• Title/Summary/Keyword: Moral Obligations

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The Influence of Positive Thought about Social Capital on Social Participation of the Elderly Koreans (사회 자본에 대한 긍정적인 생각이 한국노인의 사회 참여에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Hyo Young;Jeon, Gyeong Suk
    • 한국노년학
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    • v.29 no.3
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    • pp.789-803
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    • 2009
  • We investigated the influences of positive thought about social capital on social participation of the elderly Koreans. The study design was cross-sectional analysis of the National Statistic Office Study of Korean Society Statistics Survey 2003. Participants were total of 8,586 representative samples. Two types of social participation were investigated: meeting attendance and volunteer obligations. The base model included five thoughts about social capital that must be settled as a priority in Korea, i.e., reducing the differences between the rich and the poor, reducing the crime rate, reducing regulations and corruption, improving the moral level, eliminating environmental pollution. Social participation was influenced by positive thoughts about social capital, and different kinds of thoughts had different influences on different types of social participation. The elderly who responded positively to 'reducing the differences between the rich and the poor' attended all two types of social participation more. Along with education and health status, positive thought about social capital is another important factor that influences increased social participation. It may also compensate for deteriorating health with increasing age by promoting social participation. Encouraging social participation is a good way to improve the health of the elderly, as are efforts to change thought about social capital positively.

Thai Tourists' Souvenir Shopping Experience in Korea

  • Poraksa, Sirin;Cheon, Hyejung
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.15-29
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    • 2013
  • Shopping is considered a 'must-do' activity for most people on travel. One of the major parts of tourist shopping is the purchasing of souvenirs. Souvenirs are universally associated with tourism as a commercially produced and purchased object to remind the purchaser of the experience. Recently, Korea becomes one of the most popular destinations that many Asian tourists like to visit. Among those Asian tourists, the number of Thai tourists bound for Korea shows an incredible rapid growth. Thai people pick Korea and Seoul as their favorite country and city to visit for three consecutive years since 2009. One of the major reasons why Thais are choosing to tour Korea is the enthusiasm for Korean pop culture. That is, 'Hallyu' has influenced Thais' decision to visit Korea and purchase Korean products. The primary objective of the current research is to explore the shopping experiences of Thai tourists, specifically their souvenir shopping. It adopts a reflexive interpretive approach to bring light to the various meanings Thai tourists attach to the souvenirs they purchase in Korea. In order to accomplish the objective, the individual interviews were conducted. A total of 12 Thais who have experienced traveling in Korea participated in the study. Four themes were identified through interview text analysis. First, the research participants almost always purchase souvenirs in Korea because the souvenirs represent their identities as tourists. Especially, they purchase the souvenirs as gifts for others, including family members, friends, and colleagues. The souvenirs as gifts show love and thanks to others, and they cement the social relationship. However, purchasing souvenirs for others is more like the moral obligations which evoke the psychological stress. Secondly, the research participants feel closer to Korea while shopping souvenirs around. Thirdly, they obtain imaginative experiences and pleasure through souvenirs related to the Korean pop culture. Souvenirs provide them to visually extraordinary experiences. Lastly, souvenirs purchased in Korea act as visible status marker when they go back to Thailand. They show the socioeconomic status and lifestyles. Tourists themselves and others place special value to souvenirs that were purchased out of Thailand. The findings of this study are of both academic and practical importance. Souvenirs are among the most pervasive elements of the travel experience. However, souvenir shopping is the complicated consumer behavior within tourism both from business and social science perspectives. Along the same line, it needs strategic approaches in order to maximize the economy effects. It concludes by suggesting how further research could offer unique insights into how the souvenirs are positioned both in the context of tourism academics and industry.

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The Opposition and Disputation between Pelagius and Augustine -Focused on Free-will- (아우구스티누스와 펠라기우스의 대립과 논쟁 - 자유의지를 중심으로 -)

  • Kim, Young-jin
    • Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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    • v.137
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    • pp.81-108
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    • 2016
  • In Medieval and Christian history, disputation between Augustine and Pelagius originated from different perspectives regarding the free-will of humans and the grace of God. This debate has continued throughout the Middle-Ages and the Reformation to date. In this regard, the purpose of this article is to investigate the implication of opposition and disputation between Augustine and Pelagius on today's society. Overemphasis on human capacity and free-will leads to humanism, while the arguments supporting the grace of God can encourage evasion of the ethical obligations of humans. Augustine and Pelagius had opposing views on this subject. Pelagius emerged in the Roman Empire, emphasizing the ethical responsibility of humans with free-will. On the other hand, Augustine argued that human nature and free-will had been damaged. With a pessimistic outlook on human capacity, he emphasized the grace of God. Shocked by the self-indulgence and ethical negligence of the Church of Rome which was the center of Christian nations at that time, Pelagius strongly urged Christians of the Roman Church to take moral responsibility. However, the theology of Augustine justified the status quo of the Roman Church while Pelagius focused on the necessity of an ethical life of humans based on free-will. Viewing Pelagius' strict moralism as a humanist view that emphasizes human capacity and action, Augustine showed strong opposition to such a view and instead emphasized God's grace. Pelagius was condemned as a heretic as his belief in free-will did not follow Augustine's Doctrine of Grace. However, Pelagianism penetrated Christian history and still poses a threat to Christianity to date. Societal corruption and depravity is still prevalent in today's society as it was in the time of Pelagius. South Korea for instance is exposed to serious moral corruption and a lack of social responsibility as shown in the sinking of the MV Sewol in April 2014. For those reasons, Christian society emphasizes Christian ethics and requires an honest leader who will set an example of Christian life. In this light, I want to examine the implications of disputation between Augustine and Pelagius on today's society.

Thought of ChunChu and a practical solution of Song Joon Kil (동춘당 송준길의 춘추정신과 현실 대응)

  • Kim, Moon Joon
    • The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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    • no.50
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    • pp.37-74
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    • 2016
  • Song Joon Kil(宋浚吉, 1606-1672) intended to establish the subjectivity of people as a "Great Justice". He declared that at that time "Great Justice" was meant to respect 'Ming(明)' and reject 'Ching'(淸). He understood 'Ching' as a country which destroyed the human community and reasoned that if we put Ching's uncivilized behavior out of our mind in favor of the pursuit of present existence and merits, a temporary peace may be got but eternal peace and stability would not be achieved. 'Ming' doesn't refer only to the name of a country, but a country with the capacity to perform 'humanity and justice' with a human culture. On the other hand, he considered 'Ching' to signify the uncivilised country that destroyed or repressed the humanity and peaceful order of the world. He thought the international order can only be maintained under the organization respectful and protective of humanity. He believed a country should act to unify the whole world guaranteeing life and stability. He possessed this cultivated spirit which acted to protect the civilised world from the perils of an uncivilised world. But because of the great famine for a lot of years and the international state(Ming was regressing, and Ching was continuing to make rapid strides) was timely unsuitable to revenge and to wash the shame off. So Song propeled to stabilize the government and to strengthen the national ethics. Song focused on administering the domestic affairs. To him a high priority was a internal affairs, and a low priority was a external affairs[military aggression]. Song considered 'providing for the welfare of the people'(安民) before 'pushing ahead with military aggression'(外攘). And a high priority was 'restoring the people'(養民), a low priority was 'the military affairs'(治兵). Song regarded 'domestic affairs'(內治) as a fundamental affairs. He putted 'to nurse people'(養民) and 'to straighten King's mind'(格君心) first, than 'to buildup military'. His foreign policy was 'respecting Ming' and 'rejecting Ching'. Song was bothered about defining Chosun dynasty's moral obligations to the southern Ming government(1644~46) at Nanjing at that time.

Developing a Scale for Measuring the Corporate Social Responsibility Activities of Korea Corporation: Focusing on the Consumers' Awareness (한국형 기업의 사회적 책임활동 측정을 위한 척도 개발 연구: 소비자 인식을 중심으로)

  • Park, Jongchul;Kim, Kyungjin;Lee, Hanjoon
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.27-52
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    • 2010
  • It is not new that today's business organizations are expected to exhibit ethical and moral management and to carry out social responsibility as a good corporate citizen. Since South Korea emerged as a newly industrialized country during the 1980s, Korean corporations have become active in carrying out their social responsibility as a good corporate citizen to society. In spite of the short history of corporate social responsibility, Korean companies have actively participated in corporate philanthropy. Corporations' significant donations to various social causes, no-lay-off policies, corporate volunteerism and green marketing are evidences of their commitment to corporate citizenship. Corporate social responsibility is now an essential management practice whereby corporation can strengthen its sustainable value creation processes by enhancing the trust assets underlying the relationships between the business and the stakeholders. Much of the conceptual work in the area of corporate social responsibility(CSR) has originated from researches conducted in the management field. Carroll(1979) proposed that corporations have four types of social responsibilities: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. Most past research has investigated CSR and its impact on consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. Although there exists a large body of literature on how consumers perceive and respond to CSR, the majority of past studies were conducted in the United States. The stability and applicability of past findings need to be tested across different national/cultural settings, especially since corporate social responsibility is a reflection of implicit conformation with the expectations and criticism that society may have toward a corporation(Matten and Moon, 2004). In this study, we explored whether people in Korea perceive CSR of Korean corporations in the same four dimensions as done in the United States and what were the measurement items tapping each of these four dimensions. In order to investigate the dimensions of CSR and the measurement items for CSR perceived by Korean people, nine focus group interviews were conducted with several stakeholder groups(two with undergraduate students, two with graduate students, three with general consumers, and two with NGO groups). Scripts from the interviews revealed that the Korean stakeholders perceived four types of CSR which are the same as those proposed by Carroll(1979). However we found CSR issues unique to Korean corporations. For example for the economic responsibility, Korean people mentioned that the corporation needed to contribute to the economic development of the country by generating corporate profits. For the legal responsibility, Koreans included the "corporation need to follow the consumer protection law." For the ethical responsibility, they considered that the corporation needed to not promote false advertisement. In addition, Koreans thought that an ethical company should do transparent management. For the philanthropic responsibility, people in Korea thought that a corporation needed to return parts of its profits to the society for the betterment of society. The 28 items were developed based on the results of the nine focus group interviews, while considering the scale developed by Maignan and Ferrell(2001). Following the procedure proposed by Churchill(1979), we started by developing an item poll consisting of 28 items and purified the initial pool of items through exploratory, confirmatory factor analyses. 176 samples were sued for this analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the 28 items in order to verify the underlying four factor structure. Study 1 provided new measurement items for tapping the Korean CSR dimensions, which can be useful for the future studies exploring the effects of CSR on Korean consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. And we found the CSR scale(17 items) has good reliability, discriminant validity and nomological validity. Economic Responsibility: "XYZ company continuously improves the quality of our products", "XYZ company has a procedure in place to respond to customer complaint", "XYZ company contributes to the economic development of our country by generating profits", "XYZ company is eager to hire people". Legal Responsibility: "XYZ company's products meet legal standards", "XYZ company seeks to comply with all laws regulating hiring and employee benefits", "XYZ company honors contractual obligations to its suppliers", "XYZ company's managers try to comply with the law related to the business operation". Ethical Responsibility: "XYZ company has a comprehensive code of conduct", "XYZ company does not promote a false or misleading advertisement", "XYZ company seems to conduct a transparent business", "XYZ company does a fair business with its suppliers or sub-contractors". Philanthropic Responsibility: "XYZ company encourages partnerships with local businesses and schools", "XYZ company supports sports and cultural activities", "XYZ company gives adequate contributions to charities considering its business size", "XYZ company encourages employees to support our community". Study 2 was condusted for comprehensive validity. 655 samples were used for this anlysis. Collected samples were tested by factor analysis and Crnbach's Alpha coefficiednts and were found to be satisfactory in terms of validity and reliability. Furthermore, fitness of the measurement model was tested by using conformatory factor analysis. χ2=880.73(df=160), GFI=0.891, AGFI=0.854, NFI=0.908, NNFI=0.913, RMR=0.059, RMESA=0.070. We hope that CSR scale could greatly facilitate research on Corporate social resposibility, it is by no means the final answer.

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