본 논문은 미국의 다각화된 기업과는 다른 구조적 특성을 가진 우리나라의 다각화된 기업에 미국기업 중심의 이론들을 그대로 적용하는 과정에서 발생할 수 있는 문제점들을 인식함으로써 출발하고 있다. 기존 연구들은 계열사와 사업부 중 조직계층 상의 어느 수준에서 자원공유가 이루어지는지에 상관없이 동일한 논리를 적용해 왔지만, 본 논문에서는 우리나라 기업이 가지는 구조적 특성을 고려할 때 계열사 간 자원공유와 계열사 내 사업부 간 자원공유는 서로 다른 논리를 기반으로 이해되어야 한다고 주장한다. 이를 위해 본 논문에서는 계열사 간 관련성, 계열사의 전략적 미션, 계열사의 경쟁전략, 계열사 보유자원의 매력성을 자원공유의 결정요인으로 제시하고, 이들 중 어떤 요인이 계열사 간 자원공유에 영향을 미치고, 또 어떤 요인이 계열사 내 사업부 간 자원공유에 영향을 미치는지에 대한 가설을 수립하고, 실증분석을 통해 타당성을 검증하고 있다. 본 논문에서는 가설검증을 통해 다음의 결론을 얻을 수 있었다. 첫째, 계열사 간 산업의 관련성과 자원의 관련성의 정도가 높을 수록 계열사 간 자원공유를 많이 하는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 계열사의 전략이 차별화 전략을 취하는 경우 계열사 간 자원공유를 많이 하며, 원가우위 전략을 취하는 경우 계열사 내 사업부간 자원공유를 많이 하는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 계열사의 자원보유수준이 높고, 보유하고 있는 자원의 가치가 높을 수록 계열사 내 사업부 간 자원공유를 많이 하는 것으로 나타났으며, 계열사의 자원보유수준이 낮을 수록 계열사 간 자원공유를 많이 하는 것으로 나타났다. 본 논문에서는 분석수준에 따라 자원공유의 논리가 달라져야 한다는 점을 강조하였다. 이제까지 자원공유에 관한 기존의 연구들은 분석수준에 관계없이 동일한 논리를 획일적으로 적용하였다. 하지만 본 논문에서는 분석수준에 따라 자원공유의 성격이 달라지며, 이로 인해 차별적인 논리가 적용되어야 한다고 주장하였다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 기업본부-계열사-사업부의 특성을 반영하는 통합적 분석틀과 분석수준에 따른 차별적 논리를 제시하였으며, 특히 계열사 간 자원공유와 계열사 내 사업부 간 자원공유에 미치는 결정요인들이 어떤 식으로 차별적인 영향을 미치는지를 실증연구를 통해 입증했다는 점에서 의의를 찾을 수 있다.
Existing diversification researches in Korea have accepted the theories for american diversified firms without question. However, the research practice like this may cause a theoretical problem in that Korean diversified firms are so different in organizational structure compared to american ones. The organizational structure of Korean diversified firm is based on a triple-tier system composed of corporate, business, and divisional levels whereas an american one has only corporate and business levels. Due to structural distinction of Korean diversified firm, the logics need to be separately identified according to an organizational level to which it is applied. The issue of resource sharing is also unexceptional. The logic should be differentiated whether the resources are shared between businesses or between divisions within a business. It is stressed in this paper that resource sharing at each level has its own logic. We present relatedness, strategic mission, competitive strategy, and resource attractiveness measured at a business level as the determinants of resource sharing and clarifies which determinant would be effective in resource sharing between businesses or resource sharing within a business. We could get the following results by testing the hypotheses. First, industrial and resource relatedness affect resource sharing between businesses in a positive way, whereas neither has an influence on resource sharing within a business. Second, it is suggested that a build mission would be related to resource sharing between businesses and a harvest mission would be related to resource sharing within a business. However, neither one is significantly supported. We infer the reason from the possibility that the business units to which a build or a harvest mission is assigned indiscriminately involve in resource sharing between businesses because a business unit with a build mission is supposed to be given the resources from other ones whereas the one with a harvest mission is supposed to give. As the fact that a business unit with a hold mission falls on the cell of star in the BCG matrix indicates that it should feed itself, it is encouraged to share the resources inside to efficiently utilize its own resources rather than to give or to be given them. A business unit with a divest mission might not share the resources with other business units as it prepares for being sold or liquidated. Third, a differentiation strategy affects resource sharing between businesses, but it does not affect resource sharing within a business. In contrast, a low-cost strategy does not affect resource sharing between businesses, but it affects resource sharing within a business. Fourth, resource value is positively influential to resource sharing within a business. Also, resource level is related to resource sharing within a business in a positive way and is related to resource sharing between businesses in a negative way. We expect that resource value would not affect resource sharing between businesses because of its inimitability, but the result shows that it does affect. It implies that the inimitability of resources blocks transferring not between different industries but between different organizations as the reason why the resource cannot be imitated is rooted in organizational specificity such as path dependence or tacitness. It would not be so easy for the business units which resides in the different firms to replicate other one`s resources even if they are in the same industry. However, those in the same firm would not have such a difficulty in imitating the resources in spite of industrial differences. The contributions of this study could be summarized as follows. First of all, we argue that a differentiated logic should be applied to each of the organizational levels. On the contrary of existing researches which use a homogenized logic regardless of an organizational level to which it is applied, we stress that a discriminative logic should be used because the basic nature of resource sharing at a specific level is not the same as the one at another level. By focusing on the properties of resource sharing in addition to its extents, we expand the research scope. Another one is that we include various determinants of resource sharing at a business level in a diversified firm. The traditional approaches are mainly executed at a corporate level and have limits in considering the business-level variations. They contend that the actualization of resource sharing between businesses is dependent on the corporate-level diversification strategy, but they do not concern how the relationships among businesses are constituted and how the resources are shared in the corporate-level analyses. It is therefore required to lower down the level of analyses right below the one at which its benefit is realized. In other words, resource sharing should be explored at a business level when its performance is materialized at a corporate level. The level of analyses might be much lower down to a divisional one. However, it is difficult to cover a corporate headquarter-business relationship when the analyses are implemented at a divisional level as the divisions do not receive direct orders from the corporate headquarter. So the best way for integrative explorations of the vertical relationships among corporate headquarter, businesses, and divisions is to access them at a business level like this study. Finally, this study takes an overall look of a Korean diversified firm composed of corporate, business, and divisional levels to reflect its structural feature. Existing researches tend to examine a fragmentary side such as corporate-business or business-division because the logic that they use is originated from the theories designed for a american diversified firm which is composed of only corporate and business levels. We intend to perform a full analysis of a Korean diversified firm by suggesting an integrative research model that covers all of the triple-levels.