• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.882-891
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• 1998

This study purported to analyze the condition of the degree standardization and types of global ads. in the multinational fashion brand corporations. The analyzed ads. were sampled from monthly magazines on same seasons in 1997. This study was done by means of checklists were modified other researcher's research measurments. Researcher counted of advertising message. Zero point meant perfect stan-dardization and 13 points meant perfect non-standardization. The types of advertising appeal were analyzed according to constituent unit's expression types. The results of the study proved that the degree of standardization was considerably high, which means that the multinational fashion brand corporations used the standardization strategy. In particular, the degree of standardization in sports wear and casual wear ads. was low compared with the degree of standardization in the other ads. Most of the global fashion ads. were composed of illustrations only. Besides, emotional appeal type was usually used in glabal fashion ads.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2016

We analyze how firms' global production activities affect their inventory supply and financial performance in regards to its production location. For the analysis, we use information on global production quantities of 3,076 Korean multinational firms that operate business in Europe and Asia through foreign direct investment (FDI) from 2006 to 2013. Our estimation results show that an increase in global production ratio, measured by global production/total production, decreases inventory supply and financial performance of firms that produce in European countries, while it decreases financial performance of firms that produce in Asian countries. Although our results indicate that global production decreases financial performance of firms that produce in Europe and Asia, we find that its negative effects on financial performance are different based on the market demand uncertainty.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.45-50
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• 2015

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine IKEA in the context of corporate social responsibility to determine the reasons, if any, as to why IKEA has had more success in the implementation of its CSR policies and Code of Conduct where many other multinational companies seem to have failed. Research Design and Methodology - This is a case study, an analytical approach, which focuses on exploring and analyzing the CSR policies to measure IKEA's ethical behavior in a business environment. Results - IKEA stands out as a multinational company whose CSR policies are ingrained into the business itself as a part of its ethical operations, rather than a marketing event. Conclusion - Beyond profit, IKEA actively works together with its suppliers and the nation states to eradicate the harmful social causes of the various challenges it faces in the global business environment.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.139-154
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• 2012

This paper provides a theoretical setup for an analysis of strategic relationships inherent to activities of an innovative multinational enterprise (MNE) and a local company in a host country. Additionally, we explore the incentives of the host country's government to provide subsidies to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and to protect outcomes of R&D activities conducted by the MNE. We show that the MNE's commercial interests may collide with local companies' over protection of IPRs. Therefore, the extent of knowledge spillovers from the MNE to the local company and the magnitude of incentives to the MNE perform a crucial function in determining the optimal policy mix of IPR protection and FDI subsidies of the host country's government.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.271-287
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• 2019

This paper reviews and analyzes the ethical issues of multinational corporations (MNCs) in Africa. First, we find that the transparency and institutions of a host country have a negative relationship with the number of ethical violations of the MNCs. Second, this covers the effects of industry characteristics on each category of ethical issues such as the human rights and the environment. Based on the database of "Ethical Consumer", we show that the Auto, Chemical, Finance, and Telecommunication industries are more likely to violate human rights issues, and that Mining, Oil, Cosmetics, and Chemical industries are more likely to pollute the environments. Further, the country of origin does matter: the US and Asian companies are more likely to be involved with the business ethics violations than are their European counterparts.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.1
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• pp.37-70
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• 1987

• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.3-35
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• 2017

For recent years, several disputes between Korean consumers and multinational companies have arisen. Since the disputes were big and material that children's safety was at issue, a question started if Korean law properly has protected consumers' rights against multinational companies. While the Korean legal society tried to legislate punitive compensation with this concern, the U.S. Supreme Court reached an interesting case law regarding consumer contracts. A recent trend on consumer contracts in the United States shows that general terms have arbitration clause with class action waiver. As much as international arbitration has worked as the most effective resolution in international commercial disputes, the concept is still foreign and the experts are not approachable to lay individual consumers. However, class action in arbitration can hugely help for lay individual consumers to bring a case before arbitration tribunal. California courts consistently showed the analysis that the practical impact of prohibiting class action in arbitration clause is to ban lay individual consumers from fighting for their rights. However, the Supreme Court held that the arbitration clause shall be enforced as parties agree even if consumers practically cannot fight for their rights in the end. Even though consumer contracts are a typical example of lack of parity and of adhesive contract, the Supreme Court still applies liberalism that parties are equal in power and free to agree. This case law has a crucial implication since Korean consumers buy goods and services from the U.S. and other countries in everyday life. Accordingly, they are deemed to agree on the dispute resolution clauses, which might violate their constitutional right to bring their cases before the adjudication tribunal. This issue could be more important than adopting punitive compensation because consumers' rights are not necessarily governed by Korean law but by the governing law of the general terms and conditions chosen and written by the multinational companies. Thus this paper studies and analyzes the practical reality of international arbitration and influence of arbitration clause with class action waiver with the U.S. Supreme Court and California case laws.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.194-200
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• 2009

This study provides a heuristic algorithm to solve the locating problem of repair service centers (RSCs). To enhance the customer service level with more satisfaction and quicker responsiveness, the locating problem of RSCs has become one of the important issues in reverse supply chain management. This problem is formulated as a zero-one mixed integer programming in which an exiting distributor will be considered to be an un-capacitated repair service center for the objective of cost-minimizing. Since logistical costs are highly interrelated with the multinational location of distributors and RSCs, the fixed cost for setting a repair service center, variable cost, transportation cost, and exchange rates are considered in this study. Recognizing the selection of un-capacitated RSCs' locations is a combinatorial optimization problem and is a zero-one mixed integer programming with NP-hard complexity, we provide a heuristic algorithm named as incremental cost matrix procedure (ICMP) to simplify the solving procedure. By using the concise and structural cost matrix, ICMP can efficiently screen the potential location with cost advantage and effectively decide which distributor should be a RSC. Results obtained from the numerical experiments conducted in small scale problem have shown the fact that ICMP is an effective and efficient heuristic algorithm for solving the RSCs locating problem. In the future, using the extended ICMP to solve problems with larger industrial scale or problems with congestion effects caused by the variation of customer demand and the restriction of the RSC capacity is worth a further investigation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.103-112
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• 2016

As supply chains are globalized, multinational companies are trying to optimize distribution networks using a hub and spoke structure. In this hub and spoke network structure, multinational companies locate regional distribution centers at hub airports, which serve demands in their corresponding regions. Especially when customers put higher priority on the service lead-time, hinterlands of international hub airports become ideal candidate locations for the regional hub distribution centers. By utilizing excellent airport and logistics services from hub airports, regional distribution centers in the hub airports can match supply with demand efficiently. In addition, regional hub distribution centers may increase air cargo volume of each airport, which is helpful in the current extremely competitive airport industry. In this paper, we classified locational preferences into three primary categories including demand, service and risk and applied the analytic hierarchy process methodology to prioritize factors of locational preferences. Primary preference factors include secondary factors. Demand factor contains access to current and prospect markets. Service factor comprises airport and logistics perspectives. Service factor in terms of airport operations includes secondary factors such as airport service and connectivity. Service factor in terms of logistics operations contains infrastructure and logistics operations efficiency. Risk factor consists of country and business risks. We also evaluated competitiveness of Asian hub airports in terms of candidate location for regional hub distribution centers. The candidate hub airports include Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Narita and Incheon. Based on the analytic hierarchy process analysis, we derived strategic implications for hub airports to attract multinational companies' regional hub distribution centers.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.66-72
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• 2022

Background: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the psychological well-being (PWB) during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in workers of a multinational company. Methods: Employees (aged ≥18 years) were recruited from Latin American, North American, New Zealand, and European sites of a multinational company operative during all the pandemic period. The self-reported Psychological General Well-Being Index was used to assess the global PWB and the effects on six subdomains: anxiety, depressed mood, positive well-being, self-control, general health, and vitality. The influencing role of age, gender, geographical location, COVID-19 epidemiology, and restrictive measures adopted to control the pandemic was explored. Results: A total of 1335 workers completed the survey. The aggregate median PWB global score was in a positive range, with significantly better outcomes detected in the Mexican and Colombian Latin American sites compared with the other worldwide countries (p < 0.001). Among the European locations, a significantly higher PWB score was determined in Spain compared with the German and French sites (p < 0.05). Comparable geographical trends were demonstrated for all the PWB subdomains. Male workers had a significantly better PWB compared with females (p < 0.05), whereas a negative correlation emerged with aging (p = 0.01). COVID-19 epidemiology and pandemic control measures had no clear effects on PWB. Conclusion: Monitoring PWB and the impact of individual and pandemic-related variables may be helpful to clarify the mental health effects of pandemic, define targeted psychological-supporting measures, also in the workplace, to face such a complex situation in a more constructive way.