• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.943-952
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on corporate governance attributes and firm performance association. This research used a sample of 188 non-financial firms from the Malaysian market for the years 2019-2020. We found that the COVID-19 has affected all firm characteristics including firm performance, governance structure, dividend, liquidity, and leverage level, yet, the difference between prior and post COVID-19 pandemic is not significant. Also, the investigation revealed that board size exerts a significant positive impact on firm performance. After splitting the sample based on year, however, we found that board size does not matter in the uncertain time of the current crisis, while board diversity appeared to be significantly enhancing firm performance in the crisis time compared to the prior year where it has an inverse association with firm performance in both indicators. Board meetings and audit committee meetings seemed to have a significant negative influence on firm performance pre and post-COVID-19. This study contributes to the limited literature by providing the first empirical evidence on the impact of Coronavirus on the firm performance and corporate governance association.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.33-71
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• 2021

Many different approaches and databases have been developed for the evaluation of non-tariff measures (NTMs) and free trade agreements (FTAs). This paper is devoted to the EU-South Korea agreement, which is the first 'second-generation' FTA of the EU, addressing a wide array of non-tariff policies. We review the evolution of NTM types applicable to the EU-South Korea trade relationship and the role of NTMs in ex-ante and ex-post analyses of the agreement. Subsequently a structural gravity model is employed to assess the value added of information on different aspects of FTAs and types of NTMs by evaluating their ability to predict the trade effects of the EU-South Korea FTA. Our results show that, when accounting for information on the components common in modern deep trade agreements, no additional trade effect is attributable to the EU-South Korea FTA. The evolution of NTMs differs considerably across indicators used, but trade predictions are hardly affected. Most specifications point towards a negative effect of bilateral differences in the number of technical barriers to trade (TBT) applied and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) against which trading partners issued complaints at the WTO.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.271-287
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• 2022

Purpose This research aims to study the changes in recruitment needed for the growth and survival of companies in the rapidly changing industry. In particular, we built a real company's worklist accounting for the rapidly advancing data-driven digital transformation, and presented the capabilities and conditions required for work. Design/methodology/approach we selected 37 jobs based on NCS to develop the employment search requirements by analyzing the business characteristics and work capabilities of the industry and company. The business specification indicators were converted into a matrix through the TF-IDF process, and the NMF algorithm is used to extract the features of each document. Also, the cosine distance measurement method is utilized to determine the similarity of the job specification conditions. Findings Companies tended to prefer "IT competency," which is a specification related to computer use and certification, and "experience competency," which is a specification for experience and internship. In addition, 'foreign language competency' was additionally preferred depending on the job. This analysis and development of job requirements would not only help companies to find the talents but also be useful for the jobseekers to easily decide the priority of their specification activities.

• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.35-44
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• 2022

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to find out the impact of ownership structure on firm performance in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry of Bangladesh. Research design, data and methodology: The study has been conducted on 28 listed pharmaceutical and chemical companies from 2012 to 2020. Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q are selected as indicators of internal and market performance of the firms respectively whereas institutional ownership, directors' ownership and foreign ownership are selected as proxies of ownership structure. Panel analysis using random effects, lag method and time dummy method is used to analyse the relationship. Results: The study has found the existence of highly concentrated directors' ownership, a low percentage of institutional ownership and a very insignificant proportion of foreign ownership in the industry. The regression results show that directors' ownership has a positive and significant impact on firm performance, supporting the concept of agency theory. The study has also found a positive and significant impact of foreign ownership on firm performance. Unfortunately, the impact of institutional ownership is found to be insignificant. Conclusions: Directors' ownership and foreign ownership decreases agency cost that ultimately increases firm performance. However, the role of institutional investors is not significant enough to improve firm performance. It is suggested that institutional investors should be more active and involved in monitoring the activities of the organisations to improve performance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.53-70
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• 2022

Recently, due to the change to SASB(Sustainability Accounting Standards Board) and GRI(Global Reporting Initiative) Standards 2021, the paradigm for non-financial information disclosure is changing significantly, with the number of ESG topics and indicators that must be disclosed by industry from an autonomous material topic selection method. This study revealed that the number of compulsory topics in the oil and gas industry by GRI standards 2021 is up to 2.4 times higher than the average number of material topics disclosed when domestic companies publish sustainability reports using GRI Standards 2020. In the oil and gas industry, I analyzed the similarities and differences between the GRI standards 2021 and the ESG topics covered by SASB by environmental, social, economic, and governance areas. In addition, the materiality test process, which is different in GRI standards 2021, is introduced, and the issues included in the following 10 representative ESG-related initiatives are summarized into 62 and suggested improvement plans for materiality test used in the topic pool.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.1445-1453
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• 2023

In 2022, the domestic production performance of functional cosmetics in South Korea reached 4.6 trillion won, accounting for 33.85% of the total cosmetics production. The number of functional cosmetics reviewed increased by about 7.5% from the previous year, totaling 974 items. Especially with the increasing importance of the skin barrier function due to skin sensitivity caused by various environmental pollutants, domestic cosmetic companies are showing interest in the development of new ingredients and products related to this area. This study aims to analyze academic research trends related to in vitro experiments for the development of cosmetics improving the skin barrier, to provide practical information for the cosmetic industry. The findings are as follows: Academic research mainly focused on the efficacy of natural ingredients in improving the skin barrier, but there is a significant lack of quantitative accumulation of research. For the development of skin barrier-improving cosmetic ingredients, efficacy evaluation indicators were set, including hyaluronic acid production, expression of filaggrin gene, loricrin, formation of cornified envelope (CE), and expression of ceramide synthesis enzyme genes. Moreover, effective cosmetic ingredients for improving the skin barrier included lemongrass and perilla leaf extracts, flavonoids, Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Exosomelike Nanovesicles derived from apple callus, Eleutherococcus sessiliflorus, Acanthopanax sessiliflorus, Eleutherococcus gracilistylus, Acer okamotoanum extracts, Aloe vera adventitious root extract, ethanol extract of Aruncus dioicus, and organic solvent fraction of Dracocephalum argunense.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.112-119
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• 2020

Suicide has been a long-standing problem for global public health, along with almost 800,000 deaths from suicide worldwide in 2016, accounting for 1.4% of all deaths. South Korea was ranked first in suicide mortality in 2018 among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This study aimed to suggest up-to-date information about suicide-related indicators such as the rate of suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, and suicide death, and its trends by applying sampling weight to make it nationally representative. In this study, we used the data sources: Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination (KNHANES, '07-13, '15-18), Korean Community Health Survey (KCHS, '08-09, '13, '17), Korean Wealth Panel Study (KOWEPS, '12-18), Korea Health Panel Survey (KHP, '10-13), and Statistics Korea (1983-2017). The rate of suicidal ideation as recent year was 4.73% (KNHANES, '17), 6.96% (KCHS, '17), 2.29% (KOWEPS, '18), and 5.39% (KHP, '13). That of suicide attempt as recent year was 0.51% (KNHANES, '18), 0.32% (KCHS, '17), and 0.15% (KOWEPS, '18). Annual percentage change (APC) of suicidal ideation was -15.4% (KNHANES, '07-13, '15, '17), -2.5% (KCHS, '08-09, '13, '17), -10.8% (KOWEPS, '12-18), and -10.9% (KHP, '10-13). APC of suicide attempt was -4.4% (KNHANES, '07-13, '15-18), -4.4% (KCHS, '08-09, '13, '17), and -13.6% (KOWEPS, '12-18). APC of death by intentional self-harm was -1.25% (Statistics Korea, '07-18). All suicide-related indicators were found to be decreasing in the overall from 2009. Individuals with lower income level were more likely to experience suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Even though suicide rate had been continuously decreasing from its highest point in 2011 (suicide rate: 31.7 per 100,000 population) to 2017 (suicide rate: 24.3 per 100,000 population), it increased again in 2018 (suicide rate: 26.6 per 100,000 population). This information would be grounded on policy implementation for suicide prevention, thus continuous data observation is necessary.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.215-222
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• 2018

This study aims to compare and analyze the quality of life of residents between those living in coastal and non-coastal areas. The indicators for the quality of life were divided into three different sectors. First, the economic sector observed the rate of population growth, the number of businesses per 1000 people, the employment and unemployment rate. The second was the environmental sector, which included the number of car registrations per capita, water supply and sewer service ratio, the urban park composition area per 1000 people and the road pavement rate. Thirdly, the social sector comprising data about the number of students per teacher, the number of sickbeds in medical institutions per 1000 people, the rate of traffic accidents per 1000 cars and the portion of social welfare budget in general accounting. The analysis method of standardized indicators and T-Test were carried out in 24 coastal cities and 51 non-coastal cities across the country. Results of the indicator comparison suggested there were significant differences in the number of businesses per 1000 people, the road pavement rate and the rate of traffic accidents per 1000 cars. From the results of each sector comparison, the coastal cities showed a higher value than non-coastal cities only in the economic sector. The quality of life comparison showed that coastal cities were better than non-coastal cities but were not statistically significant.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.104-124
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• 1996

Background : In these days, the health care organizations have concerned about customer-centered care in order to empower the competitiveness on the health care markets. The departments working for quality management of the hospitals have used health care quality indicators in terms of medical areas as well as service areas of the hospitals. However, there were insufficient efforts to develop the credible measurement to seek the customers' needs, their expectations and their satisfaction levels related to health care services because various kinds of challenges were in the process of scale development to measure customers' satisfaction in health care. The purpose of this study was to develop the satisfaction scale to health care services in a Korea health care organization and to test its tool with validity and reliability. Method : The concept of this tool was acceptability that one of the components of health care quality defined by Donabedian. Acceptability has the five dimensions of concept: Accessibility; Patient-Practitioner Relations; Amenities; Patient Preferences as to the effects of care; and Patient Preferences as to the costs of care. The Satisfaction Tool to Health Care Services was reviewed by expert panel with five researchers, including hospital managers and a professor related to quality management of the hospitals. As a result, the content validity index was .84 in the outpatient satisfaction tool. The inpatient satisfaction tool had .87 of the content validity index. The Satisfaction Tools to Health Care Services finally consisted of 44 items for outpatients/their families and of 60 items for inpatients/their families. Study subjects of the construct validity test were 479 outpatients/their families and 561 inpatients/their families who visited or admitted at a University hospital from July 1, 1996 through August 10, 1996. The data were examined by Factor Analysis with SPSS. Result : The items of Satisfaction tools for outpatients/their families were categorized by eleven factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0 accounting for 64.2 percent of the variation in item scores. Also, the items of inpatient tool had eleven factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0 accounting for 60.3 percent of the variation in item scores. The reliability of overall scale were .95 and .96 for the outpatients/their families satisfaction scores and inpatient/their families satisfaction scores. The internal consistency reliability with eleven factors was ranged from .30 to .94 for inpatients/their families. The Satisfaction Tool with eleven factors for inpatients/their families had internal consistency reliability ranged from .53 to .89. Conclusion : The Satisfaction Tools to Health Care Services focused on outpatients/their families and inpatients/their families developed in this study had a high reliability and the strong evidence of content validity and construct validity based on quality concept. Therefore, this tool would be utilized as a credible quality indicator of health care services to assess the quality problems and to monitor the quality improvement activities in Korean Health Care Organizations.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.157-182
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• 2023

This study analyzed the structure and utilization of subject headings in the National Library of Korea Subject Headings List (NLSH) based on an analysis of subject headings assigned to 1,218,867 national bibliographies from 2003 to 2022. The findings of the study are as follows: Firstly, among all subject headings in the NLSH, there were 257,103 preferred terms, accounting for 50.2% of the total terms. Foreign language terms constituted 33% (169,466), while non-preferred terms comprised 12% (61,442). Among the preferred terms, 57,312 subject headings were used, accounting for 22.3%. However, it was observed that 54.7% (31,351) of these subject headings were assigned less than 5 times, indicating that only a small number of subject headings were frequently utilized. Secondly, the frequency of relationship indicators appeared in the order of RT, BT, and NT. The NLSH consisted of 12,602 top-level subject headings and 143,704 lowest-level subject headings, with a maximum depth of 17 levels. Thirdly, on average, 1.72 subject headings were assigned per bibliographic record. The number of subject headings assigned and the depth of the hierarchy increased for materials with more specific contents. Recent bibliographic records have been assigned more subject headings and deeper into the hierarchy of the NLSH. It was also found that the number of subject headings assigned per bibliography varied depending on the main class of KDC. Based on the findings, it is recommended to evaluate the coverage of terms in the NLSH, reorganize hierarchical relationships and depth of subject headings, and enhance the development of subdivisions within the NLSH.