This thesis aims to analyze the factors affecting the technology development of machine tool industry in Korea.
The level of the technology development in this study was primarily measured by the number of newly developed products and auxiliary indicators are self-reported technological capability, objectively reported technical level of products and composite technological potentials.
The following 15 factors are analyzed as independent variables ;
1) Technical information availability.
2) Utilization of foreign-made facilities.
3) Experience of product development.
4) Establishment of work standards.
5) Level of technological manpower.
6) Technical potentials.
7) Capability of product test.
8) Level of education and training.
9) R&D investment.
10) Top management support and interest.
11) Development capability.
12) Degree of technical cooperation.
13) Amount of technology transfer.
14) Government support.
15) Competition
Data were collected from 29 firms in machine tool industry in order to find the significant factors affecting the technology development.
Data analysis was performed by two ways ;
ⅰ) Whole firms at different level of technology as total samples
ⅱ) 3 groups of firms as different samples according to the 3 distinctive technical levels.
The results of data analysis based total samples show 10 out of the 15 independent variables are accepted to be related to the dependent variable, the number of newly developed products.
In high technical level, 10 out of the 15 factors are accepted to have significant relationship.
In the medium level, 3 out of the 15 and in the low technical level, 4 out of the 15 are accepted to be related to the number of newly developed products.
Descriptive and qualitative analysis are also performed for each group of product development.
Most of products are imitatively developed and their development was initiated by top management.
The performance test of each category of machine tools by government to distinguish certified grades was reported to give a great impact to the advance of technical level.
Further studies in other industries with a refined model and hypotheses would extend the generalizability of the findings.
