• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.11
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• pp.81-97
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• 1972

Experiments and investigations were done basically and practically for the purpose of labor saving in paddy rice cultivation especially on Homizil i.e. hoeing and herbicide, 1969. 8 concrete tanks were established on the open base of Keon Kuk University for comparison of percolation, dissolved oxygen and yield test of rice in the paddy plot of tank. The dimension of the bottom of each tank is square meter. Each of the 4 of the 8 tanks is 21cm in height and each of the remaining 4 tanks is 36cm. Each tank has a system that comprises 2 sets of tubes, each of which has 20 holes of 5mm in diameter scattered every side and is covered with nylon cloth taking water in the tank. One set consists of 4 P.V.C tubes. The first set is situated 8cm below the top of the tank and the second set is located at bottom layer inside the tank. The 4 tubes of each set are combined together and led to the glass tube which protects from inside to outside. And this inside-outside glass tube is connected to the small rubber tube. Also a glass tube is set 4cm below the top of the tank. Paddy loam was filled on sand in each of the tanks in the soil depth of either 15cm or 30cm. The depth of sand was 5cm in the soil depth of 15cm and 10cm in the soil depth of 30cm. (Fig. 1, 2 and 3). The paddy rice was grown in the tank. The percolation of water, the dissolved oxygen and the yield of rice were observed in the tank. And the dissolved oxygen was detected by Winkler method. A sandy paddy field of heavy percolation was selected at the field of the National Agricultural Material Inspection Center in Seoul. It was divided into 9 plots. These plots were given 3 treatments: (A) not hoeing, (B) hoeing one time and (C) hoeing two times. These treatments were replicated 3 times along the latin square design. The paddy rice was grown and sprayed with Stam F-34 in the all plots for the purpose of killing weeds before hoeing. The two types of paddy of field i.e. one for normal percolation and the other for ill drainage were selected at Iri Crop Experiment Station, Jeonla-Bukdo. Each field was divided into 24 plots for 8 treatments. They are: (A) not hoeing; (B) hoeing one time; (C) hoeing two times; (D) not hoeing but treating with herbicide, Pamcon; (E) hoeing one time and weeding two times also treating with herbicide, Pamcon; (F) hoeing two times and weeding one time a], o treating with herbicide, Pamcon; (G) hoeing two times and weeding two times also treating with herbicide, Pamcon, ; (H) usual manner. The labor hours and expenses needed for weeding in the paddy by hoeing were investigated in a farmer at Suwon and the price of herbicide and the yield of rice were taken out at Iri, Jeonla-Bukdo. The results obtained from the above experiments and investigations are as follows: 1. The relationship between percolation and dissolved oxygen shows that a very small amount of oxygen is detected in the soil water under 2cm below surface of earth in the paddy even when percolation is over 4.0cm per 24 hours (Tab. 1). 2. The relationship between percolation and yield of rice shows that the yield of rice increases in the percolation of 0cm and 1.5cm per 24 hours and decreases in the percolation of 2.5cm and 3.4cm in the plot of the 15cm ploughing depth and increases in the percolation of 1.4cm and 3.0cm and decreases in the percolation of 0cm and 4.0cm in the plot of 30cm ploughing depth (Tab. 1 and Fig. 5). 3. The yield of paddy weeded with Stam F-34 in the sandy field of heavy percolation in Seoul was 3.02 tons in the plot of not hoeing, 2.99 tons in hoeing one time and 3.05 tons in hoeing two times per hectare (Tab. 5). 4.1). 4. 1) The yield of rice per 10 ares in the field of normal percolation at Iri was 338kg in not hoeing, 379kg in hoeing one time, 383kg in hoeing two times, 413kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and not hoeing, 433kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing one time and weeding two times, 399kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing two times and weeding one time, 420kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing two times and weeding two times and 418kg in usual manner (Tab. 6-1). 2) The yield of rice per 10 ares in the field of ill drainage at Iri was 323kg in not hoeing, 363kg in hoeing one time, 342kg in hoeing two times, 388kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and not hoeing, 425kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing one time and weeding two times, 427kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing two times and weeding one time, 449kg in spraying herbicide, Pamcon, and hoeing two times and weeding two times and 412kg in usual manner (Tab. 6-2). 5. 1) The labor hours for weeding by hoeing was 37.1 hours but 53.5 hours if hours for meal, smoking and so on are included, and the expenses including labor cost needed for weeding by hoeing in the paddy rice was 2, 346 Won per 10 ares at Suwon (Tab. 7). 2) The labor hours for weeding by spraying herbicide with hand sprayer in the paddy rice was about 5 hours per 10 ares at Suwon and the expenses for weeding by spraying herbicide in the paddy rice was 750 Won but 1130 Won if the loss by decrement of rice in the paddy field of ill drainage per 10 ares is calculated in estimation at Iri (Tab. 8). From these observations and investigations it is known that using of some kinds of herbicides Saves labor and expenses of weeding, almost without giving damages to the rice itself, in the field of normal or heavy percolation comparing usual manner of hoeing.