• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.1223-1230
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• 2005

The dynamic nature of the A/E/C industry, rapidly changing global market environments, and lowest cost competitive bidding make it difficult to survive in global design markets. To understand the global design markets, a case study has been undertaken. The top 150 global design firms represented in the ENR (Engineering News Record) from 1995 to 2003 are classified into three groups for the case study. First group is the firms which advanced in rank from 1995. Second group is the firms which maintained its rank from 1994 until 2003. Third group is the firms which went down in rank from 1995 until 2003. However, finding key factors and changing business strategies of successful top design firms are the fundamental goals in this paper. After examinations of case studies, this paper concludes and suggests that professionalization, M&A strategies, patrons of the government, and academic support are needed to be successful in the global design & engineering industry.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.5 no.6 s.22
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• pp.226-234
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• 2004

Dynamic nature of the A/E/C industry, rapidly changing global market environment, and lowest cost competitive bidding make it difficult to survive in global engineering markets. To understand of the global design&engineering market, a case study has been undertaken. The top 150 global design forms represented in the ENR(Engineering News Record) from 1995 to 2003 are classified three groups for the case study, First group is the firms that its rank is getting raised from 1995. Second group is the firms keep holding its rank from 1994 until 2003. Third group is the firms that its rank has gone down from 1995 until 2003. However, finding key factors and changing business strategies of successful top design fm are the fundamental goals in this paper, After examined case study, this paper concludes and suggests that professionalization, M&A strategies, patrons of government, and academic supporting are needed to be succeeding in the global design & engineering industry.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.35-58
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• 2020

Purpose - This study examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) location choice for Chinese firms, focusing on the agglomeration effect for firms of the same nationality. Design/methodology - The empirical data are China's inward FDI from the top 19 economies (excluding tax havens and Taiwan) in terms of FDI during 1997-2015 and China's outward FDI from the top 18 economies (excluding tax havens). This study uses a random effects generalized least squares model for panel data analysis. Findings - The results confirm that both host countries' costs and market conditions and the degree of agglomeration affect these countries' attractiveness for FDI inflows. Specifically, agglomeration has a significant effect on China's inward and outward FDI. This study confirms that the agglomeration of firms of the same nationality has predictive power for multinational enterprises' FDI location choices. The host countries' real GDP and trade openness also positively affect FDI inflows. Interestingly, however, China's production cost has a positive effect. Thus, inward FDI aimed at entering the Chinese market is increasing in recent years relative to the previous efficiency-seeking FDI. Inward FDI in China is therefore the market-entry type, whereas outward FDI by Chinese firms is the market-oriented type. Originality/value - These results suggest that the effects of the potential determinants of Chinese outward FDI are similar to those of inward FDI as China's trade liberalization progresses.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.13 no.5 s.58
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• pp.844-855
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to examine which fashion brands are most likely to be investigated by Korean textile firms when they conduct their market trend analyses. The result shows that for the domestic sales, textile firms are most likely to collect and analyze information on the Cheil Textil Co. It is followed by Bean Pole, Chanel, Buberry, Tomboy. For the future domestic sales, textile firms prefers referring foreign fashion brands such as Burberry, ZARA, MaxMara, Missoni, and Chanel. Textile firms majoring exports prefers collecting and analyzing information on D&G followed by Chanel, Gucci, and DKNY. This preference, however, differs when considering exporting areas. Textile firms targeting the French market considers Gucci, followed by Ferragamo, Dior, Louisvuitton. Textile firms targeting the Italian market prefer Chanel, followed by Valentine, ZARA, Gucci, and Armani. Chanel is also top brand for the North American and Japanese markets, and followed by GAP, ZARA, OZOC, Missoni, Munshing Wear. The information content collected and analyzed by textile firms is style, pattern, color, and textile materials for textile firms targeting the domestic sales, while the exporting firms prefer information on color and textile materials proposed and presented by the fashion brands to which they prefer to make reference. The result of this study can be used to effectively and efficiently collect and analyze market information on fashion brands for textile firms majoring the domestic and foreign sales.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.426-431
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• 2011

The quality of performance evaluation on engineering consultants that provide design-related technical services is difficult to be measured, and only a handful of papers discussed the quality during the design stage. Although design cost is relatively far less than construction cost for a project, the decisions made in the design phase have a significant impact on the final products of the project, especially for large public construction projects. Therefore, this research focuses on reviewing and then establishing a performance evaluation framework for the consulting firms that execute detailed design and provide technical services for the Taipei Rapid Transit Systems (TRTS). By interviewing experts, this study first established a set of indicators to evaluate these firms' performance. Then, those indicators were incorporated into the four aspects of balanced scorecard (BSC) to establish the architecture of the evaluation mechanism. The weight of each indicator was calculated by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from a survey conducted among experts. The results showed that the top-three indicators were quantity take-off, functions conformity, and budgeting. The framework of performance evaluation established by this study can be applied to measure service performance during the design stage. It not only facilitates the monitoring of consulting firms, but also helps to reduce unnecessary change orders and disputes during the construction stage.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.225-240
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• 2004

The most critical problem of MIS evaluation is the lack of the systematic framework to cover various factors and viewpoints. To solve this problem, this study takes the multi-level and contingent approach to performance evaluation, composed of three levels: evaluating the contribution of MIS to an organization [strategy level]; evaluating the activities of MIS department or MIS function as an organizational sub-function through the overall MIS lifecycle [function level]; and evaluating the quality or productivity of the application systems as MIS outputs [system level]. Ideal MIS evaluation should include all three levels of the hierarchy with balanced importance. However, MIS evaluationcanbedividedintothreetypes,suchasstrategy-oriented, function-oriented and system-oriented evaluation, depending on the focus and emphasis of evaluation. The usage pattern of each evaluation type is analyzed according to contingent variables of MIS evaluation such as MIS maturity, information intensity and firm size, and top management's intent. It is also found that the firms of higher MIS maturity and top management's intent use the strategy-oriented evaluation type, and the firms with strategy-oriented evaluation type show a higher MIS performance. Further, MIS maturity and top management's intent show contingent effects between evaluation type and MIS performance. Some managerial implications can be drawn based on the results of the study. First, strategy-oriented evaluation of MIS is more important as many firms more often use information technology as a strategic weapon. Second, MIS performance varies with evaluation type. Therefore, the design of MIS evaluation framework should be done carefully in the strategic and managerial contexts. Third, firms are recommend to use a different evaluation type according to organizational characteristics such as MIS maturity and information intensity.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 2020

Firms employing hierarchical loyalty programs (HLPs) periodically demote customers from higher to lower status level to divest from unprofitable customers and boost profitability. However, existing literature lacks objective evidence on how customer demotion affects demoted customers' future purchase behaviors and ultimately profitability for the firm. Moreover, customers in the HLP's higher position may respond to customer demotion differently from those in the HLP's lower position. Drawing upon emotions and equity theories, this study quantifies how the profits that customers contribute to the firm change after customer demotion, and compares demoted customers' behavioral reactions from top-tier with those from bottom-tier based on customers' actual behavior data from a major retail bank in South Korea. The findings show that withdrawing customer status actually deteriorates customer profitability, and customers with top-tier status decrease their profitability more dramatically than those with bottom-tier status after demotion. The results contribute to previous literature on customer demotion and relationship marketing, and provide specific guidelines into how firms should design and implement customer demotion in HLPs.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.77-82
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• 2018

Purpose - This paper examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial reporting quality. Corporate social responsibility is a way for firms to take responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their business operations. Corporate social responsibility is a broad concept that can take various forms depending on the firm and industry. Through corporate social responsibility programs, firms can benefit society. At the same time, firms improve their reputations by increasing engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. However, corporate social responsibility activities are not directly related to profitability, especially for distribution firms. Research design, data, and methodology - 229 distribution & service firm-years between 2011 and 2016 are used for the main analysis. In Korea, Korean Economic Justice Institute evaluates the ethical performance of Korean firms, and the institute annually discloses the scores of top firms. This study uses the KEJI Index scores to measure firm-level corporate social responsibility activities. Discretionary accruals are used as a proxy for financial reporting quality. Discretionary accruals can be used opportunistically, and thus distort the information in earnings. We extract financial data from the KIS Value database. Results - We find that distribution & service firms' engagement in corporate social responsibilities is positively related to their financial reporting quality. First, there is a negative correlation between implementation of corporate social responsibility activities and discretionary accruals. In addition, we find that the coefficient of CSR is significantly negative, supporting our prediction. The result is significant at the 1% level. Conclusions - We examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility activities of distribution firms and their financial reporting quality while most prior studies examine the engagement in corporate social responsibility activities of manufacturing firms. The results of this study show that distribution & service firms engaging in corporate social responsibility activities are likely to maintain high-quality financial reporting.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.69-83
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper investigates the long term impact of RFID investment on firm value in Korea. We wand to find out why the long term performance of some firm's RFID investment is better than others. To understand the dynamics of the long term returns from RFID investment announcements, we divide our events into groups for each of the independent firm characteristic variable such as investment time period, kind of markets, industries, solvency and growth potential. We composed portfolios based on the RFID investment announcement date for each group and evaluate the monthly abnormal excess returns. Research design, data, and methodology - Based on these calendar-time portfolios, we measure the long term returns from 86 RFID investment announcements of 46 firms from 2003 to 2017. We construct the calendar-time portfolio for 3, 6, 9, 12 months of holding periods. Using the weighted least squares method, we regress the raw monthly returns of the portfolios on the Fama-French model and Carhart(1997) model. As a result, we can get the estimated risk adjusted mean monthly abnormal excess return α_P for each of the calendar-time portfolio. Results - We found that early adopters, large firms, non-manufacturing firms have very significant excess returns. We also found modestly significant excess returns for financially stable firms and slow growing firms. Put together, top managers of the firms which plan to invest RFID should understand the strategic role of RFID adoption and the generalized business process of distribution information technology investment in Korea. Moreover, the findings of this paper provide useful trading strategies to the managers of large funds who are considering on investing in RFID adopting firms. Conclusions - Put together, the results of this paper give us a new insight into how the RFID and IT technology in general and other characteristic factors' interactions affect the long term performance of firms. Using the unbiased estimates of long term returns of the calendar-time portfolios, this paper extends the understandings on short term impact of RFID adoption of existing studies. This paper also extends the current understandings of firm characteristics that affect the long term performance of RFID adopting firms.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.170-190
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• 1994

The importantce of a development of competitiveness in domestic construction industry is growing as some of domestic construction markets is scheduled to open to foreign competing firms with higher level of construction technology and management. A national level of competitiveness in domestic construction industry and firms are partially, but significantly, affected by a technology level and a characteristics of production pattern. The purpose of the study is mainly to analyze and identify a technology level, production pattern and a development stage of R&D activities of domestic construction industry and firms. Based on these findings the study draws on a concluding remarks and derives technology policy implications. Results of analysis in the study impliy that (1) competitiveness of domestic construction firms(industry) in terms of technology level is relatively weak as compare to that of advanced foreign competing firms, (2) degrees of substitution of capital for labor are seemed to be relatively high, (3) R&D (investment) activities of domestic construction firms are generally spread out in forms of import, adjustment and betterment, and (4) only a small number of big domestic construction firms are seemed to afford to R&D investment for research facilities and equipments, but not enough for higher level of R&D man-power. The study suggests that technology policy for construction industry should be based on a fundamental policy directions. For example the increase in size and heightened quality level of R&D man-power should be placed in a top priority in policy agenda. Sound and specific policy items should be developed for planning and design, and maintenace and inspection technology in order to lead domestic industry to compete with foreign firms with full strength.