• STI Policy Review
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.54-86
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• 2015

The study examines the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, with a focus on the recent Reauthorization, and compares, in the political context, the U.S. and East Asian countries-Japan, Korea and Taiwan-that adopted the U.S. SBIR program. For the systematic analysis and cross-country comparison, the study employs Kingdon (2003)'s framework-his political theory and Garbage Can Model-to identify political participants and processes underlying the SBIR Reauthorization and to analyze the differences in problem, policy, and politics streams between the U.S. and East Asian countries. For the cross-country comparison, specifically, the study uses various data sources such as OECD, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, and World Value Survey. Based on the analysis outcomes, implications of U.S. practices on East Asian countries are extracted as follows. East Asian countries tend to: Have higher entrepreneurial aspiration while lower entrepreneurial activity and attitude than the U.S.; bear higher long term orientation and uncertainty avoidance while lower individualism than the U.S.; and have greater expectations of technology development and higher confidence in political parties while participating less in political action than the U.S. Drawing on the differences, the following policy recommendations are suggested. East Asian countries should: Improve entrepreneurs' access to resources (in particular, financial resource) in order to link their high entrepreneurial aspiration to actual entrepreneurial activities; cultivate failure-tolerating culture and risk-taking entrepreneurs, for instance, by providing a second chance to SBIR-participating businesses that failed to materialize their innovative ideas; and leverage their high expectations of new technology in order to take bold actions regarding their SBIR programs, and update the programs by drawing out constructive dialogues between SBIR stakeholders.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.23-36
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• 2014

This paper analyzes the effects of national culture on an individual's ethical decision-making in the context of the Internet. An ethical decision-making model which posits that five moral philosophy variables-justice, relativism, egoism, utilitarianism, and deontology-affect ethical judgment; ethical judgment, in turn, affects behavioral intention was proposed and Hofstede's five cultural dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation were used to analyze the effects of national culture on the model. The results showed that power distance, individualism, and masculinity had significant effects on the relationship between the deontology variable and ethical judgment, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance had significant effects on the relationship between the justice variable and ethical judgment, and individualism and long-term orientation had significant effects on the relationship between ethical judgment and behavioral intention in the Internet context.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.335-348
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• 2020

This study examines the cultural differences in Korea and the United Kingdom, and how they affect consumer complaint behavior(CCB). Technological advances allow consumers to easily access information anywhere in the world using the internet thus they demand even higher expectations from the sellers. Consumers from different cultural backgrounds, especially the millennial generation, have different ways of expressing a dissatisfying shopping experience. For this comparative study, in-depth interviews were conducted based on the methodology set by grounded theory. The results of the axial coding produced by recombining the data from open coding were visualized as a paradigm model. The main phenomenon of attitude towards complaining was formed following the causal conditions of dissatisfaction that occurred after purchasing fashion products online. The contextual condition, which is the cultural factors, affects the formation of the attitude towards complaining; and the intervening conditions, which are personal value and amplifications of dissatisfaction, had a moderating effect between the causal condition and the main phenomenon. Complaining costs, the likelihood of successful complaint, attribution, and the importance of the product were the determinants of the complaining behavior after the attitude towards complaining was formed. As a result, there were three classifications of consumer complaining behavior: no action, private action, and public action. This research will serve as a guide for online companies that wish to enter the UK fashion industry with a competitive edge.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.247-260
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• 2017

Purpose: The study is aimed to identify the national cultural dimensions that are affecting the quality management (QM) maturity level and the project quality performance, and analyze their relationships. Methods: This study collected the data of QM Maturity level based on Crosby's QM maturity model and the project quality performance using the Iron Triangle (Quality, Time/Schedule and Cost) from the employees who are participating in the ITER Project across the major 8 countries (China, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, U.K. and U.S.A.). Three research hypotheses are proposed concerning the national cultural dimensions in this study and Hofstede's five cultural dimensions framework are used for the statistical test. Results: The results are two folds in the study: First, there is a significant positive correlation between the QM maturity level and the project quality performance. Second, three cultural dimensions (Collectivism, Large Power Distance and Strong Uncertainty Avoidance) and five cultural dimensions (Collectivism, Large Power Distance, Strong Uncertainty Avoidance, Feminity and Long Term Orientation) have a positive impact on the QM maturity level and the project quality performance respectively. Conclusion: From the results, the understanding and consideration of the culture difference among the countries participating International Collaboration R&D project are recommended.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.113-145
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• 2009

Recently, due to the globalization of the IT(Information Technology) market, devices and systems designed in one country are used in other countries as well. This phenomenon is becoming the key factor for increased interest on cross-cultural, or cross-national, research within the IT area. However, as the IT market is becoming bigger and more globalized, a great number of IT practitioners are having difficulty in designing and developing devices or systems which can provide optimal experience. This is because not only tangible factors such as language and a country's economic or industrial power affect the user experience of a certain device or system but also invisible and intangible factors as well. Among such invisible and intangible factors, the cultural characteristics of users from different countries may affect the user experience of certain devices or systems because cultural characteristics affect how they understand and interpret the devices or systems. In other words, when users evaluate the quality of overall user experience, the cultural characteristics of each user act as a perceptual lens that leads the user to focus on a certain elements of experience. Therefore, there is a need within the IT field to consider cultural characteristics when designing or developing certain devices or systems and plan a strategy for localization. In such an environment, existing IS studies identify the culture with the country, emphasize the importance of culture in a national level perspective, and hypothesize that users within the same country have same cultural characteristics. Under such assumptions, these studies focus on the moderating effects of cultural characteristics on a national level within a certain theoretical framework. This has already been suggested by cross-cultural studies conducted by scholars such as Hofstede(1980) in providing numerical research results and measurement items for cultural characteristics and using such results or items as they increase the efficiency of studies. However, such national level culture has its limitations in forecasting and explaining individual-level behaviors such as voluntary device or system usage. This is because individual cultural characteristics are the outcome of not only the national culture but also the culture of a race, company, local area, family, and other groups that are formulated through interaction within the group. Therefore, national or nationally dominant cultural characteristics may have its limitations in forecasting and explaining the cultural characteristics of an individual. Moreover, past studies in psychology suggest a possibility that there exist different cultural characteristics within a single individual depending on the subject being measured or its context. For example, in relation to individual vs. collective characteristics, which is one of the major cultural characteristics, an individual may show collectivistic characteristics when he or she is with family or friends but show individualistic characteristics in his or her workplace. Therefore, this study acknowledged such limitations of past studies and conducted a research within the framework of 'theoretically integrated model of user satisfaction and emotional attachment', which was developed through a former study, on how the effects of different experience elements on emotional attachment or user satisfaction are differentiated depending on the individual cultural characteristics related to a system or device usage. In order to do this, this study hypothesized the moderating effects of four cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs, collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and power distance) as suggested by Hofstede(1980) within the theoretically integrated model of emotional attachment and user satisfaction. Statistical tests were then implemented on these moderating effects through conducting surveys with users of four digital devices (mobile phone, MP3 player, LCD TV, and refrigerator) in three countries (US, Germany, and Russia). In order to explain and forecast the behavior of personal device or system users, individual cultural characteristics must be measured, and depending on the target device or system, measurements must be measured independently. Through this suggestion, this study hopes to provide new and useful perspectives for future IS research.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.23-48
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• 2021

The Korean economy has achieved continuous economic growth for the past several decades thanks to the government's export strategy policy. This increase in exports is playing a leading role in driving Korea's economic growth by improving economic efficiency, creating jobs, and promoting technology development. Traditionally, the main factors affecting Korea's exports can be found from two perspectives: economic factors and industrial structural factors. First, economic factors are related to exchange rates and global economic fluctuations. The impact of the exchange rate on Korea's exports depends on the exchange rate level and exchange rate volatility. Global economic fluctuations affect global import demand, which is an absolute factor influencing Korea's exports. Second, industrial structural factors are unique characteristics that occur depending on industries or products, such as slow international division of labor, increased domestic substitution of certain imported goods by China, and changes in overseas production patterns of major export industries. Looking at the most recent studies related to global exchanges, several literatures show the importance of cultural aspects as well as economic and industrial structural factors. Therefore, this study attempted to develop a forecasting model by considering cultural factors along with economic and industrial structural factors in calculating the import volume of each country from Korea. In particular, this study approaches the influence of cultural factors on imports of Korean products from the perspective of PUSH-PULL framework. The PUSH dimension is a perspective that Korea develops and actively promotes its own brand and can be defined as the degree of interest in each country for Korean brands represented by K-POP, K-FOOD, and K-CULTURE. In addition, the PULL dimension is a perspective centered on the cultural and psychological characteristics of the people of each country. This can be defined as how much they are inclined to accept Korean Flow as each country's cultural code represented by the country's governance system, masculinity, risk avoidance, and short-term/long-term orientation. The unique feature of this study is that the proposed final prediction model can be selected based on Design Principles. The design principles we presented are as follows. 1) A model was developed to reflect interest in Korea and cultural characteristics through newly added data sources. 2) It was designed in a practical and convenient way so that the forecast value can be immediately recalled by inputting changes in economic factors, item code and country code. 3) In order to derive theoretically meaningful results, an algorithm was selected that can interpret the relationship between the input and the target variable. This study can suggest meaningful implications from the technical, economic and policy aspects, and is expected to make a meaningful contribution to the export support strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises by using the import forecasting model.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.91-116
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• 2016

This study proposes a research model to investigate the effect of ICT on national culture and values. Why should we research the relationship between ICT and culture? We do this to shed light on the cultural framework and find areas for further research. This research has found that the development of Information Communication Technology(ICT) has proved to have a positive effect on the quality of individualism (B0.603), there is a decrease in power distance index(B-0.331)and a correlation between individualism and wealth. Also, the development of Information Communication Technology(ICT) has proved to have a positive effect on the quality of Long Term Orientation. As for adoption and use of ICT, the role of culture is important for many reasons. First of all, we can recognize the importance of national culture and organizational culture in establishing the ability of the overall culture to adapt, efficiently merging with different cultures and overcoming potential obstacles of these tasks. This is the evidence supporting the current theory. Our research shows that development of technology highly influences deep human values. Furthermore, the data points used in this research are from World Economic Forum, World Development Indicator and International Telecommunication Union. In order to understand and develop social evolution and progress, we tried to use data that is fair and verifiable.