• Survey Research
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.45-69
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• 2009

This paper explores how multiple facets of social capital in Korea affects social conflict. The notion of social capital is composed of several elements including (1) social trust in generalized others (2) confidence in public sector fairness and the principles of democracy (3) social networks and closures and (4) community spirit and collective norms. We particularly examine how these multiple dimensions of social capital affect an individual`s tendency of social conflict orientation. The findings address the following four points. First, an individual, who trusts generalized others in a society, is less likely to be exclusive and conflict-oriented. Second, the more an individual has confidence in the efficacy of democratic processes and public sector fairness, the more (s)he is likely to be social integration oriented. When an individual, in contrast, gives strong support to a particular party (or government in power), the person is more likely to be conflict oriented. Third, an individual who mobilizes exclusive social closures to solve a problem is more likely to be conflict oriented. However, an individual who maintains a variety of inclusive social networks is more likely to be social integration oriented. Finally, the internalization of collective norms does not affect directly the tendency of individual's social conflict orientation. Increasing social capital at the individual level does not automatically guarantee societal level conflict resolutions. Rather, building extensive social closures based on strong family or hometown ties, school connections, political interests has detrimental effects on social integration and conflict resolutions. More, constructive social integration in a society requires higher level of open social networks, consistent administrative and democratic procedures, and social trust in generalized others.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.327-334
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• 2010

The paper describes the history and the evolution of the conflict of the Saemangeum reclamation project, focusing on the court trial processes. The Saemangeum project is the world largest coastal reclamation work, regarded as the most controversial environmental issue in the recent history of Korea. Due to the severe pollution found in Lake Sihwa in 1996, the Saemangeum project began to receive a large degree of public concern on the water quality of the proposed artificial freshwater lake. Unlike the Sihwa case, the Korean court system intervened to resolve the heated conflicts between stakeholders in the Saemangeum case. Based on the same set of facts, the Korean courts showed different perspectives on the economic feasibility, value of the ecosystem, land use, and water quality, which represents the limit of legal system to address complicated environmental problems. After the final judgment by the Supreme Court, 'the Special Act for the promotion of the Saemangeum reclamation project', was enacted with strong political support from local leaders and congressmen. A more developmental-oriented land use plan came out in 2009 based on this Act. The Saemangeum project walked along the different pathway from the Sihwa case. The area should be managed in sustainable manners to appropriately consider conservation and development for the prosperity of local residents and future generations.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.145-180
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• 2013

STS studies into science documentaries for television are rare, and they do not even reflect the constructivist fruits of STS. STS have been calling for the need of analyzing 'science-in-the-making' in order to understand science more deeply. Similarly, our starting point is the assumption that science documentary can be better understood when we look into its making process. Under this assumption, we adopted the method of participant observation in analyzing 'documentary practice', trying to open the 'black box' called 'science documentary'. We have here focused on the documentary named "Light" made by a scientific documentary team of EBS, who made "Culture and Mathematics" and "Life". Each of us worked as a main consultant and an assistant staff in making "Light". We will address two main points in this study. First, based on our participant observation and interviews, we will show that the members of documentary making team are thinking about 'science' in distinctive ways. The team tended to emphasize visualization, knowledge linked to people's everyday life, and the distinctive characters of scientists who appear in the documentary. Second, by looking closely into the interaction between the team members and the consultant in the process of completing the script of the documentary, it was possible to understand how the contents of the documentary was constructed more accurately. In the making process, consultant's idea was not simply accepted by the making team, but there were conflicts and compromises. By showing this, we will be able to bring up a reflexive question about the role of consultant in the process of making a science documentary.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.110-131
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper investigates the implications for facilitating trade in the products of Industry 4.0. To identify the issues caused by the conflicts of policy objectives such as applying the tariff concession under the ITA and imposing the export control, by exploring the case of classification of drones. Design/methodology - We adopted a single case study method to gain a deeper understanding of the complex and multifaceted issues of Customs classification in the context of facilitating trade in the products of Industry 4.0. This study employs the case of drones to explore how these issues of Customs classification affect trade facilitation. We ensured the internal validity of the study by confirming the pattern of the results with the existing theories. Findings - Our main findings can be summarised as follows: the intrinsic nature of the products that converge several technologies causes issues in the classification. The inconsistency in product classification delays customs clearance by hindering the Customs risk-management system that pinpoints products subject to controls. To address the issues, therefore, we proposed fundamental reforms of Customs to empower themselves with management roles. Facilitating trade in the products of Industry 4.0 requires more enhanced Customs capability. Therefore, the reforms should include comprehensive capacity-building activities, such as changes in staff-trainings, promotion system, organisation and culture. Customs also need roles in robust designing of cooperative systems to compensate for the lacks of controls and to ensure concrete risk management for expedited Customs procedures. As well, by equipping the Single Window of Customs with crucial control functions of other ministries, Customs need to support the cooperation. The role of harmonising various preaudits of other ministries with its own is another essential role that ensures predictability of clearance procedure. Originality/value - There are scanty studies in the field of knowledge about what obstacles exist and what solution is available in the course of transforming to 'Industry 4.0'. In filling out the gap of knowledge, this paper is of academic significance in that it applies the research theory on trade facilitation for the specific cases of classification of the product of Industry 4.0 to verify its effectiveness and to extend the subject of the studies to the scope of Industry 4.0. It also has practical significance in that the results have provided implications for reforms of Customs procedures to facilitate trade in the products of Industry 4.0.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.93-103
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• 2020

This study aims to explore the difficulties of Korean dance instructors targeting senior people and extends the difficulties found to developing PBL problems applicable to the instructors' education. To address the goal, this author employed an open-ended questionnaire consisting of four questions and 1:1 interview and collected data. According to the study results, total nine subfactors were drawn from four difficulties associated with student management, the curriculum, performances, and class environment. First, about difficulties related to student management, 'conflicts between students' and 'demand for personalized class' were explored. Second, regarding difficulties about the curriculum, 'refusal against new teaching methods' and 'level difference according to the ability of acquisition' were explored. Third, concerning difficulties related to having performances, 'lack of time for practicing', 'needs to achieve excellent performances', and 'the administration of organizations in charge' were explored. Fourth, about difficulties associated with class environment, 'environment in general' and 'spatial environment' were explored. Also, based on the difficulties explored from dance instructors for senior people, this researcher has developed four PBL problems through community dance for harmony, joint choreography-based creative dance, playful dance allowing role division, and mirroring-based dance.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.175-184
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• 2022

Blockchain is being studied in various fields such as logistics, fintech, medical care, and the public sector. In the public information software project, some deliverables are omitted because the developed deliverables and the deliverables requested by the project management methodology do not match, and an additional process is required for payment. In this paper, we propose the deliverables management system for public information software project which is configured a distributed environment using the Ethereum blockchain and which has an automatic payment system only when all deliverables are approved. This system can keep the service available in case of system failure, provide transparency and traceability of deliverables management, and can reduce conflicts between the ordering company and the contractor through automatic payment. In this system, the information of deliverables is stored in the blockchain, and the deliverables that their file name is the hash value calculated by using the version information and the hash value of the previous version deliverable, are stored in the SFTP server. Experimental results show that the hash value of the deliverables registered by the contractor is correct, the file name of the deliverables stored in the SFTP server is the same as the hash value registered in the Ethereum blockchain, and the payment is made automatically to the Ethereum address of the contractor when all deliverables are approved.

• Journal of Technologic Dentistry
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.37-54
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• 2009

The purpose of this thesis is to address the imbalance between supply and demand of dental lab technicians and to propose its solutions by analyzing the improvement of employment rate of graduates of dental technology schools in Daegu area and the supply and demand of the technician workforce. Preliminary and full-scale surveys were performed from Aug. 10 to Oct. 10 in 2008 on 150 junior students of dental technology schools who finished their on-the-job-training and 150 dental technicians who were working for dental laboratory in Daegu by self-assessment questionnaire. Followings are the findings of this study. First, regarding the gender of the dental technicians, 32.7% of respondents were female 67.3% were male. Concerning age, respondents younger than 29 years-old occupied the highest percentage(39.3%). With respect to the lab technology school they graduated, DaeguHealthCollege took the largest proportion of 87.3%. With regard to interpersonal relationship at the school, 58.0% of respondents felt their relationship 'smooth'. Second, about the motive of choosing to be a lab technician, the biggest proportion of the respondents(34.7%) replied that 'because it is professional'. Regarding the degree of satisfaction about the profession, 'so-so' was the answer with the biggest percentage(51.3%) followed by 'satisfied'(32.0%) and 'unsatisfied'(16.7%). It showed that respondents were generally satisfied with their major. Third, regarding relevance of on-the-job-training with 'preparation for the employment', highest percentage of both students and lab technicians(50.0%) replied 'so-so'. With respect to 'necessity of practical education', highest percentage of the students and lab technicians replied 'relating didactic education in college to the real world' with 52.7% and 40.7% respectively. With regard to 'the aim of on-the-sport-training', 'practical training of didactic education' was chosen by 54.0% and 47.3% respectively. Fourth, with regard to the 'types of college education advantageous for the employment', both students and lab technicians groups chose 'practical training' with the highest percentage. Concerning 'helpfulness of clinical training on employment', students answered 'so-so' and 'helpful' by 50.0% and 42.7% respectively and dental technicians replied similarly by 50.0% and 46.0% respectively. Fifth, with regard to the influence of financial factors on the supply and demand of dental technician(question #1), 68.0% of respondents agreed that 'salary plays key role in the supply and demand of the work force'. Concerning the question about working condition, respondents requested better working environment. With reference to interpersonal relationship at the laboratory, respondents replied that interpersonal relationship affects the duration of the employment it was found out that there were many conflicts with colleagues or dental office. Sixth, regarding the satisfaction about their profession according to the characteristics of the respondents more respondents were 'satisfied'(10.30 points) with their profession and 'unsatisfied' were 9.47 points and the difference was statistically significant(p<0.05). According to the findings of this study, practical education on campus and on-the-job-training are as important as didactic education at class due to the characteristics of dental technology major. It was found that more practical training is related to higher employment rate. Therefore, efficiency of on-the-job-training by college education should be increased raise employment rate of the graduates and reduce the unemployment. Up-to-date information needs to be promptly delivered and future vision should be presented to the students to raise their satisfaction about the profession. In addition, to reduce dental technician's frequent change of their workplace after facing with the reality of the profession after graduation, related organizations should make an effort to present better future than now.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.61-101
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• 2014

This study investigates when and how disagreements in online customer ratings prompt more favorable product evaluations. Among the three metrics of volume, valence, and variance that feature in the research on online customer ratings, volume and valence have exhibited consistently positive patterns in their effects on product sales or evaluations (e.g., Dellarocas, Zhang, and Awad 2007; Liu 2006). Ratings variance, or the degree of disagreement among reviewers, however, has shown rather mixed results, with some studies reporting positive effects on product sales (e.g., Clement, Proppe, and Rott 2007) while others finding negative effects on product evaluations (e.g., Zhu and Zhang 2010). This study aims to resolve these contradictory findings by introducing preference heterogeneity as a possible moderator and causal attribution as a mediator to account for the moderating effect. The main proposition of this study is that when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high, a disagreement in ratings is attributed more to reviewers' different preferences than to unreliable product quality, which in turn prompts better quality evaluations of a product. Because disagreements mostly result from differences in reviewers' tastes or the low reliability of a product's quality (Mizerski 1982; Sen and Lerman 2007), a greater level of attribution to reviewer tastes can mitigate the negative effect of disagreement on product evaluations. Specifically, if consumers infer that reviewers' heterogeneous preferences result in subjectively different experiences and thereby highly diverse ratings, they would not disregard the overall quality of a product. However, if consumers infer that reviewers' preferences are quite homogeneous and thus the low reliability of the product quality contributes to such disagreements, they would discount the overall product quality. Therefore, consumers would respond more favorably to disagreements in ratings when preference heterogeneity is perceived as high rather than low. This study furthermore extends this prediction to the various levels of average ratings. The heuristicsystematic processing model so far indicates that the engagement in effortful systematic processing occurs only when sufficient motivation is present (Hann et al. 2007; Maheswaran and Chaiken 1991; Martin and Davies 1998). One of the key factors affecting this motivation is the aspiration level of the decision maker. Only under conditions that meet or exceed his aspiration level does he tend to engage in systematic processing (Patzelt and Shepherd 2008; Stephanous and Sage 1987). Therefore, systematic causal attribution processing regarding ratings variance is likely more activated when the average rating is high enough to meet the aspiration level than when it is too low to meet it. Considering that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity occurs through the mediation of causal attribution, this greater activation of causal attribution in high versus low average ratings would lead to more pronounced interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity in high versus low average ratings. Overall, this study proposes that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high as compared to when it is low. Two laboratory studies lend support to these predictions. Study 1 reveals that participants exposed to a high-preference heterogeneity book title (i.e., a novel) attributed disagreement in ratings more to reviewers' tastes, and thereby more favorably evaluated books with such ratings, compared to those exposed to a low-preference heterogeneity title (i.e., an English listening practice book). Study 2 then extended these findings to the various levels of average ratings and found that this greater preference for disagreement options under high preference heterogeneity is more pronounced when the average rating is high compared to when it is low. This study makes an important theoretical contribution to the online customer ratings literature by showing that preference heterogeneity serves as a key moderator of the effect of ratings variance on product evaluations and that causal attribution acts as a mediator of this moderation effect. A more comprehensive picture of the interplay among ratings variance, preference heterogeneity, and average ratings is also provided by revealing that the interaction between ratings variance and preference heterogeneity varies as a function of the average rating. In addition, this work provides some significant managerial implications for marketers in terms of how they manage word of mouth. Because a lack of consensus creates some uncertainty and anxiety over the given information, consumers experience a psychological burden regarding their choice of a product when ratings show disagreement. The results of this study offer a way to address this problem. By explicitly clarifying that there are many more differences in tastes among reviewers than expected, marketers can allow consumers to speculate that differing tastes of reviewers rather than an uncertain or poor product quality contribute to such conflicts in ratings. Thus, when fierce disagreements are observed in the WOM arena, marketers are advised to communicate to consumers that diverse, rather than uniform, tastes govern reviews and evaluations of products.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-63
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• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.