مدل معادلات ساختاری برای ارزیابی بودجه های ملی در پروژه های "تحقیق و توسعه" در بنگاه های کوچک و متوسط با نظر گرفتن معیارهای MBNQA

Financial support on the R&D in Science & Technology for SMEs at the governmental level plays a crucial role on the improvement of the national competitiveness. Korea Science & Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) has supported the R&D projects of SMEs with the competitive technology ability by way of the Science and Technology Promotion Fund. In this paper, we propose a structural equation model (SEM) to evaluate the performance of such a funding program in terms of three aspects: output, outcome and impact under given funding inputs, R&D environment of a recipient company, and external evaluation programs of funding organization. We adopt Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria to assess the R&D environmental factors of recipient companies. In addition, we test the effect of interim evaluation of the funded project. The proposed model is applied to the real case and is used to identify the best practices as well as to provide feedback information for the improvement of the government funding programs of the R&D projects of SMEs.

Science and technology has become one of the most critical parts for the development of a country. Thus it is necessary to set up the right direction of the national policies and corresponding financial support for R&D of SMEs. R&D funding is typically followed by the interim intervention of funding sources for the progress check up and subsequently by the final evaluation of the performances. Interim intervention is needed before the final evaluation so as to prevent potential problems and to get feedback information on the improvement of the R&D project before it is completed.

In this study we analyzed the structural relations among R&D financial input factors, environment factors of R&D of recipient company, evaluation programs of the funding organization, and R&D funding performances. Our empirical study results based on the fitted SEM brings interesting findings. The internal process management of the fund recipient company has the highest direct effect on the technological performances, followed by the external evaluation program of the funding organization, while company's R&D information & analysis factor has the highest indirect effect on the technological performance.