중소기업의 기술혁신성과에 대한 매출증대와 고용증대 효과 : 흡수역량의 매개역할

The importance of innovation is being emphasized for the survival and growth of SMEs and the absorptive capacity to improve the innovation of these enterprises is being highlighted. However, while such factors as the organization’s outside relationships and its internal resources—management resources, organizational structure, organizational culture and the situational characteristics of the organization—that improve absorptive capacity are considered as the main focus, the discussion on how absorptive capacity changes if the managerial resources increase is relatively insufficient. Accordingly, as a prerequisite for absorptive capacity, we examined the mediating role of the SMEs’ absorptive capacity in their relationship among or between sales growth rate, which is a quantitative increase in financial resources, employment growth rate, which is a quantitative increase in human resources, and technological innovation performance. The results of analyzing 67 SMEs show as follows: First, it was found that while the sales growth rate has an insignificant effect on absorptive capacity, the employment growth rate has a positive effect on absorptive capacity. Second, it was found that absorptive capacity has a positive effect on technological innovation performance. Third, the mediating effect of absorptive capacity is not significant in the relationship between sales growth rate and technological innovation performance. Specifically, the employment growth rate improved absorptive capacity, showing the complete mediating effect that the technological innovation performance is improved only through this. Based on these analytical results, we presented the implications and research limitations of human resource development.