• (The) Korean Journal of Educational Psychology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.767-794
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• 2017

Creativity is a social byproduct formed in a specific sociocultural context. Although creativity differs according to the level of culture ranging from supranational, national, professional to organizational levels, research studies documented in literature have mainly dealt with creativity in the (super)national level. For example, differences in personal creativity in the East and the West led by collectivism and individualism, respectively have been dominating in the studies about cultural differences in creativity. Consequently, the domain specificity of creativity and the effects of a more micro level of culture, such as domains, occupations, and organizations, on creative outcomes have been dismissed. Understanding the characteristics of domains, and sociocultural and environmental factors leading to creative products is worth investigating considering that the conception of creativity today highly relies on the nature of domains valued in a certain sociocultural environment. This study reviewed a wide range of literature regarding creativity and sociocultural and environmental factors in order to explore how culture and/or cultural factors inspired creative thinking and generating ideas for creative performance and products. Cultural factors were identified either as a value or a practice (custom) and examined on the supernational, national, professional, and organizational levels. For supernational and national cultures, issues on individualism, collectivism, artistic social atmosphere, and multi-cultural experiences were discussed, while the professional and organizational cultures delved topics on the domain of architecture in which both originality and functionality are greatly valued for creativity. The authors concluded that the impact of culture on creative thinking and idea generation varied according to the levels of culture although issues on multifactorial aspects of culture, differences between personal and collective creativity, and the identification of culture either as a value or a practice (custom) should be discussed further for future studies.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.5-33
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• 2018

A self-sufficiency service has worked as a typical workfare policy combined with public assistance in Korea since 2000. Despite of its long history, three core pillars in administrating the self-sufficiency service, policy, research, and practice, have respectively understood the meaning of self-sufficiency in terms of their own interests. As a result, the self-sufficiency service has recently faced with its own identity issues by showing failures to its environmental changes. The current situation makes it necessary to reconceptualize the definition of self-sufficiency by exploring its in-depth understanding perceived by service providers. Specifically, we analyzed practical reflections on 35 service providers' experiences which were collected via focus group interviews for two hours. The study findings presented that service providers had two antithetical approaches towards self-sufficiency. While a dominant approach to self-sufficiency has been concentrated on improving clients' economic outcomes such as employment, job retention, the escape from welfare trap, and increasing earnings and assets, the other approach has been extended to empower clients and achieve their well-being and quality of life. Yet, these contrary perspectives have led to suffer from their role confusions and identity crisis between the work-ready process and the employment-oriented outcomes. Specifically, they described self-sufficiency in terms of psychological, social, and integrated aspects. The psychological aspect included a process of developing inner strengths, intensifying job motivation, and coping with barriers of employment. The social aspect meant a path toward social integration through recovering human relationships. The integrated aspect covered more comprehensive support for their recovery of daily life and autonomy to make a decision for their own life. In conclusion, the study findings suggest that self-sufficiency should be more extensively considered as a stepwise process towards work-ready preparations beyond ultimate economic outcomes. Such an extended concept of self-sufficiency could contribute to restructuring the whole practice of self-sufficiency including organizational and program changes in the fields.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.139-166
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• 2010

The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.41-68
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• 2006

Today, Manufacturing companies execute the logistics outsourcing that commits the non-core logistic function to the specialized logistics corporation, which makes the manufacturing company focus on its core competence, product development and marketing, reduces logistics cost and improves customer service level. Recently, Logistics outsourcing is developed into cooperative sourcing based on the partnership. Case study on the logistics outsourcing will provide the good guideline for planning of the outsourcing strategy. The objective of this research is making a sense about 4PL through the case of UPS-Samsung Electro-Mechanics and catching major issue to provide the guideline for the cooperation outsourcing strategy. We investigated historical backgrounds of the logistics outsourcing between UPS and Samsung Electro-Mechanics. We also investigated problems occurred in outsourcing process at the five dimensions-organizational problem, CEO's short-term views, cultural gap between two companies, integration of IT system, and different understanding about outcomes. We expect to give many implications to manufacturing companies which want to cooperate with specialized logistics corporation.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.218-231
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• 2001

Background : The purpose of this study was to investigate the understanding and the attitude of Korean hospital CEOs toward the healthcare quality improvement. Methods : A mailed questionnaire survey to the CEOs of hospitals with 400 beds or more was conducted between September 15 and October 30, 2000. Of the 108 hospitals eligible for the study, 58 participated, yielding a response rate of 54 percent. Result : The hospital CEOs have expressed that their hospital management was arduous job, and they had been pressured by increasing competitions among healthcare providers. They indicated that the low fees of health insurance made their hospital management difficult. The results also indicated that there was general consensus that the improvement of service quality was important in encouraging their organizations, but the investment of manpower and equipment ranked higher than the improvement of service quality. The majority of the CEOs have good understanding about quality improvement activities. However the facts that in general QI must be focused at the process of services and customer satisfaction, meanwhile quality improvement activities are helpful for the organizational productivity embarrassed them. The hospital CEOs responded that there were successful changes in terms of quality of care, patient satisfaction, and process efficiency after QI activities, but no increase in patient number and profit. Lack of understanding to QI activities and limited budget seem to attribute unsatisfactory outcomes. Conclusion : The majority of Korean hospital CEOs have a good understanding and attitude about QI activities. As mentioned in the result, despite of several limitations, several facts regarding the CEOs of hospital in Korean can be elucidated. (1) The general cognition of the QI project is relatively high, and it is accepted with positive concern, (2) the priority of the QI project, however, is not set higher than other projects and (3) the specific concepts of the actual QI project such as customer (patient)-focused work driving, the recognition of the work accomplishment, and the importance of rewards have not sufficiently understood.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.177-197
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• 2016

Information technology (IT) outsourcing is considered an effective strategy to manage and maintain organizational technologies in a rapidly changing business environment. In particular, to meet diverse market needs, many organizations that outsource their IT functions practice a multi-vendor approach as their main outsourcing strategy. Although a few studies have been conducted about the multi-vendor approach, most previous works primarily emphasized conceptual arguments and normative prescriptions. In addition, scant attention has been directed toward the relational structure between the client and multiple vendors in the multi-vendor approach and its implications for outsourcing success. This study proposes a model from the transaction cost perspective by conceptualizing two dominant relational structures of the multi-vendor approach, namely, single-vendor dominant model and the multi-vendor dominant model, and hypothesizing their relationships with two outsourcing outcomes, project success and user satisfaction. The proposed model is examined using the data collected from 246 companies that have implemented multi-vendor outsourcing. As expected, results indicate that the single-vendor dominant model has a more significant impact on project success, whereas the multi-vendor dominant model has a more significant impact on user satisfaction. The study concludes with the theoretical implications and directions for future research.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.73-94
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• 2008

When individuals collaborated in virtual settings, communication is medicated through a variety of communication technologies, and is associated not only with communication effectiveness but also with socio-emotional interactions among group members. In this regards, scholars have examined how technology-mediated communication systems can be designed and used to facilitated communication interaction. However, the empirical results of the previous studies have revealed inconsistencies in the effects of communication media on users' behavioral or attitudinal responses, and on their viable effectiveness in organizations. Some studies claim that computer-mediated communication(CMC) is task-oriented but not suitable for emotional expression since it hinders close interpersonal interaction. On the other hand, some studies argue that individuals are able to develop interpersonal relationships more effectively in a CMC environment than in an FtF-environment. Due to the different perspectives, a theoretical gap exists, and it leads to the inconsistent research findings. The purpose of this paper is to combine the two different perspectives into single unified model, thereby providing a more realistic and comprehensive understanding about virtual collaboration. The present study here sought to answers the following questions with organizational communication perspective: What are the major components of virtual collaboration? What factors affect the performance of virtual collaboration? And what kind of managerial efforts should organization make in order to facilitate CMC media effectiveness in virtual collaboration? Although there is a certain belief that new media, namely technology-mediated communication support would create new opportunities, the problem of "how" or "why" has been an important question that is still not fully addressed. In this regards, we collectively reexamined previous literatures with major issues which are still controversial and integrated various theoretical activity within computer-mediated communication domain: task-oriented approach, socio-emotional approach, and evolutionary psychological approach. Our first contribution is to develop a framework for virtual collaboration by combining two different perspectives into a single unified model, providing a more realistic and comprehensive understanding. The second main contribution is the joint modeling of both social presence and cognitive effort, and the effects on two distinct but important communication outcomes(i.e., take performance and relational development). We tested the research hypotheses which were developed based on the various CMC theories using data gathered through a self-administered mail survey of 127 individuals of 69 virtual workgroups. The proposed model was supported, providing preliminary evidence that the tension between two opposite view should be integrated. The results show that the individual's psychological processes(social presence and cognitive effort) in a virtual environment significantly mediated the effect of CMC inputs (media richness, user adaptation, and shared contest) on the CMC outputs (task performance and relational development). Furthermore, this study shows that the lack of perceived media richness of CMC media can be complemented by user adaptation and shared context. Based on the results, we discuss how communication system should be designed and implemented so as to promote virtual interaction as well as how a virtual workgroup should be composed to complement the lack of media richness. A virtual collaboration using CMC media may create new value by overcoming the logistical constraints. On the other hand, it may also generate various managerial risks such as communicational depersonalization, process dissatisfaction, and low cohesion. Therefore, this study suggests that organization managers should carefully choose the CMC mediums and monitor individual member's cognitive and affective psychological processes during virtual collaboration to reduce potential risks in virtual collaboration.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.53-79
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• 2013

Social enterprises can be identified roughly as social purpose-oriented business ventures. They often fill the gaps left by governmental and commercial ventures in providing for certain vulnerable sectors of society. Though social enterprises often adopt market mechanisms in their organizational structures, their emphasis on particular social outcomes means that they intentionally pursue double/triple-bottom lines, thus distinguishing them from many traditional for-profit businesses. Among the Korean laborers, women have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis. As the movements have substantially been taken to strengthen women's economic activities in the recent years, many policies are formulated with these trends, connecting women's employment with social enterprises. This study focused on analyzing social enterprises to be friendly and to provide decent work to women. Data were collected from 491 social enterprises and 830 workers. The main results are as follows. First, the women's employment in social enterprises has accounted for a relatively high rate and the women's wage also is similar to men's one. Second, as for work conditions and types, most women have preferred irregular and non-managerial work. Thus, social enterprises have showed a positive response for the women's job opportunities, while social enterprises have had a negative one for enhancing the women's status at the labor market. In conclusion, social enterprises should institutionalize how to provide more stable working condition to women and to improve their's capacity.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.163-182
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• 2009

The BSC(Balanced Scorecard), a strategic performance evaluation system, has drawn attention as an innovative tool for improving an organization's performance. Recently, the Korean government has recognized the advantages of the BSC and encouraged public enterprises to implement the BSC. However, it has been pointed out that many public enterprises have faced difficulties in constructing and operating the BSC due to lack of clear understanding, a complex environment of performance evaluation, and inherent features of organizational culture. Therefore, this study analyzed a project case of a public enterprise, Korea Southern Power (KSP), which has ever been assessed as an excellent organization in implementing BSC and managing performance. This paper provides procedures, activities, resources (manpower and time), and decision-making issues and criteria required for implementing BSC, along with real project outcomes of the company. Such project details are expected to be used as helpful guidelines for public or non-profit organizations's BSC implementation. Furthermore, the KSP's efforts to cope with its problems and implications derived from the efforts are also expected to help other organizations construct and operate the BSC effectively.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.49-81
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• 2007

Research in the IS (Information Systems) outsourcing has focused on the importance of legal contracts and partnerships between vendors and clients. Without detailed legal contracts, there is no guarantee that an outsourcing vendor would not indulge in self-serving behavior. In addition, partnerships can supplement legal contracts in managing the relationship between clients and vendors legal contracts by itself cannot deal with all the complexity and ambiguity involved with IS outsourcing relationships. In this paper, we introduce a psychological contract (between client and vendor) as an important variable for IS outsourcing success. A psychological contract refers to individual's mental beliefs about his or her mutual obligations in a contractual relationship (Rousseau, 1995). A psychological contract emerges when one party believes that a promise of future returns has been made, a contribution has been given, and thus, an obligation has been created to provide future benefits (Rousseau, 1989). An employmentpsychological contract, which is a widespread concept in psychology, refers to employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship, i.e. mutual obligations, values, expectations and aspirations that operate over and above the formal contract of employment (Smithson and Lewis, 2003). Similar to the psychological contract between an employer and employee, IS outsourcing involves a contract and a set of mutual obligations between client and vendor (Ho et al., 2003). Given the lack of prior research on psychological contracts in the IS outsourcing context, we extend such studies and give insights through investigating the role of psychological contracts between client and vendor. Psychological contract theory offers highly relevant and sound theoretical lens for studying IS outsourcing management because of its six distinctive principles: (1) it focuses on mutual (rather than one-sided) obligations between contractual parties, (2) it's more comprehensive than the concept of legal contract, (3) it's an individual-level construct, (4) it changes over time, (5) it affects organizational behaviors, and (6) it's susceptible to organizational factors (Koh et al., 2004; Rousseau, 1996; Coyle-Shapiro, 2000). The aim of this paper is to put the concept, psychological contract commitment (PCC), under the spotlight, by finding out its mediating effects between legal contracts/partnerships and IS outsourcing success. Our interest is in the psychological contract commitment (PCC) or commitment to psychological contracts, which is the extent to which a partner consistently and deeply concerns with what the counter-party believes as obligations during the IS project. The basic premise for the hypothesized relationship between PCC and success is that for outsourcing success, client and vendor should continually commit to mutual obligations in which both parties believe, rather than to only explicit obligations. The psychological contract commitment playsa pivotal role in evaluating a counter-party because it reflects what one party really expects from the other. If one party consistently shows high commitment to psychological contracts, the other party would evaluate it positively. This will increase positive reciprocation efforts of the other party, thus leading to successful outsourcing outcomes (McNeeley and Meglino, 1994). We have used matched sample data for this research. We have collected three responses from each set of a client and a vendor firm: a project manager of the client firm, a project member from the vendor firm with whom the project manager cooperated, and an end-user of the client company who actually used the outsourced information systems. Special caution was given to the data collection process to avoid any bias in responses. We first sent three types of questionnaires (A, Band C) to each project manager of the client firm, asking him/her to answer the first type of questionnaires (A).