벤처기업의 직무별 인력부족과 매출성과: 성장단계별 진단과 컨설팅 시사점 = Job-Specific Human Resource Shortages and Sales Performance in Korean Venture Firms : Growth-Stage Diagnosis and Consulting Implications

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study explores how job-specific human resource shortages are associated with sales performance among Korean venture firms within a job–growth-stage framework and presents the findings as a reference matrix for consulting pre-diagnosis. Using the 2024 Korean Venture Firm Survey, the analysis focuses on firms in the early-growth, high-growth, and mature stages after excluding firms in the nascent and declining stages (N=2,742). Weighted least squares (WLS) regression was estimated with HC1 robust standard errors and Duan smearing correction. Firm size was controlled using employment-size category codes to reduce mechanical overlap with the dependent variable.
The results show that the association between job-specific human resource shortages and sales performance is observed mainly through the sales-staff shortage rate, providing partial support for Hypothesis 1. Among the 12 job–stage combination cells, only the sales-staff × high-growth stage cell shows a statistically significant negative association with sales performance (-0.320, p<.05). However, stage-pair marginal-effect difference tests indicate that inter-stage differences are not statistically significant; thus, the growth-stage dependence hypothesis (H2) is not supported. The principal finding of this study is therefore not that growth-stage differentiation has been confirmed, but rather that an exploratory diagnostic signal has been observed at the simple-slope level in the high-growth × sales-staff cell.
For high-growth venture firms, counterfactual predicted sales under the q25 condition of the sales-staff shortage rate (0%) are approximately 9.73 billion KRW, whereas predicted sales under the q75 condition (25%) are approximately 8.98 billion KRW, yielding a reference gap of about 747.2 million KRW (-7.7%). Across alternative R&D-control specifications and weighting/standard-error specifications, the negative direction of the core marginal effect is broadly maintained. However, when the shortage rate is redefined as headcount shortage divided by current headcount, rather than shortage divided by required headcount, statistical significance is not maintained. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted not as causal effects but as conditional associations observed under the main shortage-rate definition.
These findings suggest that the high-growth × sales-staff cell may serve as a candidate priority area for sales operating system review during consulting pre-diagnosis. The study provides an exploratory diagnostic reference rather than a prescriptive intervention framework, and its findings should be regarded as hypothesis-forming signals requiring further validation through multi-year panel data and field-based diagnosis.