This study is intended to derive the key issues on vitalization of the governance of rural area development for 6 cities and counties in Chungcheongnam-do where privately entrusted intermediary support organizations have been established and to present their improvement plans of policy. The findings of the study have shown the governance for the case regions is still being characterized with a very formal governance being dominated by the strong administrative initiative and expediency. What have been presented as the improvement plans of policy are as follows: First, core provisions of the ordinances must be strengthened to mandatory regulations, and some ways to check and supplement such as monitoring, policy forums by public-private partnership, etc. are required for the sake of the effective operation of the ordinances. Second, in relation to the bases of competence according to the roles of core governance players, it is necessary to overcome the limitations of job rotation system, align the administrative support systems, expand the functions of a policy committee based on public-private cooperation and operate it effectively in the case of administration, and to strengthen a footing of a civilian community and the perspectives of political incubation in administration and provide support projects contributing to the growth of the corporations in the case of the entrusted corporation, and to align the operating systems of the centers, review the introduction of a system with a full-time center head, continuously provide specialized education and improve the working environment in the case of the support centers.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand a variety of intervention studies to prevent smoking by adolescents in U.S. and find out implications for Korea. Methods: This study reviewed articles found in the internet and analysed the data of US DHHS and CDC. Results: The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) is a national survey periodically conducted to assess school health policies and programs of U.S. The main components of SHPPS are health education and physical education, health services, mental health and social services, school policies, and school environments. The CDC guidelines for school health programs to prevent tobacco use and addiction are composed of policy, instruction, curriculum, training, family involvement, tobacco-use cessation efforts, and evaluation. School-based interventions to prevent smoking can be classified into the categories of information-giving curricula, social competence curricula, social influence approaches, combined methods draw on social competence and social influence approaches and multi-modal programmes and Youth Empowerment study. The key programs for adolescent smoking prevention are ALERT Project, HSPP, TNT Project, MPP, NC YES. Conclusions: As smoking is often the first step of unhealthy behaviour such as alcohol drinking, illegal drugs, and violence, smoking prevention programmes for adolescents in U.S. have been comprehensive school-based health programs. In smoking prevention programs for adolescents, CDC plays a critical role by supporting survey, research, policy, and funds. The effectiveness of the programs was high when it was based on school and involved parents, community, and mass media. As the effect of each programme is not expected to last for a long time, consistent repetition of these interventions is essential. Current smoking prevention programs for adolescents are exploring the empowerment approach focused on the active involvement of participants rather than traditional approaches using order and discipline.
Franchising is one of the fastest growing types of business. It is already popular and well-known in the U.S., and has been growing in many other countries including Korea. Furthermore, many Korean franchising companies have expanded their business overseas actively. According to the data by the Ministry of Industry and Resource, 82 companies out of a sample of 500 franchising companies are already operating in many foreign countries and 48% of them have started their foreign business since 2006. This clearly indicates the fast growing current trend of foreign operation by Korean franchising companies. In spite of the fast growing trend of foreign expansion in the industry, academic research on internationalization of franchising companies is extremely difficult to find. Accordingly, academic research on the issue is necessary and urgent in Korea. Among the various research questions on internationalization of franchising business, this study intends to investigate the difference in organizational factors between the franchising companies doing foreign operation and those doing business only domestically. More specifically, this research has the following purposes. First, considering the lack of theoretical basis of previous studies, resource-based theory and agency theory are employed as the theoretical bases. Second, this study explains the difference in internationalization based on organizational factors such as company size, history and growth rate. Third, the five hypotheses regarding the difference in organizational factors are presented and tested empirically, which is the first attempt in the area of this topic. Finally, the study attempts to clarify the conflicting implications among theories regarding some organizational factos such as growth rate. As the theoretical background, resource-based theory and agency theory are discussed. According to resource-based theory, a firm can grow continuously when it has competence and resource, and also the ability to develop them. The competence and resource can include capital, human resource, management skill, market information, ability to manage risk, etc. Meanwhile, agency theory views the relationship between franchisor and franchisee as an agency relationship. In agency theory, bonding capability and monitoring capability are the two key factors which promote internationalization of franchising companies. Based on the two theories, a conceptual model is designed. The model consists of two groups of variables. One is organizational factors including size, history, growth rate, price bonding and geographic dispersion. The other is whether a franchising company is operating overseas or not. We developed the following five research hypotheses basically describing the relationship between organizational factors and internationalization of franchising companies. H1: The size of franchising companies operating overseas is larger than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H2: The history of franchising companies operating overseas is longer than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H3: The growth rate of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H4: The price bonding of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H5: The geographic dispersion of franchising companies operating overseas is wider than that of franchising companies operating domestically. Data for the analyses are obtained from 2005 Korea Franchise Survey data co-generated by Ministry of Industry and Resource, GS1 Korea, and Korea Franchise Association. Out of 2,804 population companies, 2,489 companies are excluded for various reasons and 315 companies are selected as the final sample. Prior to hypotheses tests, validity and reliability of the measures of size, history, growth rate and price bonding are examined for further analyses. Geographic dispersion is not validated since it is measured using nominal data. A series of independent sample T-tests is used to find out whether there exists any significant difference between the companies internationalized and those operating only domestically for each organizational factor. Among the five factors, size and geographic dispersion show significant difference, growth rate and price bonding do not reveal any difference and, finally, history factor shows conflicting results in the difference depending on how to measure it.