한국 경영사상 애경그룹의 위상

The Status of AeKyung Group in Korean Business History

AeKyung group has been established for 50 years. Given the short period of Korean capitalism, the AeKyung group has a comparatively long history in Korea. Since liberation from Japanese imperialism in 1945, Korea has experienced radical changes: political, social, and cultural. In particular, many firms of Korea underwent radical changes. For example, they became victims of politic hegemony: sometimes they were taken over and eliminated by the government. Therefore, most firms maintained the strong relationships with the government. Through these relationships, companies benefited by acquisition of Japanese-owned firms, public enterprise, or poorly-managed firms, primal beneficiary of foreign-aid resources, aid dollars, or foreign loans, and cumulative inflation. These factors made those firms their foundations sound, that worked as important factors to grow themselves. Because of those circumstances, they are not exempted from ethical problem in Korean society. Nevertheless, they played important roles to support economical development of Korea. While the AeKyung group has grown relatively slowly compared with other firms having similar company history, it has grown very solidly. The AeKyung particularly showed solid growth base, compared to SK or LG group, all of which started from the same chemical industry. AeKyung played a positive role in economic development of Korea as the following way: firstly, it led chemical industry in Korea and devoted itself to the enhancement of people s lives. Secondly, the AeKyung pursued the vertical integration of chemical industry, which secured the equipment and financial resources for company independence. AeKyung has shown that it has remarkable features in business history: the AeKyung established desirable relationships between employers and employees, and between the company and consumers through human-oriented management, environment management, and quality management, all of those are targeted for partnership management. Chairman Chang, Young-Shin, proved herself an able business person, and promoting the belief that woman has not less potential to manage the company. She developed the AeKyung chemical industry Ltd. into a huge firm with 1,000 million dollar products annually. All of these prove that the AeKyung left its clear stamp on the economic history and business history of Korea.