• Title/Summary/Keyword: explicit analysis

Search Result 970, Processing Time 0.024 seconds

Comparative Analysis of Anti-Terrorism Act and its Enforcement Ordinance for Counter-Terrorism Activities (대테러 활동을 위한 테러 방지법과 시행령의 비교 분석)

  • Yoon, Hae-Sung
    • Korean Security Journal
    • /
    • no.48
    • /
    • pp.259-285
    • /
    • 2016
  • As the need for anti-terrorism legislation has been continuously argued, Anti-terrorism act has been enacted and enforced. On the other hand, there still remain a lot of points to be discussed regarding the definition of the concept of terrorism, matters of human rights violations, strengthening authority of the investigation and intelligence agencies, and mobilization military forces for the suppression of terrorism. Also, reviewing Anti-terrorism act and its enforcement ordinance draft, this legislation seems to regulate terrorist groups like IS. If so, in the case of terrorism of North Korea or domestic anti-government organizations, whether this law would be applied could become an issue. In the case of terrorism of North Korea, Ministry of National Defense has a right of commandership in the military operations, however, it is also possible to apply the article 4 of Natural Security Act a crime of performing objective-or a crime of foreign exchange on Criminal law as legal grounds for not military terrorisms but general investigations. Therefore, it is necessary to involve consideration about this matter. Furthermore, in the view of investigation, Anti-terrorism act and its enforcement ordinance draft do not mention Supreme Prosecutors Office and Ministry of Justice that conduct investigations. In the case of terrorism, the police and prosecution should conduct to arrest criminals and determine crimes at the investigation stage, however, any explicit article related to this content in Anti-terrorism act and its enforcement ordinance draft was unable to be found. Although Anti-terrorism act is certainly toward preventive aspects, considering some matters such as prevention, actions on the scene, maneuver after terrorism, arresting terrorists, investigation direction, cooperation, and mutual assistance, it is necessary to reflect these contents in Anti-terrorism act. In other words, immediately after terrorists attacks, it is possible to mobilize the military operations by Integrated Defense act in order to arrest them in the case of military terrorism. Nevertheless, because both military terrorism and general one are included in the investigation stage, it needs to begin an investigation under the direction of the prosecution. Therefore, above all, a device for finding out the truth behind the case at the investigation stage is not reflected in the current Anti-terrorism act and its enforcement ordinance draft. Accordingly, if National Intelligence Service approaches information at the prevention level in this situation, it may be necessary to come up with follow-up measures of the police, the prosecution, and military units.

  • PDF

Critical Analyses of '2nd Science Inquiry Experiment Contest' (과학탐구 실험대회의 문제점 분석)

  • Paik, Seoung-Hey
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
    • /
    • v.15 no.2
    • /
    • pp.173-184
    • /
    • 1995
  • The purpose of this study was to analyse the problems of 'Science Inquiry Experiment Contest(SIEC)' which was one of 8 programs of 'The 2nd Student Science Inquiry Olympic Meet(SSIOM)'. The results and conclusions of this study were as follows: 1. It needs to reconsider the role of practical work within science experiment because practical work skills form one of the mainstays in current science. But the assessment of students' laboratory skills in the contest was made little account of. It is necessary to remind of what it means to be 'good at science'. There are two aspects: knowing and doing. Both are important and, in certain respects, quite distinct. Doing science is more of a craft activity, relying more on craft skill and tacit knowledge than on the conscious application of explicit knowledge. Doing science is also divided into two aspects, 'process' and 'skill' by many science educators. 2. The report's and checklist's assessment items were overlapped. Therefore it was suggested that the checklist assessment items were set limit to the students' acts which can't be found in reports. It is important to identify those activities which produce a permanent assessable product, and those which do not. Skills connected with recording and reporting are likely to produce permanent evidence which can be evaluated after the experiment. Those connected with manipulative skills involving processes are more ephemeral and need to be assessed as they occur. The division of student's experimental skills will contribute to the accurate assess of student's scientific inquiry experimental ability. 3. There was a wide difference among the scores of one participant recorded by three evaluators. This means that there was no concrete discussion among the evaluators before the contest. Despite the items of the checklists were set by preparers of the contest experiments, the concrete discussions before the contest were necessary because students' experimental acts were very diverse. There is a variety of scientific skills. So it is necessary to assess the performance of individual students in a range of skills. But the most of the difficulties in the assessment of skills arise from the interaction between measurement and the use. To overcome the difficulties, not only must the mark needed for each skill be recorded, something which all examination groups obviously need, but also a description of the work that the student did when the skill was assessed must also be given, and not all groups need this. Fuller details must also be available for the purposes of moderation. This is a requirement for all students that there must be provision for samples of any end-product or other tangible form of evidence of candidates' work to be submitted for inspection. This is rather important if one is to be as fair as possible to students because, not only can this work be made available to moderators if necessary, but also it can be used to help in arriving at common standards among several evaluators, and in ensuring consistent standards from one evaluator over the assessment period. This need arises because there are problems associated with assessing different students on the same skill in different activities. 4. Most of the students' reports were assessed intuitively by the evaluators despite the assessment items were established concretely by preparers of the experiment. This result means that the evaluators were new to grasp the essence of the established assessment items of the experiment report and that the students' assessment scores were short of objectivity. Lastly, there are suggestions from the results and the conclusions. The students' experimental acts which were difficult to observe because they occur in a flash and which can be easily imitated should be excluded from the assessment items. Evaluators are likely to miss the time to observe the acts, and the students who are assessed later have more opportunity to practise the skill which is being assessed. It is necessary to be aware of these problems and try to reduce their influence or remove them. The skills and processes analysis has made a very useful checklist for scientific inquiry experiment assessment. But in itself it is of little value. It must be seen alongside the other vital attributes needed in the making of a good scientist, the affective aspects of commitment and confidence, the personal insights which come both through formal and informal learning, and the tacit knowledge that comes through experience, both structured and acquired in play. These four aspects must be continually interacting, in a flexible and individualistic way, throughout the scientific education of students. An increasing ability to be good at science, to be good at doing investigational practical work, will be gained through continually, successively, but often unpredictably, developing more experience, developing more insights, developing more skills, and producing more confidence and commitment.

  • PDF

Difference Test of CRM Strategic Factors by university type for building customer strategy of university (대학의 고객경영전략 수립을 위한 대학유형별 CRM 전략 요소의 차별성 분석)

  • Park, Keun;Kim, Hyung-Su;Park, Chan-Wook
    • CRM연구
    • /
    • v.3 no.2
    • /
    • pp.43-68
    • /
    • 2010
  • One of the recent research trends that universities are increasingly adopting the concept of 'customer' and the customer-oriented strategy has urged us to research enterprise-wide CRM strategy adaptable to university administration. As the first step of CRM strategy for university management, we try to validate the difference of CRM strategic factors among university types. Drawing upon both CRM process and customer equity drivers, which have been recognized as core frameworks for CRM strategy, we developed those survey instruments adoptable into university industry, and validated statistically-significant difference among 12 types of university group constructed by the levels of university evaluation and the location of the universities. We collected 261 responses from 177 universities from all over the country and analyzed the data to see the levels of CRM processes consisting of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion, and customer equity drivers consisting of value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity by using multivariate ANOVA(MANOVA). The result confirms the explicit differences of the levels of CRM processes and customer equity drivers between the groups by university evaluation levels(high/middle/low). However, the analysis failed to show the significant differences of those between the group by university locations(the capital/the suburbs/the six megalopolises/other countries). More specifically, the level of activities for customer acquisition and retention of the universities in the higher-graded group are significantly different from those in the lower-graded group from the perspective of CRM process. In terms of customer equity drivers, the levels of both brand equity and relationship equity of the higher-graded group are significantly higher than those of both middle and lower-graded group. In addition, we found that the value equity between the higher and lower-graded groups, and the brand equity between the middle and lower-graded groups are different each other. This study provides an important meaning in that we tried to consider CRM strategy which has been mainly addressed in profit-making industries in terms of non-profit organization context. Our endeavors to develop and validate empirical measurements adoptable to university context could be an academic contribution. In terms of practical meaning, the processes and results of this study might be a guideline to many universities to build their own CRM strategies. According to the research results, those insights could be expressed in several messages. First, we propose to universities that they should plan their own differentiated CRM strategies according to their positions in terms of university evaluation. For example, although it is acceptable that a university in lower-level group might follow the CRM process strategy of the middle-level group universities, it is not a good idea to imitate the customer acquisition and retention activities of the higher-level group universities. Moreover, since this study reported that the level of universities' brand equity is just correlated with the level of university evaluation, it might be pointless for the middle or lower-leveled universities if they just copy their brand equity strategies from those of higher-leveled ones even though such activities are seemingly attractive. Meanwhile, the difference of CRM strategy by university position might provide universities with the direction where they should go for their CRM strategies. For instance, our study implies that the lower-positioned universities should improve all of the customer equity drivers with concerted efforts because their value, brand, and relationship equities are inferior compared with the higher and middle-positioned universities' ones. This also means that they should focus on customer acquisition and expansion initiatives rather than those for customer retention because all of the customer equity drivers could be influenced by the two kinds of CRM processes (KIm and Lee, 2010). Surely specific and detailed action plans for enhancing customer equity drivers should be developed after grasping their customer migration patterns illustrated by the rates of acquisition, retention, upgrade, downgrade, and defection for each customer segment.

  • PDF

Membership Fluidity and Knowledge Collaboration in Virtual Communities: A Multilateral Approach to Membership Fluidity (가상 커뮤니티의 멤버 유동성과 지식 협업: 멤버 유동성에 대한 다각적 접근)

  • Park, Hyun-jung;Shin, Kyung-shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.21 no.2
    • /
    • pp.19-47
    • /
    • 2015
  • In this era of knowledge economy, a variety of virtual communities are proliferating for the purpose of knowledge creation and utilization. Since the voluntary contributions of members are the essential source of knowledge, member turnover can have significant implications on the survival and success of virtual communities. However, there is a dearth of research on the effect of membership turnover and even the method of measurement for membership turnover is left unclear in virtual communities. In a traditional context, membership turnover is calculated as the ratio of the number of departing members to the average number of members for a given time period. In virtual communities, while the influx of newcomers can be clearly measured, the magnitude of departure is elusive since explicit withdrawals are seldom executed. In addition, there doesn't exist a common way to determine the average number of community members who return and contribute intermittently at will. This study initially examines the limitations in applying the concept of traditional turnover to virtual communities, and proposes five membership fluidity measures based on a preliminary analysis of editing behaviors of 2,978 featured articles in English Wikipedia. Subsequently, this work investigates the relationships between three selected membership fluidity measures and group collaboration performance, reflecting a moderating effect dependent on work characteristic. We obtained the following results: First, membership turnover relates to collaboration efficiency in a right-shortened U-shaped manner, with a moderating effect from work characteristic; given the same turnover rate, the promotion likelihood for a more professional task is lower than that for a less professional task, and the likelihood difference diminishes as the turnover rate increases. Second, contribution period relates to collaboration efficiency in a left-shortened U-shaped manner, with a moderating effect from work characteristic; the marginal performance change per unit change of contribution period is greater for a less professional task. Third, the number of new participants per month relates to collaboration efficiency in a left-shortened reversed U-shaped manner, for which the moderating effect from work characteristic appears to be insignificant.

Evaluating Impact Resistance of Externally Strengthened Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete Slab with Fiber Reinforced Polymers (섬유 보강재로 외부 보강된 강섬유 보강 콘크리트 슬래브의 충격저항성능 평가)

  • Yoo, Doo-Yeol;Min, Kyung-Hwan;Lee, Jin-Young;Yoon, Young-Soo
    • Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
    • /
    • v.24 no.3
    • /
    • pp.293-303
    • /
    • 2012
  • Recently, as construction technology improved, concrete structures not only became larger, taller and longer but were able to perform various functions. However, if extreme loads such as impact, blast, and fire are applied to those structures, it would cause severe property damages and human casualties. Especially, the structural responses from extreme loading are totally different than that from quasi-static loading, because large pressure is applied to structures from mass acceleration effect of impact and blast loads. Therefore, the strain rate effect and damage levels should be considered when concrete structure is designed. In this study, the low velocity impact loading test of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) slabs including 0%~1.5% (by volume) of steel fibers, and strengthened with two types of FRP sheets was performed to develop an impact resistant structural member. From the test results, the maximum impact load, dissipated energy and the number of drop to failure increased, whereas the maximum displacement and support rotation were reduced by strengthening SFRC slab with FRP sheets in tensile zone. The test results showed that the impact resistance of concrete slab can be substantially improved by externally strengthening using FRP sheets. This result can be used in designing of primary facilities exposed to such extreme loads. The dynamic responses of SFRC slab strengthened with FRP sheets under low velocity impact load were also analyzed using LS-DYNA, a finite element analysis program with an explicit time integration scheme. The comparison of test and analytical results showed that they were within 5% of error with respect to maximum displacements.

Case Study of Teaching Practices of Biology Teachers with and without Research Experience in Evolution Education (진화 교육 연구 경험 유무에 따른 생명과학 교사의 교수 실행 사례 연구)

  • Ko, Yuseon;Cha, Heeyoung;Lim, Mili
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
    • /
    • v.37 no.4
    • /
    • pp.747-761
    • /
    • 2017
  • The purpose of this study is to analyze differences in the teaching practices of biology teachers according to their awareness of the importance of evolution. For this purpose, two teachers who experienced study of evolution and recognized its importance, along with two teachers with no experience in evolution education in the comparison group, were included in the sample. To observe teaching practices, two classes each on biological evolution and non-evolution were selected, recorded and transcribed. The content analyzed included the teachers' view on evolution education and teachers' evolution concepts reflected in teaching practice. As a result, the level of understanding of the teachers' evolution concept was unrelated to teachers' awareness of the importance of evolution. Instead, each teacher would not feel the need for religious beliefs or awareness of the importance of evolution to have a negative impact on the awareness of the importance of evolution. Inexperienced teachers tend to reject the retraining opportunities to recognize the importance of evolution. In addition, inexperienced teachers were only superficially aware of the evaluation and improvement of evolution presented in textbooks and curricula. In actual teaching practice analysis, inexperienced teachers' utilizing ratio of the evolution key concept was higher than that of experienced teachers. Only experienced teachers were aware of the misconceptions presented in their execution and described the causes that appear in these misconceptions. Teachers who recognized the importance of evolution were widely using the key concepts of evolution, as well as more practical in preventing the misconceptions related to evolution forms. It indicates that biology teachers who do not realize the importance of evolution in biology education need to experience explicit and practical education programs as well as instructional materials on evolution.

A Study on the Cubism - In it's relation to Bergsonian Philosophy and Simultaneity - (큐비즘에 관한 연구 - 베르그송 철학과 동시성 개념을 중심으로 -)

  • Ryu, Ji-Seok;Oh, Chan-Ohk
    • Archives of design research
    • /
    • v.18 no.3 s.61
    • /
    • pp.117-128
    • /
    • 2005
  • The French Belle Epoque is a period where the literary and artistic movement was very activated. The birth of the cubism reflects this atmosphere of the times and the change of paradigm in all fields. The Bergsonism is often designated as one of the important backgrounds of cubism. The problem consists in knowing if Bergsonian ideas gave real influence on the cubist movement and up to what point. Our analysis will show that it is not homogenous and very variable according to painters. In the case of Picasso and Braques it seems be a simple inspiration of Zeitgeist. But the influence upon Metzinger and Gleizes is explicit. The text of 1912, Du cubism, prove their attachment to his thought. The key concept of cubist theory, influenced by Bergsonian philosophy, is the concept of simultaneity. Cubist simultaneity is in one hand a reflection of an artist's psychological experience and the other hand a synthesis of multiple views for grasping the object in itself by the way of conceptual representation. The temporal simultaneity could be identified with the notion of memory, which is a temporal continuity connecting the past to dynamic present. The spatial simultaneity is a juxtaposition of multiple views obtained by the movement around the object. But the dose reading of Bergson's text shows that there is a divergence between the notion of cubist simultaneity and his ideas. The biased interpretation is often, as well as the strict understanding, like the history shows us well, a great source of inspiration and creativity. The cubist mouvement is not far from this case.

  • PDF

Types of Scenic Sites of State-Designated Cultural Property and Relationship between Pal-Kyung and Doncheon-Gugok (국가 지정 문화재 '명승'의 유형과 팔경(八景), 동천구곡(洞天九曲)과의 연관성)

  • Rho, Jae Hyun;Shin, Sang Sup
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
    • /
    • v.43 no.1
    • /
    • pp.128-159
    • /
    • 2010
  • In this study, the progress of domestic cultural properties designation, the changes and problems in classification were examined, and the relationship among Traditional Pal-kyung, Dongcheon-gukok, and Modern Pal-kyung were investigated targeting total of 68 cases of state-designated cultural properties of scenic sites in order to show that the traditional significance and value are being inherited today. The major results of this study are as follows. First, increase in scenic site designations with historical, cultural, and scenic characteristics can be viewed as an active intent to embrace the concepts such as cultural utilities, historical characteristics, literary value, and ideological backgrounds, which were specified as the basis for designation in the early Cultural Property Protection Law. Accordingly, it is very encouraging that the concept of cultural attractions such as traditional gardens and observatory points are regarded as an important standard for designation of scenic sites. Second, as for the classification of scenic sites per type, it was found that 'places with excellent natural scenery' were 44.16%(30 cases), followed by 'famous buildings or gardens and places with important legend' occupying 30.9%(21 cases), 'places with famous scenery' occupying 13.2%(9 cases), 'places with outstanding historical cultural and scenic value' that occupying 10.3%(7 cases), and 'animal and vegetation habitat with beautiful scenery' (1 case). Third, according to the current classification standards for scenic sites, there were only 7 cases which could be classified into Pal-kyungs(Famous 8 Sceneries) and 3 cases classified into Dongcheon(beautiful scenery surrounded by mountains and rivers), but there was no Gugok(beautiful valleys). Consequently, in terms of external appearance, the scenic sites among the total scenic sites that could be classified into Palkyung and Gugok were only 14.7%(10 cases). Fourth, the traditional scenic sites based on literal references and Internet analysis occupied 67.7%(46 cases), which were found to be scenic sites related to the traditional Pal-kyung among which 38 cases(55.9% of 46 cases) were included based on the scenery and 8 cases(11.8% of 46 cases) were included due to the scenery at the time. Fifth, there were 8(11.8%) scenic sites which were related to Dongcheon, and 4 cases(5.9%) related to Gugok. Also, it was found that total of 40(48.9%) scenic sites designated as modern scenic sites were playing the role of local scenic sites, and they were used as the tourism advertising contents. Sixth, it was identified that there were 62 cases(91.2%) of scenic sites in total related to traditional and modern Pal-kyung or Dongcheon-gugok, and unlike explicit classifications, most of the designated scenic sites were found to be deeply connected with the historical and cultural significance contained in the scenaries.

A Store Recommendation Procedure in Ubiquitous Market for User Privacy (U-마켓에서의 사용자 정보보호를 위한 매장 추천방법)

  • Kim, Jae-Kyeong;Chae, Kyung-Hee;Gu, Ja-Chul
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.18 no.3
    • /
    • pp.123-145
    • /
    • 2008
  • Recently, as the information communication technology develops, the discussion regarding the ubiquitous environment is occurring in diverse perspectives. Ubiquitous environment is an environment that could transfer data through networks regardless of the physical space, virtual space, time or location. In order to realize the ubiquitous environment, the Pervasive Sensing technology that enables the recognition of users' data without the border between physical and virtual space is required. In addition, the latest and diversified technologies such as Context-Awareness technology are necessary to construct the context around the user by sharing the data accessed through the Pervasive Sensing technology and linkage technology that is to prevent information loss through the wired, wireless networking and database. Especially, Pervasive Sensing technology is taken as an essential technology that enables user oriented services by recognizing the needs of the users even before the users inquire. There are lots of characteristics of ubiquitous environment through the technologies mentioned above such as ubiquity, abundance of data, mutuality, high information density, individualization and customization. Among them, information density directs the accessible amount and quality of the information and it is stored in bulk with ensured quality through Pervasive Sensing technology. Using this, in the companies, the personalized contents(or information) providing became possible for a target customer. Most of all, there are an increasing number of researches with respect to recommender systems that provide what customers need even when the customers do not explicitly ask something for their needs. Recommender systems are well renowned for its affirmative effect that enlarges the selling opportunities and reduces the searching cost of customers since it finds and provides information according to the customers' traits and preference in advance, in a commerce environment. Recommender systems have proved its usability through several methodologies and experiments conducted upon many different fields from the mid-1990s. Most of the researches related with the recommender systems until now take the products or information of internet or mobile context as its object, but there is not enough research concerned with recommending adequate store to customers in a ubiquitous environment. It is possible to track customers' behaviors in a ubiquitous environment, the same way it is implemented in an online market space even when customers are purchasing in an offline marketplace. Unlike existing internet space, in ubiquitous environment, the interest toward the stores is increasing that provides information according to the traffic line of the customers. In other words, the same product can be purchased in several different stores and the preferred store can be different from the customers by personal preference such as traffic line between stores, location, atmosphere, quality, and price. Krulwich(1997) has developed Lifestyle Finder which recommends a product and a store by using the demographical information and purchasing information generated in the internet commerce. Also, Fano(1998) has created a Shopper's Eye which is an information proving system. The information regarding the closest store from the customers' present location is shown when the customer has sent a to-buy list, Sadeh(2003) developed MyCampus that recommends appropriate information and a store in accordance with the schedule saved in a customers' mobile. Moreover, Keegan and O'Hare(2004) came up with EasiShop that provides the suitable tore information including price, after service, and accessibility after analyzing the to-buy list and the current location of customers. However, Krulwich(1997) does not indicate the characteristics of physical space based on the online commerce context and Keegan and O'Hare(2004) only provides information about store related to a product, while Fano(1998) does not fully consider the relationship between the preference toward the stores and the store itself. The most recent research by Sedah(2003), experimented on campus by suggesting recommender systems that reflect situation and preference information besides the characteristics of the physical space. Yet, there is a potential problem since the researches are based on location and preference information of customers which is connected to the invasion of privacy. The primary beginning point of controversy is an invasion of privacy and individual information in a ubiquitous environment according to researches conducted by Al-Muhtadi(2002), Beresford and Stajano(2003), and Ren(2006). Additionally, individuals want to be left anonymous to protect their own personal information, mentioned in Srivastava(2000). Therefore, in this paper, we suggest a methodology to recommend stores in U-market on the basis of ubiquitous environment not using personal information in order to protect individual information and privacy. The main idea behind our suggested methodology is based on Feature Matrices model (FM model, Shahabi and Banaei-Kashani, 2003) that uses clusters of customers' similar transaction data, which is similar to the Collaborative Filtering. However unlike Collaborative Filtering, this methodology overcomes the problems of personal information and privacy since it is not aware of the customer, exactly who they are, The methodology is compared with single trait model(vector model) such as visitor logs, while looking at the actual improvements of the recommendation when the context information is used. It is not easy to find real U-market data, so we experimented with factual data from a real department store with context information. The recommendation procedure of U-market proposed in this paper is divided into four major phases. First phase is collecting and preprocessing data for analysis of shopping patterns of customers. The traits of shopping patterns are expressed as feature matrices of N dimension. On second phase, the similar shopping patterns are grouped into clusters and the representative pattern of each cluster is derived. The distance between shopping patterns is calculated by Projected Pure Euclidean Distance (Shahabi and Banaei-Kashani, 2003). Third phase finds a representative pattern that is similar to a target customer, and at the same time, the shopping information of the customer is traced and saved dynamically. Fourth, the next store is recommended based on the physical distance between stores of representative patterns and the present location of target customer. In this research, we have evaluated the accuracy of recommendation method based on a factual data derived from a department store. There are technological difficulties of tracking on a real-time basis so we extracted purchasing related information and we added on context information on each transaction. As a result, recommendation based on FM model that applies purchasing and context information is more stable and accurate compared to that of vector model. Additionally, we could find more precise recommendation result as more shopping information is accumulated. Realistically, because of the limitation of ubiquitous environment realization, we were not able to reflect on all different kinds of context but more explicit analysis is expected to be attainable in the future after practical system is embodied.

Business Relationships and Structural Bonding: A Study of American Metal Industry (산업재 거래관계와 구조적 결합: 미국 금속산업의 분석 연구)

  • Han, Sang-Lin;Kim, Yun-Tae;Oh, Chang-Yeob;Chung, Jae-Moon
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.18 no.3
    • /
    • pp.115-132
    • /
    • 2008
  • Metal industry is one of the most representative heavy industries and the median sales volume of steel and nonferrous metal companies is over one billion dollars in the case America [Forbes 2006]. As seen in the recent business market situation, an increasing number of industrial manufacturers and suppliers are moving from adversarial to cooperative exchange attitudes that support the long-term relationships with their customers. This article presents the results of an empirical study of the antecedent factors of business relationships in metal industry of the United States. Commitment has been reviewed as a significant and critical variable in research on inter-organizational relationships (Hong et al. 2007, Kim et al. 2007). The future stability of any buyer-seller relationship depends upon the commitment made by the interactants to their relationship. Commitment, according to Dwyer et al. [1987], refers to "an implicit or explicit pledge of relational continuity between exchange partners" and they consider commitment to be the most advanced phase of buyer-seller exchange relationship. Bonds are made because the members need their partners in order to do something and this integration on a task basis can be either symbiotic or cooperative (Svensson 2008). To the extent that members seek the same or mutually supporting ends, there will be strong bonds among them. In other words, the principle that affects the strength of bonds is 'economy of decision making' [Turner 1970]. These bonds provide an important idea to study the causes of business long-term relationships in a sense that organizations can be mutually bonded by a common interest in the economic matters. Recently, the framework of structural bonding has been used to study the buyer-seller relationships in industrial marketing [Han and Sung 2008, Williams et al. 1998, Wilson 1995] in that this structural bonding is a crucial part of the theoretical justification for distinguishing discrete transactions from ongoing long-term relationships. The major antecedent factors of buyer commitment such as technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance were identified and explored from the perspective of structural bonding. Research hypotheses were developed and tested by using survey data from the middle managers in the metal industry. H1: Level of technology of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H2: Comparison level of alternatives is negatively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H3: Amount of the transaction-specific assets is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H4: Importance of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H5: Level of structural bonding is positively related to the level of commitment to the relationship. To examine the major antecedent factors of industrial buyer's structural bonding and long-term relationship, questionnaire was prepared, mailed out to the sample of 400 purchasing managers of the US metal industry (SIC codes 33 and 34). After a follow-up request, 139 informants returnedthe questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 35 percent. 134 responses were used in the final analysis after dropping 5 incomplete questionnaires. All measures were analyzed for reliability and validity following the guidelines offered by Churchill [1979] and Anderson and Gerbing [1988]., the results of fitting the model to the data indicated that the hypothesized model provides a good fit to the data. Goodness-of-fit index (GFI = 0.94) and other indices ( chi-square = 78.02 with p-value = 0.13, Adjusted GFI = 0.90, Normed Fit Index = 0.92) indicated that a major proportion of variances and covariances in the data was accounted for by the model as a whole, and all the parameter estimates showed statistical significance as evidenced by large t-values. All the factor loadings were significantly different from zero. On these grounds we judged the hypothesized model to be a reasonable representation of the data. The results from the present study suggest several implications for buyer-seller relationships. Theoretically, we attempted to conceptualize the antecedent factors of buyer-seller long-term relationships from the perspective of structural bondingin metal industry. The four underlying determinants (i.e. technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance) of structural bonding are very critical variables of buyer-seller long-term business relationships. Our model of structural bonding makes an attempt to systematically examine the relationship between the antecedent factors of structural bonding and long-term commitment. Managerially, this research provides industrial purchasing managers with a good framework to assess the interaction processes with their partners and, ability to position their business relationships from the perspective of structural bonding. In other words, based on those underlying variables, industrial purchasing managers can determine the strength of the company's relationships with the key suppliers and its state of preparation to be a successful partner with those suppliers. Both the supplying and customer companies can also benefit by using the concept of 'structural bonding' and evaluating their relationships with key business partners from the structural point of view. In general, the results indicate that structural bonding gives a critical impact on the level of relationship commitment. Managerial implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.

  • PDF