• The Korean Nurse
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.77-96
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• 1997

The duty shifts of hospital nurses not only affect nurses' physical and mental health but also present various personnel management problems which often result in high turnover rates. In this context a study was carried out from October to November 1995 for a period of two months to find out the status of hospital nurses' duty shift patterns, and preferred duty hours and fixed duty shifts. The study population was 867 RNs working in five general hospitals located in Seoul and its vicinity. The questionnaire developed by the writer was used for data collection. The response rate was 85.9 percent or 745 returns. The SAS program was used for data analysis with the computation of frequencies, percentages and Chi square test. The findings of the study are as follows: 1. General characteristics of the study population: 56 percent of respondents was (25 years group and 76.5 percent were "single": the predominant proportion of respondents was junior nursing college graduates(92.2%) and have less than 5 years nursing experience in hospitals(65.5%). For their future working plan in nursing profession, nearly 50% responded as uncertain The reasons given for their career plan was predominantly 'personal growth and development' rather than financial reasons. 2. The interval for rotations of duty stations was found to be mostly irregular(56.4%) while others reported as weekly(16.1%), monthly(12.9%), and fixed terms(4.6%). 3. The main problems related to duty shifts particularly the evening and night duty nurses reported were "not enough time for the family, " "afraid of security problems after the work when returning home late at night." and "lack of leisure time". "problems in physical and physiological adjustment." "problems in family life." "lack of time for interactions with fellow nurses" etc. 4. The forty percent of respondents reported to have '1-2 times' of duty shift rotations while all others reported that '0 time'. '2-3 times'. 'more than 3 times' etc. which suggest the irregularity in duty shift rotations. 5. The majority(62.8%) of study population found to favor the rotating system of duty stations. The reasons for favoring the rotation system were: the opportunity for "learning new things and personal development." "better human relations are possible. "better understanding in various duty stations." "changes in monotonous routine job" etc. The proportion of those disfavor the rotating 'system was 34.7 percent. giving the reasons of"it impedes development of specialization." "poor job performances." "stress factors" etc. Furthermore. respondents made the following comments in relation to the rotation of duty stations: the nurses should be given the opportunity to participate in the. decision making process: personal interest and aptitudes should be considered: regular intervals for the rotations or it should be planned in advance. etc. 6. For the future career plan. the older. married group with longer nursing experiences appeared to think the nursing as their lifetime career more likely than the younger. single group with shorter nursing experiences ($x^2=61.19.{\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=41.55.{\;}p=.000$). The reason given for their future career plan regardless of length of future service, was predominantly "personal growth and development" rather than financial reasons. For further analysis, the group those with the shorter career plan appeared to claim "financial reasons" for their future career more readily than the group who consider the nursing job as their lifetime career$(x^2$= 11.73, p=.003) did. This finding suggests the need for careful .considerations in personnel management of nursing administration particularly when dealing with the nurses' career development. The majority of respondents preferred the fixed day shift. However, further analysis of those preferred evening shift by age and civil status, "< 25 years group"(15.1%) and "single group"(13.2) were more likely to favor the fixed evening shift than > 25 years(6.4%) and married(4.8%)groups. This differences were statistically significant ($x^2=14.54, {\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=8.75, {\;}p=.003$). 7. A great majority of respondents(86.9% or n=647) found to prefer the day shifts. When the four different types of duty shifts(Types A. B. C, D) were presented, 55.0 percent of total respondents preferred the A type or the existing one followed by D type(22.7%). B type(12.4%) and C type(8.2%). 8. When the condition of monetary incentives for the evening(20% of salary) and night shifts(40% of. salary) of the existing duty type was presented. again the day shift appeared to be the most preferred one although the rate was slightly lower(66.4% against 86.9%). In the case of evening shift, with the same incentive, the preference rates for evening and night shifts increased from 11.0 to 22.4 percent and from 0.5 to 3.0 percent respectively. When the age variable was controlled. < 25 yrs group showed higher rates(31.6%. 4.8%) than those of > 25 yrs group(15.5%. 1.3%) respectively preferring the evening and night shifts(p=.000). The civil status also seemed to operate on the preferences of the duty shifts as the single group showed lower rate(69.0%) for day duty against 83. 6% of the married group. and higher rates for evening and night duties(27.2%. 15.1%) respectively against those of the married group(3.8%. 1.8%) while a higher proportion of the married group(83. 6%) preferred the day duties than the single group(69.0%). These differences were found to be statistically all significant(p=.001). 9. The findings on preferences of three different types of fixed duty hours namely, B, C. and D(with additional monetary incentives) are as follows in order of preference: B type(12hrs a day, 3days a wk): day shift(64.1%), evening shift(26.1%). night shift(6.5%) C type(12hrs a day. 4days a wk) : evening shift(49.2%). day shift(32.8%), night shift(11.5%) D type(10hrs a day. 4days a wk): showed the similar trend as B type. The findings of higher preferences on the evening and night duties when the incentives are given. as shown above, suggest the need for the introductions of different patterns of duty hours and incentive measures in order to overcome the difficulties in rostering the nursing duties. However, the interpretation of the above data, particularly the C type, needs cautions as the total number of respondents is very small(n=61). It requires further in-depth study. In conclusion. it seemed to suggest that the patterns of nurses duty hours and shifts in the most hospitals in the country have neither been tried for different duty types nor been flexible. The stereotype rostering system of three shifts and insensitiveness for personal life aspect of nurses seemed to be prevailing. This study seems to support that irregular and frequent rotations of duty shifts may be contributing factors for most nurses' maladjustment problems in physical and mental health. personal and family life which eventually may result in high turnover rates. In order to overcome the increasing problems in personnel management of hospital nurses particularly in rostering of evening and night duty shifts, which may related to eventual high turnover rates, the findings of this study strongly suggest the need for an introduction of new rostering systems including fixed duties and appropriate incentive measures for evenings and nights which the most nurses want to avoid, In considering the nursing care of inpatients is the round-the clock business. the practice of the nursing duty shift system is inevitable. In this context, based on the findings of this study. the following are recommended: 1. The further in-depth studies on duty shifts and hours need to be undertaken for the development of appropriate and effective rostering systems for hospital nurses. 2. An introduction of appropriate incentive measures for evening and night duty shifts along with organizational considerations such as the trials for preferred duty time bands, duty hours, and fixed duty shifts should be considered if good quality of care for the patients be maintained for the round the clock. This may require an initiation of systematic research and development activities in the field of hospital nursing administration as a part of permanent system in the hospital. 3. Planned and regular intervals, orientation and training, and professional and personal growth should be considered for the rotation of different duty stations or units. 4. In considering the higher degree of preferences in the duty type of "10hours a day, 4days a week" shown in this study, it would be worthwhile to undertake the R&D type studies in large hospital settings.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2019

The study aims to examine the impact of productivity in addition to the policy of increasing the foreign investors' ownership rate on the performance of businesses which were listed on Vietnam's stock exchange market from 2010 to 2017. With the database of 3.961 observations, the study employs a statistical method - multiple regression to estimate the relationship between labor productivity, foreign ownership as well as other firm-level characteristics and firm performance. Research findings show that increasing labor productivity and increasing foreign ownership rates help increase firm performance. In addition, except for financial leverage, variables such as liquidity and firm size have positive effects on firm performance measured by Tobin's Q. These findings have theoretical contributions and practical implications for managers, investors and government in Vietnam. Managers should pay attention to improving labor productivity through employing incentive mechanisms, building a good working environment, investing in technology, etc. in order to enhance the firm performance. Investors could utilize the labor productivity and foreign ownership indicators to select stocks of good companies for investment. For Vietnamese government, relaxing the limit of foreign ownership and accelerating the divesting of State capital in State-owned enterprises could help increase the investment scale of foreign investors and resulting in positive effects on the firm performance.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.117-124
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• 2010

Objectives: The Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) payment system, which has been mplemented in Korea since 1997, is based on voluntary participation. Hence, the positive impact of this system depends on the participation of physicians. This study examined the factors determining participation of Korean obstetrics & gynecology (OBGYN) clinics in the DRG-based payment system. Methods: The demographic information, practice-related variables of OBGYN clinics and participation information in the DRG-based payment system were acquired from the nationwide data from 2002 to 2007 produced by the National Health Insurance Corporation and the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service. The subjects were 336 OBGYN clinics consisting of 43 DRG clinics that had maintained their participation in 2003-2007 and 293 no-DRG (fee-for-service) clinics that had never been a DRG clinic during the same period. Logistic regression analysis was carried out to determine the factors associated with the participation of OBGYN clinics in the DRG-based payment system. Results: The factors affecting participation of OBGYN clinics in the DRG-based payment system were as follows (p<0.05): (1) a larger number of caesarian section (c/sec) claims, (2) higher cost of a c/sec, (3) less variation in the price of a c/sec, (4) fewer days of admission for a c/sec, and (5) younger pregnant women undergoing a c/sec. Conclusions: These results suggest that OBGYN clinics with an economic practice pattern under a fee-for-service system are more likely to participate in the DRG-based payment system. Therefore, to ensure adequate participation of physicians, a payment system with a stronger financial incentive might be more suitable in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.233-242
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to investigate how implementation of direct nutrition education differs between nutrition teachers and dietitians in Gyeonggi Area. In this study, we collected data from 107 nutrition teachers and 129 dietitians in 2012. Among those who have answered they implemented direct nutrition education for the last one year, 36% were nutrition teachers and 10% were dietitians (p < 0.05). Among subjects who implemented direct education, a significantly greater percentage of nutrition teachers used a class as an education time to conduct creative hands-on-activity compare to dietitians (p < 0.05). However, for most dietitians, school meal time was more commonly used for direct nutrition education. When asked to make a suggestion regarding improvement for school nutrition education, the highest rate of people chose simplification of school administrative work (4.68 points) was needed. Developing nutrition education (4.55 points) showed the next highest rate. The rest of the answers were the following order; regular training of teaching methods (4.50 points), increasing awareness of school teachers (4.50 points), improving school facilities and financial support (4.47 points), preparing teaching plan (4.46 points), providing incentive for direct education (4.26 points), organizing regular class for nutrition education (4.17 points), and placing nutrition teachers (4.16 points). This study provides useful information including manageable workload of nutrition teachers and dietitians, capacity building and supportive school environment to be delivered with respect to nutrition education system in South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.35-58
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• 2009

One of the main goals of providing open access is to vitalize the exchange of academic information by allowing access to the scholarly research outputs for everyone without the legal, financial, and technical barriers. We regard the use of the institutional repository as an open access enabler. In this study, we tried to make the factors, which enable the successful deployment of the institutional repository, explicit. We utilized literature review and case studies to generate the potential success factors for the institutional repository deployment. We verified the factors by having in-depth interviews with the subject matter experts. The resulting factors were organized as organizational, political, and technical ones. The organizational factors included the strong open access support by the organization heads. Under the policy factors, a number of issues such as selection of the core contents, minimum quality control, protection of the copyrights, forming supporting groups through active advertising, long-term preservation, incentive, and mandate, were included. The technical factors included easy submission, support for interoperability, and support for the publication activities.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.286-298
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• 2018

This study presents determinants of resettlement considering population, economy, residential environment, policy characteristic, proposes implications for increase of resettlement. The research method deducted determinants of resettlement by union groups using logistic regression, union members are divided to more 10 years group and under 10 years group focused on real estate ownership duration. The analysis results are summarized as follows. More 10 years group has higher age, neighborship, satisfaction about pre-sale price, inside region in redevelopment promotion project, satisfaction about increase of real estate price, the higher resettlement decision probability. Under 10 years group has higher satisfaction about increase of real estate price, satisfaction about pre-sale price, satisfaction about floor area ratio incentive, the higher resettlement decision probability. the political implications must be customized financial support considering economic situations and increase of asset value by real estate ownership duration.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.94 no.3 s.160
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• pp.153-160
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• 2005

This study was analyze the performance of Forest Work Team from 1999 to 2003. Following recommendations were come up by reviewing the performance of Forest Work Team. The volume of forest works should be increased in order to supply the constant daily work. This would provide the increase of their salary and maintain their salary and maintain their livelihood. The Forest Work Teams should be the members of registered business with highly trained manpower. Qualified Work Team should have extra financial incentive by comparing with general forest workers who did not have adequate skills. The percentage of the certified forest workers should be increased by providing the technical training. To increase the efficiency of forest work, the forest mechanization should be accomplished and the training of forest mechanization had to be offered regularly for the forest workers, and provided them with an education allowance.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2003

General drug prices involve three stages: shipment stage, wholesaler stage and retail stage. Policies on drug price differ from country to country. Shipment stage prices are tightly regulated in countries like France and Netherlands. They are free in only a minority of advanced countries, even if these include some major players such as the US, Germany and, in a very limited sense, Japan. The situation in the UK is very complex with a semi-free system, where drug companies are free to set their own prices but cannot exceed a predetermined profit ceiling. Mark-up at both wholesaler and retail stages is formally admitted in most countries observed. Apart from the general drug prices, reimbursement price of insured drugs has been major policy concerns. Most countries reviewed in this study has exerted some control over reimbursement prices, but differ both in the way how and in the extent to which prices are admitted or fixed. Price fixing has been used in France and Japan. Some countries have transformed their system over time, particularly to move to reference pricing in the last decade. This mechanism has empowered the customer, and improved price competition on the market. Referring to the drug price policies in the advanced countries, this study makes some suggestions for the redirection of Korean price policy for reimbursement drug in health insurance as follows: to match appropriate policy tools to each policy goal; to maximize market mechanism through effective reimbursement price fixing which admits mark-ups in wholesaler and retail prices; to introduce reference pricing system in order to redirect patient's demand with a financial incentive to choose the best-priced drugs and to save the finance of health insurance; and to strengthen surveillance and monitoring mechanism in the drug market.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.129-139
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• 2016

Purpose - This paper examines the explanatory power of the agency theory in the determination of cash holdings for Korean retail firms. If the agency theory holds, a firm with strong corporate governance structure tends to have low cash holdings. A strong governance structure makes the CEO of this firm to behave in the interests of shareholders and thus the CEO has low incentive to stockpile cash holdings, which can be easily diverted for the CEO's own managerial purposes. We investigate this relationship between corporate governance structure and cash holdings, by using corporate governance scores as a proxy variable that captures the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanism. Research design, data, and methodology - We adopt the sample of publicly listed retail firms in KOSPI market from 2005 to 2013. Financial and accounting statements are gathered from the WISEfn database. We also use the corporate governance scores published by Korean Corporate Governance Service. The relationship between the corporate governance scores and cash holdings is cross-sectionally estimated based on the ordinary least square method. This estimation method is widely accepted in the existing literature. The sample of large conglomerates, Chebol, and the remainder firms are separately examined as well, to account for the distinctive internal financing environment in these large conglomerates. Results - We mainly contribute to the extant literature by providing empirical evidence against the agency theory of cash policy. Unlike the prediction of agency theory, we confirm statistically insignificant or even positive correlations between the set of corporate governance scores and cash-asset ratios. Almost all the major corporate governance attributes including total score, shareholder rights, board structure, and the quality of information disclosure do not show negative correlations with cash holdings, which poses a strong challenge to the validity of the agency theory in the determination of retail firms' cash holdings. Conclusions - This study presents interesting empirical results with respect to the cash policy in Korean retail firms. Consistent to prior studies, I verify that the agency theory only limitedly explains the level of cash holdings. Future studies may obtain more robust results by examining a longer sample period.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.117-125
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• 2019

Purpose - We investigate how to increase consumer incentives to buy public offering funds, resulting in activating the public offering fund market. In particular, this study aims to find ways to expand diversity and to improve efficiency of public offering fund. The public fund market of Korea has been stagnant in recent years. However, the public offering fund market plays a very significant role in terms of consumer welfare. Since only a few wealthy investors can participate in the private equity market, the stagnation in the public offering fund market usually reduces the opportunity of consumer's buying funds thus ultimately affecting their future wealth. Research design, data, and methodology - To attain our purpose, the 'factor-based portfolio strategy' has been considered. It is an alternative portfolio strategy, which composites the advantages of the passive management and active management. For our empirical anaylsis, we used global stock distribution market data over the period of 1991 and 2016. Then we constructed portfolios based on firm-size, firm-value, and momentum. Finally, a regression model was set, then hypotheses were tested, analyzing the performances. Results - First, among the 15 factor-based portfolios of global, Europe, Asia-Pacific(ex Japan), US and Japan, in eight portfolios, positive excess returns are observed at 5% significance level. Further, there is another portfolio with positive excess return at 10% significance level. Second, most of the portfolios with significant excess performance show positive relationship with the market portfolio. However, the firm-value based portfolio in Asia-Pacific region shows no relationship, and the firm-value based portfolio in US shows negative relationship. Third, we confirmed that the two firm-value factor portfolios in Asia-Pacific region and US, not having positive relationship with market portfolio, provide significant excess returns. Conclusions - In this paper, we provide empirical evidences supporting that the factor-based portfolios expand the diversity of funds and improve the efficiency of investment performance. However, there is no guarantee that the efficiency will continue in the future. In addition, various constraints and costs must be considered. Nevertheless, our novel findings in the advanced financial market such as US and Asia-Pacific are very interesting and offers important implications.