중소기업 사례연구: 의의, 절차, 그리고 개선방향

It is necessary to adopt various research methods with a view to both suggesting the managerial disciplines for SMEs operations and creating the related knowledges for performance enhancement in SMEs. However, academic researches on Korean SMEs have been mainly executed with the aid of quantitative statistical method. If researchers choose and depend on the quantitative statistical method exclusively, it may reveal some inescapable limitations, if rigid, in designing research plan and interpreting research consequences. So, it is plausible to argue that quantitative statistical method, which is nothing if not, needs to be complemented by case study method, which is aided by qualitative analysis, so as to make some methodological improvement in the field of researches on Korean SMEs. According to the results of analysis about existing literatures published in Korean Small Business Review during the latest 5 years 2003～2007, it was uncovered that there have been only a few researches which adopted case-based analysis as a main research instrument. Moreover, although those researches adopted case-based method, it is not easy to acknowledge that they followed substantially case study procedures as generally-accepted scientific research method. In order to unravel some questions from up-to-date research trends on Korean SMEs, (ⅰ) potential benefits of case-based research on SMEs, (ⅱ) substantial procedures of case study as scientific method, and (ⅲ) implications for future research on Korean SMEs were proposed in this paper.