• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.167-175
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• 2008

Purpose: To examine the changes in nurse staffing in hospitals after implementing the policy of differentiating inpatient nursing fees by staffing grades. Method: The study sample included 43 tertiary hospitals, 185 general hospitals, and 282 non-general hospitals that were operating in both 1999 and 2008. Nurse staffing grade was categorized from Grade 1 (highest) to 6 (lowest) in 1999 or Grade 7 in 2008, based on the nurse-to-bed ratio. Results: Tertiary hospitals at Grade 3 and Grade 4 accounted for 49% and 35%, respectively, in 2008, whereas 63% were Grade 6 in 1999. General hospitals at Grade 6 decreased from 87% to 48%. In non-general hospitals, little change was found in the staffing distribution, in that 92% still remained in Grade 6 or 7 in 2008. Forty tertiary hospitals (93%) and 45% of general hospitals improved their staffing grades, while only 7% of non-general hospitals did. Greater likelihood of improvement in staffing grades was found in general hospitals located in metropolitan areas or having 250 or more beds. Conclusion: Elaboration of the financial incentive system is needed to increase the policy impact on staffing improvement.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.247-255
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• 2017

Background: South Korea has experienced problems with excessive pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2010, the South Korean government introduced an outpatient prescription incentive program to effectively manage pharmaceutical expenditures. Therefore, we examined the relationship between the outpatient prescription incentive program and pharmaceutical expenditures. Methods: We used data from the Korean National Health Insurance claims database, which included medical claims filed for 22,732 clinics from 2011-2014 to evaluate associated pharmaceutical expenditures. We performed multiple regression analysis and Poisson regression analysis using generalized estimating equation models to examine the associations between outpatient prescription incentives and the outcome variables. Results: The data used in this study consisted of 123,392 cases from 22,372 clinics (average 5.4 periods follow-up). Clinics that had received outpatient prescription incentives in the last period had better cost saving and Outpatient Prescribing Costliness Index (OPCI) (received: proportion of cost saving, ${\beta}=6.8179$; p-value < 0.0001; OPCI, ${\beta}=-0.0227$; p-value < 0.0001; reference = non-received). Moreover, these clinics had higher risk in the provision of outpatient prescription incentive (relative risk, 2.772; 95% confidence interval, 2.720 to 2.824). The associations were higher in clinics that had separate prescribing and dispensing programs, or had professional staff. Conclusion: The introduction of an outpatient prescription incentive program for clinics effectively managed problems with rapid increases of pharmaceutical expenditures in South Korea. However, the pharmaceutical expenditures still increased in spite of the positive impact of the outpatient prescription incentive program. Therefore, healthcare professionals and health policy makers should develop more effective alternatives (i.e., for clinics without separate prescribing and dispensing programs) based on our results.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.1-15
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• 2016

Improving the quality of school education is one of the key policy concerns in Korea. This paper examines whether providing schools with adequate autonomy and incentives can meet the policy goals by looking at a recent policy reform in Korea. In 2009, the Korean government granted autonomy to certain private high schools on the condition that no financial subsidies would be provided to the schools. Because the autonomous private high schools cannot receive a subsidy, they have a strong incentive to meet parental demands because schools failing to meet these demands will lose students and will have to close. Applying the value-added model to longitudinal data at the student level, I find that students entering these autonomous schools show faster growth in their academic achievement than their peers in traditional non-autonomous schools. These results suggest that providing schools with autonomy and incentives can be a useful policy tool for improving school education.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.81-111
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• 2007

The agency relationship between managers and shareholders has the potential to influence decision-making in the firm which in turn potentially impacts on firm characteristics such as value and leverage. Using an agency framework, we examine the relation between ownership structure and capital structure during post-IMF period. We used the balanced panel data for 378 korean listed companies during the 1999-2005. The panel data sets consist of time-series observation on each of 378 cross-sectional units. The results indicate a non-linear U-shaped relation between the level of managerial share ownership and leverage with the relation reaching a minimum at 58.48 per cent of management share ownership. As managerial share ownership increase from a low level, managers have incentive to reduce the debt level for decreasing the financial risk, resulting in a lower lever of debt. However, when corporate managers hold a significant proportion of a firm's shares, managers have incentive to increase the debt level for leverage effects, resulting in a higher lever of debt.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.57-104
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• 2022

The government has supported the innovation of private firms by intervening the market for various purposes, such as preventing market failure, alleviating information asymmetry, and allocating resources efficiently. Although the government's R&D budget increased rapidly in the 2000s, it is not clear whether the government intervention has made desirable impact on the market. To address this, the current study attempts to explore this issue by doing a systematic literature review on foreign and domestic papers in an integrated way. In total, 168 studies are analyzed using contents analysis approach and various lens, such as policy additionality, policy tools, firm size, unit of analysis, data and method, are adopted for analysis. Overlapping policy target, time lag between government intervention and policy effects, non-linearity of financial supports, interference between different polices, and out-dated R&D tax incentive system are reported as factors hampering the effect of the government intervention. Many policy prescriptions, such as program evaluation indices reflecting behavioral additionality, an introduction of policy mix and evidence-based policy using machine learning, are suggested to improve these hurdles.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.1009-1019
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• 2020

This study presents an exploratory investigation of SMEs in Vietnam to understand the impact of personal-level factors on middle managers' work motivation and the moderating role of work environment. A survey of 450 middle managers (MMs) in 150 Hanoi's SMEs was conducted. The findings of this research showed a significant positive impact of Achievement (ACHV), Recognition (RECOG), and Responsibility (RESP) on work motivation of MMs under the investigation. Furthermore, the result indicated that the work environment affects the relationship between personal-level factors and work motivation of participants. Consequently, both work environment improvement and strategies related to personal-level factors need to be taken into consideration. Especially, Recognition and transparency in Responsibility are appreciated in organizations with a low level of work environment satisfaction. However, there were no indications that Participation (PAR) and Communication (CMM) have a considerable impact on work motivation of respondents, being neither low level nor high level of work environment satisfaction. Based on the findings, recommendations are suggested for Vietnam's SMEs to improve work motivation of MMs, by (i) developing standards with emphasis on their achievement, (ii) paying attention to organizational culture focusing on the responsibility of this managerial level, and (iii) building an adequate incentive system, especially non-financial incentives.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.43-65
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• 2010

Facing a complex environment driven by a decade, many companies are adopting new strategic frameworks such as Customer Relationship Management system to achieve sustainable profitability as well as overcome serious competition for survival. In many business areas, CRM system advanced a great deal in a matter of continuous compensating the defect and overall integration. However, pharmaceutical companies in Korea were slow to accept them for usesince they still have a tendency of holding fast to traditional way of sales and marketing based on individual networks of sales representatives. In the circumstance, this article tried to empirically address current status of CRM system as well as the effects of the system on the performance of pharmaceutical companies by applying BSC method's four perspectives, from financial, customer, learning and growth and internal process. Survey by e-mail and post to employers and employees who were working in pharma firms were undergone for the purpose. Total 113 cases among collected 140 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. This study revealed that CRM system had a significant effect on improving financial and non-financial performance of pharmaceutical companies as expected. Proposed regression model fits well and among them, CRM marketing information system shed the light on substantial impact on companies' outcome given profitability, growth and investment. Useful analytical information by CRM marketing information system appears to enable pharmaceutical firms to set up effective marketing and sales strategies, these result in favorable financial performance by enhancing values for stakeholderseventually, not to mention short-term profit and/or mid-term potential to growth. CRM system depicted its influence on not only financial performance, but also non-financial fruit of pharmaceutical companies. Further analysis for each component showed that CRM marketing information system were able to demonstrate statistically significant effect on the performance like the result of financial outcome. CRM system is believed to provide the companies with efficient way of customers managing by valuable standardized business process prompt coping with specific customers' needs. It consequently induces customer satisfaction and retentionto improve performance for long period. That is, there is a virtuous circle for creating value as the cornerstone for sustainable growth. However, the research failed to put forward to evidence to support hypothesis regarding favorable influence of CRM sales representative's records assessment system and CRM customer analysis system on the management performance. The analysis is regarded to reflect the lack of understanding of sales people and respondents between actual work duties and far-sighted goal in strategic analysis framework. Ordinary salesmen seem to dedicate short-term goal for the purpose of meeting sales target, receiving incentive bonus in a manner-of-fact style, as such, they tend to avail themselves of personal network and sales and promotional expense rather than CRM system. The study finding proposed a link between CRM information system and performance. It empirically indicated that pharmaceutical companies had been implementing CRM system as an effective strategic business framework in order for more balanced achievements based on the grounded understanding of both CRM system and integrated performance. It suggests a positive impact of supportive CRM system on firm performance, especially for pharmaceutical industry through the initial empirical evidence. Also, it brings out unmet needs for more practical system design, improvement of employees' awareness, increase of system utilization in the field. On the basis of the insight from this exploratory study, confirmatory research by more appropriate measurement tool and increased sample size should be further examined.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.663-683
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• 2018

This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of R&D tax credit for SMEs. We surveyed to collect the information on firm's financial statements and R&D tax credit during 2014-2016, and implemented fixed effect model, random effect model and panel negative binomial model. The results show that the effect of R&D tax credit is 5.3 times larger in terms of R&D expenditure and 4.3 times bigger in terms of number of researchers than that of R&D subsidy. In addition, the effect of tax credit on non-metropolitan area companies is higher than that in the metropolitan area. Based on these results, we suggests three ways to improve the R&D tax incentive system for SMEs; To convert unused R&D tax credit of the start-ups to tax points, to exempt the minimum tax rate on R&D expenditure in equipment, and to unify the operation of various R&D tax credit institution.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.73-80
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• 2019

This study analyzed the relevance between investment horizons of foreign investors and Book-Tax Difference. To do this, we measured investment horizons of foreign investors as the investment-turnover of foreign investors. We use the sample of 3,025 firm-year Korea listed companies belonging to non-financial corporate sector during 2011-2016. The results of empirical analyses show that investment horizons of foreign investors has a negative relevance with Book-Tax Difference. This result indicates that the firm have a long-term foreign investors has a good Accounting Earning's Quality than the firm have a short-term foreign investors. This study is expected to provide useful information by suggesting the need for more incentive for the long-term foreign investors. And Our Study has a contribution that this study extended prior research on foreign investors by utilizing investment horizons of foreign investors.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.72-81
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• 2019

Objectives: The current study presents a new conceptual framework for physician-induced demand that comprises several influential components and their interactions. Methods: This framework was developed on the basis of the conceptual model proposed by Labelle. To identify the components that influenced induced demand and their interactions, a scoping review was conducted (from January 1980 to January 2017). Additionally, an expert panel was formed to formulate and expand the framework. Results: The developed framework comprises 2 main sets of components. First, the supply side includes 9 components: physicians' incentive for pecuniary profit or meeting their target income, physicians' current income, the physician/population ratio, service price (tariff), payment method, consultation time, type of employment of physicians, observable characteristics of the physician, and type and size of the hospital. Second, the demand side includes 3 components: patients' observable characteristics, patients' non-clinical characteristics, and insurance coverage. Conclusions: A conceptual framework that can clearly describe interactions between the components that influence induced demand is a critical step in providing a scientific basis for understanding physicians' behavior, particularly in the field of health economics.