• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.347-365
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• 1995

A survey was conducted to study perception and attitudes of health workers towards health center's activities and organization of health services, from August 15 to September 30, 1994. The study population was 310 health workers engaged in seven urban health centers in Taegu City area. A questionnaire method was used to collect data and response rate was 81.3 percent or 252 respondents. The following are summaries of findings: Profiles of study population: Health workers were predominantly female(62.3%); had college education(60.3%); and held medical and nursing positions(39.6%), technicians(30.6%) and public health/administrative positions(29.8%). Perceptions on health center's resources: Slightly more than a half(51.1%) of respondents expressed that physical facilities of the centers are inadequate; equipments needed are short(39.0%); human resource is inadequate(44.8%); and health budget allocated is insufficient(38.5%) to support the performance of health center's activities. Decentralization and health services: The majority revealed that the decentralization of government system would affect the future activities of health centers(51.9%) which may have to change. However, only one quarter of respondents(25.4%) seemed to view the decentralization positively as they expect that it would help perform health activities more effectively. The majority of the respondents(78.6%) insisted that the function and organization of the urban health centers should be changed. Target workload and job satisfaction: A large proportion (43.3%) of respondents felt that present target setting systems for various health activities are unrealistic in terms of community needs and health center's situation while only 11.1 percent responded it positively; the majority(57.5%) revealed that they need further training in professional fields to perform their job more effectively; more than one third(35.7%) expressed that they enjoy their professional autonomy in their job performance; and a considerable proportion (39.3%) said they are satisfied with their present work. Regarding the personnel management, more worker(47.3%) perceived it negatively than positive(11.5%) as most of workers seemed to think the personnel management practiced at the health centers is not fair or justly done. Health services rendered: Among health services rendered, health workers perceived the following services are most successfully delivered; they are, in order of importance, Tb control, curative services, and maternal and child health care. Such areas as health education, oral health, environmental sanitation, and integrated health services are needed to be strengthening. Regarding the community attitudes towards health workers, 41.3 percent of respondents think they are trusted by the community they serve. New areas of concern identified which must be included in future activities of health centers are, in order of priority, health care of elderly population, home health care, rehabilitation services, and such chronic diseases control programs as diabetes, hypertension, school health and mental health care. In conclusion, the study revealed that health workers seemed to have more negative perceptions and attitudes than positive ones towards organization and management of health services and activities performed by the urban health centers where they are engaged. More specifically, the majority of health workers studied revealed to have the following areas of health center's organization and management inadequate or insufficient to support effective performance of their health activities: Namely, physical facilities and equipments required are inadequate; human and financial resources are insufficient; personnel management is unsatisfactory; setting of service target system is unrealistic in terms of the community needs. However, respondents displayed a number of positive perceptions, particularly to those areas as further training needs and implementation of decentralization of government system which will bring more autonomy of local government as they perceived these change would bring the necessary changes to future activities of the health center. They also displayed positive perceptions in their job autonomy and have job satisfactions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-33
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• 2019

The small and medium sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are already at a competitive disadvantaged when compared to large companies with more abundant resources. Manufacturing SMEs not only need a lot of information needed for new product development for sustainable growth and survival, but also seek networking to overcome the limitations of resources, but they are faced with limitations due to their size limitations. In a new era in which connectivity increases the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment, SMEs are increasingly urged to find information and solve networking problems. In order to solve these problems, the government funded research institutes plays an important role and duty to solve the information asymmetry problem of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the differentiating characteristics of SMEs that utilize the public information support infrastructure provided by SMEs to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs, and how they contribute to corporate performance. We argue that we need an infrastructure for providing information support to SMEs as part of this effort to strengthen of the role of government funded institutions; in this study, we specifically identify the target of such a policy and furthermore empirically demonstrate the effects of such policy-based efforts. Our goal is to help establish the strategies for building the information supporting infrastructure. To achieve this purpose, we first classified the characteristics of SMEs that have been found to utilize the information supporting infrastructure provided by government funded institutions. This allows us to verify whether selection bias appears in the analyzed group, which helps us clarify the interpretative limits of our study results. Next, we performed mediator and moderator effect analysis for multiple variables to analyze the process through which the use of information supporting infrastructure led to an improvement in external networking capabilities and resulted in enhancing product competitiveness. This analysis helps identify the key factors we should focus on when offering indirect support to SMEs through the information supporting infrastructure, which in turn helps us more efficiently manage research related to SME supporting policies implemented by government funded institutions. The results of this study showed the following. First, SMEs that used the information supporting infrastructure were found to have a significant difference in size in comparison to domestic R&D SMEs, but on the other hand, there was no significant difference in the cluster analysis that considered various variables. Based on these findings, we confirmed that SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure are superior in size, and had a relatively higher distribution of companies that transact to a greater degree with large companies, when compared to the SMEs composing the general group of SMEs. Also, we found that companies that already receive support from the information infrastructure have a high concentration of companies that need collaboration with government funded institution. Secondly, among the SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure, we found that increasing external networking capabilities contributed to enhancing product competitiveness, and while this was no the effect of direct assistance, we also found that indirect contributions were made by increasing the open marketing capabilities: in other words, this was the result of an indirect-only mediator effect. Also, the number of times the company received additional support in this process through mentoring related to information utilization was found to have a mediated moderator effect on improving external networking capabilities and in turn strengthening product competitiveness. The results of this study provide several insights that will help establish policies. KISTI's information support infrastructure may lead to the conclusion that marketing is already well underway, but it intentionally supports groups that enable to achieve good performance. As a result, the government should provide clear priorities whether to support the companies in the underdevelopment or to aid better performance. Through our research, we have identified how public information infrastructure contributes to product competitiveness. Here, we can draw some policy implications. First, the public information support infrastructure should have the capability to enhance the ability to interact with or to find the expert that provides required information. Second, if the utilization of public information support (online) infrastructure is effective, it is not necessary to continuously provide informational mentoring, which is a parallel offline support. Rather, offline support such as mentoring should be used as an appropriate device for abnormal symptom monitoring. Third, it is required that SMEs should improve their ability to utilize, because the effect of enhancing networking capacity through public information support infrastructure and enhancing product competitiveness through such infrastructure appears in most types of companies rather than in specific SMEs.