• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.177-200
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• 2009

AIn the advanced - economy, the services industry hasbecome a dominant sector. Evidently, the services sector has grown at a much faster rate than any other. For instance, in such developed countries as the U.S., the proportion of the services sector in its GDP is greater than 75%. Even in the developing countries including India and China, the magnitude of the services sector in their GDPs is rapidly growing. The increasing dependence on service gives rise to new initiatives including service science and service-dominant logic. These new initiatives propose a new theoretical prism to promote the better understanding of the changing economic structure. From the new perspectives, service is no longer regarded as a transaction or exchange, but rather co-creation of value through the interaction among service users, providers, and other stakeholders including partners, external environments, and customer communities. The purpose of this study is the following. First, we review previous literature on service, service innovation, and service systems and integrate the studies based on service dominant logic. Second, we categorize the ten propositions of service dominant logic into conceptual propositions and the ones that are directly related to service provision. Conceptual propositions are left out to form the research model. With the selected propositions, we define the research constructs for this study. Third, we develop measurement items for the new service concepts including service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and convergence of service with product. We then propose a research model to explain the relationship among the factors that affect the value creation mechanism. Finally, we empirically investigate the effects of the factors on firm performance. Through the process of this research study, we want to show the value creation mechanism of service systems in which various participants in service provision interact with related parties in a joint effort to create values. To test the proposed hypotheses, we developed measurement items and distributed survey questionnaires to domestic companies. 500 survey questionnaires were distributed and 180 were returned among which 171 were usable. The results of the empirical test can be summarized as the following. First, service providers' network which is to help offer required services to customers is found to affect customer network, while it does not have a significant effect on value co-creation and product-service convergence. Second, customer network, on the other hand, appears to influence both value co-creation and product-service convergence. Third, value co-creation accomplished through the collaboration of service providers and customers is found to have a significant effect on both product-service convergence and firm performance. Finally, product-service convergence appears to affect firm performance. To interpret the results from the value creation mechanism perspective, service provider network well established to support customer network is found to have significant effect on customer network which in turn facilitates value co-creation in service provision and product-service convergence to lead to greater firm performance. The results have some enlightening implications for practitioners. If companies want to transform themselves into service-centered business enterprises, they have to consider the four factors suggested in this study: service provider network, customer network, value co-creation, and product-service convergence. That is, companies becoming a service-oriented organization need to understand what the four factors are and how the factors interact with one another in their business context. They then may want to devise a better tool to analyze the value creation mechanism and apply the four factors to their own environment. This research study contributes to the literature in following ways. First, this study is one of the very first empirical studies on the service dominant logic as it has categorized the fundamental propositions into conceptual and empirically testable ones and tested the proposed hypotheses against the data collected through the survey method. Most of the propositions are found to work as Vargo and Lusch have suggested. Second, by providing a testable set of relationships among the research variables, this study may provide policy makers and decision makers with some theoretical grounds for their decision making on what to do with service innovation and management. Finally, this study incorporates the concepts of value co-creation through the interaction between customers and service providers into the proposed research model and empirically tests the validity of the concepts. The results of this study will help establish a value creation mechanism in the service-based economy, which can be used to develop and implement new service provision.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.1087-1102
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• 1999

Diabetes mellitus, a universal and prevalent chronic disease, is projected to be one of the most formidable worldwide health problems in the 21st century. For those living with diabetes, there is a need for self-care skills to manage a complex medical regimen. Self-efficacy which refers to one's belief in his/her capability to monitor and perform the daily activities required to manage diabetes has be found to be related to self-care. The concept of self-efficacy comes from social cognitive theory which maintains that cognitive mechanism mediate the performance of behavior. The literature cites several research studies which show a strong relationship between self-efficacy and self-care behavior. Meta-analysis is a technique that enables systematic review and quantitative integration of the results from multiple primary studies that are relevant to a particular research question. Therefore, this study was done using meta-analysis to quantitatively integrate the results of independent research studies to obtain numerical estimates of the overall effect of a self-efficacy with diabetic patient on self-care behaviors. The research proceeded in three stages : 1) literature search and retrieval of studies in which self-efficacy was related to self-care, 2) coding, and 3) calculation of mean effect size and data analysis. Seventeen studies which met the research criteria included study population of adults with diabetes, measures of self-care and measures of self-efficacy as a predictive variable. Computation of effect size was done on DSTAT which is a statistical computer program specifically designed for meta-analysis. To determine the effect of self-efficacy on self-care practice homogeneity tests were conducted. Pooled effect size estimates, to determine the best subvariable for composite variables, metabolic control variables and component of self-efficacy and self-care, indicated that the effect of self-efficacy composite on self-care composite was moderate to large. The weighted mean effect size of self-efficacy composite and self-care composite were ＋.76 and the confidence interval was from ＋.66 to ＋.86 with the number of subjects being 1,545. The total for this meta-analysis result showed that the weighted mean effect sizes ranged from ＋.70 to ＋1.81 which indicates a large effect. But since reliabilities of the instruments in the primary studies were low or not stated, caution must be applied in unconditionally accepting the results from these effect sizes. Meta-analysis is a useful took for clarifying the status of knowledge development and guiding decision making about future research and this study confirmed that there is a relationship between self-efficacy and self-care in patients with diabetes. It, thus, provides support for nurses to promote self-efficacy in their patients. While most of the studies included in this meta-analysis used social cognitive theory as a framework for the study, some studies use Fishbein & Ajzen's attitude model as a model for active self-care. Future research is needed to more fully define the concept of self-care and to determine what it is that makes patients feel competent in their self-care activities. The results of this study showed that self-efficacy can promote self-care. Future research is needed with experimental design to determine nursing interventions that will increase self-efficacy.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.575-585
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• 1997

A daily runoff system was constructed to support decision making for water use in the downstream region of multipurpose dams in the Han River. The daily runoff system used the modified model from NWSRFS by Tabios III et al. (1986), and potential evapotranspiration was computed from Penman equation. DWOPER was used for channel routing. While the North Han River is the main river reach in the channel routing system, the South Han River and the Soyang River became tributaries. The rainfall-runoff model was calibrated and verified for five subbasins. Daily runoffs were simulated with the hydrometeorological data in 1986 and1990. The simulations were performed from April to November, and the sum of computed discharges for seven or thirty days were compared with actual releases of the downstream dams. It showed the average absolute errors of 8.7 ~31.6%. The sum of total discharges were 10% or less. While stage errors were produced by 0.5 m or less at Yoju station in the ease of simulation from April to August in 1986, the errors kept under 0.2 m since September. In the simulation for 1990, we compared two simulation results. One is produced from real internal and downstream boundary conditions and the other is one from internal and downstream boundary conditions fixed arbitrarily. The two cases showed similar results.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-21
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• 2009

The balanced scorecard(BSC) framework is a tool for strategic decision making and task support that aims for efficiency in performance management and strategy execution. BSC evolved from an old performance management practice, which tended to be limited to a finance-only perspective, to a new system of corporate management looking at corporate tasks from a multi-dimensional, future-inclined value perspective. This form of BSC amounts to a framework capable of driving management innovation and renewing the ways in which companies conceive their strategy and perform their operations. Since BSC draws integrally on user participation, it can be expected that users' satisfaction with BSC systems is an important factor in systems' success or failure. However, previous studies of the BSC system have not yet considered it as a theoretical model, specifically examining BSC system and task characteristics. To date, only a few studies have put forward plans for the implementation and use of BSC systems, and these studies have the common limitation of failing to consider the circumstances or theoretical structure of the companies for which a BSC system is being proposed. This paper then begins to fill some of this gap by characterizing the BSC system from the perspective of contingency theories. Contingency theories can be particularly useful in the Korean context in exploring how different companies use the BSC system in ways determined by their unique environmental characteristics, which may also determine the performance factors behind the application of a company's particular BSC system. In order to provide concrete suggestions for implanting and using the BSC system from a contingency theory perspective, this study sets out to determine the relationships between the contingency variables affecting BSC system performance and BSC system property variables(in given cases) through an empirical analysis. The study takes into account the perspective from which contingency theory is to be applied in individual cases, sets contingency and BSC property variables with reference to the BSC system user's environment and BSC system's character, and frames initial hypotheses concerning corporate structure and environmental variables and BSC system performance variables with reference to previous studies. A survey was then conducted on users in Korean companies that have implemented the BSC system in order to verify the research model and understand results.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.462-471
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• 2018

Even though software (SW) education has not been considered part of the current national kindergarten curriculum, in practice there is growing interest in adopting it. Teachers would be expected to play a key role in the successful introduction and implementation of new educational changes, such as SW education. In preparation for its adoption in ECE, it would be useful to determine ECE teachers' perception and attitudes toward early childhood software education. For this study, 219 ECE teachers' level of concern toward SW education was surveyed using the Stages of Concern Questionnaire. It was found that the teachers' level of concern was the highest at stage 0-Unconcerned and that they had high levels of stage management, personal and informational concern. Thus, a non-user pattern was mostly indicated. However, compared to the typical non-user pattern, the pattern aspect close to critical non-user ever appeared to some extent. In addition, a significant difference in the level of concern was shown at all stages depending on the awareness of the necessity for SW education. The teachers with SW training experience showed a higher intensity only at stage 0. There was a statistically significant difference in stages 0 and 6 depending on the future implementation decision. These results will be utilized as a resource in building an ECE teachers' support system according to their level of concern about SW education.

• Archives of design research
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• v.14
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• pp.1-7
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• 1996

Designers often hesitate to decide the shape, size, and layout of a product. Though ergonomic principles and data are absolutely needed in this process, they don have enough guidelines to refer. For the refrigerator designers, they also are not convinced of their decision: the vertical position of the freezing and refrigerating rooms, the height of shelves, the shape of door-handle, etc. To support the refrigerator design, we applied several ergonomic methods to the evaluation of refrigerator. EMG was measured to evaluate the load of users lumbar muscle. Based upon the experimental EMG data, we developed a model to estimate the relative load corresponding to the height of refrigerator shelves. Two different layouts of a refrigerator, R/F and F/R styles, were compared with the model. A three-dimensional motion analysis method was used to evaluate the users motion of using a refrigerator. Ten door-handles with the different shapes and positions were evaluated by tracking the rotations of the users arm. Video protocol analysis was used to evaluate the user interface of a control panel in a refrigerator. Finally, we suggested several ergonomic design guidelines based on the facts found in this research and the anthropometric data of the Korean adults. The results of this study can be applied to the ergonomic design of refrigerators

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.166-174
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• 2018

Potato(Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the major food crop in the world following rice, wheat, and maize. It is thus important to project yield predict of potato under climate change conditions for assessment of food security. A crop growth modelling is widely used to simulate crop growth condition and total yield of various crops under a given climate condition. The decision support system for agrotechnology transfer (DSSAT) cropping system model, which was developed by U.S. which package integrating several models of 27 different crops, have been used to project crop yield for the impact assessment of climate change on crop production. In this study, we simulated potato yield using RCP 8.5 climate change scenario data, as inputs to the DSSAT model in five regions of Korea. The genetic coefficients of potato cultivar for 'superior', which is one of the most widely cultivated potato variety in Korea were determined. The GenCalc program, which is a submodule of the DSSAT package, was used to determine the genetic coefficients for the superior cultivar. The values of genetic coefficients were validated using results of 39 experiments performed over seven years in five regions. As a case study, the potato yield was projected that total yields of potato across five regions would increase by 26% in 2050s but decrease by 17% in 2090s, compared with 2010s. These results suggested that the needs for cultivation and irrigation technologies would be considerably large for planning and implementation of climate change adaptation for potato production in Korea.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.123-131
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• 2021

The buffer is a key component of an engineered barrier system that safeguards the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Buffers are located between disposal canisters and host rock, and they can restrain the release of radionuclides and protect canisters from the inflow of ground water. Since considerable heat is released from a disposal canister to the surrounding buffer, the thermal conductivity of the buffer is a very important parameter in the entire disposal safety. For this reason, a lot of research has been conducted on thermal conductivity prediction models that consider various factors. In this study, the thermal conductivity of a buffer is estimated using the machine learning methods of: linear regression, decision tree, support vector machine (SVM), ensemble, Gaussian process regression (GPR), neural network, deep belief network, and genetic programming. In the results, the machine learning methods such as ensemble, genetic programming, SVM with cubic parameter, and GPR showed better performance compared with the regression model, with the ensemble with XGBoost and Gaussian process regression models showing best performance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.37-49
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• 2023

Active attention and effort are needed to develop an integrated water management system in response to climate change. In this study, it proposed models for cross-use of agricultural water and river maintenance water using sewage treatment water as an integrated water management system for the Yeongsan River. The impact of the integrated water management models was assessed by applying the concept of Nexus, which is being presented worldwide for sustainable resource management. The target year was set for 2030 and quantitatively analyzed water, energy, land use and carbon emissions and resource availability index by integrated water management models was calculated by applying maximum usable amount by resource. An integrated water management system evaluation model using the Nexus concept developed in this study can play a role that can be viewed in a variety of ways: security and environmental impact assessment of other resources. The results of this research will be used as a foundation for the field of in the establishment of a policy decision support system to evaluate various security policies, as we analyzed changes in other factors according to changes in individual components, taking into account the associations between water, energy, food, and carbon resources. In future studies, additional sub-models need to be built that can be applied flexibly to changes in the future timing of the inter-resource relationship components.