• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

The paper discusses how the new EU Strategy towards Central Asia issued in May 2019 might be analyzed through the lens of the intensely debated transformations from the liberal to a post-liberal international order. The author claims that the EU's normative power is transforming from the post-Cold War predominantly liberal/ value-based approach, with democracy and human rights at its core, to a set of more technical tools and principles of good governance and effective management of public administration. The paper problematizes a nexus between the dynamics of the EU's nascent post-liberalism and the geopolitical challenges of the EU's growing engagement with illiberal regimes, focuses on direct encounters between the post-liberal EU and the illiberal elites in Central Asia, and seeks to find out the impact of these connections upon the EU's international subjectivity. In this context geopolitical dimensions of EU foreign and security policies, along with the specificity of the EU's geopolitical actorship in Central Asia, are discussed.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.121-152
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• 2020

The article is a critical examination of the political developments in Armenia since the 'Velvet Revolution' of April-May 2018, when, on the wave of massive protests against the ruling regime, new young forces came to power raising amongst broad segments of population enormous enthusiasm and hopes about radical reforms that would lead to profound transformations in the political and socio-economic spheres. It contains a thorough analysis of underlying political processes in the country in an attempt to answer a number of topical questions, so important to get a deeper understanding of the situation in Armenia and in the South Caucasus region. Based on the analysis of the new authorities' performance against the acknowledged benchmarks and standards of democracy consolidation, such as: separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, good governance, transitional justice the author comes to the conclusion that they failed to achieve any breakthrough in the above-mentioned fields. On the contrary, as demonstrated by concrete examples, what occurred in Armenia was not a revolution but a mere regime change under the leadership of Prime Minister Pashinyan, who gradually has concentrated in his hands executive, legislative, and quasi-totality of the judicial branch of power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.3-3
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• 2017

The question of how to establish sustainable agricultural systems has become as prominent as questions related to water, energy and climate change. High input/high output agriculture has brought with it many adverse effects; the massive deterioration of soil and water in both quantity and quality, increased greenhouse gas emissions and an increased prevalence of unsafe foods. Additionally, urbanization and climate change has worsened the shortage of farmland and reduced the supply of agricultural water. Given these challenges, maintaining, conserving and efficiently using agri-environmental resources, through fostering of sustainable agriculture, have emerged as key tasks in solving these problems. What is needed therefore is research, based on systematic and comprehensive empirical analyses, that can propose plans and methods for establishing an appropriate sustainable agricultural system. The empirical analysis of sustainable agricultural system is approached separately from economic, environmental and social aspects. An analysis of environment effect reveals that the available phosphate level is 1.3~2.1 times greater than the optimal amount in rice paddies, upland fields and orchards. Further examination has revealed that the excess nutrient is polluting both ground water and surface water. Analytical results for economic feasibility show that factors of production have been invested heavily in the rice crop. Under these conditions, sustainable agriculture, including low-input agriculture, appears to be a possible alternative that will facilitate simultaneous improvements in both economic feasibility and environment effects. Analysis results for sociality reveal that social factors include the value of producer, association and interior networks. Social conditions are comprised of leadership, consumers' awareness, education and conflict solutions. In addition, analysis as to the degree investments contribute to improving agricultural value added has revealed that the direct payment program is the most effective instrument. Experts confirm that economic feasibility can be improved by scientific and well-reasoned nutrient management on the basis of soil testing. Farmers pointed to 'economic factors' as being the largest obstacle to switching to the practice of sustainable agriculture. They also indicate 'uncertainty with regards to sustainable agriculture technology' as an impediment to practicing sustainable agriculture. Even so, farmers who believe environmental and regional issues to be the most pressing problems have expanded their practice of sustainable agriculture. The keys to establishing sustainable agriculture system are classified into the following four aspects. Firstly, from an economic aspect, the research indicates that agricultural policy needs to be integrated with environmental policy and that the function of market making based on the value chain needs to be revitalized. Secondly, from an environmental aspect, there is a need for an optimal resource management system to be established in the agricultural sector. In addition, sustainable agriculture practice will need to be extended with attendant environmentally-friendly and sustainable intensive technology also requiring further development. Thirdly, from a social aspect, green agriculture management needs to be fostered, technology and education extended, and social conflict mediated. Lastly, from a governance aspect, it will be necessary to strengthen good governance, assign and share suitable roles and responsibilities, build a cooperation system and utilize community supported agriculture.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.317-340
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• 2023

In a business context, ESG is defined as the use of environmental, social, and governance factors to assess a firm's progress in terms of sustainability. Social media has enabled the public to actively share firms' good and/or bad deeds, increasing public interest in ESG management. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association of firm performances with the respective sentiments towards each of environmental, social, and governance activities, as well as comprehensive ESG sentiments, which encompass all environmental, social, and governance sentiments. This study used panel regression models to examine the relationship between social media ESG sentiment and the Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) of 143 companies listed on the KOSPI 200. We collected data from 2018 to 2021, including sentiment data from a variety of social media channels, such as online communities, Instagram, blogs, Twitter, and other news. The results indicated that firm performance is significantly related to respective ESG and comprehensive ESG sentiments. This study has several implications. By using data from various social media channels, it presents an unbiased view of public ESG sentiment, rather than relying on ESG ratings, which may be influenced by rating agencies. Furthermore, the findings can be used to help firms determine the direction of their ESG management. Therefore, this study provides theoretical and practical insights for researchers and firms interested in ESG management.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.11-33
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• 2010

The majority of graphs and visuals made publicly available by Thai listed companies tend to be disjointed and minimal. Only a little over fifty percent of the total 478 companies included graphic representations of their business operations and performance in the form of two or three dimensional spreadsheet based graphs in their annual reports, investor relations documents, websites and so on. For novice users, these visual representations are unlikely to give the big picture of what is the company's financial position and performance. Neither will they tell where the company stands in its own operating environment. The existing graphics and visuals, in very rare cases, can provide a sense of the company's future outlook. For boundary users such as audit committees whose duty is to promote good governance through transparency and disclosure, preliminary interview results show that there is some doubt as to whether the inclusion of big-picture visuals can really be of use to minority shareholders. These boundary users expect to see more insightful visuals beyond those produced by traditional spreadsheets which will enable them to learn to cope with the on-going turbulence in today's business environment more quickly. However, the debate is still going on as to where to draw the line between internal or external reporting visuals.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.44-58
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to prove the Korean Internet company, Kakao's resilience capacity. For it, this paper reviews the previous literatures regarding Kakao's business models and discusses 'resilience' theory. Then, it organizes the research questions based on the theoretical background and explains the research methodology. It investigates the case of Kakao's business and organization. The case analysis shows that five levers of resilience are a good indicator for a successful platform business evolution. The five levers are composed of coordination, cooperation, clout, capability, and connection: First lever, coordination that makes the company to restructure its silo governance in order to respond to actual business flow starting from the basic asset like game and music content; second lever, cooperation where the firm provides creative people with playground for startups such as KakaoPage; third lever, clout where the company shares its data by opening its API of AI and chatbot to $3^{rd}$ party developers; fourth lever, capability where the firm establishes AI R&D center, KakaoBrain as the function of multi-domain generalist for developing diverse platforms tackling customer needs; and the last fifth lever, connection where the firm continues to expand its platform business to the peripheries, O2O businesses such as KakaoTaxi, KakaoOrder, KakaoPay, and KakaoBank. In conclusion, this study proposes Internet companies to be a resilient platform utilizing those five levers of resilience in order to form successful platform. This study contributes to the agile innovation of Internet platform with ecological sense.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.43-52
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• 2020

The paper investigates the mechanism through which corporate credit ratings affect dividend payments by decomposing the mean difference of dividends into a part that is explained by the determinants of dividends and a residual part that is contributed by the pure credit group effect, in the framework of the traditional dividend model of Fama and French (2001). Historically, better credit rated firms have shown consistently higher propensity to pay dividends especially during the economic crisis period. According to the counter-factual decomposition technique of Jann (2008), better rated firms are more responsive to the firm characteristics that have positive impact on dividends and poor rated firms are more responsive to the negative dividend predictors. As a result, good (bad) credit ratings make corporate managers become more bold (timid) in their dividend payments and they tend to pay more (less) dividends than what their firm characteristics prescribe. The degree of information asymmetry increases for the poor group firms during crisis periods and they attempt to reserve more cash in preparation for future investments. The decomposition results suggest that the credit group effect can potentially exceed the effect of firm characteristics because firms of different credit ratings can respond to the very same firm characteristics in a different manner.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.10
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• pp.629-639
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• 2020

The current study explains how corruption, terrorism, political stability and oil price has an effect on on the Iraq stock exchange utilizing corruption perception index as a proxy of corruption, global terrorism index as proxy for terrorism, political stability and oil price with ISX60 index as proxy of stock market for the period (2005-2019) using Ordinary Least Square method. The results show that the level of corruption, terrorism activities and political stability coefficient is significantly positive with Iraq stock exchange. In contrast, the oil price coefficient is significantly negative with Iraq stock exchange, which means that lower levels of corruption, less terrorism activities and more stability in political system have strong influence on stock market development in Iraq. The study concludes that the explanatory variables are important for Iraq stock exchange. Hence, the study suggests the policy makers to develop stock market by implementing policies and strategies to overcome high level of corruption, terrorism activities especially after ISIS/ISIL announcement has been made public. There is a need for transparency and creating stable political environment through good governance practices in order to attract more foreign investment and promote economic development. Factors like terrorism and corruption make economic and political systems unstable and has an adverse effect on on Iraq's stock exchange performance.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.163-178
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• 2015

This paper specifically delineated the methodological application of constructivism in smart tourism studies. It explained what constructivism is and how this methodology could be applied in the study of smart tourism. In this study, residents of Seoul participated in constructivist research using the Q method to identify their subjectivities toward Seoul based on photographs most commonly found in tourism promotional material. Residents are concerned with good governance and cultural integrity, and they are aware of their role as stakeholders in tourism in their communities. However their potential contribution to destination image formation has been usually overlooked by researchers and marketers. Three clusters of subjectivities were revealed after 42 photographs of Seoul were sorted by 37 respondents. The results show how respondents perceived Seoul's destination image. The three clusters agreed that symbolic monuments were the key representations of Seoul. The paper recommends that tourism marketers and policy makers should focus on understanding and coordinating with residents' perceived image of Seoul as a destination when planning and decision making, especially in promoting Seoul as a destination market. This study, in conjunction with other constructivist research offers insight into how destination image is, especially with the rise of smart tourism, a complex social construction.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.111-125
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• 2022

The general view of the division of affiliates of many large corporations is a reorganization of the governance structure, and the smooth division of affiliates is often well wrapped up in a beautiful breakup. However, the parties to the breakup are not only the owners of the company, but all employees as well. Separation of the owner family can be done with joy and good feelings, because they are separated according to the will of the owner family, and each becomes the owner of the company. As Commitment decreases and turnover behavior appears, it is necessary to take a strategic approach to members, along with consideration. This study looked into the recent separation of LG Group's affiliates based on this point of view. To this end, we focused on the case of LX Hausys of LX Group, which was separated from LG Group. To this end, through a meeting with the person in charge of LX Hausys, the company's response to the division was investigated, and FGI was conducted for retired and current members. As a result, it was confirmed through the person in charge that no appropriate measures were taken due to the separation of the company. Through FGI with the retirees and incumbents, the psychological resistance of the members and the decrease in organizational commitment and the increase in turnover intention was confirm.