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A RURAL HEALTH SERVICE MODEL FOR KOREA BASED OH A PRIMARY CARE NURSING SERVICE SYSTEM

  • Hong, Yeo-Shin
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.11 no.2
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    • pp.5-8
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    • 1981
  • This study concerns itself with the development of a new model of comprehensive health service for rural communities of Korea. The study was conceived to resolve the problems of both underservice in rural communities and underutilization of valuable health manpower, namely the nurses, the disenchanted elite health personnel in Korea. On review of the current situation, the greatest deficiencies in the Korean health care system were found in the availability of primary care at the peripheries of md communities, in the dissemination of knowledge of disease prevention and health care, and in the induction of and guidance for active participation by the clientele in health maintenance at the personal, family and community level Abundant untapped health resources were identified that could be brough to bear upon the national effort to extend health services to every member of the Korean Population. Therefore, it was Postulated that the problem of underservice in rural communities of Korea can be structurcturally resolved by the effective mobilization and organization of untapped health resources, and that. a primary care Nursing Service System offers the best possibility for fulfillment of rural health service goals within the current health man-power situation. In order to identify appropriate strategies to combat the present difficulties in Korean rural health services and to utilize nurses and other health personnel in community-centered health programs, a search was made for examples of innovative service models throughout the world. An extensive literature survey and field visits to project sites both in Korea and in the United States were made. Experts in the field of world health, health service, planners, administrators, and medical and nursing practitioners in Korea, in the United States as well as visitors from other Asian countries were widely consulted. On the basis of information and inputs from these experts a new rural health service model has been constructed within the conceptual framework of community development, especially of the innovation diffusion Model. It is considered especially important that citizens in each community develop capacities for self-care with assistance and supports from available health professionals and participate in health service-related decisions that affect their own well-being. The proposed model is based upon the regionalization of health care planning utilizing a comprehensive Nursing Service System at the immediate delivery level The model features: (1) a health administration unit at each administrative level; (2) mechanisms for community participation; (3) a continuous source of primary health care at the local community level; (4) relative centralization of specialty care and provision of tertiary or super-specialty care only at major national metropolitan centers; and (5) a system for patient referral to the appropriate level of care. This model has been built around professional nurses as the key community health workers because their training is particularly suited and because large numbers of well-trained nurses are currently available and being trained. The special element in this model is a professional nurse-guided, self-care facilitating primary care Community Nursing Service System. This is supported by a Nursing Extension Service as a new training and support structure. (See attached diagrams). A broad spectrum of programs was proposed for the Community Nursing Service System. These were designed to establish a balance of activities between the clinic-centered individual care component and the field activity-centered educational and supportive component of health care services. Examples of possible program alternatives and proposed guidelines for health care in specific situations were presented, as well as the roles and functions of the key health personnel within the Community Nursing Service System. This Rural Health Service Model was proposed as a real alternative to the maldistributed, inequitable, uncoordinated solo-practice, physician-centered fee-for-service health care available to Koreans today.

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Recent Advancement in the Differentiation of Tissues and Organs and Regulation of Gene Expression (조직.기관의 분화와 유전자 발현의 조절, 최근의 진보)

  • Harn, Chang-Yawl
    • Korean Journal of Plant Tissue Culture
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.1-35
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    • 1997
  • Fertilized egg, by successive cell divisions, differentiates into different tissues and organs with various structures and functions. Different cells and tissues contain different proteins, products of selective gene expression. Not all the genes in any genomes are equally active, temporal and spatial gene expression being the general rule. Present paper attempts to review the tanscriptional mechanisms or the initiations of transcription from several angles. In some of the organisms the genes in the process of transcription or the genes in the inactive state can be seen under the light microscope. Some bands of Drosophila polytene chromosomes may exhibit a swollen or puff appearance under certain conditions. A puff, unfolded or decondensed form of chromomere, represents sets of intense transcriptional activity or RNA synthesis. The heterochromatic X chromosome whose genes remain inactive in the female mammals can be visualized as a dark staining structure called Barr body, Configuration of chromatin differs between transcribed and nontranscribed chromatin. Modification to the chromatin facilitates RNA synthesis. The movement of large polymerase molecule along the DNA would probably be facilitated if some modifications of the chromatin configuration is effected. Methylation of cytosines in CG sequences is associated with inactive genes. Methylation can play a role in determination of mammalian cells during embryogenesis. Demethylation is necessary for the gene to be expressed during development A histone modification that is also known to be correlated with transcriptional capacity of chromatin is acetylation of the lysine residues of the core histones. Chromatin containing a high level of histone acetylation is very sensitive to DNase 1. For the transcription to occur TBP must first bind to the TATA box. Another TF, TF IIB, then binds to the promoter-TBP complex, facilitating the access of RNA polymerase to the transcription initiation site. As recently as eight years ago researchers assumed that histones were irrelevant to the regulation of gene expression. Histones combine with the DNA to form nucleosome of the chromatin. Histones are vital participant in gene regulation. Histone and basal factors compete for access to TATA box. When DNA is exposed to basal factors before histones are introduced, the basal factors assemble on TATA boxes preventing the access of histones, allowing transcription to occur, for transcription to begin, activator protein at the upstream activation sequence or enhancer must interact with the tail of histone H4 at TATA box and cause the histone role particle to dissociate from the TATA box leading to partial breakup of the histone core particle and allowing the basal factors to bind to the TATA box. New concept of genomic flux in contrast to the old concept of static genome has been developed based on the powerful new molecular techniques. Genomic changes such as repetitive DNAs and transposable elements, it is assumed but not yet proved, may affect some of the developmental patterns that characterize particular cells, tissues, organs, and organisms. In the last decade or so remarkable achievement have been made in the researches of the structures and functions of TFs and the specific target sequences located in promoters or enhancers where these TFs bind. TFs have independent domains that bind DNA and that activate transcription. DNA binding domain of TFs serves to bring the protein into the right location. There are many types of DNA binding domains. Common types of motifs can be found that are responsible for binding to DNA. The motifs are usually quite short and comprise only a small part of the protein structure. Steroid receptors have domains for hormone binding, DNA binding, and activating transcription. The zinc finger motif comprises a DNA binding domain. Leucine zipper consist of a stretch of amino acids with a leucine residue in every seventh position Two proteins form a dimer because they interact by means of leucine zippers on similar α-helical domain. This positions their DNA binding basic domains for interaction with the two halves of a DNA sequence with dyad symmetry of TGACTCA, ACTGAGT.

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Patent Production and Technological Performance of Korean Firms: The Role of Corporate Innovation Strategies (특허생산과 기술성과: 기업 혁신전략의 역할)

  • Lee, Jukwan;Jung, Jin Hwa
    • Journal of Technology Innovation
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.149-175
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    • 2014
  • This study analyzed the effect of corporate innovation strategies on patent production and ultimately on technological change and new product development of firms in South Korea. The intent was to derive efficient strategies for enhancing technological performance of the firms. For the empirical analysis, three sources of data were combined: four waves of the Human Capital Corporate Panel Survey (HCCP) data collected by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET), corporate financial data obtained from the Korea Information Service (KIS), and corporate patent data provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO). The patent production function was estimated by zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression. The technological performance function was estimated by two-stage regression, taking into account the endogeneity of patent production. An ordered logit model was applied for the second stage regression. Empirical results confirmed the critical role of corporate innovation strategies in patent production and in facilitating technological change and new product development of the firms. In patent production, the firms' R&D investment and human resources were key determinants. Higher R&D intensity led to more patents, yet with decreasing marginal productivity. A larger stock of registered patents also led to a larger flow of new patent production. Firms were more prolific in patent production when they had high-quality personnel, intensely investing in human resource development, and adopting market-leading or fast-follower strategy as compared to stability strategy. In technological performance, the firms' human resources played a key role in accelerating technological change and new product development. R&D intensity expedited new product development of the firm. Firms adopting market-leading or fast-follower strategy were at an advantage than those with stability strategy in technological performance. Firms prolific in patent production were also advanced in terms of technological change and new product development. However, the nexus between patent production and technological performance measures was substantially reduced when controlling for the endogeneity of patent production. These results suggest that firms need to strengthen the linkage between patent production and technological performance, and take strategies that address each firm's capacities and needs.

Exploring Influence of Network Structure, Organizational Learning Culture, and Knowledge Management Participation on Individual Creativity and Performance: Comparison of SI Proposal Team and R&D Team (네트워크 구조와 조직학습문화, 지식경영참여가 개인창의성 및 성과에 미치는 영향에 관한 실증분석: SI제안팀과 R&D팀의 비교연구)

  • Lee, Kun-Chang;Seo, Young-Wook;Chae, Seong-Wook;Song, Seok-Woo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.101-123
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    • 2010
  • Recently, firms are operating a number of teams to accomplish organizational performance. Especially, ad hoc teams like proposal preparation team are quite different from permanent teams like R&D team in the sense of how the team forms network structure and deals with organizational learning culture and knowledge management participation efforts. Moreover, depending on the team characteristics, individual creativity will differ from each other, which will lead to organizational performance eventually. Previous studies in the field of creativity are lacking in this issue. So main objectives of this study are organized as follows. First, the issue of how to improve individual creativity and organizational performance will be analyzed empirically. This issue will be performed depending on team characteristics such as ad hoc team and permanent team. Antecedents adopted for this research objective are cultural and knowledge factors such as organizational learning culture, and knowledge management participation. Second, the network structure such as degree centrality, and structural hole is used to analyze its influence on individual creativity and organizational performance. SI (System Integration) companies are facing severely tough requirements from clients to submit very creative proposals. Also, R&D teams are widely accepted as relatively creative teams because their responsibilities are focused on suggesting innovative techniques to make their companies remain competitive in the market. SI teams are usually ad hoc, while R&D teams are permanent on an average. By taking advantage of these characteristics of the two kinds of teams, we will prove the validity of the proposed research questions. To obtain the survey data, we accessed 7 SI teams (74 members), and 6 R&D teams (63 members), collecting 137 valid questionnaires. PLS technique was applied to analyze the survey data. Results are as follows. First, in case of SI teams, organizational learning culture affects individual creativity significantly. Meanwhile, knowledge management participation has a significant influence on Individual creativity for the permanent teams. Second, degree centrality Influences individual creativity significantly in case of SI teams. This is comparable with the fact that structural hole has a significant impact on individual creativity for the R&D teams. Practical implications can be summarized as follows: First, network structure of ad hoc team should be designed differently from one of permanent team. Ad hoc team is supposed to show a high creativity in a rather short period, implying that network density among team members should be improved, and those members with high degree centrality should be encouraged to show their Individual creativity and take a leading role by allowing them to get heavily engaged in knowledge sharing and diffusion. In contrast, permanent team should be designed to take advantage of structural hole instead of focusing on network density. Since structural hole can be utilized very effectively in the permanent team, strong arbitrators' merits in the permanent team will increase and therefore helps increase both network efficiency and effectiveness too. In this way, individual creativity in the permanent team is likely to lead to organizational creativity in a seamless way. Second, way of Increasing individual creativity should be sought from the perspective of organizational culture and knowledge management. Organization is supposed to provide a cultural atmosphere in which Innovative idea suggestions and active discussion among team members are encouraged. In this way, trust builds up among team members, facilitating the formation of organizational learning culture. Third, in the ad hoc team, organizational looming culture should be built such a way that individual creativity can grow up fast in a rather short period. Since time is tight, reasonable compensation policy, leader's Initiatives, and learning culture formation should be done In a short period so that mutual trust is built among members quickly, and necessary knowledge and information can be learnt rapidly. Fourth, in the permanent team, it should be kept in mind that the degree of participation in knowledge management determines level of Individual creativity. Therefore, the team ought to facilitate knowledge circulation process such as knowledge creation, storage, sharing, utilization, and learning among team members, which will lead to team performance. In this way, firms must control knowledge networks in permanent team and ad hoc team in a way mentioned above so that individual creativity as well as team performance can be maximized.

A Study of Korean Short Animation Films in 1960s - On Animation from Culture Movies of the National Film Production Center of Korea (1960년대 한국단편애니메이션 연구 - 국립영화제작소 문화영화 중 애니메이션에 관하여)

  • Kim, Jong-Ok
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.40
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    • pp.1-31
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    • 2015
  • The Korean animation that has relatively short history compared to the Western Europe and Japan's animation started out from the non-commercial short-piece animation produced as part of advertisement animation and culture movie in the later part of 1950s. In 1960s, the culture movie animation reflecting for the Movie Act and cultural policies has hardly been mentioned in the history of Korean animation, but they are the precious cultural work produced prior to the theatrical long-piece animation. In particular, compared to the 15-second short CF animation, the short-piece animations are ranging for 4 minutes to 10 minutes as the work pieces with the historic value to measure the level of the Korean animation at that time. in 1960s, approximately 20 short-piece animation works were produced and they contained the educational contents to enlighten general public in the process of modernization policy. Those short-piece animations produced in cultural movie at the National Film Production Center of Korea had been produced not only in cell-facilitating cartoon animation, but also in paper animation and puppet animation. In this background, this thesis takes a close look to the short-piece animation works produced in the National Film Production Center of Korea in 1960s. While there was almost no studies of early short-piece animation other than CF works, it is meaningful to discover and analyze the works, and, Director Park Young-il, Director Han Sung-hak, Director Jung Do-bin, Director Shin Dong-hyun, Director Nelson Shin and others participated in the creative work process have worked as the animation directors for theater that the analysis on the works would be considered as important fundamental studies to understand the Korean animation. Under this thesis, it is intended to study the historic implication and formative characteristics around some 10 work pieces to affirm participating personnel, including directors, for the short-piece animation created by the National Film Production Center of Korea as well as the situation of time to launch the National Film Production Center of Korea in 1960s. Through this effort, it is intended to come up with the starting point to process enriched researches on non-commercial short-piece animation as well as contemplation on the Korean animation history that have been neglected in the study of the Korean animation history through such effort.

A Collaborative Filtering System Combined with Users' Review Mining : Application to the Recommendation of Smartphone Apps (사용자 리뷰 마이닝을 결합한 협업 필터링 시스템: 스마트폰 앱 추천에의 응용)

  • Jeon, ByeoungKug;Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.1-18
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    • 2015
  • Collaborative filtering(CF) algorithm has been popularly used for recommender systems in both academic and practical applications. A general CF system compares users based on how similar they are, and creates recommendation results with the items favored by other people with similar tastes. Thus, it is very important for CF to measure the similarities between users because the recommendation quality depends on it. In most cases, users' explicit numeric ratings of items(i.e. quantitative information) have only been used to calculate the similarities between users in CF. However, several studies indicated that qualitative information such as user's reviews on the items may contribute to measure these similarities more accurately. Considering that a lot of people are likely to share their honest opinion on the items they purchased recently due to the advent of the Web 2.0, user's reviews can be regarded as the informative source for identifying user's preference with accuracy. Under this background, this study proposes a new hybrid recommender system that combines with users' review mining. Our proposed system is based on conventional memory-based CF, but it is designed to use both user's numeric ratings and his/her text reviews on the items when calculating similarities between users. In specific, our system creates not only user-item rating matrix, but also user-item review term matrix. Then, it calculates rating similarity and review similarity from each matrix, and calculates the final user-to-user similarity based on these two similarities(i.e. rating and review similarities). As the methods for calculating review similarity between users, we proposed two alternatives - one is to use the frequency of the commonly used terms, and the other one is to use the sum of the importance weights of the commonly used terms in users' review. In the case of the importance weights of terms, we proposed the use of average TF-IDF(Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency) weights. To validate the applicability of the proposed system, we applied it to the implementation of a recommender system for smartphone applications (hereafter, app). At present, over a million apps are offered in each app stores operated by Google and Apple. Due to this information overload, users have difficulty in selecting proper apps that they really want. Furthermore, app store operators like Google and Apple have cumulated huge amount of users' reviews on apps until now. Thus, we chose smartphone app stores as the application domain of our system. In order to collect the experimental data set, we built and operated a Web-based data collection system for about two weeks. As a result, we could obtain 1,246 valid responses(ratings and reviews) from 78 users. The experimental system was implemented using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications(VBA) and SAS Text Miner. And, to avoid distortion due to human intervention, we did not adopt any refining works by human during the user's review mining process. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system, we compared its performance to the performance of conventional CF system. The performances of recommender systems were evaluated by using average MAE(mean absolute error). The experimental results showed that our proposed system(MAE = 0.7867 ~ 0.7881) slightly outperformed a conventional CF system(MAE = 0.7939). Also, they showed that the calculation of review similarity between users based on the TF-IDF weights(MAE = 0.7867) leaded to better recommendation accuracy than the calculation based on the frequency of the commonly used terms in reviews(MAE = 0.7881). The results from paired samples t-test presented that our proposed system with review similarity calculation using the frequency of the commonly used terms outperformed conventional CF system with 10% statistical significance level. Our study sheds a light on the application of users' review information for facilitating electronic commerce by recommending proper items to users.

Effectiveness and characteristics of technology transfer consortia in public R&D sector: The case of Korean TT consortia (공공연구부문에서의 기술이전컨소시엄의 효과와 특성 연구: 공공기술이전컨소시엄 사례를 중심으로)

  • Park, Jong-Bok;Ryu, Tae-Kyu
    • Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.284-309
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    • 2007
  • Technology transfer (TT) consortium is an affiliation of two or more public research institutions (PRIs) that participate in a common technology transfer activity or pool their resources together, with the objective of facilitating technology transfer. Based on empirical analysis of five regional TT consortia (2002-2006) operating in Korea, this paper suggests their effectiveness by employing a TT performance index (TTPI) and identifies possible characteristics involved, such as motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. TTPI devised in the paper is a new composite TT performance index to measure how much the TT performance of a PH changed in a designated year compared to a base year. All the performance indicators of TTPI are well-structured based on the unique TT process that is prevalent in Korea. Further, TTPI can bring different size and focus of PRIs to the same scale for comparison by double-normalizing. The paper tests the effectiveness of TT consortium for the escalation of TT performances in member PRIs by highlighting the differences of TTPI's between 2005 and 2001. As a result, the paper found that the escalation of TTPI for member PRIs was greater than that for non-member PRIs. As for the characteristics of TT consortia, their respective factors obtained by TT expert survey were computed with proportion tests of differences (Z tests) to compare two perspectives between intramural and extramural groups. One of key findings is that there is general homogeneity in stakeholder perspectives regarding motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. Some notable responses are as follow; the most probable motivation to join TT consortium is to share or exchange TT competences for enhanced performance. Second, the most probable facilitator is professional capability of consortium-hired personnel. Third, the foremost probable barriers to effective TT consortium are frequent change of consortium director and passive participation of member PRIs. Lastly, both publicizing TT consortia and developing performance metrics are the most important for the improvement of TT consortia. The understanding of the characteristics of TT consortia increases the likelihood of accelerated success, because TT consortia path from formation to termination encompasses many concepts, processes, principles, and factors. Finally, an analysis of the survey data combined with expert interview and observation data led the authors to derive five conditions as being critical to viable TT consortia in Korea at early stage of technology transfer systems. These conditions include policy infrastructure, proactive participation, excellent professionals, personal motivation, and teaming mechanisms. It is expected that the Korean evidence is a starting point to develop and refine the theory of TT consortia and for additional studies in other countries.

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An Inquiry into the Meaning of "Sasang" in the I Ching and Its Relationship to the Sasang Medicine (주역의 '사상'과 사상의학의 '사상'의 연관성에 관한 고찰)

  • Lee, Sung-hwan;Kim, Ki-hyon
    • Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.24-36
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    • 2000
  • Purpose : Many believe that the Sasang mentioned in the I Ching and the Sasang of Sasang Medicine (as expounded by Dr. Lee Je-ma in the book Longevity and Life Preservation in Oriental Medicine) refer to different concepts. This is untrue. In order to understand the thought patterns of Dr. Lee Je-ma and his book, it is necessary to first understand the concepts of the I Ching. The I Ching was the most respected text in Dr. Lee Je-ma time, and served as the foundation upon which his medicine stood. The purpose of this research is to understand the concept of Sasang in the I Ching and how it applies to the Sasang medicine. Method : The authors first defined the term Sasang according to the theory of I Ching. It was then discussed in relation to theories of modern science. Inferences were made as to how Sasang corresponds to the terminologies and concepts of modern science. The characteristics of Sasang interpreted through modern science were then applied to the physiology, pathology and pharmacology of Sasang Medicine. Results and Conclusion : 1. The Sasang theory of the I Ching organizes seemingly random and isolated natural phenomena into four distinct groups according to various attributes. The particular characteristics representing each of these four categories are known as Sasang. 2. The Sasang theory of I Ching has a strong correlation to the Theory of Relativity and the Theory of Complementarity, as well as the Digital and Fractal Theories. 3. By applying the Sasang Theory to various fields, the seemingly unrelated principles of physics, chemistry, biology and medicine can be seen as parts of a whole. 4. Sasang Medicine categorizes human morphology, physiology and pharmacology into four categories according to the characteristics defined by the Sasang Theory of the I Ching. 5. Grouping new discoveries of modern physics, chemistry, biology and medicine according to the Sasang Theory will bring to light the intricacies of the Sasang Theory while facilitating the incorporation of modern science into Sasang Medicine.

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Organizational Factors Facilitating the Internationalization of Korean Franchising Companies (해외진출 국내 프랜차이즈기업의 조직특성)

  • Lim, Young-Kun;Lee, Dong-Whuy;Kim, Hee-Jung
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.40-52
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    • 2009
  • Franchising is one of the fastest growing types of business. It is already popular and well-known in the U.S., and has been growing in many other countries including Korea. Furthermore, many Korean franchising companies have expanded their business overseas actively. According to the data by the Ministry of Industry and Resource, 82 companies out of a sample of 500 franchising companies are already operating in many foreign countries and 48% of them have started their foreign business since 2006. This clearly indicates the fast growing current trend of foreign operation by Korean franchising companies. In spite of the fast growing trend of foreign expansion in the industry, academic research on internationalization of franchising companies is extremely difficult to find. Accordingly, academic research on the issue is necessary and urgent in Korea. Among the various research questions on internationalization of franchising business, this study intends to investigate the difference in organizational factors between the franchising companies doing foreign operation and those doing business only domestically. More specifically, this research has the following purposes. First, considering the lack of theoretical basis of previous studies, resource-based theory and agency theory are employed as the theoretical bases. Second, this study explains the difference in internationalization based on organizational factors such as company size, history and growth rate. Third, the five hypotheses regarding the difference in organizational factors are presented and tested empirically, which is the first attempt in the area of this topic. Finally, the study attempts to clarify the conflicting implications among theories regarding some organizational factos such as growth rate. As the theoretical background, resource-based theory and agency theory are discussed. According to resource-based theory, a firm can grow continuously when it has competence and resource, and also the ability to develop them. The competence and resource can include capital, human resource, management skill, market information, ability to manage risk, etc. Meanwhile, agency theory views the relationship between franchisor and franchisee as an agency relationship. In agency theory, bonding capability and monitoring capability are the two key factors which promote internationalization of franchising companies. Based on the two theories, a conceptual model is designed. The model consists of two groups of variables. One is organizational factors including size, history, growth rate, price bonding and geographic dispersion. The other is whether a franchising company is operating overseas or not. We developed the following five research hypotheses basically describing the relationship between organizational factors and internationalization of franchising companies. H1: The size of franchising companies operating overseas is larger than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H2: The history of franchising companies operating overseas is longer than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H3: The growth rate of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H4: The price bonding of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H5: The geographic dispersion of franchising companies operating overseas is wider than that of franchising companies operating domestically. Data for the analyses are obtained from 2005 Korea Franchise Survey data co-generated by Ministry of Industry and Resource, GS1 Korea, and Korea Franchise Association. Out of 2,804 population companies, 2,489 companies are excluded for various reasons and 315 companies are selected as the final sample. Prior to hypotheses tests, validity and reliability of the measures of size, history, growth rate and price bonding are examined for further analyses. Geographic dispersion is not validated since it is measured using nominal data. A series of independent sample T-tests is used to find out whether there exists any significant difference between the companies internationalized and those operating only domestically for each organizational factor. Among the five factors, size and geographic dispersion show significant difference, growth rate and price bonding do not reveal any difference and, finally, history factor shows conflicting results in the difference depending on how to measure it.

    shows the summary statistics for hypotheses testing. In conclusion, the results show that the size and history, which are the key variables in resource-based theory, have a significant relationship with internationalization and that geographic area, which belongs to agency theory, also has a strong relationship with internationalization. The results support the findings of extant research and, therefore, prove the usefulness of resource-based theory and agency theory in explaining internationalization of franchising companies. However, growth rate and price-bonding do not show a clear difference between the two types of companies. Accordingly, these two factors need further attention in the future research. Although this study shows meaningful findings theoretically and practically, it has several limitations. First, only organizational factors are considered even if there are various environmental factors influencing franchising firm's internationalization. Second, only being internationalized or not is considered. That is, modes of entry and the size of foreign operations are not included in the study. Third, internationalization strategy is often determined based on the desire for business expansion and higher profitability and egoistical reasons of the CEOs. However, this type of factors belonging to behavioral science is not discussed in the study. Finally, organizational ecology perspective is usefully applicable in explaining the survival and performance of internationally operating companies. Accordingly, research propositions based on this perspective need to be developed and tested.

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  • The Politics of Scale: The Social and Political Construction of Geographical Scale in Korean Housing Politics (스케일의 정치: 한국 주택 정치에서의 지리적 스케일의 사회적.정치적 구성)

    • Ryu, Yeon-Taek
      • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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      • v.42 no.5
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      • pp.691-709
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      • 2007
    • This paper investigates the social and political construction of geographical scale in conjunction with Korean housing politics. Recently, attention has been drawn to the issue of the social and political construction of geographical scale. Spatial scales have increasingly been regarded as socially constructed and politically contested rather than ontologically pregiven or fixed. The scale literature has paid attention to how different spatial scales can be used or articulated in social movements, with an emphasis on 'up-scaling' and 'scales of activism' rather than 'down-scaling' and 'scales of regulation.' Furthermore, the scale literature has focused on the aspect of empowerment. However, it is worthwhile to examine how scale-especially 'down-scaling' and 'scales of regulation'-can be used not only for marginalizing or excluding unprivileged social groups, but also for controlling the (re)production of space, including housing space. Under a regulatory regime, the Korean central government gained more control over the (re)production of housing space at geographical multi-scales by means of 'jumping scales,' specifically 'down-scaling.' The Korean central government has increasingly obtained the capacity to 'jump scales' by using not only multiscalar strategies for housing developments, but also taking advantage of various scales of institutional networking among the central and local governments, quasi-governmental institutions, and Chaebols, across the state. Traditionally, scale has been regarded as an analytical spatial unit or category. However, scale can be seen as means of inclusion(and exclusion) and legitimation. Choosing institutions to include or exclude cannot be separated from the choices and range of spatial scale, and is closely connected to 'scale spatiality of politics.' Facilitating different forms of 'scales of regulation,' the Korean central government included Chaebols and upper- and middle-income groups for the legitimization of housing projects, but excluded local-scale grassroots organizations and unprivileged social groups as decision-makers.


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