• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.79-105
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• 2020

While individual enterprises with different objectives each other within supply chains require a variety of resources to achieve their own seeking goals and performances, it is necessary to form interdependent relationships among the enterprises to secure the resources what they need, as the individual enterprises are supposed to have limitations on such as time, space and cost to secure all the resources. In this process, conflict possibilities rise and opportunistic behaviors increase due to those environmental factors such as unbalanced information among enterprises, limited rationality, pursuit of interests, and risk aversion. Those existing studies on conflicts in the field of supply chains have limitations in that they failed to present specific conflict management strategies based on the conflict types from the perspective of the conflict resolution mechanism as the studies have made only focused on investigating the causes of conflicts and the impact of conflicts on performance. In this study, therefore, it used the TKI model of Kilmann and Thomas(1977) to subdivide the conflict management strategies in the process of transactions within supply chains by enterprises, and looked into the impact on partnership and performance according to each strategy. As the results, it showed that those types of conflict management strategies such as concession type and cooperation type had a positive(+) impact on the relationship commitment as a factor of partnership, and it was identified that the relationship commitment had a positive(+) impact on performance. In other words, it can be considered that the enterprises making use of the concession type & the cooperation type conflict management strategies under the situation of conflict would be able to have a very positive impact on their performances if they can make good relationship commitment such as investments in and efforts for the sustainable relationship along with the conflict management, while recognizing the importance of relationship. The most important meaning of this study lies on in terms of that it would be contributable to strengthening the partnership between enterprises and minimizing the risk of supply chains caused by conflicts through these results from the study.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-83
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• 2017

The Swedish labor market secures flexibility in the use of labor force by means of non-regular workers such as temporary workers among others instead of regular workers' layoffs. Although the labor law reform in the late 2000s made it easier to use temporary workers and the outbreak of the economic crisis strengthened the power of user firms against labor unions, the size of temporary workers was scaled down. It is the aim of this study to analyze the change in the use of temporary workers, to examine the effect of the labor law reform and that of economic crisis in that regard, and to explain how, over the use of temporary workers, user firms' strategy to secure flexibility and labor unions' strategy to regulate flexibility interact with each other so as to establish a new equilibrium through conflicts and compromises. The labor law reform to enhance the flexibility in the use of temporary workers failed to entail amendments of collective contracts. Besides, out of the economic crisis, user firms adopted a new policy to use third party workers more, refraining from employing temporary workers. That's why the number of temporary workers has declined eventually. User firms prefer to use third party workers because they could avoid their own responsibility as an employer and they could rely on 'permanent temporary' workers without any time limit. Labor unions, however, responded with a strategy to lay more strict regulations on the use of third party workers, so that third party workers could be used only for limited cause for external numerical flexibility. As a result, the managed flexibility thesis comes to prevail to the usage of non-regular workers in general beyond the category of agency workers. Korea with severe abuse of third party workers should learn from Swedish labor unions' strategy to provide third party workers with stronger employment security and higher wages so as to prevent user firms from abusing third party workers.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.55-80
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• 2012

I. Introduction Developing the relationships between companies is very important issue to ensure a competitive advantage in today's business environment (Bleeke & Ernst 1991; Mohr & Spekman 1994; Powell 1990). Partnerships between companies are based on having same goals, pursuing mutual understanding, and having a professional level of interdependence. By having such a partnerships and cooperative efforts between companies, they will achieve efficiency and effectiveness of their business (Mohr and Spekman, 1994). However, it is difficult to expect these ideal results only in the B2B corporate transaction. According to agency theory which is the well-accepted theory in various fields of business strategy, organization, and marketing, the two independent companies have fundamentally different corporate purposes. Also there is a higher chance of developing opportunism and conflict due to natures of human(organization), such as self-interest, bounded rationality, risk aversion, and environment factor as imbalance of information (Eisenhardt 1989). That is, especially partnerships between principal(or buyer) and agent(or supplier) of companies within supply chain, the business contract itself will not provide competitive advantage. But managing partnership between companies is the key to success. Therefore, managing partnership between manufacturer and supplier, and finding causes of conflict are essential to improve B2B performance. In conclusion, based on prior researches and Agency theory, this study will clarify how business hazards cause conflicts on supply chain and then identify how developed conflicts have been managed by two control mechanisms. II. Research model III. Method In order to validate our research model, this study gathered questionnaires from small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs). In Korea, SMEs mean the firms whose employee is under 300 and capital is under 8 billion won(about 7.2 million dollar). We asked the manufacturer's perception about the relationship with the biggest supplier, and our key informants are denied to a person responsible for buying(ex)CEO, executives, managers of purchasing department, and so on). In detail, we contact by telephone to our initial sample(about 1,200 firms) and introduce our research motivation and send our questionnaires by e-mail, mail, and direct survey. Finally we received 361 data and eliminate 32 inappropriate questionnaires. We use 329 manufactures' data on analysis. The purpose of this study is to identify the anticipant role of business hazard (environmental dynamism, asset specificity) and investigate the moderating effect of control mechanism(formal control, social control) on conflict-performance relationship. To find out moderating effect of control methods, we need to compare the regression weight between low versus. high group(about level of exercised control methods). Therefore we choose the structural equation modeling method that is proper to do multi-group analysis. The data analysis is performed by AMOS 17.0 software, and model fits are good statically (CMIN/DF=1.982, p<.000, CFI=.936, IFI=.937, RMSEA=.056). IV. Result V. Discussion Results show that the higher environmental dynamism and asset specificity(on particular supplier) buyer(manufacturer) has, the more B2B conflict exists. And this conflict affect relationship quality and financial outcomes negatively. In addition, social control and formal control could weaken the negative effect of conflict on relationship quality significantly. However, unlikely to assure conflict resolution effect of control mechanisms on relationship quality, financial outcomes are changed by neither social control nor formal control. We could explain this results with the characteristics of our sample, SMEs(Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Financial outcomes of these SMEs(manufacturer or principal) are affected by their customer(usually major company) more easily than their supplier(or agent). And, in recent few years, most of companies have suffered from financial problems because of global economic recession. It means that it is hard to evaluate the contribution of supplier(agent). Therefore we also support the suggestion of Gladstein(1984), Poppo & Zenger(2002) that relational performance variable can capture the focal outcomes of relationship(exchange) better than financial performance variable. This study has some implications that it tests the sources of conflict and investigates the effect of resolution methods of B2B conflict empirically. And, especially, it finds out the significant moderating effect of formal control which past B2B management studies have ignored in Korea.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.23-33
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• 2016

The current smart lighting is shaped to offer the lighting environment suitable for current context, after identifying user's action and location through a sensor. The sensor-based context awareness technology just considers a single user, and the studies to interpret many users' various context occurrences and conflicts lack. In existing studies, a fuzzy theory and algorithm including ReBa have been used as the methodology to solve context conflict. The fuzzy theory and algorithm including ReBa just avoid an opportunity of context conflict that may occur by providing services by each area, after the spaces where users are located are classified into many areas. Therefore, they actually cannot be regarded as customized service type that can offer personal preference-based context conflict. This paper proposes a priority-based LED lighting control system interpreting multiple context conflicts, which decides services, based on the granted priority according to context type, when service conflict is faced with, due to simultaneous occurrence of various contexts to many users. This study classifies the residential environment into such five areas as living room, 'bed room, study room, kitchen and bath room, and the contexts that may occur within each area are defined as 20 contexts such as exercising, doing makeup, reading, dining and entering, targeting several users. The proposed system defines various contexts of users using an ontology-based model and gives service of user oriented lighting environment through rule based on standard and context reasoning engine. To solve the issue of various context conflicts among users in the same space and at the same time point, the context in which user concentration is required is set in the highest priority. Also, visual comfort is offered as the best alternative priority in the case of the same priority. In this manner, they are utilized as the criteria for service selection upon conflict occurrence.