• Title/Summary/Keyword: human influence

Search Result 2,942, Processing Time 0.035 seconds

An Empirical Study in Relationship between Franchisor's Leadership Behavior Style and Commitment by Focusing Moderating Effect of Franchisee's Self-efficacy (가맹본부의 리더십 행동유형과 가맹사업자의 관계결속에 관한 실증적 연구 - 가맹사업자의 자기효능감의 조절효과를 중심으로 -)

  • Yang, Hoe-Chang;Lee, Young-Chul
    • Journal of Distribution Research
    • /
    • v.15 no.1
    • /
    • pp.49-71
    • /
    • 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.

  • PDF

A Study on Startups' Dependence on Business Incubation Centers (창업보육서비스에 따른 입주기업의 창업보육센터 의존도에 관한 연구)

  • Park, JaeSung;Lee, Chul;Kim, JaeJon
    • Korean small business review
    • /
    • v.31 no.2
    • /
    • pp.103-120
    • /
    • 2009
  • As business incubation centers (BICs) have been operating for more than 10 years in Korea, many early stage startups tend to use the services provided by the incubating centers. BICs in Korea have accumulated the knowledge and experience in the past ten years and their services have been considerably improved. The business incubating service has three facets : (1) business infrastructure service, (2) direct service, and (3) indirect service. The mission of BICs is to provide the early stage entrepreneurs with the incubating service in a limited period time to help them grow strong enough to survive the fierce competition after graduating from the incubation. However, the incubating services sometimes fail to foster the independence of new startup companies, and raise the dependence of many companies on BICs. Thus, the dependence on BICs is a very important factor to understand the survival of the incubated startup companies after graduation from BICs. The purpose of this study is to identify the main factors that influence the firm's dependence on BICs and to characterize the relationships among the identified factors. The business incubating service is a core construct of this study. It includes various activities and resources, such as offering the physical facilities, legal service, and connecting them with outside organizations. These services are extensive and take various forms. They are provided by BICs directly or indirectly. Past studies have identified various incubating services and classify them in different ways. Based on the past studies, we classify the business incubating service into three categories as mentioned above : (1) business infrastructure support, (2) direct support, and (3) networking support. The business infrastructure support is to provide the essential resources to start the business, such as physical facilities. The direct support is to offer the business resources available in the BICs, such as human, technical, and administrational resources. Finally, the indirect service was to support the resource in the outside of business incubation center. Dependence is generally defined as the degree to which a client firm needs the resources provided by the service provider in order to achieve its goals. Dependence is generated when a firm recognizes the benefits of interacting with its counterpart. Hence, the more positive outcomes a firm derives from its relationship with the partner, the more dependent on the partner the firm must inevitably become. In business incubating, as a resident firm is incubated in longer period, we can predict that her dependence on BICs would be stronger. In order to foster the independence of the incubated firms, BICs have to be able to manipulate the provision of their services to control the firms' dependence on BICs. Based on the above discussion, the research model for relationships between dependence and its affecting factors was developed. We surveyed the companies residing in BICs to test our research model. The instrument of our study was modified, in part, on the basis of previous relevant studies. For the purposes of testing reliability and validity, preliminary testing was conducted with firms that were residing in BICs and incubated by the BICs in the region of Gwangju and Jeonnam. The questionnaire was modified in accordance with the pre-test feedback. We mailed to all of the firms that had been incubated by the BICs with the help of business incubating managers of each BIC. The survey was conducted over a three week period. Gifts (of approximately ₩10,000 value) were offered to all actively participating respondents. The incubating period was reported by the business incubating managers, and it was transformed using natural logarithms. A total of 180 firms participated in the survey. However, we excluded 4 cases due to a lack of consistency using reversed items in the answers of the companies, and 176 cases were used for the analysis. We acknowledge that 176 samples may not be sufficient to conduct regression analyses with 5 research variables in our study. Each variable was measured through multiple items. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis to assess their unidimensionality. In an effort to test the construct validity of the instruments, a principal component factor analysis was conducted with Varimax rotation. The items correspond well to each singular factor, demonstrating a high degree of convergent validity. As the factor loadings for a variable (or factor) are higher than the factor loadings for the other variables, the instrument's discriminant validity is shown to be clear. Each factor was extracted as expected, which explained 70.97, 66.321, and 52.97 percent, respectively, of the total variance each with eigen values greater than 1.000. The internal consistency reliability of the variables was evaluated by computing Cronbach's alphas. The Cronbach's alpha values of the variables, which ranged from 0.717 to 0.950, were all securely over 0.700, which is satisfactory. The reliability and validity of the research variables are all, therefore, considered acceptable. The effects of dependence were assessed using a regression analysis. The Pearson correlations were calculated for the variables, measured by interval or ratio scales. Potential multicollinearity among the antecedents was evaluated prior to the multiple regression analysis, as some of the variables were significantly correlated with others (e.g., direct service and indirect service). Although several variables show the evidence of significant correlations, their tolerance values range between 0.334 and 0.613, thereby demonstrating that multicollinearity is not a likely threat to the parameter estimates. Checking some basic assumptions for the regression analyses, we decided to conduct multiple regression analyses and moderated regression analyses to test the given hypotheses. The results of the regression analyses indicate that the regression model is significant at p < 0.001 (F = 44.260), and that the predictors of the research model explain 42.6 percent of the total variance. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 address the relationships between the dependence of the incubated firms and the business incubating services. Business infrastructure service, direct service, and indirect service are all significantly related with dependence (β = 0.300, p < 0.001; β = 0.230, p < 0.001; β = 0.226, p < 0.001), thus supporting Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3. When the incubating period is the moderator and dependence is the dependent variable, the addition of the interaction terms with the antecedents to the regression equation yielded a significant increase in R2 (F change = 2.789, p < 0.05). In particular, direct service and indirect service exert different effects on dependence. Hence, the results support Hypotheses 5 and 6. This study provides several strategies and specific calls to action for BICs, based on our empirical findings. Business infrastructure service has more effect on the firm's dependence than the other two services. The introduction of an additional high charge rate for a graduated but allowed to stay in the BIC is a basic and legitimate condition for the BIC to control the firm's dependence. We detected the differential effects of direct and indirect services on the firm's dependence. The firms with long incubating period are more sensitive to indirect service positively, and more sensitive to direct service negatively, when assessing their levels of dependence. This implies that BICs must develop a strategy on the basis of a firm's incubating period. Last but not least, it would be valuable to discover other important variables that influence the firm's dependence in the future studies. Moreover, future studies to explain the independence of startup companies in BICs would also be valuable.

An Investigation on the self-consciousness Symptoms of the Clerical Workers attendant upon Office Automation (사무 자동화에 따른 사무직 근로자의 건강과 연관된 자각 증상에 대한 조사연구)

  • Jung, Mi Wha
    • Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
    • /
    • v.3
    • /
    • pp.54-70
    • /
    • 1993
  • According as the automation of clerical work(OA ; Office Automation) develops, the use of VDT(Visual or Video Display Terminal) is increasing suddenly. But, in proportion to the spread of office automation(OA tendency), the self-conciousness syptom attendant upon the work is appearing also (Kim, Jung Tae, Lee, Young Ook, 1990). The apparatuses of office enable the clerical workers to be convenient and perform mass businesses. But, they are increasing the opportunity to be exposed to VDT syndrom, techno stress, computer terminal disease, pain by muscle strain(RSI), bradycausia of noise nature, and electromagnetic waves, etc. which are referred to as the new type of occupational diseases to the workers. It is the real situation that the workers to use VDT is complaining of the physical inconvenience sense in the recent newspaper and literature, it is the point of time that the sydrome to come from VDT use and computer terminal disease, etc. must be classified into the occupational disease(Lee, Kwang Young 1990, Lee, Kyoo Hak 1990, Lee, Won Ho 1991, Lee, Si Young 1991, Lee, Joon 1991, Choi, Young Tae 1991, Heo, Seung Ho 1989). In addition, it is the real situation that the scientifitic study result about the scope that electromagnetic waves has influence on the human body has not been suggested yet, and criticism on the stable exposure permission standard about electromagnetic waves to be emitted from VDT and on the problem in the health about electromagnetic waves is continuing. (IEEE Spectrum, 1990). In addition according to the experience of nursery business of industry field, it is the real situation that the patients who consult complaining of physical and mental inconvenience sence, among the users of apparatus of office automation, are reaching 10% of the patients coming to doctor's room. Therefore, it is necessary to confirm the self-consciousness symptom that the clerical workers complain of multilaterally with the actual state examination about the use of the apparatuses of offices automaton. Thus, this study was tried as th basic data for the cosultation and education for the maintenance and furtherance of the health of workers as the nurse of industry field, by confirming the contents of self-consciousness symptom attendant upon the use of the apparatus for office outomation making the financial institution in which the spparatus for office automation in most frequently used as the subject, and by examining whether there is the difference according to the subject of study, the data were collected, by using the questionnaire method, making 200 workers who consented to the study participation as the subject, among the persons who have spent over 3 months since they used the apparatuses for office automation and didn't receive the treatment in hospital due to the clerical disease for recent 3 years. The period of data collection was from Oct. 9, 1991 to Oct. 12. As for the measurement instrument about the complaint if self-consciousness symptom attendant upon the use of apparatuses fo office automation, the question item on the complaint symptom of health problem attendant upon the treatment of VDT that Kim(1991) developed and on CMI health problem and the question items on the fatigue degree due to industry were used by previous examination to 25 persons. Collected data were analyzed with the statistical method such as percentage, arithmetic mean, Person correlation coeffient, Kai square verfication, t-test, ANOVA, etc. by using SPSS/PC+ program, and the result is as follows : 1. The self-consciousness symptom that the clerical workers complained of most frequetly appeared high in 'My eyes are tired'(99.4%), 'I feel fatigue and weariness'(99.4%), 'I feel that my head is heavy5(90.0%), 'eyesight fell'(88.8%), 'I have a stiff neck'(88.8%), 'I fell pain in the shoulder'(85.0%), 'I feel cold and painful in the eyes'(76.9%), 'I feel the dry sense of eyeball'(76.2%), 'My nerves are edgy, and I an fretful, (75.6%), 'I feel pain in the waist'(73.2%) and 'I fell pain in the back'(72.8%). It emerged that the subject use the apparatuses for office automation complained of self-consciousness symptoms related to visual symptoms and musculoskeletal symptoms. 2. As for the general feature of examination subjects, the result to see the distribution by classifying into sex, age, school career, use career of apparatuses for office automation, skillfulness degree of the use of apparatus for office automation, use hours of the apparatuses for office automation per 1 day, type of business of the apparatus for office automation, rest hours during the use of apparatus for office automation, satifaction degree of business of office automation, and work circumstance, etc. emerged as follows : As for the sex of subjects, the distribution showed that men were 58.8% and women were 41.3%, Age was average 26.9. As the distribution of school career, the distribution showed that4below the graduation of high school' was 58.8%, 'graduation from junior college-university' was 35.0%, and 'over graduate school' was 6.3%. In the question to ask the existence or non-existence of experience of health consultation in connection with the work of office automation, the response that I had the consultation exprience and I feel the necessity emergerd as 90.1% And, the case that the subject who didn't wear the glasses or lens before using the OA apparatus wear glasses or lens after using OA apparatus emerged as 28.3% of whole. As for the existence or non-existence of use career of OA apparatus, the case under 3 years was highest as 52. 7%. As for the skillfulnness degree about the use of apparatus for office automation, most of them are skillful with the fact that 'common' was 44.4%, 'skill' was 42.5%, and 'unskillful' was 13.1% As for the use average hours of the apparatus for office automation per 1 day, the distribution showed that the case under 3-6 hours was 33.1%, the case under 6-9 hours was 28.1%, the case under 3 hours was 30.6%, and the case over 9 hours was 8.1% Main OA business and the use hours for 1 day showed in the order of keeping and retrieval, business of information transmission(162min), business of information transmission(79.3 min), business of document framing(55.5 min), and business of duplication and printing(25.4min). as for the rest during the use of apparatus for affice automation, that I take rest occasion demands the major portion, but that I take after completing the work emerged as 33.8%. Though the subiness gets to be convenient by the use of the apparatus for of office automation, respondents who showed the dissatisfaction about the present OA business emergd high as 78.1%. The work circumstances of each office was good with the fact that the temperature of office was 21.8, noise was average 42.7db, and the illumination was average 364.4 lx, in the light of ANSi/HFS 100 Standard. 3. Sight syptom, musculoskeletal symptom, skin and other symptoms showed the significant difference according to the extent of skillfulness of the apparatus for office automation. All the symptoms exept skin symptom showed the difference according to the use hours of the apparatus for office automation. All the question items exept the sytoms of digestive organs and the rest hours during the apparatus for office automation showed the signicant difference. The question item which showed the signicant difference from the satisfaction degree of present OA business showed the significant difference from all the question item classified into 6 groups. But, age and school career didn't significant difference from the complaint of any self-consciousness symptoms.

    . In conclusion, the self-consciousness symptoms of the subjects to use OA apparatus appeared differently, according to sex distiction, skillfull degree of OA apparatus, use hours of OA apparatus, the rest hours during th use of OA apparatus, and the satiafaction degree of persent business. Therefore, it is necessary that the nurse in the inuctry field must recognize to receive the education about the human technological physical condition which is most proper for te use of OA apparatus and about the proper rest method until they get accustomed to the use of OA apparatus. In addition, the simple exercise relax the tention of muscle due to the repetitive simple movement, and the education for the protection of eyesight are necessary.

  • PDF
  • Innovative approaches to the health problems of rural Korea (한국농촌보건(韓國農村保健)의 문제점(問題點)과 개선방안(改善方案))

    • Loh, In-Kyu
      • Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
      • /
      • v.1 no.1
      • /
      • pp.5-9
      • /
      • 1976
    • The categories of national health problems may be mainly divided into health promotion, problems of diseases, and population-economic problems which are indirectly related to health. Of them, the problems of diseases will be exclusively dealt with this speech. Rurality and Disease Problems There are many differences between rural and urban areas. In general, indicators of rurality are small size of towns, dispersion of the population, remoteness from urban centers, inadequacy of public transportation, poor communication, inadequate sanitation, poor housing, poverty, little education lack of health personnels and facilities, and in-accessibility to health services. The influence of such conditions creates, directly or indirectly, many problems of diseases in the rural areas. Those art the occurrence of preventable diseases, deterioration and prolongation of illness due to loss of chance to get early treatment, decreased or prolonged labour force loss, unnecessary death, doubling of medical cost, and economic loss. Some Considerations of Innovative Approach The followings art some considerations of innovative approaches to the problems of diseases in the rural Korea. 1. It would be essential goal of the innovative approaches that the damage and economic loss due to diseases will be maintained to minimum level by minimizing the absolute amount of the diseases, and by moderating the fee for medical cares. The goal of the minimization of the disease amount may be achieved by preventive services and early treatment, and the goal of moderating the medical fee may be achieved by lowering the prime cost and by adjusting the medical fees to reasonable level. 2. Community health service or community medicine will be adopted as a innovative means to disease problems. In this case, a community is defined as an unit area where supply and utilization of primary service activities can be accomplished within a day. The essential nature o the community health service should be such activities as health promotion, preventive measures, medical care, and rehabilitation performing efficiently through the organized efforts of the residents in a community. Each service activity should cover all members of the residents in a community in its plan and performance. The cooperation of the community peoples in one of the essential elements for success of the service program, The motivations of their cooperative mood may be activated through several ways: when the participation of the residents in service program of especially the direct participation of organized cooperation of the area leaders art achieved through a means of health education: when the residents get actual experience of having received the benefit of good quality services; and when the health personnels being armed with an idealism that they art working in the areas to help health problems of the residents, maintain good human relationships with them. For the success of a community health service program, a personnel who is in charge of leadership and has an able, a sincere and a steady characters seems to be required in a community. The government should lead and support the community health service programs of the nation under the basis of results appeared in the demonstrative programs so as to be carried out the programs efficiently. Moss of the health problems may be treated properly in the community levels through suitable community health service programs but there might be some problems which art beyond their abilities to be dealt with. To solve such problems each community health service program should be under the referral systems which are connected with health centers, hospitals, and so forth. 3. An approach should be intensively groped to have a physician in each community. The shortage of physicians in rural areas is world-wide problem and so is the Korean situation. In the past the government has initiated a system of area-limited physician, coercion, and a small scale of scholarship program with unsatisfactory results. But there might be ways of achieving the goal by intervice, broadened, and continuous approaches. There will be several ways of approach to motivate the physicians to be settled in a rural community. They are, for examples, to expos the students to the community health service programs during training, to be run community health service programs by every health or medical schools and other main medical facilities, communication activities and advertisement, desire of community peoples to invite a physician, scholarship program, payment of satisfactory level, fulfilment of military obligation in case of a future draft, economic growth and development of rural communities, sufficiency of health and medical facilities, provision of proper medical care system, coercion, and so forth. And, hopefully, more useful reference data on the motivations may be available when a survey be conducted to the physicians who are presently engaging in the rural community levels. 4. In communities where the availability of a physician is difficult, a trial to use physician extenders, under certain conditions, may be considered. The reason is that it would be beneficial for the health of the residents to give them the remedies of primary medical care through the extenders rather than to leave their medical problems out of management. The followings are the conditions to be considered when the physician extenders are used: their positions will be prescribed as a temporary one instead of permanent one so as to allow easy replacement of the position with a physician applicant; the extender will be under periodic direction and supervision of a physician, and also referral channel will be provided: legal constraints will be placed upon the extenders primary care practice, and the physician extenders will used only under the public medical care system. 5. For the balanced health care delivery, a greater investment to the rural areas is needed to compensate weak points of a rurality. The characteristics of a rurality has been already mentioned. The objective of balanced service for rural communities to level up that of urban areas will be hard to achieve without greater efforts and supports. For example, rural communities need mobile powers more than urban areas, communication network is extremely necessary at health delivery facilities in rural areas as well as the need of urban areas, health and medical facilities in rural areas should be provided more substantially than those of urban areas to minimize, in a sense, the amount of patient consultation and request of laboratory specimens through referral system of which procedures are more troublesome in rural areas, and more intensive control measures against communicable diseases are needed in rural areas where greater numbers of cases are occurred under the poor sanitary conditions.

    • PDF

    A Study on Red Cell Protoporphyrin Concentration and Iron Metabolism (적혈구(赤血球) Protoporphyrin과 철분대사(鐵分代謝)에 관(關)한 연구(硏究))

    • Cho, Kyung-Hwan;Tchai, Bum-Suk
      • Journal of Nutrition and Health
      • /
      • v.7 no.3
      • /
      • pp.1-13
      • /
      • 1974
    • The relative state of human iron storage may be ascertained more reliably through determination of the serum iron, iron binding capacity, transferrin saturation and absorption of radioactive iron in conjunction with studies of red cell morphology than from the study of red cell morphology alone. Recent investigations have shown that there is an increase in red cell protoporphyrin concentration in iron deficiency anemia. The significance of the red cell protoporphyrin has been discussed greatly during the years since its discovery. Two of the main factors which appear to influence the amaunt of protoporphyrin are increased erythropoiesis and factors interfering with the utilization of iron in the synthesis of hemoglobin, and iron deficiency. Recently Heller et al. have described a simplified method for blood protoporphyrin assay and this technique could be used assess nutritional iron status, wherein even minor insufficiencies are detectable as increased protoporphyrin concentrations. Based on the evaluation of the relationship between nutritional iron status and red cell protoporphyrin as an index suitable for the detection of the iron deficiency is described in this paper. RESULTS 1. Hemoglobin Concentrations and Anthropometric Measurements. The mean and standard deviations of the various anthropometric measurements of different age and sex groups are shown in table 1. There measurements have been compared with the Korean Standard. In the absence of local standards for arm circumference and skin-fold thickness over triceps, they have been compared with the standard from Jelliffe. Table 2,3, and 4 give anthropometric measurements and frequency (%) of anemia in children surveyed. The mean height of the children studid was 10 to 20 percent; below the Korean Standard. The distribution of height below 80 percent of the Standard was 21.2 percent, however, among anemic group this percentage was 27.7 percent. In general, the mean weight of the children was 10 to 15 percent below the Korean Standard. The percentage of children with weight less than 80 percent of the Standard was about 35 percent. But in the anemic group of the children, this percentage was 44 percent. The mean arm circumference was about 15 percent lower than the Jelliffe's standard. 61.2 percent of the children had values of arm circumference below 80 percent of the standard. Children with low hemoglobin levels, this percentage was 80 percent. The mean skinfold thickness over the triceps of the children studied was about 25 Percent lower than the Jelliffe's standard and 61.2 percent of the children had the value less than 80 percent of the standard. Among anemic children, this percentage was 70.8%. As may be seen from table 5, the mean hemoglobin concentration of the total group was 11.3g/100ml. Hemoglobin concentration was less than 11.0g/100ml. in 65(36.5%) of the 178 children. The degree of anemia in most of these children was mild with a hemoglobin level of less than 8.0g/100ml. found in only one child. In general, the prevalence of anemia was high in female children than male and decreased its frequency with increasing age. Relatively close relationship was observed between hemoglobin level and anthrophometric measurements especially high between arm circumference and skinfold thickness and hemoglobin but very low in height and low in weight and hemoglobin level, estimated by chi-square value. II. Serum iron, Transferrin saturation (1) Serum iron, and transferrin saturation Serum iron, transferrin saturation and red cell protoporphyrin concentrations were estimated in sub-sample of 84 children from 1 to 6 years and 24 older children between 7 and 13 years of age. The findings are presented in table 6. The mean serum iron concentration of the total group was 59ug/100ml. However, the level incrased with age from 36.6ug/100ml. (1-3years) to 80.8ug/100ml. (7-13 years). 60 percent of these children had a serum iron level less than 50ug/10ml. in the 1-3 years age group and 31.4 percent for 4-6 years group. These contrast with the finding of 12.5 percent anemic children in the 7-13 years age group. The mean transferrin saturation for the total group was 18.1 percent and frequency of anemia by transferrin saturation was observed same pattern as serum iron concentration. (2) Red cell protoporphyrin concentrations. (a) Red cell protoporphrin levels of children: Red cell protoporphyrin and other biochemical data are shown in table 4. The mean concentration in red cell of all children was fround 46.3ug/100ml. RBC. and differences with age groups were observed; in the age group 1-3 years, the mean concentration was $59.5{\pm}32.14$ ug/100ml. RBC; 4-6 years $44.1{\pm}22.57$ ug/100ml. RBC. and 7-13 years, $39.0{\pm}13.56$ ug/100ml. RBC. (b) Normal protoporphyrin values in adults: It was observed that in 10 normal adult males studied here the level of protoporphyrin in red cell ranged from 18 to 54 ug/100ml. RBC. and the mean concentration was $47.5{\sim}14.47$ ug/100ml. RBC. Other biochemical determination made on the same subjects are presented in table 8. (c) Red tell protoporphyrin concentration of occupational blood donors: The results of analyses for red cell protoporphyrin as well as serum iron, transferrin saturation and hemoglobin in the 76 blood donors are presented in table 7 and 8. In this experiment, donors were selected at random, however, most of them bled repeatedly because of poor economic situation, I doubt. Table 9 shows the distribution of red cell protoporphyrin concentration and hemoglobin concentration of occupational donors. The mean hemoglobin value for the total was 11.9 g/100 ml. When iron deficiency anemia is defined as a transferrin saturation below 15%, prevalence of anemia was 47.4 percent and the mean serum iron was 27.1ug/100ml. and red cell protoporphyrin, 168.3ug/100ml. RBC. However, mean serum iron and protoporphyrin concentration of above 15% transferrin saturation were 11.6 ug/100 ml. and 58.8 ug/100 ml. RBC. respectively. The mean Protoporphyrin concentration of non-anemic (above 15% transferrin saturation) donors was slightly higher than the results of normal adult males.

    • PDF

    The way to make training data for deep learning model to recognize keywords in product catalog image at E-commerce (온라인 쇼핑몰에서 상품 설명 이미지 내의 키워드 인식을 위한 딥러닝 훈련 데이터 자동 생성 방안)

    • Kim, Kitae;Oh, Wonseok;Lim, Geunwon;Cha, Eunwoo;Shin, Minyoung;Kim, Jongwoo
      • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
      • /
      • v.24 no.1
      • /
      • pp.1-23
      • /
      • 2018
    • From the 21st century, various high-quality services have come up with the growth of the internet or 'Information and Communication Technologies'. Especially, the scale of E-commerce industry in which Amazon and E-bay are standing out is exploding in a large way. As E-commerce grows, Customers could get what they want to buy easily while comparing various products because more products have been registered at online shopping malls. However, a problem has arisen with the growth of E-commerce. As too many products have been registered, it has become difficult for customers to search what they really need in the flood of products. When customers search for desired products with a generalized keyword, too many products have come out as a result. On the contrary, few products have been searched if customers type in details of products because concrete product-attributes have been registered rarely. In this situation, recognizing texts in images automatically with a machine can be a solution. Because bulk of product details are written in catalogs as image format, most of product information are not searched with text inputs in the current text-based searching system. It means if information in images can be converted to text format, customers can search products with product-details, which make them shop more conveniently. There are various existing OCR(Optical Character Recognition) programs which can recognize texts in images. But existing OCR programs are hard to be applied to catalog because they have problems in recognizing texts in certain circumstances, like texts are not big enough or fonts are not consistent. Therefore, this research suggests the way to recognize keywords in catalog with the Deep Learning algorithm which is state of the art in image-recognition area from 2010s. Single Shot Multibox Detector(SSD), which is a credited model for object-detection performance, can be used with structures re-designed to take into account the difference of text from object. But there is an issue that SSD model needs a lot of labeled-train data to be trained, because of the characteristic of deep learning algorithms, that it should be trained by supervised-learning. To collect data, we can try labelling location and classification information to texts in catalog manually. But if data are collected manually, many problems would come up. Some keywords would be missed because human can make mistakes while labelling train data. And it becomes too time-consuming to collect train data considering the scale of data needed or costly if a lot of workers are hired to shorten the time. Furthermore, if some specific keywords are needed to be trained, searching images that have the words would be difficult, as well. To solve the data issue, this research developed a program which create train data automatically. This program can make images which have various keywords and pictures like catalog and save location-information of keywords at the same time. With this program, not only data can be collected efficiently, but also the performance of SSD model becomes better. The SSD model recorded 81.99% of recognition rate with 20,000 data created by the program. Moreover, this research had an efficiency test of SSD model according to data differences to analyze what feature of data exert influence upon the performance of recognizing texts in images. As a result, it is figured out that the number of labeled keywords, the addition of overlapped keyword label, the existence of keywords that is not labeled, the spaces among keywords and the differences of background images are related to the performance of SSD model. This test can lead performance improvement of SSD model or other text-recognizing machine based on deep learning algorithm with high-quality data. SSD model which is re-designed to recognize texts in images and the program developed for creating train data are expected to contribute to improvement of searching system in E-commerce. Suppliers can put less time to register keywords for products and customers can search products with product-details which is written on the catalog.

    Analysis of Health Functional Foods Advertisements Effects according to the Delivery Tool for Efficacy Information and Consumers' Attitudes (기능성 정보 전달 방법 및 소비자 태도에 따른 건강기능식품 광고 효과 분석)

    • Lee, Yeonkyung;Kim, Ji Yeon;Kwon, Oran;Hwang, In-Kyeong
      • The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
      • /
      • v.29 no.6
      • /
      • pp.835-848
      • /
      • 2016
    • The purpose of this study was to find efficient and customized tools for delivering the benefit of health functional foods (HFFs). Delivery tools which could influence the impact of advertising were images, explanations of ingredients, diagrams of health benefit, patents, and comments from authority. Six advertisements were developed using these tools: "A": relevant image + explanation of ingredients + scientific diagram of efficacy; "B": relevant image + explanation of ingredients; "C": relevant image; "D": irrelevant image; "E": irrelevant image + explanation of ingredient + patent; "F": irrelevant image + explanation of ingredient + comments from authority. To analyze the consumer perceptions on HFFs and advertisement effects, 300 respondents were requested to answer a questionnaire comprising of the following questions: 5 questions of attitudes (necessity of HFFs, trust in HFFs, gathering information, watching advertisements and trust in advertisement claims) and 6 questions on the 6 developed advertisements (attention, understanding, sufficiency of information, sympathy, trust, and purchase). Scoring was done as per the 5 Likert scale. There was a higher proportion of females and the elderly, as compared to males and youngsters. The overall consumer attitudes were positive. Explanation of ingredients, scientific diagram of health benefit, patents and expert comments were helpful factors in increasing the advertisement evaluation by consumer, but the images were not. Advertisement evaluation of consumer did not differ with gender and age. However, differences were observed between some of the consumer attitudes (necessity of HFFs, trust in HFFs, gathering information and trust in advertisements claim) and advertisement evaluations (attention, understanding, sympathy and purchase). Our results indicate that for consumers utilizing the HFFs, advertisements with concrete tools such as diagrams, patent, and expert comments are more helpful. However, for consumers who do not have interest in HFFs, the scientific information was irrelevant. We believe that to maximize the effect of health information in advertisements, consumers should be segmented, and customized tools for each segment needs to be developed.

    Relationships on Magnitude and Frequency of Freshwater Discharge and Rainfall in the Altered Yeongsan Estuary (영산강 하구의 방류와 강우의 규모 및 빈도 상관성 분석)

    • Rhew, Ho-Sang;Lee, Guan-Hong
      • The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
      • /
      • v.16 no.4
      • /
      • pp.223-237
      • /
      • 2011
    • The intermittent freshwater discharge has an critical influence upon the biophysical environments and the ecosystems of the Yeongsan Estuary where the estuary dam altered the continuous mixing of saltwater and freshwater. Though freshwater discharge is controlled by human, the extreme events are mainly driven by the heavy rainfall in the river basin, and provide various impacts, depending on its magnitude and frequency. This research aims to evaluate the magnitude and frequency of extreme freshwater discharges, and to establish the magnitude-frequency relationships between basin-wide rainfall and freshwater inflow. Daily discharge and daily basin-averaged rainfall from Jan 1, 1997 to Aug 31, 2010 were used to determine the relations between discharge and rainfall. Consecutive daily discharges were grouped into independent events using well-defined event-separation algorithm. Partial duration series were extracted to obtain the proper probability distribution function for extreme discharges and corresponding rainfall events. Extreme discharge events over the threshold 133,656,000 $m^3$ count up to 46 for 13.7y years, following the Weibull distribution with k=1.4. The 3-day accumulated rain-falls which occurred one day before peak discharges (1day-before-3day -sum rainfall), are determined as a control variable for discharge, because their magnitude is best correlated with that of the extreme discharge events. The minimum value of the corresponding 1day-before-3day-sum rainfall, 50.98mm is initially set to a threshold for the selection of discharge-inducing rainfall cases. The number of 1day-before-3day-sum rainfall groups after selection, however, exceeds that of the extreme discharge events. The canonical discriminant analysis indicates that water level over target level (-1.35 m EL.) can be useful to divide the 1day-before-3day-sum rainfall groups into discharge-induced and non-discharge ones. It also shows that the newly-set threshold, 104mm, can just separate these two cases without errors. The magnitude-frequency relationships between rainfall and discharge are established with the newly-selected lday-before-3day-sum rainfalls: $D=1.111{\times}10^8+1.677{\times}10^6{\overline{r_{3day}}$, (${\overline{r_{3day}}{\geqq}104$, $R^2=0.459$), $T_d=1.326T^{0.683}_{r3}$, $T_d=0.117{\exp}[0.0155{\overline{r_{3day}}]$, where D is the quantity of discharge, ${\overline{r_{3day}}$ the 1day-before-3day-sum rainfall, $T_{r3}$ and $T_d$, are respectively return periods of 1day-before-3day-sum rainfall and freshwater discharge. These relations provide the framework to evaluate the effect of freshwater discharge on estuarine flow structure, water quality, responses of ecosystems from the perspective of magnitude and frequency.

    Mediating Roles of Attachment for Information Sharing in Social Media: Social Capital Theory Perspective (소셜 미디어에서 정보공유를 위한 애착의 매개역할: 사회적 자본이론 관점)

    • Chung, Namho;Han, Hee Jeong;Koo, Chulmo
      • Asia pacific journal of information systems
      • /
      • v.22 no.4
      • /
      • pp.101-123
      • /
      • 2012
    • Currently, Social Media, it has widely a renown keyword and its related social trends and businesses have been fastly applied into various contexts. Social media has become an important research area for scholars interested in online technologies and cyber space and their social impacts. Social media is not only including web-based services but also mobile-based application services that allow people to share various style information and knowledge through online connection. Social media users have tendency to common identity- and bond-attachment through interactions such as 'thumbs up', 'reply note', 'forwarding', which may have driven from various factors and may result in delivering information, sharing knowledge, and specific experiences et al. Even further, almost of all social media sites provide and connect unknown strangers depending on shared interests, political views, or enjoyable activities, and other stuffs incorporating the creation of contents, which provides benefits to users. As fast developing digital devices including smartphone, tablet PC, internet based blogging, and photo and video clips, scholars desperately have began to study regarding diverse issues connecting human beings' motivations and the behavioral results which may be articulated by the format of antecedents as well as consequences related to contents that people create via social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Cyworld users are more and more getting close each other and build up their relationships by a different style. In this sense, people use social media as tools for maintain pre-existing network, creating new people socially, and at the same time, explicitly find some business opportunities using personal and unlimited public networks. In terms of theory in explaining this phenomenon, social capital is a concept that describes the benefits one receives from one's relationship with others. Thereby, social media use is closely related to the form and connected of people, which is a bridge that can be able to achieve informational benefits of a heterogeneous network of people and common identity- and bonding-attachment which emphasizes emotional benefits from community members or friend group. Social capital would be resources accumulated through the relationships among people, which can be considered as an investment in social relations with expected returns and may achieve benefits from the greater access to and use of resources embedded in social networks. Social media using for their social capital has vastly been adopted in a cyber world, however, there has been little explaining the phenomenon theoretically how people may take advantages or opportunities through interaction among people, why people may interactively give willingness to help or their answers. The individual consciously express themselves in an online space, so called, common identity- or bonding-attachments. Common-identity attachment is the focus of the weak ties, which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support, whereas common-bonding attachment is explained that between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationship such as family and close friends. The common identify- and bonding-attachment are mainly studying on-offline setting, which individual convey an impression to others that are expressed to own interest to others. Thus, individuals expect to meet other people and are trying to behave self-presentation engaging in opposite partners accordingly. As developing social media, individuals are motivated to disclose self-disclosures of open and honest using diverse cues such as verbal and nonverbal and pictorial and video files to their friends as well as passing strangers. Social media context, common identity- and bond-attachment for self-presentation seems different compared with face-to-face context. In the realm of social media, social users look for self-impression by posting text messages, pictures, video files. Under the digital environments, people interact to work, shop, learn, entertain, and be played. Social media provides increasingly the kinds of intention and behavior in online. Typically, identity and bond social capital through self-presentation is the intentional and tangible component of identity. At social media, people try to engage in others via a desired impression, which can maintain through performing coherent and complementary communications including displaying signs, symbols, brands made of digital stuffs(information, interest, pictures, etc,). In marketing area, consumers traditionally show common-identity as they select clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, logos, and so on, to impress others in any given context in a shopping mall or opera. To examine these social capital and attachment, we combined a social capital theory with an attachment theory into our research model. Our research model focuses on the common identity- and bond-attachment how they are formulated through social capitals: cognitive capital, structural capital, relational capital, and individual characteristics. Thus, we examined that individual online kindness, self-rated expertise, and social relation influence to build common identity- and bond-attachment, and the attachment effects make an impact on both the willingness to help, however, common bond seems not to show directly impact on information sharing. As a result, we discover that the social capital and attachment theories are mainly applicable to the context of social media and usage in the individual networks. We collected sample data of 256 who are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld and analyzed the suggested hypotheses through the Structural Equation Model by AMOS. This study analyzes the direct and indirect relationship between the social network service usage and outcomes. Antecedents of kindness, confidence of knowledge, social relations are significantly affected to the mediators common identity-and bond attachments, however, interestingly, network externality does not impact, which we assumed that a size of network was a negative because group members would not significantly contribute if the members do not intend to actively interact with each other. The mediating variables had a positive effect on toward willingness to help. Further, common identity attachment has stronger significant on shared information.

    • PDF

    The Roles of Service Failure and Recovery Satisfaction in Customer-Firm Relationship Restoration : Focusing on Carry-over effect and Dynamics among Customer Affection, Customer Trust and Loyalty Intention Before and After the Events (서비스실패의 심각성과 복구만족이 고객-기업 관계회복에 미치는 영향 : 실패이전과 복구이후 고객애정, 고객신뢰, 충성의도의 이월효과 및 역학관계 비교를 중심으로)

    • La, Sun-A
      • Journal of Distribution Research
      • /
      • v.17 no.1
      • /
      • pp.1-36
      • /
      • 2012
    • Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

    • PDF

    (34141) Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, 245, Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon
    Copyright (C) KISTI. All Rights Reserved.