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A PLS Path Modeling Approach on the Cause-and-Effect Relationships among BSC Critical Success Factors for IT Organizations (PLS 경로모형을 이용한 IT 조직의 BSC 성공요인간의 인과관계 분석)

  • Lee, Jung-Hoon;Shin, Taek-Soo;Lim, Jong-Ho
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.207-228
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    • 2007
  • Measuring Information Technology(IT) organizations' activities have been limited to mainly measure financial indicators for a long time. However, according to the multifarious functions of Information System, a number of researches have been done for the new trends on measurement methodologies that come with financial measurement as well as new measurement methods. Especially, the researches on IT Balanced Scorecard(BSC), concept from BSC measuring IT activities have been done as well in recent years. BSC provides more advantages than only integration of non-financial measures in a performance measurement system. The core of BSC rests on the cause-and-effect relationships between measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures to allow prediction of value chain performance measures, communication, and realization of the corporate strategy and incentive controlled actions. More recently, BSC proponents have focused on the need to tie measures together into a causal chain of performance, and to test the validity of these hypothesized effects to guide the development of strategy. Kaplan and Norton[2001] argue that one of the primary benefits of the balanced scorecard is its use in gauging the success of strategy. Norreklit[2000] insist that the cause-and-effect chain is central to the balanced scorecard. The cause-and-effect chain is also central to the IT BSC. However, prior researches on relationship between information system and enterprise strategies as well as connection between various IT performance measurement indicators are not so much studied. Ittner et al.[2003] report that 77% of all surveyed companies with an implemented BSC place no or only little interest on soundly modeled cause-and-effect relationships despite of the importance of cause-and-effect chains as an integral part of BSC. This shortcoming can be explained with one theoretical and one practical reason[Blumenberg and Hinz, 2006]. From a theoretical point of view, causalities within the BSC method and their application are only vaguely described by Kaplan and Norton. From a practical consideration, modeling corporate causalities is a complex task due to tedious data acquisition and following reliability maintenance. However, cause-and effect relationships are an essential part of BSCs because they differentiate performance measurement systems like BSCs from simple key performance indicator(KPI) lists. KPI lists present an ad-hoc collection of measures to managers but do not allow for a comprehensive view on corporate performance. Instead, performance measurement system like BSCs tries to model the relationships of the underlying value chain in cause-and-effect relationships. Therefore, to overcome the deficiencies of causal modeling in IT BSC, sound and robust causal modeling approaches are required in theory as well as in practice for offering a solution. The propose of this study is to suggest critical success factors(CSFs) and KPIs for measuring performance for IT organizations and empirically validate the casual relationships between those CSFs. For this purpose, we define four perspectives of BSC for IT organizations according to Van Grembergen's study[2000] as follows. The Future Orientation perspective represents the human and technology resources needed by IT to deliver its services. The Operational Excellence perspective represents the IT processes employed to develop and deliver the applications. The User Orientation perspective represents the user evaluation of IT. The Business Contribution perspective captures the business value of the IT investments. Each of these perspectives has to be translated into corresponding metrics and measures that assess the current situations. This study suggests 12 CSFs for IT BSC based on the previous IT BSC's studies and COBIT 4.1. These CSFs consist of 51 KPIs. We defines the cause-and-effect relationships among BSC CSFs for IT Organizations as follows. The Future Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Operational Excellence perspective. Then the Operational Excellence perspective will have positive effects on the User Orientation perspective. Finally, the User Orientation perspective will have positive effects on the Business Contribution perspective. This research tests the validity of these hypothesized casual effects and the sub-hypothesized causal relationships. For the purpose, we used the Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modeling(or PLS Path Modeling) for analyzing multiple IT BSC CSFs. The PLS path modeling has special abilities that make it more appropriate than other techniques, such as multiple regression and LISREL, when analyzing small sample sizes. Recently the use of PLS path modeling has been gaining interests and use among IS researchers in recent years because of its ability to model latent constructs under conditions of nonormality and with small to medium sample sizes(Chin et al., 2003). The empirical results of our study using PLS path modeling show that the casual effects in IT BSC significantly exist partially in our hypotheses.

Bankruptcy prediction using an improved bagging ensemble (개선된 배깅 앙상블을 활용한 기업부도예측)

  • Min, Sung-Hwan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.121-139
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    • 2014
  • Predicting corporate failure has been an important topic in accounting and finance. The costs associated with bankruptcy are high, so the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction is greatly important for financial institutions. Lots of researchers have dealt with the topic associated with bankruptcy prediction in the past three decades. The current research attempts to use ensemble models for improving the performance of bankruptcy prediction. Ensemble classification is to combine individually trained classifiers in order to gain more accurate prediction than individual models. Ensemble techniques are shown to be very useful for improving the generalization ability of the classifier. Bagging is the most commonly used methods for constructing ensemble classifiers. In bagging, the different training data subsets are randomly drawn with replacement from the original training dataset. Base classifiers are trained on the different bootstrap samples. Instance selection is to select critical instances while deleting and removing irrelevant and harmful instances from the original set. Instance selection and bagging are quite well known in data mining. However, few studies have dealt with the integration of instance selection and bagging. This study proposes an improved bagging ensemble based on instance selection using genetic algorithms (GA) for improving the performance of SVM. GA is an efficient optimization procedure based on the theory of natural selection and evolution. GA uses the idea of survival of the fittest by progressively accepting better solutions to the problems. GA searches by maintaining a population of solutions from which better solutions are created rather than making incremental changes to a single solution to the problem. The initial solution population is generated randomly and evolves into the next generation by genetic operators such as selection, crossover and mutation. The solutions coded by strings are evaluated by the fitness function. The proposed model consists of two phases: GA based Instance Selection and Instance based Bagging. In the first phase, GA is used to select optimal instance subset that is used as input data of bagging model. In this study, the chromosome is encoded as a form of binary string for the instance subset. In this phase, the population size was set to 100 while maximum number of generations was set to 150. We set the crossover rate and mutation rate to 0.7 and 0.1 respectively. We used the prediction accuracy of model as the fitness function of GA. SVM model is trained on training data set using the selected instance subset. The prediction accuracy of SVM model over test data set is used as fitness value in order to avoid overfitting. In the second phase, we used the optimal instance subset selected in the first phase as input data of bagging model. We used SVM model as base classifier for bagging ensemble. The majority voting scheme was used as a combining method in this study. This study applies the proposed model to the bankruptcy prediction problem using a real data set from Korean companies. The research data used in this study contains 1832 externally non-audited firms which filed for bankruptcy (916 cases) and non-bankruptcy (916 cases). Financial ratios categorized as stability, profitability, growth, activity and cash flow were investigated through literature review and basic statistical methods and we selected 8 financial ratios as the final input variables. We separated the whole data into three subsets as training, test and validation data set. In this study, we compared the proposed model with several comparative models including the simple individual SVM model, the simple bagging model and the instance selection based SVM model. The McNemar tests were used to examine whether the proposed model significantly outperforms the other models. The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the other models.

Development of Multimedia Annotation and Retrieval System using MPEG-7 based Semantic Metadata Model (MPEG-7 기반 의미적 메타데이터 모델을 이용한 멀티미디어 주석 및 검색 시스템의 개발)

  • An, Hyoung-Geun;Koh, Jae-Jin
    • The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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    • v.14D no.6
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    • pp.573-584
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    • 2007
  • As multimedia information recently increases fast, various types of retrieval of multimedia data are becoming issues of great importance. For the efficient multimedia data processing, semantics based retrieval techniques are required that can extract the meaning contents of multimedia data. Existing retrieval methods of multimedia data are annotation-based retrieval, feature-based retrieval and annotation and feature integration based retrieval. These systems take annotator a lot of efforts and time and we should perform complicated calculation for feature extraction. In addition. created data have shortcomings that we should go through static search that do not change. Also, user-friendly and semantic searching techniques are not supported. This paper proposes to develop S-MARS(Semantic Metadata-based Multimedia Annotation and Retrieval System) which can represent and extract multimedia data efficiently using MPEG-7. The system provides a graphical user interface for annotating, searching, and browsing multimedia data. It is implemented on the basis of the semantic metadata model to represent multimedia information. The semantic metadata about multimedia data is organized on the basis of multimedia description schema using XML schema that basically comply with the MPEG-7 standard. In conclusion. the proposed scheme can be easily implemented on any multimedia platforms supporting XML technology. It can be utilized to enable efficient semantic metadata sharing between systems, and it will contribute to improving the retrieval correctness and the user's satisfaction on embedding based multimedia retrieval algorithm method.

Effect of Protein Kinase C Inhibitor (PKCI) on Radiation Sensitivity and c-fos Transcription Activity (Protein Kinase C Inhibitor (PKCI)에 의한 방사선 민감도 변화와 c-fos Proto-oncogene의 전사 조절)

  • Choi Eun Kyung;Chang Hyesook;Rhee Yun-Hee;Park Kun-Koo
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.299-306
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    • 1999
  • Purpose : The human genetic disorder ataxia-telangiectasia (AT) is a multisystem disease characterized by extreme radiosensitivity. The recent identification of the gene mutated in AT, ATM, and the demonstration that it encodes a homologous domain of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-K), the catalytic subunit of an enzyme involved in transmitting signals from the cell surface to the nucleus, provide support for a role of this gene in signal transduction. Although ionizing radiation was known to induce c-fos transcription, nothing is known about how ATM or PKCI mediated signal transduction pathway modulates the c-fos gene transcription and gene expression. Here we have studied the effect of PKCI on radiation sensitivity and c-fos transcription in normal and AT cells. Materials and Methods: Normal (LM217) and AT (AT5BIVA) cells were transfected with PKCI expression plasmid and the overexpression and integration of PKCI was evaluated by northern blotting and polymerase chain reaction, respectively. 5 Gy of radiation was exposed to LM and AT cells transfected with PKCI expression plasmid and cells were harvested 48 hours after radiation and investigated apoptosis with TUNEL method. The c-fos transcription activity was studied by performing CAT assay of reporter gene after transfection of c-fos CAT plasmid into AT and LM cells. Results: Our results demonstrate for the first time a role of PKCI on the radiation sensitivity and c-fos expression in LM and AT cells. PKCI increased radiation induced apoptosis in LM cells but reduced apoptosis in AT cells. The basal c-fos transcription activity is 70 times lower in AT cells than that in LM cells. The c-fos transcription activity was repressed by overexpression of PKCI in LM cells but not in AT cells. After induction of c-fos by Ras protein, overexpression of PKCI repressed c-fos transcription in LM cells but not in AT cells Conclusion: Overexpression of PKCI increased radiation sensitivity and repressed c-fos transcription in LM cells but not in AT cells. The results may be a. reason of increased radiation sensitivity of AT cells. PKCI may be involved in an ionizing radiation induced signal transduction pathway responsible for radiation sensitivity and c-fos transcription. The data also provided evidence for novel transcriptional difference between LM and AT cells.

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A Resource-Based Perspective on Three IT Resources and Their Relationships in IT Outsourcing (IT 아웃소싱 성공에 영향을 미치는 3가지 IT 자원들과 그 관계: 자원기반 관점에서)

  • Kim, Chy Heon;Kim, Joon S.;Im, Kun Shin
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.14 no.3
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    • pp.53-74
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    • 2012
  • IT outsourcing (ITO) is an integration of two firms-external vendor(s) and a client firm-IT resources by contract. According to resource-based view(RBV), three different resources-ITO vendor's resource, client firm's resource, and the relationship resource between two firms- may have an impact on ITO performance. However, there have been few previous studies considering all three IT resources simultaneously. There have been also few empirical studies in ITO context, which test Bharadwaj (2000)'s findings: 1) IT resources can be divided into tangible IT asset and intangible IT capability, and 2) only IT capability has an impact on the IT performance. Therefore we examined whether, in ITO context, all three different resources have a significant impact on ITO performance. Adopting the findings of previous IT studies, we also divided IT resource into IT asset and IT capability. To achieve this research objective, we analyzed 62 ITO cases of 45 companies being listed in Korean top 100 companies for recent 3 years. Also, we analyzed the data with the Partial Least Squares method. The results of this research lead to the following conclusions: First, only when partnership is high, ITO vendors' resource can have an influence on ITO performance. Second, only client firm's IT capability, not IT asset, is directly related to the ITO success. Third, a firm's IT capability can increase the partnership. Therefore, we concluded that 1) RBV is also an useful theory in ITO context, 2) Bharadwaj(2000)'s suggestion is valid in ITO context as well, and 3) the relationship resource is also important in ITO.

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A Study on the Business of the Situation Analysis of Food Waste Recycling (음식물류 폐기물 재활용현황 분석을 통한 사업화 연구)

  • Park, Yong Soo;Seol, Byung Moon
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.10 no.5
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    • pp.209-217
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    • 2015
  • Development of food industry and increased city life induced enlarged generation of food waste which is currently reused in a wide range of way. In this study, treatment of food waste generated from the public agricultural product wholesale markets (they are categorized as business places which imposes the duty for reducing the food waste discarded) in Korea was investigated, and subsequently, a scheme for improving the food waste recycling business was suggested. The food waste treatment plants are mainly located in Kyeongki-do at 39.5% of total plants in Korea and the other provinces have less than 10% of the total numbers, among which public treatment plant was 38.0% and private plant was 62.0%. The treatment methods included recycling as animal feed at 47.5%, as compost at 36.4%, and the rest of food waste (12.6%) was treated in other ways. Remarkably, it was noticed that the amount of food waste treated in anaerobic digestion have been increased up to 5.4% since 2011. This implied that food waste treated in anaerobic digestion method is gradually increased according to government policy. Amongst 33 public agricultural product wholesale markets distributed all over the country, the trading volume dealt in Garakdong market in Seoul, Gangseo market in Seoul, Daegu market in Daeju, Eomgung market in Busan, Guri market in Guri accounted for 34.67, 7.47, 6.98, 5.41, and 5.30% of the total trading volume in Korea, respectively. 2.65% of the total trading agricultural products dealt in the markets were remained as food waste and treated. In 2006, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs implemented the package policy for radish and Chinese cabbage in order to reduce the amount of food waste and indeed, food waste generated in Garakdong market declined to one third of the food waste before the package policy implementation. In 2010, the food waste amount treated by 'dehydration', 'discarding as raw materials', and 'drying after dehydration' accounted for 56.3%, 33.7%, and 10.0% of the total food waste generated in the public agricultural product wholesale market. However, in 2013, discarding as raw materials accounted for the most at 56.3% followed by dehydration at 37.5%, and by drying after dehydration at 6.3%. The remarkable increment of the food waste discarded as raw materials was attributed to the increase of them in Garakdong market in Seoul. In general, the agricultural food waste contains high amount of moisture at 88% in average and low amount of salt at 0.02% in average. Therefore, it is highly recommended to treat the agricultural food waste through drying after dehydration in order for improving the treatment capability. Also, this recommendation can be supported by the fact that the end-products via drying after dehydration can be utilized as compost material. Overall, the agricultural food waste recycling business can be developed through integration of the treatment via 'drying after dehydration' and compost production.

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Carbon nanotube field emission display

  • Chil, Won-Bong;Kim, Jong-Min
    • Electrical & Electronic Materials
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    • v.12 no.7
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    • pp.7-11
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    • 1999
  • Fully sealed field emission display in size of 4.5 inch has been fabricated using single-wall carbon nanotubes-organic vehicle com-posite. The fabricated display were fully scalable at low temperature below 415$^{\circ}C$ and CNTs were vertically aligned using paste squeeze and surface rubbing techniques. The turn-on fields of 1V/${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ and field emis-sion current of 1.5mA at 3V/${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ (J=90${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$/$\textrm{cm}^2$)were observed. Brightness of 1800cd/$m^2$ at 3.7V/${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ was observed on the entire area of 4.5-inch panel from the green phosphor-ITO glass. The fluctuation of the current was found to be about 7% over a 4.5-inch cath-ode area. This reliable result enables us to produce large area full-color flat panel dis-play in the near future. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted much attention because of their unique elec-trical properties and their potential applica-tions [1, 2]. Large aspect ratio of CNTs together with high chemical stability. ther-mal conductivity, and high mechanical strength are advantageous for applications to the field emitter [3]. Several results have been reported on the field emissions from multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs) and single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) grown from arc discharge [4, 5]. De Heer et al. have reported the field emission from nan-otubes aligned by the suspension-filtering method. This approach is too difficult to be fully adopted in integration process. Recently, there have been efforts to make applications to field emission devices using nanotubes. Saito et al. demonstrated a car-bon nanotube-based lamp, which was oper-ated at high voltage (10KV) [8]. Aproto-type diode structure was tested by the size of 100mm $\times$ 10mm in vacuum chamber [9]. the difficulties arise from the arrangement of vertically aligned nanotubes after the growth. Recently vertically aligned carbon nanotubes have been synthesized using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition(CVD) [6, 7]. Yet, control of a large area synthesis is still not easily accessible with such approaches. Here we report integra-tion processes of fully sealed 4.5-inch CNT-field emission displays (FEDs). Low turn-on voltage with high brightness, and stabili-ty clearly demonstrate the potential applica-bility of carbon nanotubes to full color dis-plays in near future. For flat panel display in a large area, car-bon nanotubes-based field emitters were fabricated by using nanotubes-organic vehi-cles. The purified SWNTs, which were syn-thesized by dc arc discharge, were dispersed in iso propyl alcohol, and then mixed with on organic binder. The paste of well-dis-persed carbon nanotubes was squeezed onto the metal-patterned sodalime glass throuhg the metal mesh of 20${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ in size and subse-quently heat-treated in order to remove the organic binder. The insulating spacers in thickness of 200${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ are inserted between the lower and upper glasses. The Y\ulcornerO\ulcornerS:Eu, ZnS:Cu, Al, and ZnS:Ag, Cl, phosphors are electrically deposited on the upper glass for red, green, and blue colors, respectively. The typical sizes of each phosphor are 2~3 micron. The assembled structure was sealed in an atmosphere of highly purified Ar gas by means of a glass frit. The display plate was evacuated down to the pressure level of 1$\times$10\ulcorner Torr. Three non-evaporable getters of Ti-Zr-V-Fe were activated during the final heat-exhausting procedure. Finally, the active area of 4.5-inch panel with fully sealed carbon nanotubes was pro-duced. Emission currents were character-ized by the DC-mode and pulse-modulating mode at the voltage up to 800 volts. The brightness of field emission was measured by the Luminance calorimeter (BM-7, Topcon).

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A Study on the Accessability of the Bikeway Networks in the South of the Han River Using Space Syntax (Space Syntax를 이용한 한강이남 자전거도로망의 접근성 분석)

  • Oh, Chung-Won;Lim, Dong-Wook;Kim, Hyun-Jin;Park, Jun-Tae
    • International Journal of Highway Engineering
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    • v.14 no.3
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    • pp.97-110
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    • 2012
  • In case of the axial line bikeway, the residents in the riverside use it frequently but those in the city center hardly do as the axis is formed along the riverside of the Han river. This situation happens due to the inefficient connectivity between the bikeway that leads to the riverside and that in the city center, which means the administrative policies have been focused on the facilities rather than on raising connectivity of the bikeway networks in the south of the Han River. Also, this is the point of time when a reasonable improvement plan is needed to raise the accessibilities of the bikeways in Seoul, not just a utilization of those in the south of the Han River. This study intends to analyse the connectivity between Gangseo (west of the Han River) and Gangdong (East of the Han River) districts by comparing the current spatial structure in the southern areas of the Han River and that after the installation of the axial line, and that after installation of the ordinary bikeway respectively with use of the Space Syntax Model, and to predict resultant changes there of. The Space Syntax Model was used as the major method of analysis in this study to find out characteristics of the bikeways in the south of the Han River. Consequently, as the analysis shows that when the bikeways in the Gangseo and Gangdong-gu districts are connected, the accessibility of the bikeways in the south of the Han River will improve while the spatial structure intelligibility will be lowered, it can be said the prediction rate in the all areas is low compared with the current status. It is analyzed that the intelligibility of the current bikeways in the south of the Han River appeared highest when compared with those of plans for installation of the axial line and ordinary bikeway because they don't interconnect with other areas.

An Examination of Knowledge Sourcing Strategies Effects on Corporate Performance in Small Enterprises (소규모 기업에 있어서 지식소싱 전략이 기업성과에 미치는 영향 고찰)

  • Choi, Byoung-Gu
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.57-81
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    • 2008
  • Knowledge is an essential strategic weapon for sustaining competitive advantage and is the key determinant for organizational growth. When knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout the organization, it increases an organization's value by providing the ability to respond to new and unusual situations. The growing importance of knowledge as a critical resource has forced executives to pay attention to their organizational knowledge. Organizations are increasingly undertaking knowledge management initiatives and making significant investments. Knowledge sourcing is considered as the first important step in effective knowledge management. Most firms continue to make an effort to realize the benefits of knowledge management by using various knowledge sources effectively. Appropriate knowledge sourcing strategies enable organizations to create, acquire, and access knowledge in a timely manner by reducing search and transfer costs, which result in better firm performance. In response, the knowledge management literature has devoted substantial attention to the analysis of knowledge sourcing strategies. Many studies have categorized knowledge sourcing strategies into intemal- and external-oriented. Internal-oriented sourcing strategy attempts to increase firm performance by integrating knowledge within the boundary of the firm. On the contrary, external-oriented strategy attempts to bring knowledge in from outside sources via either acquisition or imitation, and then to transfer that knowledge across to the organization. However, the extant literature on knowledge sourcing strategies focuses primarily on large organizations. Although many studies have clearly highlighted major differences between large and small firms and the need to adopt different strategies for different firm sizes, scant attention has been given to analyzing how knowledge sourcing strategies affect firm performance in small firms and what are the differences between small and large firms in the patterns of knowledge sourcing strategies adoption. This study attempts to advance the current literature by examining the impact of knowledge sourcing strategies on small firm performance from a holistic perspective. By drawing on knowledge based theory from organization science and complementarity theory from the economics literature, this paper is motivated by the following questions: (1) what are the adoption patterns of different knowledge sourcing strategies in small firms (i,e., what sourcing strategies should be adopted and which sourcing strategies work well together in small firms)?; and (2) what are the performance implications of these adoption patterns? In order to answer the questions, this study developed three hypotheses. First hypothesis based on knowledge based theory is that internal-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. Second hypothesis developed on the basis of knowledge based theory is that external-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. The third one based on complementarity theory is that pursuing both internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing simultaneously is negatively or less positively associated with small firm performance. As a sampling frame, 700 firms were identified from the Annual Corporation Report in Korea. Survey questionnaires were mailed to owners or executives who were most erudite about the firm s knowledge sourcing strategies and performance. A total of 188 companies replied, yielding a response rate of 26.8%. Due to incomplete data, 12 responses were eliminated, leaving 176 responses for the final analysis. Since all independent variables were measured using continuous variables, supermodularity function was used to test the hypotheses based on the cross partial derivative of payoff function. The results indicated no significant impact of internal-oriented sourcing strategies while positive impact of external-oriented sourcing strategy on small firm performance. This intriguing result could be explained on the basis of various resource and capital constraints of small firms. Small firms typically have restricted financial and human resources. They do not have enough assets to always develop knowledge internally. Another possible explanation is competency traps or core rigidities. Building up a knowledge base based on internal knowledge creates core competences, but at the same time, excessive internal focused knowledge exploration leads to behaviors blind to other knowledge. Interestingly, this study found that Internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing strategies had a substitutive relationship, which was inconsistent with previous studies that suggested complementary relationship between them. This result might be explained using organizational identification theory. Internal organizational members may perceive external knowledge as a threat, and tend to ignore knowledge from external sources because they prefer to maintain their own knowledge, legitimacy, and homogeneous attitudes. Therefore, integrating knowledge from internal and external sources might not be effective, resulting in failure of improvements of firm performance. Another possible explanation is small firms resource and capital constraints and lack of management expertise and absorptive capacity. Although the integration of different knowledge sources is critical, high levels of knowledge sourcing in many areas are quite expensive and so are often unrealistic for small enterprises. This study provides several implications for research as well as practice. First this study extends the existing knowledge by examining the substitutability (and complementarity) of knowledge sourcing strategies. Most prior studies have tended to investigate the independent effects of these strategies on performance without considering their combined impacts. Furthermore, this study tests complementarity based on the productivity approach that has been considered as a definitive test method for complementarity. Second, this study sheds new light on knowledge management research by identifying the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies and small firm performance. Most current literature has insisted complementary relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies on the basis of data from large firms. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study identifies substitutive relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies using data from small firms. Third, implications for practice highlight that managers of small firms should focus on knowledge sourcing from external-oriented strategies. Moreover, adoption of both sourcing strategies simultaneousiy impedes small firm performance.

Semantic Process Retrieval with Similarity Algorithms (유사도 알고리즘을 활용한 시맨틱 프로세스 검색방안)

  • Lee, Hong-Joo;Klein, Mark
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.79-96
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    • 2008
  • One of the roles of the Semantic Web services is to execute dynamic intra-organizational services including the integration and interoperation of business processes. Since different organizations design their processes differently, the retrieval of similar semantic business processes is necessary in order to support inter-organizational collaborations. Most approaches for finding services that have certain features and support certain business processes have relied on some type of logical reasoning and exact matching. This paper presents our approach of using imprecise matching for expanding results from an exact matching engine to query the OWL(Web Ontology Language) MIT Process Handbook. MIT Process Handbook is an electronic repository of best-practice business processes. The Handbook is intended to help people: (1) redesigning organizational processes, (2) inventing new processes, and (3) sharing ideas about organizational practices. In order to use the MIT Process Handbook for process retrieval experiments, we had to export it into an OWL-based format. We model the Process Handbook meta-model in OWL and export the processes in the Handbook as instances of the meta-model. Next, we need to find a sizable number of queries and their corresponding correct answers in the Process Handbook. Many previous studies devised artificial dataset composed of randomly generated numbers without real meaning and used subjective ratings for correct answers and similarity values between processes. To generate a semantic-preserving test data set, we create 20 variants for each target process that are syntactically different but semantically equivalent using mutation operators. These variants represent the correct answers of the target process. We devise diverse similarity algorithms based on values of process attributes and structures of business processes. We use simple similarity algorithms for text retrieval such as TF-IDF and Levenshtein edit distance to devise our approaches, and utilize tree edit distance measure because semantic processes are appeared to have a graph structure. Also, we design similarity algorithms considering similarity of process structure such as part process, goal, and exception. Since we can identify relationships between semantic process and its subcomponents, this information can be utilized for calculating similarities between processes. Dice's coefficient and Jaccard similarity measures are utilized to calculate portion of overlaps between processes in diverse ways. We perform retrieval experiments to compare the performance of the devised similarity algorithms. We measure the retrieval performance in terms of precision, recall and F measure? the harmonic mean of precision and recall. The tree edit distance shows the poorest performance in terms of all measures. TF-IDF and the method incorporating TF-IDF measure and Levenshtein edit distance show better performances than other devised methods. These two measures are focused on similarity between name and descriptions of process. In addition, we calculate rank correlation coefficient, Kendall's tau b, between the number of process mutations and ranking of similarity values among the mutation sets. In this experiment, similarity measures based on process structure, such as Dice's, Jaccard, and derivatives of these measures, show greater coefficient than measures based on values of process attributes. However, the Lev-TFIDF-JaccardAll measure considering process structure and attributes' values together shows reasonably better performances in these two experiments. For retrieving semantic process, we can think that it's better to consider diverse aspects of process similarity such as process structure and values of process attributes. We generate semantic process data and its dataset for retrieval experiment from MIT Process Handbook repository. We suggest imprecise query algorithms that expand retrieval results from exact matching engine such as SPARQL, and compare the retrieval performances of the similarity algorithms. For the limitations and future work, we need to perform experiments with other dataset from other domain. And, since there are many similarity values from diverse measures, we may find better ways to identify relevant processes by applying these values simultaneously.