• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2010

Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.45-65
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• 2008

The rapid growth of the Internet has increased the amount of transmission of personally identifiable information. At the same time, with new Internet related technologies, organizations are trying to collect and access more personal information than before, which in turn makes individuals concern more about their information privacy. For their successful businesses, organizations have tried to alleviate these concerns in two ways: (1) by offering privacy policies that promise certain level of privacy protection; (2) by offering benefits such as financial gains or convenience. In this paper, we interpret these actions in the context of the information processing theory of motivation. This paper follows Hann et al.(2007)'s methods to analyze Internet users privacy concerns in Korea and tries to compare the findings. Our research objectives are as follows: First, we analyze privacy concern mitigation strategies in the framework of the expectancy theory of motivation. Subsequently, we show how the expectancy theory based framework is linked o the conjoint analysis. We empirically validate the predictions that the means to mitigate privacy concerns are associated with positive valences resulting in an increase in motivational score. In order to accommodate real-life contexts, we investigate these means in trade-off situation, where an organization may only be able to offer partially complete privacy protection and/or promotions and/or convenience, While privacy protection (secondary use, improper access) are associated with positive valences, we also find that financial gains can significantly increase the individuals' motivational score of a website in Korea. One important implication of this empirical analysis is that organizations may possess means to actively manage the privacy concerns of Internet users. Our findings show that privacy policies are valued by users in Korea just as in the US or Singapore. Hence, organizations can capitalize on this, by stating their privacy policy more prominently. Also organizations would better think of strategies or means that may increase online users' willingness to provide personal information. Since financial incentives also significantly increase the individuals' motivational score of website participation, we can quantify the value of website privacy protection in terms of monetary gains. We find that Korean Internet users value the total privacy protection (protection against errors, improper access, and secondary use of personal information) as worthy as KW 25,550, which is about US 28. Having done this conjoint analysis, we next adopt cluster analysis methodology. We identify two distinct segments of Korea's internet users-privacy guardians and information sellers, and convenience seekers. The immediate implication of our study is that firms with online presence must differentiate their services to serve these distinct segments to best meet the needs of segments with differing trade-offs between money and privacy concerns. Information sellers are distinguished from privacy guardians by prior experience of information provision, To the extent that businesses cannot observe an individual's prior experience, they must use indirect methods to induce segmentation by self-selection as suggested in classic economics literature of price discrimination, Businesses could use monetary rewards to attract information sellers to provide personal information. One step forward from the societal trends that emphasize the need of legal protection of information privacy, our study wants to encourage organizations and related authorities to have the viewpoints to consider both importance of privacy protection and the necessity of information trade for the growth of e-commerce.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.72-91
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to investigate the recognition of health information managers, and to analyze the level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment of medical record technicians. The data for this study were collected through a self-administered survey with a structured questionnaire to 172 subjects from medical record technicians working in hospitals in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province as well as the faculty of medical schools across South Korea. In this analysis frequency, t-test, ANOVA, factor analysis and structural equation model were used. The main findings of this study are as follows: 1. As for recognition of the seven dimensions in the role of health information managers, the role as clinical data specialist received the most positive feedback, followed by document & repository managers, patient information coordinators, health information managers, data quality managers, security officers and research & decision support analyst. 2. The level of job satisfaction among medical information handlers and managers averaged 3.14. In terms of the factors in the work environment concerned with job satisfaction, being able to work independently and as team players reached the top among 6 factors with the average of 3.39, followed by professional position, salary & rewards, expectations for job performance and administration. 3. The average rate of organizational commitment stood at 3.09. Respondents tend to be focused on present tasks rather than future-oriented tasks. 4. The result of the analysis based on the relationship between recognition as health information managers, job satisfaction and organizational commitment found that all analysis are statistically meaningful. The more the respondents were aware of their roles as health information managers, the more they tended to be committed to their work and satisfied with their work. The more the respondents were committed to their work, the more satisfaction was seen. The effects of recognition as health information managers on organizational commitment measured 0.27 and for job satisfaction it was 0.17. The effects of organizational commitment on job satisfaction stood at 0.71. The feasibility of the model meets the standard at Chi-square value of 66.755 and the P value of 0.057. The Normed Fit Index (NFI) of 0.930 was in compliance with the standard for model feasibility and the squared multiple correlation coefficient of this model was 8% in organizational commitment and 60% in job satisfaction.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.59-79
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• 2010

According to resource based view, knowledge is regarded as a salient factor to improve an organization's efficiency in the current fast-changing business environment. Knowledge management (KM) may encourage employees to share and exchange knowledge in the organization in order to improve and sustain a competitive advantage over other companies. The proposed research model examines the impacts of KM performances' antecedents on an employee's absorptive capacity. This study identifies KM performances as employee's satisfaction about KM and shared knowledge quality. This study considers KM performances as the major determinants that enhance his/her absorptive capacity. This study also investigates the key antecedents of KM performances. The research model posits extrinsic reward, intrinsic reward, and relational reward as the KM performances' antecedents. Furthermore, this study examines the difference of the antecedents' effects in terms of firm's type. The proposed research model was tested by using survey data collected from 1,103 employees of 2 public enterprises and 907 employees of 5 private enterprises. The findings of this study showed that employee's satisfaction about KM and shared knowledge quality play a significant role in enhancing employee' absorptive capacity. Extrinsic reward only significantly influences employee's satisfaction about KM, whereas both intrinsic and relational rewards serve as the salient antecedents of improving both KM performances. The results also shed light on the moderating role of firm's type. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.39-47
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• 2012

As a scheme to efficiently reduce the effects of multipath fading in next generation wireless communication systems, cooperative communication systems have recently come into the spotlight. Since these cooperative communication systems use cooperative relays with diverse fading coefficients to transmit information, having all relays participate in cooperative communication may result in unnecessary waste of resources, and thus relay selection schemes are required to efficiently use wireless resources. In this paper, we propose an efficient relay selection scheme through self-learning in cooperative wireless networks using Q-learning algorithm. In this scheme, we define states, actions and two rewards to achieve good SER (Symbol Error Rate) performance, while selecting a small number of cooperative relays. When these parameters are well-defined, we can obtain good performance. For demonstrating the superiority of the proposed Q-learning, We compared the proposed scheme with Q-learning and a relay selection scheme with a mathematical analysis. The simulation results show that, compared to a scheme that obtains optimum relays through a mathematical analysis, the proposed scheme uses resources efficiently by using smaller numbers of relays with comparable SER performance. According to these simulation results, the proposed scheme can be considered as a good attempt for future wireless communication.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.167-181
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• 2012

This study analyzed consumer's harsh complaining behaviors and firm's reactions toward consumers' harsh complaining behavior, and investigated the differences in the firms' reactions according to the characteristics of counselors and customer service centers. In addition, this study attempted to find a strategy and provide guidance regarding consumer's harsh complaining behaviors. The results of this study are discussed below. First, consumer's harsh complaining attitudes were expressed by crude language, violent language, threats, personal attacks, and claims of a high-ranking social position. Consumer's directive, complaining behaviors were repeated on the telephone, and threats of prosecution or disclosure to the public, exposure of habitual product returns, and requests for interviews with superiorsat the representative firm were made. Second, a firm typologies according to its reaction style toward a consumer's harsh complaining behaviors were as follows: Group 1, having a neutral attitude toward consumers and preparation thoroughly regarding their demands; Group 2, having a negative attitude toward consumers and some degree of preparation toward consumers' demands; and finally, Group 3, having a positive attitude toward consumers but offering insufficient reparation regarding consumers' demands. Third, female counselors, counselors having a certified counselor's license, and those much experience working in labor work were more likely to be in Group 3. Male counselors, part-time counselors, and those having experience of many years were more likely to be in Group 2. Group 1 were more likely to have large number of workers at customer service centers, male counselors, and to have large numbers of educational training programs related to the reactions of consumers in the form of dissatisfaction, complaints, how to offer compensation for injuries to consumers, and issues related to PL(product liability). In addition, Group 1 also had more firm level welfare policies related to hight stress levels of consumer counselors and extra types of support regarding harsh consumers. However, Group 2 members were more likely to provide excessive compensation and rewards to harsh consumers. Finally, to react to consumer's harsh complaint efficiently, it was suggested that firms should not treat consumers as harsh consumers, should react to consumers' complaints sincerely, and should take precautionary management efforts as regards consumer dissatisfaction based on better quality control of products. In addition, it was deemed necessary to formulate a management strategy to train competent consumer counselors with a high quality of counselor skill, having standardized and consistent reaction guidance toward consumer complaints and thorough knowledge of compensation rules for consumer injuries and subsequent guidance.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.225-239
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• 2014

An effect of reward program related to promotional activity has the limitation of being concentrated on a short-term performance or of inducing temporary re-purchase. Accordingly, this study verified the influence of reward method upon consumers' response recovery centering on interactive effects of reward timing and reward intensity, in order to expand a research of dissatisfaction situation. As for the objective of this study, first, the aim is to verify the difference in the influence of economic, non-economic, and combined rewards, which are reward methods of dissatisfaction situation, upon consumers' cognitive response recovery and emotional response recovery. Second, the aim is to confirm a moderating role of reward timing and reward intensity in the effect of consumers' response recovery according to reward methods. To design a research, the perfect factor design between subjects in 3X2X2 was used. As a result of major research, first, there was a difference in the influence upon consumers' response recovery depending on reward methods. Second, the influence of reward method upon consumers' response recovery had a difference depending on reward timing. Third, the influence of reward method upon consumers' response recovery had a difference depending on reward intensity. Consumers' response recovery level was confirmed to have the greatest influence in the combined reward. This study has a significance in newly applying the reward timing, in the dissatisfaction situation which is addressed in the general reward program. Through this study, the aim was to support the empirically analytical results of prior researches and to expand its role in several angles.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.17
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• pp.191-214
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• 2005

Recently, most enterprises are having a knowlege management boom. A number of books associated with the knowlege management are being published, countless public seminars are held, and many research councils have been organized studying it formally or informally as if not importing the system is like falling behind a fashion. However, there are not many cases that achieved success by constructing the system of knowledge management. Then, why the knowledge management is not so much effective despite so many voices wanting the change of management system and a lot of public lectures about it? I guess the reason is that most companies do not have concrete methodology. Seeing a result of a survey which reported that with spread of venture boom and successful examples being known widely, the outflow of precious human resources is accelerated and a large number of employees of conglomerates have already resigned or are considering separation from their positions, we can realize that are occurring a change which can be nearly called severance in an occupational view and an organization culture. The preference to a large enterprise or a public institution of labor is low today and the notion about a lifelong job is regarded as past remains. As for this, it could be said that the social atmosphere that pursued the stability of a job has been changed to the practical one that attaches importance to ability and pay. The way of thinking of employees has been changed while established organizations cannot satisfy their desire and this explains why important members of a company are flown out. The reason why superior human resources move to venture businesses is that they can do their likable work and also prove their ability as well as unconventional rewards. Although existing companies are trying to preserve important human resources through performance compensating stock option, temporary patching up of personnel management cannot retard the rushing wind of foundation and the outflow of labor. On the contrary, clumsy import of performance-based reward system not only fails to hire superior labor power but also can bring about a sense of incompatibility and conflicts among the remaining employees. Therefore, this thesis, focusing on how to choose, develop, and maintain the human resources, will suggest a future-aiming human resources management model of Korean enterprises after comparing and analyzing the actual condition of domestic companies and the trends of advanced corportaions.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.59-80
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• 2017

In this study, we investigate social preference of gifted students by analyzing their behaviors in social dilemma situations. We conducted an experimental study using ultimatum games and public goods games with 132 academically gifted middle school students who attended the Ewha-Seodaemun Center for gifted education from 2012 to 2016. We also experimented the same games with 87 regular students for comparative analysis. The result of ultimatum game experiment shows that there is no statistical difference in the proposed share of both groups. Their proposed share ranges from 37% to 38% as expected in other similar studies. However, the rejection rate of the respondents to the proposals with small share are significantly higher among gifted students than among their regular counterparts. This result implies that the gifted students show stronger negative reciprocity, meaning that they tend to punish selfish behaviors even when it takes some costs. In finitely repeated public goods game experiments, the results show that both groups' contribution rates decrease toward the end of the experiments. However, the gifted students show strategic cooperation by attempting to increase the other members' contribution rate within an experimental group. This implies that gifted students tend to care more about how to increase their own expected rewards by reciprocating other students' behaviors.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.181-192
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• 2018

In the current economic situation of China, the leadership style and organizational commitment of employees has become an important topic. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships among leadership style, employee empowerment and organizational commitment. And help leaders to understand which leadership style is more important and suitable for them, and to increase employees sense of identify of the organization and giving them more power so that they can work more effectively. To serve this purpose, this study conducted an extensive survey of IT companies in ShenZhen, China, and 403 valid data was collected. The research model was analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. According to the result, leadership style has a profound influence on organizational commitment. And leadership style can also impact on empowerment. Employees' empowerment also significantly influence the organization commitment, and exist a mediating effect between the leadership style of organizational commitment. The results of this study provided a new reference and a more suitable leadership style for Chinese IT enterprises that transactional leadership is more effective than transformational leadership, and it is more effective to encourage employees with rewards.