A Study of SME Managers' Attitudes About the Impact on Job Satisfaction
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Choi Hwa-Yeol , Lee In-Ku 
Published: June 2018

Currently, the center of Korean businesses moves from conglomerates to small enterprises which occupy 50% of Korean businesses with the criteria of sales in 2010. This is the result of not only the boom of venture businesses but also the development of knowledge-based internet businesses. Therefore, the recent trend of small enterprises is clearly that they gradually take the leadership positions in Korean business markets away from conglomerates based on the development of knowledge-based businesses. Although the leadership transfer is happening gradually, the trend will be even more strengthened from now on. Factors like more various consumer preferences and profitability based on creative ideas with relatively small capitals change the previous natures of industrial structures, and small enterprises tend to adopt this new situation better than conglomerates. As the importance of small enterprises grows bigger with this trend, the importance of roles of entrepreneurs grows bigger as well. Entrepreneurs of small enterprises need to have different leadership styles than those of conglomerates since small enterprises have different foundation structures of small scales. This may affect levels of job satisfaction, but no research has been proved the correlation. Therefore, a research needs to suggest the leadership styles through which entrepreneurs of small enterprises can increase job satisfaction. Also, a research needs to suggest appropriate entrepreneur spirits for leaders of small enterprises. Consequently, this research examines the roles of CEOs of small enterprises. This research is based on the assumption that entrepreneur spirits are core competencies of businesses as well as the assumption that characteristics of CEOs differ depending on industries. In the other word, this research is based on that entrepreneur spirits can affect job satisfaction of employees thus directly contributing to core competencies of companies. This research is based on analyses of literatures which include theses for doctorates in Korea, books about human resources organizations, theses of Wotrmam in 1999, and other non-Korean theses. From these sources, many non-Korean cases were reviewed, and concepts were organized. Based on the analyses, the questions of the survey for this research were derived. Preliminary researches enabled further changes of the questions so that they can be more appropriate. In addition to the literature analyses, this research is also based on a survey analysis. The survey targets 200 employees of small enterprises near Seoul, and the enterprises are in knowledge-based manufacturing industries and technology-based IT industries. The survey in a paper form aims at figuring out the effects of entrepreneur spirits on core competencies of firms based on 47 questions from a Likert scale. This research aims at analyzing different entrepreneur tendencies depending on industries thus suggesting most favorable entrepreneur spirits which can magnify small enterprises’ values and enable their long-term sustainability. As a result, entrepreneur spirits of small enterprises affect core competencies a lot, and the most favorable spirits differ depending on industries. Especially for knowledge-based businesses, creativity is an important factor in terms of the leadership of entrepreneurs. This leadership type for small enterprises differs from that for conglomerates. From the research about effects of entrepreneur spirits of small enterprises on job satisfaction of YooGeun Shin in 1999, it is proved that the leadership types preferred by employees differ from those of existing CEOs. If this gap between employee’s preferences and existing leadership styles becomes smaller, companies will be able to have much stronger competencies thus achieving the increase in sales as well as long-term growth.