• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.35-54
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• 2002

This study was performed to investigate the task status and performance improvement plan of dental hygienists of Health Centers and Subcenters. The Data collected by self-administered Questionnaire survey of 203 dental hygienists of Health Centers and Subcenters located in Gyeongsangbuk-do were analyzed. The major results are as follows: For the degree of satisfaction in tasks, 73.9% of dental hygienists of Health Centers and Subcenters felt proud, 52.2% felt overwork, 32.0% hoped transferring to other worksite and the major reason of transferring was lack of promotion opportunity in officials of dental hygiene department. Dental hygienists received job education in addition continuous job education in last 3 years were 47.3%, 19.2% of dental hygienists performed the special dental health program for residents in last 3years. Almost half(53.7%) of dental hygienists replied that dental hygienists who were not engaged in dental health tasks should be engaged in dental health tasks. The major dental hygienic tasks performed by dental hygienic officials were support for dental treatment(41.6%). Dental hygienic officials answered that dental health tasks, school dental health program, vertical dental health program should be conducted as important tasks in order. And they replied that the most serious problem of dental hygienic tasks was not conducting dental health affairs due to 'lack of dental doctor'(40.9%), 'lack of concern for dental health tasks'(26.4%), and 'lack of budget and personnels for dental tasks'(19.0%), and the most important thing to improve dental hygienic tasks was 'posting dental hygienists in ministry of health and welfare(MOHW) and province', 'securing of budget and personnels for dental health tasks'.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.331-367
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• 2008

This study aims to validate a web-based neuropsychological testing tool developed by Kwak(2007) and to suggest solutions to potential problems that can deteriorate its validity. When it targets a wider range of subjects, a web-based neuropsychological testing tool is challenged by high drop-out rates, lack of motivation, lack of interactivity with the experimenter, fear of computer, etc. As a possible solution to these threats, this study aims to redesign the user interface of a web-based attention testing tool through three phases of study. In Study 1, an extensive analysis of Kwak's(2007) attention testing tool was conducted to identify potential usability problems. The Heuristic Walkthrough(HW) method was used by three usability experts to review various design features. As a result, many problems were found throughout the tool. The findings concluded that the design of instructions, user information survey forms, task screen, results screen, etc. did not conform to the needs of users and their tasks. In Study 2, 11 guidelines for the design of web-based attention testing tools were established based on the findings from Study 1. The guidelines were used to optimize the design and organization of the tool so that it fits to the user and task needs. The resulting new design alternative was then implemented as a working prototype using the JAVA programming language. In Study 3, a comparative study was conducted to demonstrate the excellence of the new design of attention testing tool(named graphic style tool) over the existing design(named text style tool). A total of 60 subjects participated in user testing sessions where their error frequency, error patterns, and subjective satisfaction were measured through performance observation and questionnaires. Through the task performance measurement, a number of user errors in various types were observed in the existing text style tool. The questionnaire results were also in support of the new graphic style tool, users rated the new graphic style tool higher than the existing text style tool in terms of overall satisfaction, screen design, terms and system information, ease of learning, and system performance.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.237-262
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• 2022

There has been a growing interest in IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) due to the profitable returns that IPO stocks can offer to investors. However, IPOs can be speculative investments that may involve substantial risk as well because shares tend to be volatile, and the supply of IPO shares is often highly limited. Therefore, it is crucially important that IPO investors are well informed of the issuing firms and the market before deciding whether to invest or not. Unlike institutional investors, individual investors are at a disadvantage since there are few opportunities for individuals to obtain information on the IPOs. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to provide individual investors with the information they may consider when making an IPO investment decision. This study presents a model that uses machine learning and text analysis to predict whether an IPO stock price would move up or down after the first 5 trading days. Our sample includes 691 Korean IPOs from June 2009 to December 2020. The input variables for the prediction are three tone variables created from IPO prospectuses and quantitative variables that are either firm-specific, issue-specific, or market-specific. The three prospectus tone variables indicate the percentage of positive, neutral, and negative sentences in a prospectus, respectively. We considered only the sentences in the Risk Factors section of a prospectus for the tone analysis in this study. All sentences were classified into 'positive', 'neutral', and 'negative' via text analysis using TF-IDF (Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency). Measuring the tone of each sentence was conducted by machine learning instead of a lexicon-based approach due to the lack of sentiment dictionaries suitable for Korean text analysis in the context of finance. For this reason, the training set was created by randomly selecting 10% of the sentences from each prospectus, and the sentence classification task on the training set was performed after reading each sentence in person. Then, based on the training set, a Support Vector Machine model was utilized to predict the tone of sentences in the test set. Finally, the machine learning model calculated the percentages of positive, neutral, and negative sentences in each prospectus. To predict the price movement of an IPO stock, four different machine learning techniques were applied: Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Network. According to the results, models that use quantitative variables using technical analysis and prospectus tone variables together show higher accuracy than models that use only quantitative variables. More specifically, the prediction accuracy was improved by 1.45% points in the Random Forest model, 4.34% points in the Artificial Neural Network model, and 5.07% points in the Support Vector Machine model. After testing the performance of these machine learning techniques, the Artificial Neural Network model using both quantitative variables and prospectus tone variables was the model with the highest prediction accuracy rate, which was 61.59%. The results indicate that the tone of a prospectus is a significant factor in predicting the price movement of an IPO stock. In addition, the McNemar test was used to verify the statistically significant difference between the models. The model using only quantitative variables and the model using both the quantitative variables and the prospectus tone variables were compared, and it was confirmed that the predictive performance improved significantly at a 1% significance level.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.130-150
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• 2018

Technology valuation refers to the act, procedures, or techniques in evaluating certain technology and its value for commercialization. For this purpose, deadlines and process plans are established based on valuation goals such as technology transfer, investment and financing, investment in kind, and strategy establishment. The technology valuation process involves analyzing and evaluating technology performance, rights, marketability, and business value technology, as well as calculating the monetary value of technology modules based on the results. Analysis and evaluation of each module is performed by a team of experts having knowledge of specific technology. Valuation of technologies is conducted as independent projects by project managers (PM) who integrate and manage modules; they must have expertise in systematic performance of task support and management to ensure objectivity and reliability. Furthermore, the valuation team comprises expert stakeholders having knowledge about each module due to the nature of technology valuation. For smooth knowledge sharing in technology and valuation procedures, communication skills and roles of PMs supporting and managing the valuation are important. Primarily, PMs must resolve conflicts between evaluators participating in different tasks, evaluators and evaluatees, and technology holders and receivers. This study examines technology valuation for four conflicts occurring frequently among stakeholders providing valuation support to PMs, and seeks resolutions. The conflicts and resolutions discussed in this study may lead to more specialized roles of PMs in technology valuation and project management, as well as systemized valuation support and management plans.

• Strategy21
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• s.33
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• pp.65-112
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• 2014

Recent trends show that the PRC has stepped aside its "army-centered approach" and placed greater emphasis on its Navy and Air Force for a wider range of operations, thereby reducing its ground force and harnessing its economic power and military technology into naval development. A quantitative growth of the PLA Navy itself is no surprise as this is not a recent phenomenon. Now is the time to pay closer attention to the level of PRC naval force's performance and the extent of its warfighting capacity in the maritime domain. It is also worth asking what China can do with its widening naval power foundation. In short, it is time to delve into several possible scenarios I which the PRC poses a real threat. With this in mind, in Section Two the paper seeks to observe the construction progress of PRC's naval power and its future prospects up to the year 2020, and categorize time frame according to its major force improvement trends. By analyzing qualitative improvements made over time, such as the scale of investment and the number of ships compared to increase in displacement (tonnage), this paper attempts to identify salient features in the construction of naval power. Chapter Three sets out performance evaluation on each type of PRC naval ships as well as capabilities of the Navy, Air Force, the Second Artillery (i.e., strategic missile forces) and satellites that could support maritime warfare. Finall, the concluding chapter estimates the PRC's maritime warfighting capability as anticipated in respective conflict scenarios, and considers its impact on the Korean Peninsula and proposes the directions ROK should steer in response. First of all, since the 1980s the PRC navy has undergone transitions as the focus of its military strategic outlook shifted from ground warfare to maritime warfare, and within 30 years of its effort to construct naval power while greatly reducing the size of its ground forces, the PRC has succeeded in building its naval power next to the U.S.'s in the world in terms of number, with acquisition of an aircraft carrier, Chinese-version of the Aegis, submarines and so on. The PRC also enjoys great potentials to qualitatively develop its forces such as indigenous aircraft carriers, next-generation strategic submarines, next-generation destroyers and so forth, which is possible because the PRC has accumulated its independent production capabilities in the process of its 30-year-long efforts. Secondly, one could argue that ROK still has its chances of coping with the PRC in naval power since, despite its continuous efforts, many estimate that the PRC naval force is roughly ten or more years behind that of superpowers such as the U.S., on areas including radar detection capability, EW capability, C4I and data-link systems, doctrines on force employment as well as tactics, and such gap cannot be easily overcome. The most probable scenarios involving the PRC in sea areas surrounding the Korean Peninsula are: first, upon the outbreak of war in the peninsula, the PRC may pursue military intervention through sea, thereby undermining efforts of the ROK-U.S. combined operations; second, ROK-PRC or PRC-Japan conflicts over maritime jurisdiction or ownership over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands could inflict damage to ROK territorial sovereignty or economic gains. The PRC would likely attempt to resolve the conflict employing blitzkrieg tactics before U.S. forces arrive on the scene, while at the same time delaying and denying access of the incoming U.S. forces. If this proves unattainable, the PRC could take a course of action adopting "long-term attrition warfare," thus weakening its enemy's sustainability. All in all, thiss paper makes three proposals on how the ROK should respond. First, modern warfare as well as the emergent future warfare demonstrates that the center stage of battle is no longer the domestic territory, but rather further away into the sea and space. In this respect, the ROKN should take advantage of the distinct feature of battle space on the peninsula, which is surrounded by the seas, and obtain capabilities to intercept more than 50 percent of the enemy's ballistic missiles, including those of North Korea. In tandem with this capacity, employment of a large scale of UAV/F Carrier for Kill Chain operations should enhance effectiveness. This is because conditions are more favorable to defend from sea, on matters concerning accuracy rates against enemy targets, minimized threat of friendly damage, and cost effectiveness. Second, to maintain readiness for a North Korean crisis where timely deployment of US forces is not possible, the ROKN ought to obtain capabilities to hold the enemy attack at bay while deterring PRC naval intervention. It is also argued that ROKN should strengthen its power so as to protect national interests in the seas surrounding the peninsula without support from the USN, should ROK-PRC or ROK-Japan conflict arise concerning maritime jurisprudence. Third, the ROK should fortify infrastructures for independent construction of naval power and expand its R&D efforts, and for this purpose, the ROK should make the most of the advantages stemming from the ROK-U.S. alliance inducing active support from the United States. The rationale behind this argument is that while it is strategically effective to rely on alliance or jump on the bandwagon, the ultimate goal is always to acquire an independent response capability as much as possible.

• The Journal of Korean Institute for Practical Engineering Education
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

In this paper, as a new educational cooperation model, seeking the problems and the directions of progress on GPOE(Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education)'s innovational education district project, recognizing the various points of issue of SVHS(specialized vocational high schools) faced now, suggesting the contents and standards of the program as measures of enhancing competitiveness of SVHS, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of project of innovational education district and finding the plans for progress. According to the result of the advanced study and analysis, it shows that the aid as well as the supporting object of helping the SVHS's students find a job don't reach a certain level. As the aid supports across the general elementary and secondary schools, it tends to show much more emotional software-based support required by elementary school, middle school and general high school as universal education welfare rather than hardware-based support required by SVHS. Despite the competent evaluation on the survey about the supporting method from SVHS's parents teachers and students, the survey includes that teachers who ask the balancing support are increasing, some students suspect its effect of education and some parents as a residential position ask the regional growth rather than education So there are a lot of confusions among the teachers, students and parents yet. To overcome these problems, we ensure the internal stability of local education community and GPOE and local government get out large scale constructions with trust and belief to make a revolution of public education in supporting the administrative task and finance and to accomplish the program that best suits our SVHS's state to be supported without dividing educational software and hardware, should reflect the demand of field by for expert group being built and attended when build the local revolution community. Also plan to make full use of local human and property infrastructure should be added. To this end, as programs to build a pool of guest lecturers are provided to teachers who carry out innovative education programs, we seek the reformations to give students opportunities to widen participation in other school programs.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.177-192
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• 2016

Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence. It refers to an area of computer science related to providing machines the ability to perform their own data analysis, decision making and forecasting. For example, one of the representative machine learning models is artificial neural network, which is a statistical learning algorithm inspired by the neural network structure of biology. In addition, there are other machine learning models such as decision tree model, naive bayes model and SVM(support vector machine) model. Among the machine learning models, we use SVM model in this study because it is mainly used for classification and regression analysis that fits well to our study. The core principle of SVM is to find a reasonable hyperplane that distinguishes different group in the data space. Given information about the data in any two groups, the SVM model judges to which group the new data belongs based on the hyperplane obtained from the given data set. Thus, the more the amount of meaningful data, the better the machine learning ability. In recent years, many financial experts have focused on machine learning, seeing the possibility of combining with machine learning and the financial field where vast amounts of financial data exist. Machine learning techniques have been proved to be powerful in describing the non-stationary and chaotic stock price dynamics. A lot of researches have been successfully conducted on forecasting of stock prices using machine learning algorithms. Recently, financial companies have begun to provide Robo-Advisor service, a compound word of Robot and Advisor, which can perform various financial tasks through advanced algorithms using rapidly changing huge amount of data. Robo-Adviser's main task is to advise the investors about the investor's personal investment propensity and to provide the service to manage the portfolio automatically. In this study, we propose a method of forecasting the Korean volatility index, VKOSPI, using the SVM model, which is one of the machine learning methods, and applying it to real option trading to increase the trading performance. VKOSPI is a measure of the future volatility of the KOSPI 200 index based on KOSPI 200 index option prices. VKOSPI is similar to the VIX index, which is based on S&P 500 option price in the United States. The Korea Exchange(KRX) calculates and announce the real-time VKOSPI index. VKOSPI is the same as the usual volatility and affects the option prices. The direction of VKOSPI and option prices show positive relation regardless of the option type (call and put options with various striking prices). If the volatility increases, all of the call and put option premium increases because the probability of the option's exercise possibility increases. The investor can know the rising value of the option price with respect to the volatility rising value in real time through Vega, a Black-Scholes's measurement index of an option's sensitivity to changes in the volatility. Therefore, accurate forecasting of VKOSPI movements is one of the important factors that can generate profit in option trading. In this study, we verified through real option data that the accurate forecast of VKOSPI is able to make a big profit in real option trading. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no studies on the idea of predicting the direction of VKOSPI based on machine learning and introducing the idea of applying it to actual option trading. In this study predicted daily VKOSPI changes through SVM model and then made intraday option strangle position, which gives profit as option prices reduce, only when VKOSPI is expected to decline during daytime. We analyzed the results and tested whether it is applicable to real option trading based on SVM's prediction. The results showed the prediction accuracy of VKOSPI was 57.83% on average, and the number of position entry times was 43.2 times, which is less than half of the benchmark (100 times). A small number of trading is an indicator of trading efficiency. In addition, the experiment proved that the trading performance was significantly higher than the benchmark.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.288-298
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• 2001

This article makes an attempt to evaluate the extent of developing community health nursing knowledge and to suggest the direction of developing a body of knowledge henceforth through the results of analysis for contents and outcomes of all literatures. which have been published in the Journal related to community health nursing. Refer to the following for the result of this article. 1. The total number of literatures analyzed amounted to 100 pieces in Journal of community health nursing society. 78 in Journal of industrial nursing society, 134 in Journal of school health society. 40 in Journal of home care nursing society. 2. Journal of community health nursing society Health needs and educational-behavioral diagnoses, which are more concrete nursing assessments and diagnoses. formed the main current(54%) of articles published in Journal of community health nursing society since 1992. There was a quantitative growth as well as a qualitative advance. Through a classification by the type of a body of knowledge. It was found that the knowledge providing nursing practice with bases, commanded an overwhelming majority(71.8%). Also, Researches on systemic supports for nursing practice are showing a tendency to increase. 3. Journal of industrial nursing society 52.6% of research papers presented in Journal of industrial nursing society dealt with health problem of workers. assessment of risk factors, diagnosis of health behaviors. Because of the beginning of an industrial nursing, the domain of nursing management to establish the role and task, work condition, training. documentary system made up 23 percent of research, subjects. A knowledge providing nursing practice with bases have a majority, 69.2%. In addition. the subject concerning a systemic support and quality assurance was scarce but continuously presented. 4. Journal of school health society The major point of this journal is the identification of health problems and risk factors which belong to assessment and diagnosis domain(56.8%) regardless of year, Because of the interdisciplinary characteristic. The knowledge on quality assurance of nursing practice is relatively rare. But, articles related to a systemic support is plentiful. 5. Journal of home care nursing society In its infancy, there was a large number of papers concerning need assessment and diagnosis, Comparing others, this journal has introduced a good many of articles related to program management. delivery system. service fee, etc that belong to domain of systemic support for nursing practice. 6. It is showing definitely that quantity and extent of research have grown for a short period. See the analysis in terms of nursing process, studies related to the domain of assessment and diagnosis command an absolute majority regardless of kinds of journal. Although articles referring to program management and implementation is increasing in number, it is scarce to evaluate a nursing program and grope for an improvement. Also, program development based on a theoretical framework is little. Therefore much more scientific effort to ensure profession should be executed. 7. In the methodological aspect, longitudinal study needs to be carried out so that we could show the evidence based nursing theory. To develop a more general theory, we have to conduct a study of various subjects and improve a validity of tools through a repeat test. In addition, the effort for interdisciplinary cooperation is needed.

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

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

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.125-155
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• 2010

Ontologies have been adopted in various business and scientific communities as a key component of the Semantic Web. Despite the increasing importance of ontologies, ontology developers still perceive construction tasks as a challenge. A clearly defined and well-structured methodology can reduce the time required to develop an ontology and increase the probability of success of a project. However, no reliable knowledge-engineering methodology for ontology development currently exists; every methodology has been tailored toward the development of a particular ontology. In this study, we developed a Graduation Screen Ontology (GSO). The graduation screen domain was chosen for the several reasons. First, the graduation screen process is a complicated task requiring a complex reasoning process. Second, GSO may be reused for other universities because the graduation screen process is similar for most universities. Finally, GSO can be built within a given period because the size of the selected domain is reasonable. No standard ontology development methodology exists; thus, one of the existing ontology development methodologies had to be chosen. The most important considerations for selecting the ontology development methodology of GSO included whether it can be applied to a new domain; whether it covers a broader set of development tasks; and whether it gives sufficient explanation of each development task. We evaluated various ontology development methodologies based on the evaluation framework proposed by G$\acute{o}$mez-P$\acute{e}$rez et al. We concluded that METHONTOLOGY was the most applicable to the building of GSO for this study. METHONTOLOGY was derived from the experience of developing Chemical Ontology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid by Fern$\acute{a}$ndez-L$\acute{o}$pez et al. and is regarded as the most mature ontology development methodology. METHONTOLOGY describes a very detailed approach for building an ontology under a centralized development environment at the conceptual level. This methodology consists of three broad processes, with each process containing specific sub-processes: management (scheduling, control, and quality assurance); development (specification, conceptualization, formalization, implementation, and maintenance); and support process (knowledge acquisition, evaluation, documentation, configuration management, and integration). An ontology development language and ontology development tool for GSO construction also had to be selected. We adopted OWL-DL as the ontology development language. OWL was selected because of its computational quality of consistency in checking and classification, which is crucial in developing coherent and useful ontological models for very complex domains. In addition, Protege-OWL was chosen for an ontology development tool because it is supported by METHONTOLOGY and is widely used because of its platform-independent characteristics. Based on the GSO development experience of the researchers, some issues relating to the METHONTOLOGY, OWL-DL, and Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$-OWL were identified. We focused on presenting drawbacks of METHONTOLOGY and discussing how each weakness could be addressed. First, METHONTOLOGY insists that domain experts who do not have ontology construction experience can easily build ontologies. However, it is still difficult for these domain experts to develop a sophisticated ontology, especially if they have insufficient background knowledge related to the ontology. Second, METHONTOLOGY does not include a development stage called the "feasibility study." This pre-development stage helps developers ensure not only that a planned ontology is necessary and sufficiently valuable to begin an ontology building project, but also to determine whether the project will be successful. Third, METHONTOLOGY excludes an explanation on the use and integration of existing ontologies. If an additional stage for considering reuse is introduced, developers might share benefits of reuse. Fourth, METHONTOLOGY fails to address the importance of collaboration. This methodology needs to explain the allocation of specific tasks to different developer groups, and how to combine these tasks once specific given jobs are completed. Fifth, METHONTOLOGY fails to suggest the methods and techniques applied in the conceptualization stage sufficiently. Introducing methods of concept extraction from multiple informal sources or methods of identifying relations may enhance the quality of ontologies. Sixth, METHONTOLOGY does not provide an evaluation process to confirm whether WebODE perfectly transforms a conceptual ontology into a formal ontology. It also does not guarantee whether the outcomes of the conceptualization stage are completely reflected in the implementation stage. Seventh, METHONTOLOGY needs to add criteria for user evaluation of the actual use of the constructed ontology under user environments. Eighth, although METHONTOLOGY allows continual knowledge acquisition while working on the ontology development process, consistent updates can be difficult for developers. Ninth, METHONTOLOGY demands that developers complete various documents during the conceptualization stage; thus, it can be considered a heavy methodology. Adopting an agile methodology will result in reinforcing active communication among developers and reducing the burden of documentation completion. Finally, this study concludes with contributions and practical implications. No previous research has addressed issues related to METHONTOLOGY from empirical experiences; this study is an initial attempt. In addition, several lessons learned from the development experience are discussed. This study also affords some insights for ontology methodology researchers who want to design a more advanced ontology development methodology.