• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.325-334
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• 2011

Market Environment around water work industry is rapidly changing. ISO, International Organization for Standardization, announced the international water work service standard for comparison and evaluation between nations and businesses. And developed countries in water work are introducing market principle for growth of nation's water industry and reinforcement of its competitiveness. Also, some local governments entrusted their water utilities for improvement of competitiveness of water work. However, as some failure cases from overseas came out with emphasis, there are many refuting perspective about entrusted operation achievements of domestic water market. Hence, this paper evaluated competitiveness of domestic local water utilities from the perspective of productivity. After evaluating productivity using Malmquist productivity index, the authors compared and analyzed whether there is a difference of productivity between two different operating types by using Mann-Whitney test. As a result of analysis, it has shown that local water utilities achieved higher productivity at entrusted operation type rather than direct operation type. The local water utilities which chose entrusted operation had increased the productivity 13.9% on total factor productivity(TFP) during experimenting period, while the local water utilities which chose direct operation had increased 0.2%. The background of achieving this high productivity in entrusted operation was analyzed as a result of the higher technological effectiveness of a special water company. The result of this study can be referred when local government needs to decide on what operating types they will use.

• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
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• 1996.12a
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• pp.265-295
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• 1996

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between various business portfolio properties (particularly technological properties) and chaebol′s performance using data on the 50 largest chaebols in Korea. In addition to the traditional indexes to measure diversification such as entropy index we calculated inter-industry technological similarity using R&D expenditure data by industry and 1990 Input-output Table in Korea, and obtained chaebol-level technological relatedness and internal transaction proportion from chaebols′business profile, inter-industry technological similarity and 1990 input-output table. We applied factor analysis on 13 business portfolio property indexes and showed that they could be grouped into 3 dimensions, diversification scope, inter-business relatedness and degree of vertical integration. In this paper, using 50 largest chaebols′financial data (1989-1994), we analyzed empirically the effect of business portfolio properties on ROS (Return On Sales) which is conventional index for firm performance and on TFP(Total Factor Productivity) growth which is a pure measure of firm performance. To utilize the advantage of panel data, FEM(Fixed Effect Model) and REM(Random Effect Model) were used. The empirical result shows that the entropy index as a measurement of inter-business relatedness is not significant but technological relatedness index is significant. OLS estimates on pooled data were considerably different from FEM or REM estimates on panel data. By introducing interaction effect among the three variables for business portfolio properties, we obtained three findings. First, only VI (Vertical integration) has a significant positive correlation with ROS. Second, when using TFP growth as an dependent variable, both TR(Technological Relatedness) and f[ are significant and positively related to the deepened variable. Third, the interaction term between TR and VI is significant and negatively affects TFP growth, meaning that TR and VI are substitutes. These results suggest strategic directions on restructuring business portfolio. As VI is increased, chaebols will get more profit. A higher level of either TR or W will increase TFP growth rate. but increase in both TR and VI will have a negative effect on TFP growth. To summarize, certain business portfolio properties such as VI and TR can be considered "resources" themselves since they can affect profit rate and productivity growth. VI and TR have a synergy effect of change in profit rate and productivity growth. VI increases ROS and productivity growth, while TR increases productivity growth representing a technological synergy effect.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.175-184
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• 2019

To improve productivity in the architecture, construction and engineering industry, it is critical to understand both current and historic trends in construction productivity. This study analyzes and compares construction productivity trends of South Korea, the U.S., the U.K., and Japan 1995 to 2015 using the following three measures: construction labor productivity, construction duration per floor, and construction duration per 1,000 m2 floor area. As the results, the international competitiveness of each country varied according to which measures were used to analyze them. Among the four countries, the construction labor productivity of the U.S. was the highest, followed by that of South Korea. South Korea also had the second highest productivity growth rate, following that of Japan. On the other hand, when analyzed from the perspective of construction duration, the construction productivity in South Korea appeared relatively lower than those of other countries. There were differences in the location of construction competitiveness of each country analyzed by various measures. Therefore, to accurately diagnose and improve the construction competitiveness in South Korea, strategies based on various measures are need to established simultaneously.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.45-63
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• 2021

This paper investigates the effects of China's participation in global value chains (GVC) on the productivities focusing on the manufacturing industries. In this study, several indicators of participation in global value chains were used. These include GVC participation, forward GVC participation, backward GVC participation and GVC position index. In particular, we used the data obtained from 18 manufacturing industries in China during 15 years from 2000 to 2014. The main results of the analysis are as follows. First, the higher the degree of total participation in GVC, the higher the productivity. This means that with the increase in exports and imports of intermediate goods, productivity has increased through technology spillover effects or competition effects, and so on. Second, the backward participation does not increase the productivities significantly while forward participation leads higher productivity. Third, the productivity improvement effects of GVC participation was larger in the high-tech industries than in the low-tech industries. These results show that GVC participation was helpful for the economic growth of China and the efforts for moving toward upstream production stage in GVC is necessary for the improvement of international competitiveness in Chinese manufacturing industry.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.241-248
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirical evidences of productivity of life insurance institutions in Malaysia. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the productivity of the life insurance institutions in Malaysia. The overall findings show that the total factor productivity (TFP) has progressed by 2.5% per year during the study period from 2012 to 2016 in the Malaysian insurance industry. However, TFP change has declined from 2012 to 2015 and observed a negative growth in 2015-16 (3.3%). The highest productivity progress was documented during 2012-13 at a rate of 11.7% while the minimum productivity progress was during 2014-15 (only 0.2%). The results also indicate that the decomposition of TFP found that overall progress could mainly be attributed to technological change (TC). However, technical efficiency change (TEC) and pure technical efficiency change (PTE) have negative impact on TFP. The findings also show that most of the insurance companies have a steady growth. Therefore, this study will contribute new insights for the policy makers and insurance institutions to take appropriate steps in developing relevant policies for increasing productivity of insurance institutions in Malaysia.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.75-114
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• 2010

This paper examines empirically whether information and communication technology(ICT) has improved total factor productivity at industry level in Korea, considering time lag between ICT capital accumulation and improvement of productivity. To evaluate if ICT is pervasive enough to raise productivity, ICT capital stock of Korea is compared with those of advanced economies. From the perspective of aggregate economy, the ICT capital in Korea has increased fast since the mid-1990s and became comparable with advanced economies. However it is mostly attributed to rapid growth of ICT-producing industries. In other industries, ICT capital are still less accumulated than advanced economies. Growth accounting results exhibit that the productivity has risen faster since 2000 in industries using ICT intensively, but looking into specific industries, it is not likely for ICT to be the main factor of productivity improvement except in business service industry. Regression results provide some evidence that ICT is useful in raising productivity only after considerable amount of time allowed. To fully exploit the positive effect of ICT on productivity, it may be necessary for the Korean economy to create institutional environment facilitating complementary innovations as well as ICT captial accumulation.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.839-846
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• 2022

Traditionally, the construction industry has shown low labor productivity and productivity growth. To improve labor productivity, it must first be accurately measured. The existing method uses work-sampling techniques through observation of workers' activities at certain time intervals on site. However, a disadvantage of this method is that the results may differ depending on the observer's judgment and may be inaccurate in the case of a large number of missed scenarios. Therefore, this study proposes a model to automate labor productivity measurement by monitoring workers' actions using a deep learning-based pose estimation method. The results are expected to contribute to productivity improvement on construction sites.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 1980

By the mid 1960's the rate of productivity growth in the manufacturing industries of the United States reached the lowest level ever recorded in the American economy. As a result the cost-offsetting operations that had been a century-long part of cost minimizing became less feasible. U.S. manufacturing firins apparently embarked on a pattern of a cost pass-along management. Accounting for price variation as a function of a shift from cost minimizing to cost pass-along is the main subject of this investigation. An econometric model of the inflation process is presented which indicates a clear shift in the modal behavior of manufacturing industries from cost minimizing (1948-1964) to cost pass-along (1965-1975). The latter behavior, initially triggered by the drag of resource diversion on the productivity growth process, undermines the pressure toward productive efficiency that is at the core of industrial engineering, and at the center of U.S. industry's ability to remain competitive.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.43-52
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• 1997

The main purpose of this study was to examine the sectors of Korean textile complex based on various economic characteristics and performances. The sectors in the textile complex differed in many aspects. Man-made fiber industry showed capital-intensive characteristics even though most of the sectors in the textile complex were labor-intensive. Textile industry is composed of weaving and spinning, knitting, dyeing and finishing sectors and even within the textile industry, each sector had different characteristics from each others. Weaving and spinning sector seemed to require relatively high capital investment, while dyeing and finishing was very labor-intensive. Labor-intensive apparel industry has faced decrease in labor-productivity while wage has increased. Slow growth in labor productivity in Korean textile complex was shown to be a more problem than increase in wage or ratio of labor cost to value added. Apparel companies appeared to be in better financial states than the textile companies, even though the exports of apparel products have decreased in the 1990s. However, in overall the financial states of the Korean textile complex were not as strong as those of the other manufacturing sectors.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.477-482
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• 1998

In the aquaculture industry, a photobioreactor (Pbr) with high productivity is a prerequisite for mass production of Chlorella sp., a feeding fry for Rotifer (Brachinous plicatilis). To enhance the productivity of Chlorella sp., model Pbrs such as Cylinder type, Spherical surface type, Half-spherical surface type, Plate type, Raceway pond type and Water-wheel type Pbr with different values of surface area exposed to light/culture volume (S/V) were manufactured, and the maximum specific growth rate (${\mu}_{max}$) and productivity of Chlorella vulgaris 211-11b at $25^{\circ}C$, pH 7.0 and 12,000 lux were compared each other. The ${\mu}_{max}$ and productivity were not proportional to S/V. Among the 6 model Pbrs, Half-spherical surface type Pbr showed the highest ${\mu}_{max}$ and productivity as 2.206 ($day^{-1}$) and 0.247($g^{{\ell}-1}day^{-1}$).