K. & Roh, T. (2020) Acquirer’s Absorptive Capacity and Firm Performance: The Perspectives of Strategic Behavior and Knowledge Assets Sustainability 2020, 12(20), 8396
- This study underlines the importance of the relationship between absorptive capacity and an acquiring firm’s post-merger performance following the acquisition of a target firm’s knowledge through cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs). The study analyzed CBMAs between developed countries to highlight how realized absorptive capacity plays a crucial part in a firm’s achievement of CBMA sustainability. Using United States CBMA transactions with other developed countries during 2000–2014, the findings suggest that an acquiring firm’s greater absorptive capacity leads to better post-merger performance. More interestingly, compared to for domestic M&As, the direct effect between absorptive capacity and post-merger performance was found to be more positively related in CBMA transactions, even when applying propensity-score matching (PSM) and Heckman’s selection model to the same estimation. In addition, this paper introduces four moderating variables that could either intensify or lessen a firm’s effort to seek external knowledge for organizational growth. In terms of an acquiring firm’s strategic behavior, current study finds that paying in cash and past CBMA experiences positively influence a firm’s post-merger performance. For a target firm’s knowledge assets, the results show that when a target firm possesses more strategic assets, they reinforce the acquiring firm’s post-merger performance, and when the target firm is in a high-tech industry, the acquiring firm’s post-merger performance is weakened. Current study contributes to the CBMA literature by incorporating the concept of a knowledge-based view and by empirically testing the different effects of absorptive capacity between domestic M&A and CBMA and how both strategic behavior and a target firm’s knowledge assets affect a firm’s post-merger performance related to CBMA sustainability.
Working Papers
Lee, K. R&D Collaboration: Competitive & Non-Competitive External Actors for Innovation Performance
- This study examines how R&D collaboration with different external actors correlates in different magnitudes in terms of the focal firm’s probability for innovation performance. One stream of studies in R&D collaboration literature focuses on each relationship between various types of external actors, such as university, suppliers, customers, and competitors, and its effect on focal firm’s innovation performance. However, prior studies do not fully address the fact that focal firms may choose to engage in R&D collaboration with several external actors simultaneously. In order to address this gap, current study provides an alternative view that each distinct actor can be grouped and characterized into two external actors; competitive and non-competitive actors, based on different types of organizational learning; competitive and non-competitive learning. The present study delves into the realm of R&D collaboration and examines the correlation between the roles of competitive and non-competitive actors and focal firms’ innovation performance by examining both radical and incremental innovation outputs. Current study also analyses how internal organizational innovative effort and external government aid could moderate the probability of focal firms’ innovation performance. The results of the current research demonstrate that if firms are to benefit the most from forming a collaboration to improve their innovation performance, R&D collaboration with non-competitive actors may serve as the most viable option. In addition, to intensify the outcome of R&D collaboration, this study argues that focal firms should organize a collaborative learning environment and be open to receiving government aid to further promote innovation performance.
Lee, K. Entrepreneurial Exit: Different Motivation Between Single and Mulitple Ownership Structures and Deal Value