• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
• /
• v.57 no.2 s.111
• /
• pp.69-85
• /
• 2007

Despite the recovery of consumer expenditure and retailing in the Korean economy after 2001, the domestic apparel industry has been aggravated by negative growth in both productivity and production. The purpose of the stud? is to diagnose the develop competitive of the Korean apparel industry and derive implications for this after estimating the efficiency of the Korean apparel companies with Data Envelopment Analysis. Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) is a methodology based in non-parametric analysis and linear programming. It was developed for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of firms that use inputs to produce outputs. Data used fer input and output variables in the analysis are drawn from financial statement recorded by the Korean Financial Supervisory Service. The initial input data comprise the number fo the employees, fixed assets, general management and selling expenses, and cost of sales. The initial outputs are the operating profit and the gross margin. To summary the results, the efficiencies of the Korean apparel companies has increased yearly in spite of being overabundance of investment in Labour and Capital. According to correlation between input and output variables, the Korean apparel industry has been revamping gradually from labor intensive industries to the capital. The companies need to reduce costs in the results from the number of employees, fixed asset and cost of sales to transform into an efficiently enterprise. The companies owning or obtaining a brand had bitter establish an outsourcing strategic in production, while OEM corporations are called far setting up a manufactory in domestic or abroad. Although the paper is derived some implications with production efficiencies, the relation between apparel companies and brand power, consumption level of consumer, and social trend is remained on a limitation to the study. The next research necessitates a topic with Fashion industry or examining the correlation between brand value, social propensity and profit margin.

• Korean Business Review
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.35-59
• /
• 2009

The drive for sustainable economic growth for the sub Saharan African region continues to occupy a central place in the debate of how to move the region forward. For decades, governments, policy makers, Non Governmental Organizations and world bodies including the World Bank, IMF, ADB, USIAD and the European Union have engaged policies aimed at bringing solutions to the horrendous poverty crisis to nations of this region. Despite these noble actions and intents, poverty and underdevelopment has prevailed in countries of the region such as Cameroon. Cameroon is mainly an agricultural economy with its products facing declining prices and competition from synthetic substitutes resulting to deficits of balance of trades. This has resulted to borrowing and debt. At the same time, it is a country blessed with an abundance of tourist resources. From the literature review, tourism potency to economic growth is overwhelming. This research was motivated by the quest to find answers to questions such as; why development policies during the last two decades not succeeded in achieving Economic growth in countries of this region particularly Cameroon and why the country/ region still beleaguered by poverty and debt despite haven implemented various economic development plans. In recent years, the role of tourism has become increasingly recognized in its role of economic growth and poverty alleviation. This study attempts to unveil tourism's contribution to economic growth and to push for Tourism development as an al ternative economic growth alternative to Cameroon. Previous economic policies have ignored to tie economic growth within the country's socio-economic, geo-political and environmental circumstances. Findings from this work suggest that any sound economic policy can not afford to ignore the country's stock of both human and fiscal capital. Findings presented herewith validate Tourism as a feasible indigenous economic growth alternative that helps bringing employment, capital investment and protect the environmental ruin.

• Korean Management Science Review
• /
• v.34 no.3
• /
• pp.15-41
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of the BSCs of 642 firms excluding the financial and insurance companies listed on KOSPI. The analysis of financial performance through analysis of major financial ratios between BSC and non-BSC firms is compared with the input of human and material resources for business growth. We will promote the spread of BSC and examine the areas differentiated performance improvement. The analytical categories are manufacturing, service, wholesale and retail, and information and communications, which are 2,136 business years out of 2,378 final analytical samples. The results of the analysis are as follows. As a result of the analysis, among the four industries analyzed, the industries that showed the best performance were manufacturing. In the case of service industry, growth and activity were lower than those of non-adoption (NA) companies, but the operating margin was significantly different from manufacturing. However, market value was higher than that of NA companies, and R&D expenditures and advertising expenses were significantly higher than NA firms. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in profitability between the BSC and NA firms, but the market value was very significant. EPS is 5.22 times, BPS is 5.64 times, PBR is 1.3 times, and EVA is 35 times higher. In addition, R&D expenditure and advertising expenditure are more than twice as high as those of NA. In the case of the service industry, there is no significant difference in the growth performance from the NA firms. Activity indicators, BSC introduced companies are three times lower than both the total assets turnover and the capital turnover rate. The operating profit margin was high at 45.8% for introduced companies and 37.2% for non-introduced companies. In market value analysis, only BPS was 1.68 times higher. On the other hand, investment in welfare expenses is 0.2% of total assets, which is relatively low compared to NA firms. However, research and development expenses and advertising expenses are 2.1% and 1.02% of total assets, respectively, but they are relatively lower than those of NA firms. Unlike the manufacturing and service industries, wholesale and retail trade was significantly higher than the NA firms in terms of sales growth and total assets growth rate. In terms of market value, EPS and BPS were significantly higher, but the benefits, R&D expenditures, and advertising expenses were lower than those of NA firms. The information and communication industry showed lower level of performance than the NA firms in all indicators except cash liquidity, BPS, and EVA.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.285-304
• /
• 2017

This paper introduces household's decision for schooling and firm's decision for technology-specific training together into the second generation model of endogenous innovation, and analyses how schooling and technology-specific training interact each other, how they respectively affect innovation and economic growth, and also how the portfolio mix of schooling and technology-specific training changes as economy becomes more innovative. Main results are as follows: First, schooling and technology-specific training both have "inverted-U"shape growth effects. Second, schooling investment per labor required for growth maximization is always greater than that for firm profit maximization. Third, the optimal schooling for growth maximization decreases with technology-specific training. Fourth, the schooling effect on technology-specific training is "U"shaped, so that for firm's profit maximization schooling is substitutable for technology-specific training at the relatively lower level of schooling but complementary at its relatively higher level. Fifth, as economy becomes more innovative, the portfolio mix of education changes in favor of schooling.

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

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.33-50
• /
• 2020

Knowledge recipes are packages of knowledge which arise from the process of combining the knowledge assets in the organization in distinctive ways. This involves converting them into useful outputs which are the ideal core competitive advantage enablers for companies. The major objective of this study was to propose a knowledge recipe for financial-sector state corporations in Kenya. The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed methods research design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires and key informant interviews. The target population of the study was 1574 respondents drawn from all financial state corporations. A multistage sampling technique was used for the study. The first phase involved purposive sampling of the organizations to be studied whereby the four state corporations namely: Capital Markets Authority, Competition Authority of Kenya, Kenya Investment Authority, and Kenya Revenue Authority were identified. The second phase entailed stratified sampling of the respondents in three strata namely senior management team, knowledge management team, and general staff. The authors used a census of all senior management team and knowledge management staff while a simple random sampling technique was used for the general staff. By use of the Krejcie and Morgan table, the actual sample size was 358 respondents from all the four organizations. Data were collected using questionnaires and interview schedules. The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis while the quantitative data were analyzed by the use of Ms. Excel and VOSviewer and presented using pie charts, bar graphs, and tables. The response rate for this study was 257 (72%). The study revealed that while most employees in the financial sector organizations understand their knowledge needs, knowledge types, knowledge uses and knowledge gaps, they do not have a universal knowledge recipe to facilitate effective knowledge management in their organizations. Consequently, the authors propose a universal knowledge recipe for the state corporations in the financial sector in Kenya. The ingredients of the recipe are legal-knowledge (18%), financial knowledge (15%), administrative knowledge (11%), best practice (10%), lessons learnt (8%), human resource knowledge (8%), research and statistics knowledge (7%), product knowledge (6%), policy and procedure knowledge (5%), ICT knowledge (4%), investor knowledge (3%), markets knowledge (2%), general knowledge (2%) and regulatory framework knowledge (1%).

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.145-171
• /
• 2018

Laos' 2017 is a year of political "stagnation" and economic "change". In the political arena, despite the achievements such as the improvement of the corruption perception index (CPI), it is necessary to watch the progress of the reform. Diplomatically, the influence of China is expected to increase further. In particular, since November 2017, Xi Jinping's visit to Laos is expected to strengthen the framework of cooperation between the economic corridor and Lanchang-Mekong Cooperation Meeting. And Laos continued to have friendly relations with other neighboring countries, the ASEAN countries. However, the issue of the Laos-Cambodian border issue following the general election in Cambodia may recur. The economic sector maintained a high growth rate due to capital inflows from the construction of large infrastructures and the favorable tourism industry, but structural problems such as deficits in the fiscal and current account should be resolved. Korea and Laos discussed the comprehensive cooperation between the two countries through the Mekong Senior Officials' Meeting in March 2017 and the Ministerial Meeting of the Korean-Lao Foreign Minister in September 2017. Laos is Korea's eighth ODA aid (grant), and ODA will become an important diplomatic cooperation channel between the two countries in the future. In the economic relationship, the trade sector is on a declining trend, but investment and human exchanges are steadily increasing.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.53-77
• /
• 2012

Financial firms, especially large scaled firms such as KB bank, NH bank, Samsung Card, Hana SK Card, Hyundai Capital, Shinhan Card, etc. should be securely dealing with the personal financial information. Indeed, people have tended to believe that those big financial companies are relatively safer in terms of information security than typical small and medium sized firms in other industries. However, the recent incidents of personal information privacy invasion showed that this may not be true. Financial firms have increased the investment of information protection and security, and they are trying to prevent the information privacy invasion accidents by doing all the necessary efforts. This paper studies how effectively a financial firm will be able to avoid personal financial information privacy invasion that may be deliberately caused by internal staffs. Although there are several literatures relating to information security, to our knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the behavior of internal staffs. The big financial firms are doing variety of information security activities to protect personal information. This study is to confirm what types of such activities actually work well. The primary research model of this paper is based on Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) that describes the rational choice of human behavior. Also, a variety of activities to protect the personal information of financial firms, especially credit card companies with the most customer information, were modeled by the four-step process Security Action Cycle (SAC) that Straub and Welke (1998) claimed. Through this proposed conceptual research model, we study whether information security activities of each step could suppress personal information abuse. Also, by measuring the morality of internal staffs, we checked whether the act of information privacy invasion caused by internal staff is in fact a serious criminal behavior or just a kind of unethical behavior. In addition, we also checked whether there was the cognition difference of the moral level between internal staffs and the customers. Research subjects were customer call center operators in one of the big credit card company. We have used multiple regression analysis. Our results showed that the punishment of the remedy activities, among the firm's information security activities, had the most obvious effects of preventing the information abuse (or privacy invasion) by internal staff. Somewhat effective tools were the prevention activities that limited the physical accessibility of non-authorities to the system of customers' personal information database. Some examples of the prevention activities are to make the procedure of access rights complex and to enhance security instrument. We also found that 'the unnecessary information searches out of work' as the behavior of information abuse occurred frequently by internal staffs. They perceived these behaviors somewhat minor criminal or just unethical action rather than a serious criminal behavior. Also, there existed the big cognition difference of the moral level between internal staffs and the public (customers). Based on the findings of our research, we should expect that this paper help practically to prevent privacy invasion and to protect personal information properly by raising the effectiveness of information security activities of finance firms. Also, we expect that our suggestions can be utilized to effectively improve personnel management and to cope with internal security threats in the overall information security management system.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.31-66
• /
• 2006

The country with a relative abundance of human capital conducts relatively more R&D in the steady state than its partner. This country acquires the know-how to produce a relatively wider range of innovative goods. High technology comprises a large share of the national economy in the human-capital rich country and real output growth is faster. This prediction would seem to accord weakly with empirical observation of Korean economy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.157-175
• /
• 2021

This study categorized 3,214 companies out of the tech firms supported by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation's "technology guarantee scheme" through technology assessment from 2017 to 2019 into Fourth Industrial Revolution-related companies and general SMEs. The impact of the management characteristics of these 1,752 tech firms on the determination of high-growth firms was then empirically analyzed. This study used the OECD(2007) definition to define a "high-growth firm" as "an enterprise with average revenue growth greater than 20% per annum, over a two-year period." As the two sample groups showed non-normal distribution, this study conducted the Mann-Whitney U test, a nonparametric test, to analyze the mean differences and bivariate logistic regression in which the normality assumption is less stringent. The independent variables include fundamental characteristics; a regional dummy; a technological level dummy; and the capabilities of company representatives, human capital, and technological innovation. The corresponding sub-variables are representatives' level of education and experience in the same industry, full-time workers, research personnel, the extent of intellectual property rights, investment in research and development, firm age, total assets, region_metropolitan area, region_central region, technological level_high technology, and technological level_medium technology. As a result, the research hypothesis about representatives' level of experience in the same industry, full-time workers, total assets, and technological level_high technology was supported for the Fourth Industrial Revolution-related companies. For the general SMEs, the research hypothesis about representatives' level of experience in the same industry, research personnel, total assets, and region_metropolitan area was supported.