The collaboration between large and small firms has become an urgent issue and been emphasized as a source of the competitive force in the Korean industry.
This study addresses how we can build and maintain the collaboration and what factors will influence the successful business relationship between large and small firms.
The purpose of this study is to identify the key factors of successful collaboration. This study starts with the description of the current situation on the relationship between large and small firms in Korea. In addi-tion, it attempts to present the several recommendations to successful collaboration focusing on automobile and fiber industry.
To identify the problems and solutions, in-depth case studies for several large and small firms are carried out. They involve interviews with managers who are specialized in those fields, and reviews and analyzes the data collected from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Industry Bank, the Medium Industry Co-operative Federation, Small and Medium Industry Promotion Cor-poration and the Federation of Korean Industries.
Especially, this study includes longitudinal analysis of each case based on the research model, which is the first case study on the collaboration in the Korean fiber industry.
The results show some important implications for the automobile industry and the fiber industry to elaborate successful collaboration between large and small firms.
To improve the international competitive advantage, it is more effective for the automobile industry to execute systematization, which is defined as the subcontracting transaction, which is maintained in long-term on the basis of the cooperation between contractor(large firm) and subcontractor(small firm).
Also, it is more effective for the fiber industry to promote entrepreneurship so as to strengthen technological bases and competitives.