As the technology credit fund is available to support SMEs which have intangible technology assets, many organizations are involved in technology evaluation with various factors. Technology evaluation has worth when the evaluation result can be related to financial performances of the recipient of credit funds. In this study, we propose a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the relationship between technology evaluation factors and the financial performances by developing financial performance index (FPI). It is expected for the proposed model, which will be evaluated for the technology evaluation of enterprises, to be applied not only for the effective management of the technology credit funds for SMEs, but also will be used to evaluate financial performance of SMEs.
As the value of intangible technology assets becomes increasing, much investment commitment is needed on the companies in a manner to strengthen the technology competitiveness. In order to support the small and medium enterprises (SME) which have potential technology, governmental level of financial supports has been made based on some technology evaluation procedure. Because use of inadequate evaluation model would jeopardize the entire funding process causing critical economic loss, accurate technology evaluation is crucial.
Many organizations are involved in technology evaluation: National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC) in USA, British Technology Group (BTG), Center of Technology Assessment (CTA) in Japan, Korea Technology Credit Guarantee Fund (KTCGF), Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Planning (ITEP) and Korea Technology Transfer Center (KTTC).
Although many different forms of technology evaluation are used, the scoring model based on multi attributes of technology is the most popular form. These multi attributes are used differently according to the purpose of evaluation and technology evaluation institutes. Nevertheless, multi attributes generally consist of factors such as manager’s integrity, level of technology, marketability of technology, technology profitability and external environment factors.
In a typical evaluation, applicant SMEs are assessed in terms of these factors and the resulting score is used to decide a technology loan to enterprise. However, the structural relationship among the technology evaluation factors and financial performances of credit fund recipient SMEs has not been carefully analyzed yet. Evaluation factors can have causal relationship (Sohn, Moon, & Kim, 2005) with financial performances such as profitability, growth, liquidity, debt, turnover, and valuation ratios (Bank of Korea, 2004 and Weston and Thomas, 1985).
In this study, we propose a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze direct and indirect relationships between technology evaluation factors and financial performance indicators. Based on this structural relationship, we suggest the financial performance index (FPI) of enterprise and propose some strategies for improving financial performances in accordance with characteristics of enterprises. It is expected for the proposed model, which will be evaluated for the technology evaluation of enterprises, to be applied not only for the effective management of the technology credit funds for SMEs, but also will be used to evaluate financial performance of SMEs.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the proposed structural equation model is introduced along with our research hypotheses. Additionally empirical data analysis is carried on to fit the proposed SEM. In Section 3, we compare the FPI according to the characteristics of enterprises. Finally, we summarize the results of our study and suggest the areas for further research.
In recent years, technology has become not only an important dimension of national development and growth but also essential for survival in this competitive world. Consequently, governmental funds for SME which obtained a high score by technology evaluation model have been committed to R&D of new technology.
In this paper, we applied a structural equation model (SEM) to develop the finance performance index (FPI) by considering the relationship among various factors. The results of our study showed that the operation ability of manager has the highest direct effect on the FPI and the level of technology has the highest indirect effect on the FPI.
In addition, other factors such as knowledge and experience of manager, marketing of technology, have positive effect on the FPI.
We not only compared FPI by the type of technology, being expert managed or not, listed in market or not, old company or not but also made a check list based on the measurement variables in order to provide practical feedback information for the improvement. The results showed that information service and electronic industries are required to improve in most aspects. From this feedback information, it is expected that the model can contribute to improve financial performance index of technology fund recipient enterprises. In this paper we could not consider environmental facts such as exchange rate, oil price and interest rate when technology evaluation institutes evaluated SMEs. Thus, the limitation of this paper lies in not considering such environmental factors. Extension of the model with environmental factor is left for further areas of research.
