• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.57-82
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• 2012

The purpose of the study is to suggest the measure for the improvement of job satisfaction and level of empowerment of sanatoriums' social workers by analyzing factors of empowerments' effect on the job satisfaction, and investigating level of empowerment and job satisfaction of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped. The result of investigation and analysis on subjects of 420 social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped in Youngnam area for this is as follows: First, job characteristic that is empowerments' influence factor of sanatoriums' social workers is appeared in order of feedback, and function variety, and in organization characteristic is appeared in order of leadership, reward, and employee development. Second, level of empowerment that is recognized by sanatoriums' social workers is appeared a little higher than normal level and significance is appeared highest, and next are capability, self-determination ability, and influence. Third, features that showed significant difference with significance in general characteristic of sanatoriums' social workers were 'sex', 'marital status', and 'religion', and features that showed significant difference with capability were sex, age, marital status, academic background, and employment history. And features that showed significant difference with self-determination ability were sex, age, marital status, and employment history, and features that showed significant difference with influence were sex, age, employment history and types of facilities. Fourth, the whole average of job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers was 3.82 out of 5, which is generally high, features that showed significant difference statistically were age, marital status, academic background, employment history, and types of facilities. Thus, job satisfaction was appeared as high as 'more than age of thirty' in age, 'married' in marital status, 'under graduates of colleges' in academic background, and 'less than three years' in employment history. Fifth, as for factors that had influence on job satisfaction, the indirect effect with empowerment was appeared that had significant effect in organization characteristic, and had few effect in organization features. On these results, practical measures to increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers are as follows: First, political approach is required to standardize duty system(by various types of facilities and clients' characteristic) of social workers of sanatoriums for elderly and the handicapped, and help to do the role as professionals with giving better treatment and building self-respect by enough reward. Second, to suggest chances to perform the responsibility for the duty of the scenes by the regular supervision, establish regular supervision system of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, and the extension of duty to increase the functional varieties. Third, it is required to motivate to have self confidence for the work and to use potential ability with transforming leadership, and to have more chances of education for the self-development. To increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers who give direct services in sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, more active and positive empowerment's level improvement is in need by improvement of empowerment for them.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.117-129
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• 2015

As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, a large volume of information is posted on the Internet with exponential growth every day. Accordingly, it is not unusual that investors in stock markets gather and compile firm-specific or market-wide information through online searches. Importantly, it becomes easier for investors to acquire value-relevant information for their investment decision with the help of powerful search tools on the Internet. Our study examines whether or not the Internet helps investors assess a firm's value better by using firm-level data over long periods spanning from January 2004 to December 2013. To this end, we construct weekly-based search volume for information technology (IT) services firms on the Internet. We limit our focus to IT firms since they are often equipped with intangible assets and relatively less recognized to the public which makes them hard-to measure. To obtain the information on those firms, investors are more likely to consult the Internet and use the information to appreciate the firms more accurately and eventually improve their investment decisions. Prior studies have shown that changes in search volumes can reflect the various aspects of the complex human behaviors and forecast near-term values of economic indicators, including automobile sales, unemployment claims, and etc. Moreover, search volume of firm names or stock ticker symbols has been used as a direct proxy of individual investors' attention in financial markets since, different from indirect measures such as turnover and extreme returns, they can reveal and quantify the interest of investors in an objective way. Following this line of research, this study aims to gauge whether the information retrieved from the Internet is value relevant in assessing a firm. We also use search volume for analysis but, distinguished from prior studies, explore its impact on return comovements with market returns. Given that a firm's returns tend to comove with market returns excessively when investors are less informed about the firm, we empirically test the value of information by examining the association between Internet searches and the extent to which a firm's returns comove. Our results show that Internet searches are negatively associated with return comovements as expected. When sample is split by the size of firms, the impact of Internet searches on return comovements is shown to be greater for large firms than small ones. Interestingly, we find a greater impact of Internet searches on return comovements for years from 2009 to 2013 than earlier years possibly due to more aggressive and informative exploit of Internet searches in obtaining financial information. We also complement our analyses by examining the association between return volatility and Internet search volumes. If Internet searches capture investors' attention associated with a change in firm-specific fundamentals such as new product releases, stock splits and so on, a firm's return volatility is likely to increase while search results can provide value-relevant information to investors. Our results suggest that in general, an increase in the volume of Internet searches is not positively associated with return volatility. However, we find a positive association between Internet searches and return volatility when the sample is limited to larger firms. A stronger result from larger firms implies that investors still pay less attention to the information obtained from Internet searches for small firms while the information is value relevant in assessing stock values. However, we do find any systematic differences in the magnitude of Internet searches impact on return volatility by time periods. Taken together, our results shed new light on the value of information searched from the Internet in assessing stock values. Given the informational role of the Internet in stock markets, we believe the results would guide investors to exploit Internet search tools to be better informed, as a result improving their investment decisions.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.133-144
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• 2004

A model and a measure which can evaluate the risk of rear end collision are developed. Most traffic accidents involve multiple causes such as the human factor, the vehicle factor, and the highway element at any given time. Thus, these factors should be considered in analyzing the risk of an accident and in developing safety models. Although most risky situations and accidents on the roads result from the poor response of a driver to various stimuli, many researchers have modeled the risk or accident by analyzing only the stimuli without considering the response of a driver. Hence, the reliabilities of those models turned out to be low. Thus in developing the model behaviors of a driver, such as reaction time and deceleration rate, are considered. In the past, most studies tried to analyze the relationships between a risk and an accident directly but they, due to the difficulty of finding out the directional relationships between these factors, developed a model by considering these factors, developed a model by considering indirect factors such as volume, speed, etc. However, if the relationships between risk and accidents are looked into in detail, it can be seen that they are linked by the behaviors of a driver, and depending on drivers the risk as it is on the road-vehicle system may be ignored or call drivers' attention. Therefore, an accident depends on how a driver handles risk, so that the more related risk to and accident occurrence is not the risk itself but the risk responded by a driver. Thus, in this study, the behaviors of a driver are considered in the model and to reflect these behaviors three concepts related to accidents are introduced. And safe stopping distance and accident occurrence probability were used for better understanding and for more reliable modeling of the risk. The index which can represent the risk is also developed based on measures used in evaluating noise level, and for the risk comparison between various situations, the equivalent risk level, considering the intensity and duration time, is developed by means of the weighted average. Validation is performed with field surveys on the expressway of Seoul, and the test vehicle was made to collect the traffic flow data, such as deceleration rate, speed and spacing. Based on this data, the risk by section, lane and traffic flow conditions are evaluated and compared with the accident data and traffic conditions. The evaluated risk level corresponds closely to the patterns of actual traffic conditions and counts of accident. The model and the method developed in this study can be applied to various fields, such as safety test of traffic flow, establishment of operation & management strategy for reliable traffic flow, and the safety test for the control algorithm in the advanced safety vehicles and many others.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.117-129
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• 2023

Organizations must seek change in order to adapt to environmental changes and achieve better performance. However, despite this obvious statement, empirical analysis has been almost non-existent due to the difficulty of manipulating organizational performance or change. In this study, we overcame these limitations and analyzed the causes and effects of organizational change by assuming a professional sports team as a venture company, which is relatively easy to objectively measure and evaluate organizational change or performance. We systematically collected and preprocessed traditional and advanced metrics of National Basketball Association (NBA) statistics along with preprocessed trade data from eight years of regular seasons (2014~2015-2021~2022) to analyze our research model. Assessment of process macro model 7 derives the following empirical result. The results of the empirical analysis depict that NBA teams with low organizational performance in the previous season are more likely to make organizational changes through player trades to improve performance. Into the bargain player trades mediate the static relationship between the winning percentage in the previous season and the winning percentage in the current season. However, the indirect effect of a team's previous season's performance on player trades appears to vary depending on the current situations and context of each NBA team. Teams that made the playoffs in the previous season tend to make fewer trades than teams that did not and the previous season's performance is highly correlated with the current season's performance. On the other hand, teams that did not make the playoffs in the previous season tend to make a relatively larger amount of player trades in total, and the mediating effect of trades vanishes in this case. In other words, teams that did not make the playoffs in the previous season experience a larger change in performance due to trades than teams that made the playoffs, even if they achieved the same winning percentage. This empirical analysis of the inverse relationship between organizational change and the performance of professional sports teams has both theoretical and practical implications in the field of sports industry and management by analyzing the fundamentals of organizational change and the performance of professional sports teams.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2008

Ⅰ. Introduction Retailers in the 21st century are being told that future retailers are those who can execute seamless multi-channel access. The reason is that retailers should be where shoppers want them, when they want them anytime, anywhere and in multiple formats. Multi-channel access is considered one of the top 10 trends of all business in the next decade (Patricia T. Warrington, et al., 2007) And most firms use both direct and indirect channels in their markets. Given this trend, we need to evaluate a channel equity more systematically than before as this issue is expected to get more attention to consumers as well as to brand managers. Consumers are becoming very much confused concerning the choice of place where they shop for durable goods as there are at least 6-7 retail options. On the other hand, manufacturers have to deal with category killers, their dealers network, Internet shopping malls, and other avenue of distribution channels and they hope their retail channel behave like extensions of their own companies. They would like their products to be foremost in the retailer's mind-the first to be proposed and effectively communicated to potential customers. To enable this hope to come reality, they should know each channel's advantages and disadvantages from consumer perspectives. In addition, customer satisfaction is the key determinant of retail customer loyalty. However, there are only a few researches regarding the effects of shopping satisfaction and perceptions on consumers' channel choices and channels. The purpose of this study was to assess Korean consumers' channel choice and satisfaction towards channels they prefer to use in the case of electronic goods shopping. Korean electronic goods retail market is one of good example of multi-channel shopping environments. As the Korea retail market has been undergoing significant structural changes since it had opened to global retailers in 1996, new formats such as hypermarkets, Internet shopping malls and category killers have arrived for the last decade. Korean electronic goods shoppers have seven major channels : (1)category killers (2) hypermarket (3) manufacturer dealer shop (4) Internet shopping malls (5) department store (6) TV home-shopping (7) speciality shopping arcade. Korean retail sector has been modernized with amazing speed for the last decade. Overall summary of major retail channels is as follows: Hypermarket has been number 1 retailer type in sales volume from 2003 ; non-store retailing has been number 2 from 2007 ; department store is now number 3 ; small scale category killers are growing rapidly in the area of electronics and office products in particular. We try to evaluate each channel's equity using a consumer survey. The survey was done by telephone interview with 1000 housewife who lives nationwide. Sampling was done according to 2005 national census and average interview time was 10 to 15 minutes. Ⅱ. Research Summary We have found that seven major retail channels compete with each other within Korean consumers' minds in terms of price and service. Each channel seem to have its unique selling points. Department stores were perceived as the best electronic goods shopping destinations due to after service. Internet shopping malls were perceived as the convenient channel owing to price checking. Category killers and hypermarkets were more attractive in both price merits and location conveniences. On the other hand, manufacturers dealer networks were pulling customers mainly by location and after service. Category killers and hypermarkets were most beloved retail channel for Korean consumers. However category killers compete mainly with department stores and shopping arcades while hypermarkets tend to compete with Internet and TV home shopping channels. Regarding channel satisfaction, the top 3 channels were service-driven retailers: department stores (4.27); dealer shop (4.21); and Internet shopping malls (4.21). Speciality shopping arcade(3.98) were the least satisfied channels among Korean consumers. Ⅲ. Implications We try to identify the whole picture of multi-channel retail shopping environments and its implications in the context of Korean electronic goods. From manufacturers' perspectives, multi-channel may cause channel conflicts. Furthermore, inter-channel competition draws much more attention as hypermarkets and category killers have grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, from consumers' perspectives, 'buy where' is becoming an important buying decision as it would decide the level of shopping satisfaction. We need to develop the concept of 'channel equity' to manage multi-channel distribution effectively. Firms should measure and monitor their prime channel equity in regular basis to maximize their channel potentials. Prototype channel equity positioning map has been developed as follows. We expect more studies to develop the concept of 'channel equity' in the future.