• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.5-17
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to identify the usefulness of Weblog genre analysis in knowledge creation within an organization where communications are occurred frequently among the employees with information and communication technologies (ICTs). Knowledge creation is essential to achieve competitive advantage in today's knowledge-oriented working environments. There has been huge investment on knowledge management systems to achieve such advantages. It is, however, widely recognized that distributed knowledge management systems often fail due to the different social contexts across the sub-organizations where the local information systems are deployed. It is important to coordinate such social gaps across the sub-organizations to achieve better advantages. Given that Weblogs users often feel a shared social norm. Weblogs playa positive role of narrowing the social gaps. This paper argues that the genre analysis of Web logs could provide important clues to narrow the social gaps existed across the sub-organizations within an organization. Hence, such taxonomical practice may be a solution for the high rate of failure in knowledge management system implementations in an organization. This paper uses the theory of organizational knowledge creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi. 1995) and social construction of technology (SCOT) approach (Bijker, 1995) to compare the socialized with the non-socialized integration of distributed information systems. The findings of this research provide a useful framework for better implementing knowledge management practices especially in distributed working environments.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.233-248
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• 2023

The increasing integration of intelligent information technologies within organizational systems has amplified the risk to personal information security. This escalation, in turn, has fueled growing apprehension about an organization's capabilities in safeguarding user data. While Internet users adopt a multifaceted approach in assessing a company's information security, existing research on the multiple dimensions of information security is decidedly sparse. Moreover, there is a conspicuous gap in investigations exploring whether users' evaluations of organizational information security differ across industry types. With an aim to bridge these gaps, our study strives to identify which information security attributes users perceive as most critical and to delve deeper into potential variations in these attributes across different industry sectors. To this end, we conducted a structured survey involving 498 users and utilized the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the relative significance of various information security attributes. Our results indicate that users place the greatest importance on the technological dimension of information security, followed closely by transparency. In the technological arena, banks and domestic portal providers earned high ratings, while for transparency, banks and governmental agencies stood out. Contrarily, social media providers received the lowest evaluations in both domains. By introducing a multidimensional model of information security attributes and highlighting the relative importance of each in the realm of information security research, this study provides a significant theoretical contribution. Moreover, the practical implications are noteworthy: our findings serve as a foundational resource for Internet service companies to discern the security attributes that demand their attention, thereby facilitating an enhancement of their information security measures.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.59-80
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• 2020

Excellent FinTech firms create value by finding customer needs or addressing customer problems to provide customers with differentiated solutions through information technologies and organizational innovation capability. Accordingly, the survival and growth of FinTech firms rely on the innovation performance for solving customer problems. This study assumes that IT relatedness and entrepreneurial culture play a mediating role in the relationship between service orientation and innovation performance. To examine it, designed and demonstrated is a structural model from the perspective of dynamic organizational capability. The results show that IT relatedness and entrepreneurial culture play a mediating role between service orientation and innovation performance. Although IT relatedness and entrepreneurial culture were partial mediators in each divided model, the integration model showed there was no direct effect of service orientation on innovation performance. The practical implication is that FinTech companies need to understand customer problems accurately, set up appropriate service goals and align all strategies to achieve them. With these strategic alignments, higher innovation performance can be achieved by enabling IT resources and capabilities to be actively utilized in all functions of the organization and institutionalizing the entrepreneurial culture.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Sensory Integration
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.11-21
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• 2018

Objective : The purpose of this study is to investigate correlation of sensory processing patterns, learning styles and learning strategies for university students. Methods : Participants of this study are 115 students from K university in Busan, South Korea. Measurements are Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) for sensory processing patterns, the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) for learning styles, and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) for learning strategies. The data collected was analyzed by SPSS/WIN 20.0 for chisuare test and Pearson corelation coefficient. Results : For sensory processing patterns and learning styles, there were correlation between low registration type and surface type of learning (p=0.03), and between sensory seeking type and deep type of learning (p=0.02). For sensory processing patterns and learning strategies, sensory seeking type was correlated with organized learning strategy (p=0.00), and sensory sensitivity type was correlated with organizational learning strategy (p=0.03) and meta-cognitive learning strategy (p=0.00). Conclusion : This study found that there is correlation between sensory processing patterns, learning styles and learning strategies with implying learning styles and learning strategies can be different depends on sensory procession pattern. The results of this study can be used as a basic data to select learning type and learning strategy appropriate for an individual based on his or her sensory processing patterns.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.107-115
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• 2014

In recent years, large companies and public institutions in the Smartphone business purposes has been used a lot. Personal Smartphone are worried about security of personal information only. But if you are a corporate or business purposes requires a more cautious approach. It can destroy an organization's network to hack Smartphones have very serious damage. For this purpose, the existing solution, and try to solve security issues with MDM or MAM. However, Smartphone users discomfort and there is a limit of organizational control. In this paper, we can propose with these issues more broadly would like to suggest. Secure mobile traffic management system enables companies or agencies the ease for users to use a Smartphone. And, for organizations that provide smart phones are more powerful and can provide a means of control. In addition, wired/wireless integration and security measures that can provide new services to offer.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-35
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• 2010

This study analyzes the necessity of integrated innovation policy for post catch-up innovation. The integrated innovation policy solidifies its position as an infrastructure innovation policy which forms the foundation of all kinds of policies. The Korean government is currently under the pressure of planning technologies and policies that do not allow any easy imitation or copy of other advanced countries, which in turn reveals various limits of the existing policy framework. Integrated innovation policy for post catch-up innovation involves a continual process demanding changes in political, organizational and procedural activities. To ensure long-term and cross-sectoral innovation policy, overall changes and improvements in policy and its implementation are needed in terms of political commitments, governance systems, policy instruments and monitoring, and evaluation systems.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.22-48
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• 2004

Information systems that are not used cannot be useful. In order to increase user acceptance, it is necessary to understand why people accept or reject information systems. Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) is one of the most influential research models for studying determinants how users accept information systems. Recently, Knowledge Management Systems(KMS) have become important components of corporate systems as the foundation of industrialized economics has shifted from natural resources to knowledge assets. This paper applies TAM to investigate users' acceptance of KMS in public administration institutions. It sampled 182 users who had experience in using KMS. Many empirical researches have suggested that TAM can be integrated with other organizational theories to improve its predictive and explanatory ower. We extended the basic TAM by the integration of appraisal and reward satisfaction theory. There are many external variables that influence the perception and the belief of system users. We introduced two external variables(job characteristics, IT self-efficacy) and one additional perception variable, perceived appraisal and reward(PAR) in the basic TAM model. The LISREL model analysis is used for finding out the causality among variables and testing the model fitness. As result, The IT self-efficacy influences to the perceived ease of use(PEOU) and the PAR, and the PEOU influences directly to the perceived usefulness(PU), the PAR, and the attitude toward KMS. The KMS participation intention(PI) was influenced by the PAR and the attitude directly,andbythePEOUindirectly. Finally, this paper suggests some guidelines for the adoption of KMS in public sectors on the basis of the study results.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.147-161
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• 2012

Remarriage has been prevalent in Korea since the mid-1990s. Remarried families have reported that they face many challenges and difficulties. Life for those who remarry can worsen when the children from a previous marriage live together with new family members. It is interesting that some remarried families adjust well while others do not. This study focuses on developing a practice model for strengthening the resilience of remarried families with children based on a literature review. To understand and support remarried families, the resilience perspective was chosen, focusing on a strengths perspective with developmental, ecological, and preventative perspectives. In terms of resilience, the proposed practice model was developed on the basis of three concepts: belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication. The model can be used to help remarried families accomplish adequate integration by growing as a new family and can prevent another divorce. Moreover, it can assist practitioners and policy-makers develop programs and policies with a strengths perspective rather than a deficit or problem-oriented perspective. Based on the model, various programs need to be developed to strengthen the resilience of remarried families. The development of supportive programs is suggested. These can include remarriage preparation programs, remarriage life education programs, interactive web-based programs, and family camps. For a long time, remarried families have been labeled as abnormal and atypical owing to the normal family myth. This negative perception of remarried families must be altered so that they are accepted with a positive outlook in a society. For further studies, the development of diverse supportive adaptation programs for various types of remarried families and active research on them are recommended. The practice model can assist with the adaptation and growth of remarried families by strengthening their resilience.