• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.29-60
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• 2005

This paper investigates how firms adjust wages, employment and hours in response to demand shifts. It focuses on rigidities and asymmetries in such adjustments. Major findings are as follows. First, wage adjustments are fairly small compared with worker adjustments. Second, wage adjustments are asymmetric with respect to sales growth: there is no responsiveness of wage growth when sales are declining, while adjustments are significantly positive when sales are rising. On the contrary, worker adjustments are symmetric with respect to demand shifts. Third, while workers are linearly adjusted to the sales growth, some nonlinearity is observed in the wage adjustment. Fourth, hours are generally nonresponsive to demand shocks. Finally, union firms cut wages rather than workers in the face of negative demand shocks.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.74-87
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• 2012

The service industry will be essentially extended during the economic growth and industrial development. Especially, the role of workers meeting the customers in service industry is very important from the view point of purchase intention. So many companies in service industry endeavor to increase the work efficacies of workers through the various prizes and incentives, and improve the job performance by additional education. Recently, the incentive tours are comprehensively accepted as an efficient tool to promote the loyalty and job performance of workers. The incentive tours enable the worker to gain the cultural experiences. They will experience not only the natural heritages and antiques, but also the local life culture and arts culture. The culture marketing for worker as the internal customer increase the worker's loyalty and the ties among workers, and therefore, their job performance will be increased. The empirical results (162 workers surveyed) showed the incentive tours have improved both the individual and group's job performance at a cosmetic sales organization. So it is recommend to plan the organization specific incentive tour in order to improve the productivity of the service organization.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.89-103
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• 2004

One of the major health problems of working women is job stress according to many studies. However, existing job stress questionnaires are suitable for men and men's job environments only, and do not reflect emotional labor for sales people. The aim of this research is to find women's job stress factors. The subjects of this investigation are married working women in sales since they experience emotional labor in addition to physical and psychological labor and the work-family conflict is very important job stressor for them. The job stressor of married sales women was analyzed through qualitative research. After I had in-depth interviews with 20 married sales women, I identified 49 new concepts, 3 main categories and 17 sub categories. The results are like the following. 1. 3 main categories are job factor, aggravate factor, and compensate factor. 2. Job factor has 5 sub-categories including 'increasing of selling', 'emotional labor' and 'physical burden'. 3. Aggrabate factor has 6 sub-categories including 'work/family conflict', 'relationship with higher office' and 'relationship with a fellow worker' 4. Compensate factor has 6 sub-categories including 'opportunity of employment', 'discrimination', and 'prestige' Consequently this study newly found some major job stressors for married working women in sales department.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.111-119
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• 2022

Purpose: This study seeks to address the omission through examining the manner in which demographic similarity affects the responses of employees in the retail sector towards horizontal pay dispersion. Through doing so the study will be effective in bolstering the recent efforts of more careful exploration of conditions. Research design, data, and methodology: Scant past studies are available to guide for practitioners in retail sector which compensation strategy might lead adequate job performance for retail sales workers. To suggest possible solution, the present authors used variables of pay dispersion and obtained 317 US retail sale workers in distribution channels to measure the association between pay dispersion and employee job performance. Results: The statistical findings indicated both first and second hypothesis could be acceptable with favorable Beta and T values, resulting high degree of pay dispersion leads a low level of job performance, while a low degree of pay dispersion can motivate retail sales workers to improve their performance. Conclusions: The findings of this study raises an argument that processes of social comparison work in a more vigorous manner. This is thus a representation of the propensity of a retail sales worker to voluntarily resign from an organization when dispersion rates are higher.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.5-21
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• 2016

Purpose - This study aims to clarify the meanings of small enterprise and modify criteria for explaining its range. Prioritizing the number of full time workers first and the sales next are proper as a new concept and range. Research design, data, and methodology - In research, 'small company' is a basic concept because the range of its standard is categorized as a 'small company' in the policy system of small & medium business. This study focuses on the solutions with ① evaluation on sales, ② standard for excluded ones ③ regulation for excluded business types in 'Act on Protection and Support for Small Enterprise'. Results - Clarifying the range of standard with maintaining the title is advisable. The scope should resist the current criteria or adopt a new standard which contains not only full time workers but also the sales. The new one may raise the policies' effectiveness because it can sort the 1% people of small enterprises. Conclusions - However, there should be a preventive system for sorting out the non-eligible ones not conformed to the CAP for small company. Therefore, it is desirable to prepare the system with 'unsuitable ones list' or regulate large income·inappropriate business types in 'Act on protection and support for small enterprise'.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.99-109
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• 2021

Purpose: Retail workers have a role in attending to customers better, not only making sales to them. In this regard, this research focuses on having a clear understanding of the effects of emotional factors and job stress on mental health for retail sales workers. Research design, data and methodology: The present research conducted both a qualitative textual analysis and interview. This research method is quite useful because it relates the information collected with the research gap. Qualitative data is time-consuming type of data to analyze since it involves interpreting words rather than numbers. Results: The findings showed that emotional labor and stress may not only cause mental harm to the employees but can result in adverse reaction to the customers. Retail employees need to express their true emotions and avoid pretending to be helped with a clear understanding of their needs. Conclusion: This study conclude that motional labor and stress to the retail workers is a real issue that has affected many people around the globe and there is a need to conduct more research on the issue to help employees serve customers much better. Stress among sales workers results to poor working morale and thus affects the entire organization at large.

• IE interfaces
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.333-342
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• 2008

Warehouses form an important link in a supply chain network. Among a variety of activities in warehouses, order picking is the process of retrieving a number of items out of storage to meet customer orders. Today, as the transactions through direct sales are wide spread, warehouses often receive a large amount of small orders to be handled within tight time windows, which makes fast and efficient order picking more important than ever. This paper examines a new order picking method where the concept of bucket brigade (BB) is applied. Bucket brigade is a way of dynamically coordinating workers who progressively perform a set of operations along a flow line. In bucket brigades, a worker is not assigned his jobs in a static way. Each worker takes a job from his predecessor when he is free. We identify some considerations when bucket brigades are applied to order picking activities. A new BB picking protocol is presented to improve existing BB picking protocols. Through simulation experiments, the performance of BB order picking is evaluated under various logistics environments.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.476-481
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• 2019

Background: Mystery shopping is a method in which a company monitors quality of service and employee conduct and compliance with regulations using an evaluator posing as a customer. It is a typical tool of customer-centered bureaucratic control insofar as it provides overall and standardized evaluation of intangible elements of customer service as well as physical elements of service environments. The purpose of this study is to examine how mystery shopping is related to the health status of service workers in South Korea. Methods: Data from semistructured interviews with 15 workers were collected from January to April 2019 to obtain information on service worker experiences with mystery shopping. Data were analyzed using the constant comparison method. Results: Mystery shopping limits worker autonomy and stiffens the workplace environment by standardizing and monitoring labor processes for service workers. In addition, mystery shopping heightens work stress through increased labor intensity. Five mechanisms by which mystery shopping affects service worker health are identified and comprise (1) multifaceted and multilayered surveillance, (2) evaluator subjectivity and irrational requirements, (3) standardized rules combined with high pressure to achieve sales, (4) self-esteem degradation because of evaluator results, and (5) musculoskeletal disorders because of strict adherence to labor processes based on evaluator results. Conclusion: Mystery shopping as an evaluation method should be reconsidered not only in terms of health problems but also in terms of organizational efficiency and issues of human rights.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.139-169
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• 2023

This study analyzes the effects of firms' technology innovation(patent applications) on employment(number of workers and proportion of high-skilled workers) and corporate performance(sales per worker), while considering the two-way causal relationships between these variables. We used the three-stage least squares(3SLS) estimation to examine system of equations in which the dependent variables affect each other with a two-year lag wherever relevant, and applied it to firm-level panel data of Korean manufacturers with 100 or more workers. Our data covered the period of 2005-2017. Exogenous variables, such as firms' managerial and other characteristics, were controlled as explanatory variables. The identification variables for each equation included firms' R&D intensity, labor cost per worker(or operation of firms' own R&D center), and investment on worker training. We find that firms' patent applications increased number of workers, proportion of high-skilled workers, and sales per worker; the causal relationships in the opposite direction were also significant. Evidently, firms' technology innovation is critical to the growth and quality improvement of employment as well as sustainable corporate growth.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.135-142
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• 2015

This paper analyzed the effects of changes in temporary workers on firm performances, and the effects of different workforce portions of business functions on corporate performances, respectively, using Korean venture business survey conduected in 2013. Results show that the performance of venture businesses decreases significantly, as the portion of temporary workers increases, which is more pronounced in small companies than in medium companies. In addition, the portions of workforce for administration, R&D, production, and sales don't have uniform effect on firm performance, where medium companies are affected significantly by the portions of production and sales, while small companies do not show significant relationship. This analysis implies that innovative firms, based on knowledge workers, need to use caution when they plan to increase temporary workers, which may lead to lower performance. However, we need further research for the basic causes of the possible lower performance.