Korea Business Review · Section
KBR ARTICLE
Premium
경영 아티클
How to Assess AI Investment Payback Periods: 4 Steps for Evaluating CAPEX ROI
When Alibaba released its June quarter earnings on August 20, 2026—reporting a 75% drop in net profit to 10.444 billion yuan alongside a 75% surge in CAPEX to 67.678 billion yuan—the exact same data yielded completely opposite interpretations. Stage 1 breaks investments down into three layers: infrastructure, application, and capability, noting that internally, Alibaba's AI Cloud segment saw EBITA surge 133%, while its AI Labs segment saw losses quadruple. Stage 2 decomposes payback effects into cost, revenue, speed, and risk, with a PwC survey showing top 20% companies capturing 74% of AI's economic value, a gap driven by a focus on growth. Stage 3 requires finance and operations to first agree on the useful life that serves as the denominator for the payback period, which GPU depreciation debates prove is a management judgment rather than a hard fact. Stage 4 locks in stop criteria and re-evaluation points at the time of investment approval, noting that escalating monthly inference and token operating costs—rather than initial deployment expenses—most frequently break payback calculations.
강지혜 선임기자 · 08/29/2026
Read more →
경영 아티클
Essential CEO Competencies for Successful AX Implementation — 88% Adoption Rate, Only 6% Achieving Results: Five Kinds of Leadership Driving the Divide
김민경 책임기자 · 08/12/2026
경영 아티클
Can an Organization Grow Without Delegation? Gallup and McKinsey Data Reveal the Upper Limit of Growth
박소유 책임기자 · 07/07/2026
경영 아티클
The Illusion That 'Those Who Stay Late Work Best': Shorter Hours Improve Productivity, Hiring, and Retention
박소유 책임기자 · 06/24/2026
경영 아티클
Learning Management from the 90-Minute Pitch: Strategic and Tactical Lessons the 2026 World Cup Offers to Businesses
강지혜 선임기자 · 06/19/2026
경영 아티클
Feedback Focused on Strengths Boosts Profitability by 8.9% — The Principles of High-Performing Organizations Through Data
Frequency — Treating feedback as a weekly habit rather than an annual review makes employees five times more likely to be engaged and 48% less likely to look for another job. Strength-Centered — Weighting discovery over fault-finding leads to a 12.5% increase in productivity and an 8.9% rise in profitability. Combination of Recognition — Amplifying feedback with recognition drastically boosts employee engagement to 61% compared to 38% without it at the same frequency. Two-Way Flow — Managers must also receive feedback, and coaching, often the weakest area, is a cultivated competency rather than an innate trait. AI Era — The faster AI provides insights, the more human feedback skills that convert data into motivation become a core competitive advantage.
박소유 책임기자 · 06/18/2026
경영 아티클
People Don't Leave Companies, They Leave Managers: The True Cause of the Engagement Crisis
According to the Gallup 2026 report, global employee engagement has plummeted to 20%, meaning only one in five workers is emotionally invested in their work, marking the first time in Gallup's history that engagement has declined for two consecutive years. Low turnover should not provide false comfort, as 51% of employees are actively preparing to leave and 16% remain in a state of "active disengagement," slowly eroding the organization from within. This engagement slump carries a heavy financial toll, generating roughly $10 trillion in global productivity losses (about 9% of GDP), with the cost of replacing a single employee reaching 50% to 200% of their annual salary. The root cause lies with middle managers: manager engagement plunged from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, erasing the "engagement premium" and causing entire teams to falter under struggling leadership. The solution is to invest heavily in managers; best-practice organizations that provide training, coaching, and well-being support achieved a manager engagement rate of 79% (roughly four times the global average), proving that this crisis is not a matter of fate, but the result of choices.
박소유 책임기자 · 06/15/2026
경영 아티클
How Far Can a CEO Really Shape Organizational Culture?
According to Gallup's 2026 survey of 141,444 respondents, global employee engagement stands at 20%, its lowest level since 2020. Manager engagement has plummeted from 31% to 22%, turning managers into the weakest link in corporate culture. McKinsey's OHI research shows that healthy organizations achieve total shareholder returns (TSR) three times higher than unhealthy ones, with leaders who combine decisiveness and empowerment acting as key variables for organizational health. While 82% of CEOs prioritize culture, only those classified as 'culture accelerators'—who directly link culture to strategy—achieved a twofold revenue growth gap (9.1% vs. 4.4%). Because direct supervisors account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a CEO's most powerful cultural investment is not slogans, but managerial capability and engagement. In 2026, when only 12% of CEOs report tangible benefits from AI investments, a receptive organizational culture has become the deciding factor in the success or failure of AI transformation—proving that culture is not the speeches a CEO makes, but the accumulation of their decisions.
김민경 책임기자 · 06/11/2026
경영 아티클
What Makes Performance Management Different in Successful Global Companies—Why Adobe and Microsoft Abandoned Annual Reviews and the Truth About Performance Management Through Data
Annual evaluations can no longer drive people. Every year-end, countless organizations worldwide repeat the same routine where managers spend days filling out review forms, and employees sigh over scorecards that compress a year of performance onto a single page, which then serve as the basis for compensation and promotions. Do these familiar procedures actually drive people to work harder and lead organizations in a better direction? Many leaders hesitate before this question, as they merely operate existing systems without seriously considering whether they truly work.
KBR 편집부 · 06/10/2026
경영 아티클
The Requirements of a Leader Who Leads Through Respect, Not Fear
A respected leader is not someone who achieves goals through team members, but someone who helps team members grow on their own. The crisis of leadership and the meaning of respect: the success or failure of an organization depends on people, not strategy, and this is especially true when that person is a leader.
강지혜 기자 · 04/29/2026
