다층구조에서의 시너지 창출활동과 기업성과

Unlike American diversified firms composed of headquarter-SBU, Korean diversified firms are composed of headquarter-affiliate-division. Because of the structural difference between firms from two countries, the research on resource sharing has been divided into two streams of resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions in Korea. Most of the researchers claim that an affiliate is equal to an SBU and regard a division as a result of diversification within an SBU. The two different research streams on resource sharing are executed in their own ways since the researchers assume that each level of resource sharing occurs independently and is neither interrelated nor interactional. Some recent research is interested in the difference between resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions, but there is only limited arguments that the different determinants affect different level of resource sharing or the heterogeneous attributes of resource sharing is recognized according to the level in the hierarchy where the resources are shared. The existing research has not yet reflected the mutual influences between resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions. This study attempts to integrate the two different research streams that are separately executed based on the level of analysis. We investigate how resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions affect the affiliate’s performance and analyze the mutual effect of two different levels of resource sharing. Our logic is that the purpose of resource sharing is not improving the performance of the part but raising the performance of the whole. We consist that resource sharing across divisions increase the performance of the affiliate, which is the whole, whereas resource sharing across affiliates may or may not increase the performance of the affiliate, which is the part, depending on the situation. According to the empirical result, resource sharing across divisions affect the affiliate’s performance in a positive way, but resource sharing across affiliates doesn’t affect the affiliate’s performance in a significant way. It shows that the effect of resource sharing is presented not at the organizational level where it is executed but at the one level higher. We also contend that resource sharing across affiliates doesn’t have a direct and consistent meaningful influence on the affiliate’s performance. It indirectly increases the affiliate’s performance only when it enjoys the synergistic outcome of resource sharing. The empirical result indicates that resource sharing across affiliates affects the synergistic outcome that the affiliate enjoys in a positive way and the synergistic outcome affect the affiliate’s performance in a positive way. Also, the synergistic outcome mediates the relationship between resource sharing across affiliates and the affiliate’s performance in a significant way. It indicates that the realization of the synergistic outcome should be presupposed if resource sharing is to take effect at the same level as it is executed. Our final suggestion is that seeking one level of resource sharing constrains executing the other level of resource sharing because the two different levels of resource sharing require conflicting conditions of execution on organizational structure and control system. The drivers of resource sharing such as strategy and resource level is also polarized. Based on the empirical result, the interaction between resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions affect the synergistic outcome in a negative way. It means that resource sharing across divisions restrains the synergistic outcome of resource sharing across affiliates. The contribution of the study is that we intend to integrate the two major different approaches on resource sharing in Korea by discussing the interactive relationship between resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions. It is another contribution that we assert that each level of resource sharing is mutually contradictory and verify that resource sharing is effective when it is selectively chased rather than unconditionally done. Our study has the academic implication that there is an interrelationship between resource sharing across affiliates and resource sharing across divisions and also has the practical implication that a diversified firm should make a choice between the two different levels of resource sharing.