Exploring Factors Affecting Sustainable Innovation Performance of Food Firms. A Case of Korean Food Industry

Harry Jeong and Kwangsoo Shin
Additional contact information
Harry Jeong: Department of Biomedical Convergence, College of Medicine, Chungbuk National University, Cheong-Ju 28644, Korea
Kwangsoo Shin: Department of Biomedical Convergence, College of Medicine, Chungbuk National University, Cheong-Ju 28644, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 23, 1-16

Abstract: This study examines the influence of government support, research and development (R&D) investment and cooperation networks on sustainable innovation performance of the medium-sized food firms in South Korea. Climate change, population growth, lifestyle change and consumer demands for new products allow firms to explore innovation for sustainable growth. In the food industry, where various stakeholders are involved in the value chain, government support, R&D investment and cooperation are affecting firms’ sustainable performance. However, there are few empirical studies that examine the relationship among them, especially regarding medium-sized food firms. This study aimed to analyze data regarding Korean food firms through a structural equation model. To overcome data scarcity, this study collected new data for 67 medium-sized food firms. The data is matched with the firms’ 10-year data on management, innovation performance, and cooperation networks. This study can contribute to filling the literature gap by exploring what innovation strategies should be used to improve food SMEs’ innovation performance in the latecomer countries, which have developed their food industries relatively recently.

Keywords: food industry; latecomer country; government support; alliance with university; alliance with firm; sustainable innovation performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/10157/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/10157/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:23:p:10157-:d:457147

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().