earticle

영어

This study investigates organizations’ activities and their subsequent consequences during highly uncertain business environment, Asian Financial Crisis. Building upon the behavioral theory of the firm and institutional theory, this study predicts the impacts of organizations’ past performance and organization size on the firms’ decisions on the changes of workforce size, investment on employee training and development, and fixed assets. In addition, this study examines how these strategic decisions of firms influence future firm performance by applying resource-based view of the firm, human capital theory, and social capital theory. Furthermore, this study predicts the interaction effect of two variables (changes on the workforce size and investment on employee training and development) on future firm performance. The hypotheses of this study were tested with a sample of 283 firms in manufacturing industry, which were listed in Korean Stock Exchange between 1996 and 1999, before and during Asian financial crisis. The results of this study show the negative effects of an organization’s past performance on the organizational change related to workforce size. In addition, this study found the main and interaction effect of organizational change variables (workforce size, investment on employee training and development, fixed assets) on future firm performance. This study contributes to accumulating knowledge on the field of research on human resource management and provides firms with practical implications.