하도급 구조하에서 행위자들의 숙련전략과 저숙련 균형 재생산에 대한 연구: 한국의 SI 산업을 중심으로

This study explores how low-skill regime can be reproduced in the software industry which is under constant technological changes and, thereby, in need of skilled developers. Especially, among various areas of the SW industry in Korea, I shed light on the System Integration (SI) area, as it has long been known for its low-skilled and labor intensive nature. In the finding section, firstly, the key actors in the industry are identified based on the nature of rent they have held in the SI value chain. Then, the analysis focuses on their skill-related strategies as part of their effort to realize their rents. My finding suggests that the actors in the upper position of the value chain engage in the strategies of the quantification of skill and externalization of technical debt which allow them to maintain the dominance of their rent in the value chain. In response, the actors in the lower position rely on the strategies of the inflation and minimal implementation of skill in order to maximally realize their relational and technical rent. Finally, I illustrated how this interaction of skill-related strategies contributes to reproducing the low-skill equilibrium across the SI value chain. The policy and theoretical implications of the findings will be discussed.