• Title/Summary/Keyword: Information technology resources

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Relationships Among Employees' IT Personnel Competency, Personal Work Satisfaction, and Personal Work Performance: A Goal Orientation Perspective (조직구성원의 정보기술 인적역량과 개인 업무만족 및 업무성과 간의 관계: 목표지향성 관점)

  • Heo, Myung-Sook;Cheon, Myun-Joong
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.63-104
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    • 2011
  • The study examines the relationships among employee's goal orientation, IT personnel competency, personal effectiveness. The goal orientation includes learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Personal effectiveness consists of personal work satisfaction and personal work performance. In general, IT personnel competency refers to IT expert's skills, expertise, and knowledge required to perform IT activities in organizations. However, due to the advent of the internet and the generalization of IT, IT personnel competency turns out to be an important competency of technological experts as well as employees in organizations. While the competency of IT itself is important, the appropriate harmony between IT personnel's business capability and technological capability enhances the value of human resources and thus provides organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. The rapid pace of organization change places increased pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. This challenge raises a number of important questions concerning organizational behavior? Why do some employees display remarkable flexibility in their behavioral responses to changes in the organization, whereas others firmly resist change or experience great stress when faced with the need to alter behavior? Why do some employees continually strive to improve themselves over their life span, whereas others are content to forge through life using the same basic knowledge and skills? Why do some employees throw themselves enthusiastically into challenging tasks, whereas others avoid challenging tasks? The goal orientation proposed by organizational psychology provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Goal orientations refer to stable personally characteristics fostered by "self-theories" about the nature and development of attributes (such as intelligence, personality, abilities, and skills) people have. Self-theories are one's beliefs and goal orientations are achievement motivation revealed in seeking goals in accordance with one's beliefs. The goal orientations include learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Specifically, a learning goal orientation refers to a preference to develop the self by acquiring new skills, mastering new situations, and improving one's competence. A performance approach goal orientation refers to a preference to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. A performance avoid goal orientation refers to a preference to avoid the disproving of one's competence and to avoid negative judgements about it, while focusing on performance. And the study also examines the moderating role of work career of employees to investigate the difference in the relationship between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness. The study analyzes the collected data using PASW 18.0 and and PLS(Partial Least Square). The study also uses PLS bootstrapping algorithm (sample size: 500) to test research hypotheses. The result shows that the influences of both a learning goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.301, t = 3.822, P < 0.000) and a performance approach goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.224, t = 2.710, P < 0.01) on IT personnel competency are positively significant, while the influence of a performance avoid goal orientation(${\beta}$ = -0.142, t = 2.398, p < 0.05) on IT personnel competency is negatively significant. The result indicates that employees differ in their psychological and behavioral responses according to the goal orientation of employees. The result also shows that the impact of a IT personnel competency on both personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.395, t = 4.897, P < 0.000) and personal work performance(${\beta}$ = 0.575, t = 12.800, P < 0.000) is positively significant. And the impact of personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.148, t = 2.432, p < 0.05) on personal work performance is positively significant. Finally, the impacts of control variables (gender, age, type of industry, position, work career) on the relationships between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness(personal work satisfaction work performance) are partly significant. In addition, the study uses PLS algorithm to find out a GoF(global criterion of goodness of fit) of the exploratory research model which includes a mediating variable, IT personnel competency. The result of analysis shows that the value of GoF is 0.45 above GoFlarge(0.36). Therefore, the research model turns out be good. In addition, the study performs a Sobel Test to find out the statistical significance of the mediating variable, IT personnel competency, which is already turned out to have the mediating effect in the research model using PLS. The result of a Sobel Test shows that the values of Z are all significant statistically (above 1.96 and below -1.96) and indicates that IT personnel competency plays a mediating role in the research model. At the present day, most employees are universally afraid of organizational changes and resistant to them in organizations in which the acceptance and learning of a new information technology or information system is particularly required. The problem is due' to increasing a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty in improving past practices in accordance with new organizational changes. It is not always possible for employees with positive attitudes to perform their works suitable to organizational goals. Therefore, organizations need to identify what kinds of goal-oriented minds employees have, motivate them to do self-directed learning, and provide them with organizational environment to enhance positive aspects in their works. Thus, the study provides researchers and practitioners with a matter of primary interest in goal orientation and IT personnel competency, of which they have been unaware until very recently. Some academic and practical implications and limitations arisen in the course of the research, and suggestions for future research directions are also discussed.

Present Use of Trails and Influential Factors on Trail Selection -in Mudeung-san Provincial Park- (무등산(無等山) 도립공원(道立公園)의 등산로(登山路) 이용현황(利用現況)과 등산로(登山路) 선정요인(選定要因))

  • Kim, Sang-Oh;Oh, Kwang-In
    • Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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    • v.87 no.2
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    • pp.131-144
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    • 1998
  • Understanding of the reasons why users in recreation settings select particular trails may provide useful information for effective recreation resources management. This study investigated the present use of the major trails in Mudeung-san Provincial Park and the major influential factors on trail selection. This study was conducted in Mudeung-san Provincial Park stretching over Hwasun-gun and Damyang-gun of Chonnam Province and Kwang-ju city during August in 1996. Data were collected through on-site survey and mail-back questionnaire. 519(44.2%) out of 1173 survey samples were used for analysis. Reasons for selecting a particular trail were classified into 8 major factors. In overall, the order of the importance degree of the factors was 1) aesthetics of landscape, 2) safety(from physical and crime), 3) conditions for health, 4) quietness, 5) familiarity, 6) on the way to the destination, 7) convenience/social, 8) others' intention. There were differences in the degree of importance of each factor depending on trails, users' characteristics(eg., gender, age, group size, visit experience, etc.) and users' behavioral patterns. Recreation motivations were classified into 5 major factors. The order of the importance degree of the factors was 1) contacting with nature, 2) self-training, 3) solitude, 4) social interaction, 5) appreciating cultural properties. Regardless of trails, 'contacting with nature' was the most important factor, and the degree of importance in the other 4 motivational factors showed only a little differences in order according to the trails. There were correlations between major factors for trail selection and recreation motivations. The results of this study may provide foundational information for establishing effective management strategies through better understanding of the present use of trails and influential factors on trail selection. It can be used for reducing the present social and ecological problems caused by use concentration on certain trails and providing users with better quality of diverse recreational experiences. This study discussed the findings, and suggested some management strategies based on these information.

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A Study on the Intelligent Service Selection Reasoning for Enhanced User Satisfaction : Appliance to Cloud Computing Service (사용자 만족도 향상을 위한 지능형 서비스 선정 방안에 관한 연구 : 클라우드 컴퓨팅 서비스에의 적용)

  • Shin, Dong Cheon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.35-51
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    • 2012
  • Cloud computing is internet-based computing where computing resources are offered over the Internet as scalable and on-demand services. In particular, in case a number of various cloud services emerge in accordance with development of internet and mobile technology, to select and provide services with which service users satisfy is one of the important issues. Most of previous works show the limitation in the degree of user satisfaction because they are based on so called concept similarity in relation to user requirements or are lack of versatility of user preferences. This paper presents cloud service selection reasoning which can be applied to the general cloud service environments including a variety of computing resource services, not limited to web services. In relation to the service environments, there are two kinds of services: atomic service and composite service. An atomic service consists of service attributes which represent the characteristics of service such as functionality, performance, or specification. A composite service can be created by composition of atomic services and other composite services. Therefore, a composite service inherits attributes of component services. On the other hand, the main participants in providing with cloud services are service users, service suppliers, and service operators. Service suppliers can register services autonomously or in accordance with the strategic collaboration with service operators. Service users submit request queries including service name and requirements to the service management system. The service management system consists of a query processor for processing user queries, a registration manager for service registration, and a selection engine for service selection reasoning. In order to enhance the degree of user satisfaction, our reasoning stands on basis of the degree of conformance to user requirements of service attributes in terms of functionality, performance, and specification of service attributes, instead of concept similarity as in ontology-based reasoning. For this we introduce so called a service attribute graph (SAG) which is generated by considering the inclusion relationship among instances of a service attribute from several perspectives like functionality, performance, and specification. Hence, SAG is a directed graph which shows the inclusion relationships among attribute instances. Since the degree of conformance is very close to the inclusion relationship, we can say the acceptability of services depends on the closeness of inclusion relationship among corresponding attribute instances. That is, the high closeness implies the high acceptability because the degree of closeness reflects the degree of conformance among attributes instances. The degree of closeness is proportional to the path length between two vertex in SAG. The shorter path length means more close inclusion relationship than longer path length, which implies the higher degree of conformance. In addition to acceptability, in this paper, other user preferences such as priority for attributes and mandatary options are reflected for the variety of user requirements. Furthermore, to consider various types of attribute like character, number, and boolean also helps to support the variety of user requirements. Finally, according to service value to price cloud services are rated and recommended to users. One of the significances of this paper is the first try to present a graph-based selection reasoning unlike other works, while considering various user preferences in relation with service attributes.

Knowledge Management Strategy of a Franchise Business : The Case of a Paris Baguette Bakery (프랜차이즈 기업의 지식경영 전략 : 파리바게뜨 사례를 중심으로)

  • Cho, Joon-Sang;Kim, Bo-Yong
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.10 no.6
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    • pp.39-53
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    • 2012
  • It is widely known that knowledge management plays a facilitating role that contributes to upgrading organizational performance. Knowledge management systems (KMS), especially, support the knowledge management process including the sharing, creating, and using of knowledge within a company, and maximize the value of knowledge resources within an organization. Despite this widely held belief, there are few studies that describe how companies actually develop, share, and practice their knowledge. Companies in the domestic small franchise sector, which are in the early stages in terms of knowledge management, need to improve their KMS to manage their franchisees effectively. From this perspective, this study uses a qualitative approach to explore the actual process of knowledge management implementation. This article presents a case study of PB (Paris Baguette) company, which is the first to build a KMS in the franchise industry. The study was able to confirm the following facts through the analysis of target companies. First, the chief executive's support is a critical success factor and this support can increase the participation of organization members. Second, it is important to build a process and culture that actively creates and leverages information in knowledge management activities. The organizational learning culture should be one where the creation, learning, and sharing of new knowledge is developed continuously. Third, a horizontal network organization is needed in order to make relationships within the organization more close-knit. Fourth, in order to connect the diverse processes such as knowledge acquisition, storage, and utilization of knowledge management activities, information technology (IT) capabilities are essential. Indeed, IT can be a powerful tool for improving the quality of work and maximizing the spread and use of knowledge. However, during the construction of an intranet based KMS, research is required to ensure that the most efficient system is implemented. Finally, proper evaluation and compensation are important success factors. In order to develop knowledge workers, an appropriate program of promotion and compensation should be established. Also, building members' confidence in the benefits of knowledge management should be an ongoing activity. The company developed its original KMS to achieve a flexible and proactive organization, and a new KMS to improve organizational and personal capabilities. The PB case shows that there are differences between participants perceptions and actual performance in managing knowledge; that knowledge management is not a matter of formality but a paradigm that assures the sharing of knowledge; and that IT boosts communication skills, thus creating a mutual relationship to enhance the flow of knowledge and information between people. Knowledge management for building organizational capabilities can be successful when considering its focus and ways to increase its acceptance. This study suggests guidelines for major factors that corporate executives of domestic franchises should consider to improve knowledge management and the higher operating activities that can be used.

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Analyzing the discriminative characteristic of cover letters using text mining focused on Air Force applicants (텍스트 마이닝을 이용한 공군 부사관 지원자 자기소개서의 차별적 특성 분석)

  • Kwon, Hyeok;Kim, Wooju
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.27 no.3
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    • pp.75-94
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    • 2021
  • The low birth rate and shortened military service period are causing concerns about selecting excellent military officers. The Republic of Korea entered a low birth rate society in 1984 and an aged society in 2018 respectively, and is expected to be in a super-aged society in 2025. In addition, the troop-oriented military is changed as a state-of-the-art weapons-oriented military, and the reduction of the military service period was implemented in 2018 to ease the burden of military service for young people and play a role in the society early. Some observe that the application rate for military officers is falling due to a decrease of manpower resources and a preference for shortened mandatory military service over military officers. This requires further consideration of the policy of securing excellent military officers. Most of the related studies have used social scientists' methodologies, but this study applies the methodology of text mining suitable for large-scale documents analysis. This study extracts words of discriminative characteristics from the Republic of Korea Air Force Non-Commissioned Officer Applicant cover letters and analyzes the polarity of pass and fail. It consists of three steps in total. First, the application is divided into general and technical fields, and the words characterized in the cover letter are ordered according to the difference in the frequency ratio of each field. The greater the difference in the proportion of each application field, the field character is defined as 'more discriminative'. Based on this, we extract the top 50 words representing discriminative characteristics in general fields and the top 50 words representing discriminative characteristics in technology fields. Second, the number of appropriate topics in the overall cover letter is calculated through the LDA. It uses perplexity score and coherence score. Based on the appropriate number of topics, we then use LDA to generate topic and probability, and estimate which topic words of discriminative characteristic belong to. Subsequently, the keyword indicators of questions used to set the labeling candidate index, and the most appropriate index indicator is set as the label for the topic when considering the topic-specific word distribution. Third, using L-LDA, which sets the cover letter and label as pass and fail, we generate topics and probabilities for each field of pass and fail labels. Furthermore, we extract only words of discriminative characteristics that give labeled topics among generated topics and probabilities by pass and fail labels. Next, we extract the difference between the probability on the pass label and the probability on the fail label by word of the labeled discriminative characteristic. A positive figure can be seen as having the polarity of pass, and a negative figure can be seen as having the polarity of fail. This study is the first research to reflect the characteristics of cover letters of Republic of Korea Air Force non-commissioned officer applicants, not in the private sector. Moreover, these methodologies can apply text mining techniques for multiple documents, rather survey or interview methods, to reduce analysis time and increase reliability for the entire population. For this reason, the methodology proposed in the study is also applicable to other forms of multiple documents in the field of military personnel. This study shows that L-LDA is more suitable than LDA to extract discriminative characteristics of Republic of Korea Air Force Noncommissioned cover letters. Furthermore, this study proposes a methodology that uses a combination of LDA and L-LDA. Therefore, through the analysis of the results of the acquisition of non-commissioned Republic of Korea Air Force officers, we would like to provide information available for acquisition and promotional policies and propose a methodology available for research in the field of military manpower acquisition.

Text Mining-Based Emerging Trend Analysis for e-Learning Contents Targeting for CEO (텍스트마이닝을 통한 최고경영자 대상 이러닝 콘텐츠 트렌드 분석)

  • Kyung-Hoon Kim;Myungsin Chae;Byungtae Lee
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.1-19
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    • 2017
  • Original scripts of e-learning lectures for the CEOs of corporation S were analyzed using topic analysis, which is a text mining method. Twenty-two topics were extracted based on the keywords chosen from five-year records that ranged from 2011 to 2015. Research analysis was then conducted on various issues. Promising topics were selected through evaluation and element analysis of the members of each topic. In management and economics, members demonstrated high satisfaction and interest toward topics in marketing strategy, human resource management, and communication. Philosophy, history of war, and history demonstrated high interest and satisfaction in the field of humanities, whereas mind health showed high interest and satisfaction in the field of in lifestyle. Studies were also conducted to identify topics on the proportion of content, but these studies failed to increase member satisfaction. In the field of IT, educational content responds sensitively to change of the times, but it may not increase the interest and satisfaction of members. The present study found that content production for CEOs should draw out deep implications for value innovation through technology application instead of simply ending the technical aspect of information delivery. Previous studies classified contents superficially based on the name of content program when analyzing the status of content operation. However, text mining can derive deep content and subject classification based on the contents of unstructured data script. This approach can examine current shortages and necessary fields if the service contents of the themes are displayed by year. This study was based on data obtained from influential e-learning companies in Korea. Obtaining practical results was difficult because data were not acquired from portal sites or social networking service. The content of e-learning trends of CEOs were analyzed. Data analysis was also conducted on the intellectual interests of CEOs in each field.

Changes of Protein Profiles in Cheonggukjang during the Fermentation Period (전통 청국장의 발효 기간 동안 변화하는 수용성 단백질 개요)

  • Santos, Ilyn;Sohn, Il-Young;Choi, Hyun-Soo;Park, Sun-Min;Ryu, Sung-Hee;Kwon, Dae-Young;Park, Cheon-Seok;Kim, Jeong-Hwan;Kim, Jong-Sang;Lim, Jin-Kyu
    • Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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    • v.39 no.4
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    • pp.438-446
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    • 2007
  • The fermented soybean product, cheonggukjang, is favored by many people, partly due to its bio-functional ingredients. Since the fermentation process of cheonggukjang is mediated by enzymes, including proteases, produced by microbes, analysis of the proteome profile changes in cheonggukjang during fermentation would provide us with valuable information for fermentation optimization, as well as a better understanding of the formation mechanisms of the bio-functional substances. The soluble proteins from cheonggukjang were prepared by a phenol/chloroform extraction method, in order to remove interfering molecules for high resolution 2-D gel analysis. Proteomic analysis of the cheonggukjang different fermentation periods suggested that most of the soluble soy proteins were degraded into smaller forms within 20hr, and many microbial proteins, such as mucilage proteins, dominated the soluble protein fraction. The proteomic profile of cheonggukjang was very different from natto, in terms of the 2-D gel protein profile. Among the separated protein spots on the 2-D gels, 50 proteins from each gel were analyzed by MALDI-TOF MS and PMF for protein identification. Due to database limitations with regard to soy proteins and microbial proteins, identification of the changed proteins during fermentation was restricted to 9 proteins for cheonggukjang and 15 for natto. From de novo sequencing of the proteins by a tandem MS/MS, as well as by database searches using BLASTP, a limited number of proteins were identified with low reliability. However, the 2-D gel analysis of proteins, including protein preparation methods, remains a valuable tool to analyze complex mixtures of proteins entirely. Also, for intensive mass spectrometric analysis, it is also advisable to focus on a few of the interestingly changed proteins in cheonggukjang.

Variation in Muscle Lipids and Fatty Acid Composition of Neutral and Phospholipids of Mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectinirostris) during Hibernation (동면중 짱뚱어 근육유(筋肉油)의 지방질과 중성 및 인지질 조성의 변화)

  • Kim, Myung-Kon;Baek, Seung-Hwa;Choe, Sun-Nam;Kim, Jong-Bae;Park, Il-Woong
    • Applied Biological Chemistry
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    • v.41 no.7
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    • pp.533-538
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    • 1998
  • In order to gain fundamental information on the utilization of lipids as energy source in mud-skipper, muscle lipids and their fatty acid composition were investigated with respect to life cycle-maturation (Aug), before-hibernation (Nov), and after-hibernation (Apr). Crude and neutral lipid were found to decrease from 1.2, 68.3% (Aug) via 0.7, 53.8% (Nov) to 0.4, 42.6% (Apr), respectively, whilst phospholipids and glycolipids increased from 29.5 and 2.2% (Aug) to 52.1 and 5.3% (Apr), respectively. In neutral lipids, TG contents gradually decreased from 53.8% (Aug) via 33.6% (Nov) to 23.1% (Apr), while FFA and sterol contents increased from 13.5 and 14.2% (Aug) to 22.3 and 24.5% (Apr), respectively. In phospholipids, PC content decreased from 61.2% (Aug) to 50.6% (Apr), while changes in PS and PE contents, as a whole, showed the opposite trends. In neutral lipids, the levels of some fatty acids such as 16:0, 16:1, 18:0, 18:1 and 20:5 $({\omega}3)$ were analyzed to be high, with the 20 : 5 being predominant, and the levels of saturated and monoene-acids gradually decreased, while polyene-acids increased in before and after hibernation. In before hibernation, 16:0, 16:1, 18:1 mainly decreased but 18:2, 18:3 $({\omega}3)$ and most of saturated and monoene acids such as 14:0, 14:1, 16:1, 18:0, 18:1 slightly decreased in after hibernation. From these findings, it was suggested that those fatty acids decreased during hibernation were used as a energy source, particularly 16:1 and 18:1 being most preferentially used. In phospholipids, the levels of 16:0, 18:0, 20:5 $({\omega}3)$, 22:5 $({\omega}3)$ and 22:6 $({\omega}3)$ were found to be high. Throughout the life cycle, the levels of monoene-acids in phospholipids stayed constant, whilst those of 18:2, 18:3 $({\omega}3)$ and saturated acids such as 16:0, 18:0 were found to be decreased gradually in before and after hibernation, whereas those for the high degree of polyene-acids such as 20:4 $({\omega}6)$, 20:5 $({\omega}3)$, 22:5 $({\omega}3)$, 22:6 $({\omega}3)$ increased, particularly 20:4 $({\omega}6)$, 20:5 $({\omega}3)$ being most increased.

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Structural Adjustment of Domestic Firms in the Era of Market Liberalization (시장개방(市場開放)과 국내기업(國內企業)의 구조조정(構造調整))

  • Seong, So-mi
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.91-116
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    • 1991
  • Market liberalization progressing simultaneously with high and rapidly rising domestic wages has created an adverse business environment for domestic firms. Korean firms are losing their international competitiveness in comparison to firms from LDC(Less Developed Countries) in low-tech industries. In high-tech industries, domestic firms without government protection (which is impossible due to the liberalization policy and the current international status of the Korean economy) are in a disadvantaged position relative to firms from advanced countries. This paper examines the division of roles between the private sector and the government in order to achieve a successful structural adjustment, which has become the impending industrial policy issue caused by high domestic wages, on the one hand, and the opening of domestic markets, on the other. The micro foundation of the economy-wide structural adjustment is actually the restructuring of business portfolios at the firm level. The firm-level business restructuring means that firms in low-value-added businesses or with declining market niches establish new major businesses in higher value-added segments or growing market niches. The adjustment of the business structure at the firm level can only be accomplished by accumulating firm-specific managerial assets necessary to establish a new business structure. This can be done through learning-by-doing in the whole system of management, including research and development, manufacturing, and marketing. Therefore, the voluntary cooperation among the people in the company is essential for making the cost of the learning process lower than that at the competing companies. Hence, firms that attempt to restructure their major businesses need to induce corporate-wide participation through innovations in organization and management, encourage innovative corporate culture, and maintain cooperative labor unions. Policy discussions on structural adjustments usually regard firms as a black box behind a few macro variables. But in reality, firm activities are not flows of materials but relationships among human resources. The growth potential of companies are embodied in the human resources of the firm; the balance of interest among stockholders, managers, and workers of the company' brings the accumulation of the company's core competencies. Therefore, policymakers and economists shoud change their old concept of the firm as a technological black box which produces a marketable commodities. Firms should be regarded as coalitions of interest groups such as stockholders, managers, and workers. Consequently the discussion on the structural adjustment both at the macroeconomic level and the firm level should be based on this new paradigm of understanding firms. The government's role in reducing the cost of structural adjustment and supporting should the creation of new industries emphasize the following: First, government must promote the competition in domestic markets by revising laws related to antitrust policy, bankruptcy, and the promotion of small and medium-sized companies. General consensus on the limitations of government intervention and the merit of deregulation should be sought among policymakers and people in the business world. In the age of internationalization, nation-specific competitive advantages cannot be exclusively in favor of domestic firms. The international competitiveness of a domestic firm derives from the firm-specific core competencies which can be accumulated by internal investment and organization of the firm. Second, government must build up a solid infrastructure of production factors including capital, technology, manpower, and information. Structural adjustment often entails bankruptcies and partial waste of resources. However, it is desirable for the government not to try to sustain marginal businesses, but to support the diversification or restructuring of businesses by assisting in factor creation. Institutional support for venture businesses needs to be improved, especially in the financing system since many investment projects in venture businesses are highly risky, even though they are very promising. The proportion of low-value added production processes and declining industries should be reduced by promoting foreign direct investment and factory automation. Moreover, one cannot over-emphasize the importance of future-oriented labor policies to be based on the new paradigm of understanding firm activities. The old laws and instititutions related to labor unions need to be reformed. Third, government must improve the regimes related to money, banking, and the tax system to change business practices dependent on government protection or undesirable in view of the evolution of the Korean economy as a whole. To prevent rational business decisions from contradicting to the interest of the economy as a whole, government should influence the business environment, not the business itself.

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Research Framework for International Franchising (국제프랜차이징 연구요소 및 연구방향)

  • Kim, Ju-Young;Lim, Young-Kyun;Shim, Jae-Duck
    • 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.

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