This thesis examines the emergence of different business structure in Taiwan and South Korea. This thesis questions how, in very similar contexts, different economic institutions have evolved. In contrast to the political, market, and cultural perspectives dealing, the historical comparative institutional analysis adopted in this research suggests institutions alone could not explain the different business structure. In Korea and Taiwan, different business structure has emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, and this thesis considers three factors underlying their formations: political conditions, historical events, and industrial adjustments. The Chaebols in Korea, to a large extent are the result of a political alliance between the South Korean governments with the entrepreneurial elites to overcome their weak political support basis. Thus South Korea was, exposed largely to the leverages and influences of large business conglomerates which in turn benefited the growth of the Chaebols. In Taiwan, however, the business groups are the oucome of state policies in the economic realm. To avoid political challenges from centralized business groups, the KMT government in Taiwan distanced itself from the business sector and when necessary, exerted strong measures to restrict the business concentration. Thus, business structure in Taiwan are more diffused and balanced in its proportions. SMEs produces most of the export goods while the Large enterprises and State own enterprises produce the domestic consumer goods. This thesis pilots aspects of an alternative explanation, which aims to add additional explanation to the literature. Contrary to the prior conception of the institutional logic, the thesis concludes that growth of business structure in East Asia must incorporate attributes of historical and political conditions that support the entrepreneurial behavior, and the wider environment that serves to deter or reinforce risk-taking behavior.

This study analyses press treatment of the Korean chaebols from 1989 to 1993. A review of the scholarly literature found that the chaebols were very powerful, but were widely disliked and distrusted by members of the Korean public. As well as controlling many Korean businesses, the chaebols influence the media industries through direct and indirect control. With such influence, and their effort to improve their image after the Seoul Olympics, the researcher expected rather favourable images to be reported in the selected press. A total of seven foreign and domestic newspapers and magazines were selected for the study, which represented various ownership and readership characteristics. Hypotheses were established on the basis of the evidence in Chapters 1 and 2 of the power of the chaebols, and of their recent concern to improve their public images. Quantitative content analysis was then used to investigate significant differences in each selected source in relation to the resource dependencies of the selected newspapers and magazines. Each source was compared and analysed to investigate its distinctiveness and their dependencies due to limited resources. Also, some qualitative content analysis was incorporated to further investigate the ways the Korean chaebols were reported. The research found that rather unfavourable images of the chaebols were often reported in the press, both Korean and overseas. They were favourably described as a contributor in developing in the Korean economy, but were unfavourably described as socially destructive. Our results often contradicted our hypotheses. Also, some significant difference and similarities of reports about chaebols were found especially between the Korean and non-Korean press. The more complex situation revealed by our results was addressed using Turow's(1984) Resource Dependency Theory. Overall, the study supported the more complex picture put forward by the Resource Dependency Theory rather than the somewhat simplistic view that sees ownership as the main influence on media outlets.

This thesis deals with historical and socio-cultural context of Korean political economy and its relationships with important aspects of Korean business environment. The work dedicates significant space to chaebols as specific business organizational structures and the application of Korean paradigm of rationality to the reform following 1997 International Monetary and Financial Crisis. The main part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of Korean political economy from the viewpoint of its institutional comparative advantage, through which Korean cultural characteristics influence commodity structure of Korean international trade and Korea's patent specialisation profile. The main contribution of the thesis lies in its effort to document mutual relationships and links among various aspects of Korean political economy. The findings of the thesis show that Korea's socio-cultural characteristics still represent an important factor influencing Korean business environment and local form of capitalism. The continuing existence and success of chaebols in current economy implies that the socio-cultural and economic sources of their existence still prevail despite the increasing number of conglomerates of non-chaebol types operating in Korea since post-crisis reform. The application of "Eastern paradigm" to the post-crisis reform reveals that the reform was based on "Western paradigm" of highly liberal Anglo-American form of capitalism and crisis management was thus ethnocentrically biased. Regarding the institutional comparative advantage, the thesis concludes Korea can be regarded as a group coordinated market economy where mutual links among various agents of its political economy are of outmost importance, with some aspects of liberal market economies. The main coordination mechanism of Korean political economy can be characterised as thick networks of highly particularistic socio-economic relationships based on Korean socio-cultural characteristics. This institutional and socio-cultural set up provides Korean companies with capacities that favour companies'preference of incremental innovation production strategies. However, Korean "mobilizational culture" along with other specific organizational principles and socio-cultural features of Korean corporate culture also provide Korean firms with advantages in some radical innovation fields.

The thesis is focused on transnational family corporations – South Korean chebols, their authentic features, organizational structure and corporate governance. The main subject of the work is "Samsung Group" on which author illustrates special aspects of the pyramidal structure of ownership with mutual ownership of shares within the group, as a way to maintain control over the conglomerate by members of the same family. The advantages and disadvantages of the organizational structure of South Korean business conglomerates are revealed. / Обращаясь к теме транснациональных семейных корпораций, автор анализирует их характерные черты организационной структуры и корпоративного управления на примере южнокорейских конгломератов – чеболей. Особенности организационной структуры чеболей раскрываются на примере одного из них - «Самсунг Груп». Автор анализирует пирамидальную структуру собственности с взаимным владением акций внутри группы, как способ сохранения контроля над конгломератом членами одной семьи. Раскрываются достоинства и недостатки организационной структуры южнокорейских бизнес-конгломератов.

在了解一特定國家金融危機的成因時，除了目前已有的三代金融危機理論之外，我們覺得尚應有一個國家別論述架構才能更完整的解釋特定金融危機的前因後果。 參與韓國自1970年代以來大力推動的以出口帶動經濟成長策略的「韓國政府」、「韓國大企業財團」，以及基本上是為此等財團服務的「韓國金融機構」三者間所共同形成的運作邏輯及其利益交換的三角關係，乃是韓國特有的國家別論述架構。 此一韓國獨有的特殊三角運作，僅管一直存在政府擴張性政策所造成信用過度擴張、金融機構受制於政府及貸款企業體質而致的經營沒有效率與道德危機，以及因此累積的對外舉債過多等諸多風險因子，但由於國際貿易與國際資本市場一直對韓國有利，1990年代中期前此一三角運作堪稱良好。 然而自1990年代中期起，韓國受外在因素接連影響，一路從國際貿易市場優勢不再、企業財團獲利急速惡化，進而拖累本國金融機構體質等基本面因素上為金融危機奠下惡因，最後在1997年東南亞國家連串發生金融危機的那個時間點上，沒能撐過國際資金短期內自韓國全面撤離的衝擊，終於發生金融危機。 1997年韓國金融危機儘管是個危機，但它也帶給韓國一個來自IMF援救計畫的外來改革動力，成功的克服過去「政府、企業財團及金融機構」三角運作中所累積的沉疴以及抗拒改革的慣性，讓進一步提升韓國經濟發展的結構性改造得以全面推動。 / Three generations of financial crises theories have been evolved since Paul Krugman developed his speculative attack models in 1979. Krugman emphasized the failure of the fundamentals while the later theories including the exit clause models addressing the conditional commitment of the central banks, the moral hazards of the financial institutes and the self-fulfilling effect of the markets. We looked into the 1997 Korean financial crisis with these prevailing theoretical principles and also developed a framework incorporating three closely related Korean parties, namely the government, the chaebols（conglomerates）and the financial institutes to unveil this specific Korean case.