The purpose of this dissertation is to understand and explain the contingency relationships among entry strategy, entry environment, entry characteristics, and performance of Korean new technology-based small firms(NTBSFs). The first research question is to identify how do the interaction effect between entry characteristics and entry strategy have impact on the performance of NTBSFs. And, the second is to identify how do the interaction effect between entry environment and entry strategy have impact on the performance of NTBSFs. For the purpose of solving these questions, 9 hypotheses, which are composed of 5 hypotheses as regard to the first research question and the other as regard to the second, were generated from reviewing related previous literature and interviewing managers of 4 firms. The above hypotheses were tested using the data which is obtained from 32 sample firms. The testing method used in this analysis is regression, which has been used by some previous contingency analysis(Schoonhoven, 1981; Gupta & Govindarajan, 1984; Romanelli, 1989; Covin & Slevin, 1989).
From the test of hypotheses, 7 results were interpreted as follows :
⑴ As the founding team is composed of the members who have lesser various experience, the NTBSF which enter into the market more quickly grows more highly.
⑵ As the technological ability at the entry time is lower, the NTBSF which has the more R&D interrelationships with external R&D institution grows more highly.
⑶ As the marketing ability at the entry time is lower, the NTBSF which enters into the market quickly is more profitable.
⑷ As the financial ability at the entry time is higher, the NTBSF which takes lower price relative to competitors is more profitable.
⑸ As the entry environment is more competitive, the NTBSF which takes more various customer market or product-line is more profitable.
⑹ As the growth rate of entry market is lower, the NTBSF which developes more additional products is more profitable.
⑺ As the government policy is more favorable, the NTBSF which developes more additional products is more profitable.
The most critical limitation of this study is that the performance measures having negative correlations are not controlled in the above hypotheses, so the result of hypotheses test are lack of some precision. Future research on this area should consider the problem which exists among the dimensions of performance of NTBSFs.
From this research, However, some implications regarding to the role of government which assists the founding and developing of NTBSFs. That is, government policy regarding to NTBSFs should imply the support of R&D interrelationships between the NTBSF which has lower technological ability at the entry time and R&D institutions as well as financial support.
