• Title/Summary/Keyword: job performance level

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An Empirical Study on the Impact of the Perception of the Monitoring Function on Effective BPMS Adoption (모니터링 기능에 대한 인식이 효과적인 BPMS 도입에 미치는 영향)

  • Chae, Myung-Sin;Park, Jin-Suk;Lee, Byung-Tae
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.105-130
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    • 2007
  • Recently, there is a substantial interest in implementing Business Process Management System(BPMS) among enterprises with the purpose of business process innovation. BPMS redesigns and coordinates business processes in terms of both automated steps and human involvement in order to maximize the value of both involved people and systems. The reason why BPMS is getting attention from top managers is that it has the possibility to optimize the business processes by cycling the process of modeling, execution, monitoring, evaluation, and redesigning work processes. Thus, it has created high expectations about not only productivity improvement but also business process innovation. However. having an innovative nature, which is used for process innovation, BPMS implementation has great potential to stir up employee resistance. The analysis and the discussion about the prevention of the resistance against IS(Information Systems) is important because IS change the way people work and also alter the power structure within the organization, in general. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors that have an impact on the effective adoption of BPMS at the enterprise level. To find out these factors, this study considers two characteristics of BPMS: First. BPMS shares some characteristics with other enterprise-wide IS such as ERP. Second, it has special BPMS-specific characteristics. Due to the lack of previous research on BPMS adoption, interviews were carried out with IT-consultants and CIOs who conducted BPMS projects previously to find out BPMS-specific features that would make BPMS unique when compared to other enterprise-wide IS. As a result, the monitoring function was chosen as the main BPMS-specific factor. Thus, this paper reviewed studies both on enterprise-wide IS adoptions, which applied Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and secondly on computer based monitoring to find out factors that would influence the employees' perception on the monitoring function of BPMS. Based on the literature review, the study suggested three factors that would have an impact on the employee's perception of the monitoring function: fairness of enterprise evaluation system, fairness of the boss, and self-efficacy of their work. Three factors that would impact the enterprise-wide IS adoption were also set: the shared belief in the benefit of BPMS, training, and communication. Then, these factors were integrated with TAM. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses, out factors that would impact the employees' perception on the monitoring function of BPMS. Based on the literature review the study suggested three factors that would have an impact on the employee's perception of the monitoring function: fairness of enterprise evaluation system, fairness of the boss, and self-efficacy of their work. Three factors that would impact the enterprise-wide IS adoption were also set: the shared belief in the benefit of BPMS, training, and communication. Then, these factors were integrated with TAM. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. The data analysis results showed that two among three monitoring function related factors - enterprise evaluation system and fairness of the boss - were significant. This implies that employees would worry less about the BPMS implementation as long as they perceive the monitoring results will be used fairly for their performance evaluation. However, employees' high self-efficacy on their job was not a significant factor in their perception of the usefulness of BPMS. This is related to cases that showed employees resisted against the information systems because they automated their works (Markus, 1983). One specific case was an electronic company, where the accounting department workers were requested to redefine their job because their working processes were automated due to BPMS implementation.

A Study on Minimum Cabin Crew Requirements for Korean Low Cost Air Carriers

  • Yoo, Kyung-In;Kim, Mun-Kyung
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.291-314
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    • 2018
  • In recent 3 years, Korea's low-cost airlines have expanded their areas of passenger transportation not only to domestic market but also to Japan, China, Southeast Asia and US territory as a total of 6 companies (8 airlines including small air operation business carriers). Currently, three more airlines have filed for air transportation business certification as future low-cost carriers, and this expansion is expected to continue. To cope with the aggressive airline operations of domestic and foreign low-cost carriers and to enhance their competitiveness, each low-cost airline is taking a number of strategies for promoting cabin service. Therefore, the workload of the cabin crew is increased in proportion to the expansion, and the fatigue directly connected with the safety task performance is increased. It is stipulated in the Enforcement Regulations of the Korea Aviation Safety Act that at minimum, one cabin crew is required per 50 passenger seating capacity, and all low cost carriers are boarding only the minimum cabin crew. Sometimes it is impossible for them to sit in a floor level emergency exit for evacuation, which is the main task of the cabin crew, and this can cause confusion among evacuating passengers in the event of an emergency. In addition, if one of the minimum cabin crew becomes incapacitated due to an injury or the like, it will become a serious impediment in performing emergency evacuation duties. Even in the normal situation, since it will be violating the Act prescription on the minimum cabin crew complement, passengers will have to move to another available airline flights, encountering extreme inconvenience. Annex 6 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation specifies international standards for the determination of the minimum number of cabin crew shall be based only on the number of passenger seats or passengers on board for safe and expeditious emergency evacuation. Thereby in order to enhance the safety of the passengers and the crew on board, it is necessary to consider the cabin crew's fatigue that may occur in the various job characteristics (service, safety, security, first aid)and floor level emergency exit seating in calculating the minimum number of cabin crew. And it is also deemed necessary for the government's regulatory body to enhance the cabin safety for passengers and crew when determining the number of minimum cabin crew by reflecting the cabin crew's workload leading to their fatigue and unavailability to be seated in a floor level emergency exit on low cost carriers.

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
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.49-71
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    • 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.

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A Methodology to Develop a Curriculum based on National Competency Standards - Focused on Methodology for Gap Analysis - (국가직무능력표준(NCS)에 근거한 조경분야 교육과정 개발 방법론 - 갭분석을 중심으로 -)

  • Byeon, Jae-Sang;Ahn, Seong-Ro;Shin, Sang-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.43 no.1
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    • pp.40-53
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    • 2015
  • To train the manpower to meet the requirements of the industrial field, the introduction of the National Qualification Frameworks(hereinafter referred to as NQF) was determined in 2001 by National Competency Standards(hereinafter referred to as NCS) centrally of the Office for Government Policy Coordination. Also, for landscape architecture in the construction field, the "NCS -Landscape Architecture" pilot was developed in 2008 to be test operated for 3 years starting in 2009. Especially, as the 'realization of a competence-based society, not by educational background' was adopted as one of the major government projects in the Park Geun-Hye government(inaugurated in 2013) the NCS system was constructed on a nationwide scale as a detailed method for practicing this. However, in the case of the NCS developed by the nation, the ideal job performing abilities are specified, therefore there are weaknesses of not being able to reflect the actual operational problem differences in the student level between universities, problems of securing equipment and professors, and problems in the number of current curricula. For soft landing to practical curriculum, the process of clearly analyzing the gap between the current curriculum and the NCS must be preceded. Gap analysis is the initial stage methodology to reorganize the existing curriculum into NCS based curriculum, and based on the ability unit elements and performance standards for each NCS ability unit, the discrepancy between the existing curriculum within the department or the level of coincidence used a Likert scale of 1 to 5 to fill in and analyze. Thus, the universities wishing to operate NCS in the future measuring the level of coincidence and the gap between the current university curriculum and NCS can secure the basic tool to verify the applicability of NCS and the effectiveness of further development and operation. The advantages of reorganizing the curriculum through gap analysis are, first, that the government financial support project can be connected to provide quantitative index of the NCS adoption rate for each qualitative department, and, second, an objective standard is provided on the insufficiency or sufficiency when reorganizing to NCS based curriculum. In other words, when introducing in the subdivisions of the relevant NCS, the insufficient ability units and the ability unit elements can be extracted, and the supplementary matters for each ability unit element per existing subject can be extracted at the same time. There is an advantage providing directions for detailed class program and basic subject opening. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Employment and Labor must gather people from the industry to actively develop and supply the NCS standard a practical level to systematically reflect the requirements of the industrial field the educational training and qualification, and the universities wishing to apply NCS must reorganize the curriculum connecting work and qualification based on NCS. To enable this, the universities must consider the relevant industrial prospect and the relation between the faculty resources within the university and the local industry to clearly select the NCS subdivision to be applied. Afterwards, gap analysis must be used for the NCS based curriculum reorganization to establish the direction of the reorganization more objectively and rationally in order to participate in the process evaluation type qualification system efficiently.

Republic of Korea Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Status and Recognition Research: Focusing on Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurs Preliminary, Student Centered Comparative Analysis on the Status and Recognition (대한민국 창업생태계 현황 및 인식 연구: 창업가, 예비창업가, 학생을 중심으로 현황 및 인식 비교 분석)

  • Kim, Sung Hoon;Nam, Jung min
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.11 no.6
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    • pp.175-183
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    • 2016
  • The government set up "national happiness, the hope of a new era of national vision under' job center of the creative economy" to achieve by national goals in the first and figure achieved through the establishment of new growth engines of the youth unemployment problem solve and national level there are a number of business start-up support. September 8, 2015 announced the Government's look at the '2016 Year of the budget, the government for new growth engines greatly promoted the venture entrepreneurship ecosystem revitalization and research and development (R & D) the business for enhanced performance in 2017. According to the direction of this study is to evaluate the current creative economy business incubator at the comparison whether the correct orientation mainly entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs preliminary recognition of student entrepreneurship ecosystem. Entrepreneurs 113 people in that way, 71 people pre-entrepreneurs, students 60, workers were founding agencies conducted an online survey of 47 people, 16 people Investors, 50 public and 11 additional persons including a total of 368 people. This study is in line with the orientation of these entrepreneurs to create economic status and recognition of the Republic of Korea entrepreneurship ecosystem, pre- entrepreneurs, students will examine the comparative analysis around. Analysis, social perception of entrepreneurship is somewhat higher than it was confirmed that the negative response of 32.2% to 36.3% of positive response. Social awareness of entrepreneurs showed a 2-fold higher response rate than the negative of response of 17.1% to 41.7% responding that positive recognition for the current start-up environment is bad, the response is good response to higher response rate than 23.5% to 41.1% It showed. The percentage of responses that better respect the entrepreneurship environment of the future Republic of Korea showed a higher response rate than the rate of 23% in response to deteriorate to 41.2%, with 52.9% awareness is the percentage that responded that the bad part about the ruthless Korea's entrepreneurship environment in China good part as response rate approximately three times greater than the 17.7% showed high response rates. Social awareness of entrepreneurs experience the presence of the founding start-up experience was confirmed that the more negative the number increases, the more the contrary the number of start-up experience increased awareness of the current and future environment of entrepreneurship was identified as a positive entrepreneurship environment. Also recognized was confirmed to change the parent of the more positive changes in the start-up of entrepreneurs doctor also positive about entrepreneurship, start-up entrepreneurs start with a doctor's motivation for founding non-economic reasons than for economic reasons has confirmed Higher. This study showed the overall level overview analysis of the status and recognition of the Republic of Korea entrepreneurship ecosystem. Future studies need to be a proposal for an existing previous studies for more precise direction to go forth to analyze the entrepreneurship ecosystem with a focus on problems and improvement of the Republic of Korea entrepreneurship ecosystem.

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The Effect of the Medical Service by Service Instruction of Dental Health Care Worker (치과 의료 종사자의 의료 서비스 교육이 의료 서비스에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Chang-Hee;Lee, Ji-Youn;Lee, Hyun-Ook
    • Journal of dental hygiene science
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.53-59
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    • 2001
  • This study was aimed to survey the level of service education in the people engaging in medical services and identify the influence of the education on their job performance. This study was conducted from February 10th, 2000 to March 10th, 2000, centering on Seoul and Kyonggi area. A total of 341 questionnaires were distributed for the survey. The result ware as followings: (1) In a question about the satisfaction over general medical services such as the location of medical institutions, medical equipments and devices, and the attitudes of medical personnel, the group with service education marked 4.07 while the group with no education earned 3.97, showing statistically significant difference(p<.05). (2) In the area of medical institutions image, level of medical services and promotion, the group with service education showed 4.01 while the group with no education gained 3.83, also showing statistically significant difference(p<.05). (3) No statistically meaningful difference was revealed in the area of satisfaction for over all medical services such as the contentment about the medical services being provided, rooms for improvement and the adequacy of the number of medical personnel. The group with education acquired 3.32, with the group with no education 3.34. (4) Satisfaction about the education and awareness about medical services were high in the group of dental hygienists and showed a statistically meaningful difference. (5) The average number of education recorded 1.83 and satisfaction over service education inside the hospital was low, registering 3.24. (6) Teamwork among the personnel in the hospital was 3.70, which is relatively high. The fulfillment over given tasks posted 3.56 and the recommendation for medical institutions was low, recording 3.24. (7) The necessity of medical service education for medical personnel gained 4.40, indicating heightened awareness over the need for service education.

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Evaluation of Project-Based Learning on Community Dental Hygiene Practice Education (지역사회치위생학 실습 교육에서의 프로젝트 기반 학습 효과 평가)

  • Yoo, Sang-Hee;Bae, Soo-Myoung;Shin, Bo-Mi;Shin, Sun-Jung
    • Journal of dental hygiene science
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.368-374
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    • 2017
  • The purpose of this study was to evaluate community dental hygiene practice education, by verifying its effect after applying project-based learning in improving the practical and social skills of learners. A 15-week project-based community dental hygiene practice course was held for 27 senior students, who took community dental hygiene practice course in the Department of Dental Hygiene, Gangneung-Wonju National University. Twenty-seven students were composed of 4 teams. Each team selected a target group for four workplaces for adult workers to apply the oral health promotion project. The project was then planned and conducted based on a survey on the health problems confronting each group, and an evaluation was carried out after 4 weeks. From the results obtained in comparing confidence in problem solving ability, project value, teamwork competency, and community dental hygienist competence before and after course, the improvement in project value and teamwork competence scores was not statistically significant, but all four areas showed positive results. After analyzing the project actuality, learning outcomes, and project satisfaction after course results, the actuality of the project was 19.30 points, the learning achievement was 45.19 points, and the satisfaction was 19.19 points, demonstrating that the aim of achieving actual performance competence and a learning performance exceeding expectations was accomplished. After conducting an interview survey with 8 students, it was found that they had learned social skills involving problem-solving abilities and confidence, and teamwork competence such as cooperation, role responsibility, creative thinking ability, and communication skills. Community dental hygienists should be able to acquire learner-level practical skills and social skills in the community dental hygiene and practical courses, according to their competencies and job needs. It is necessary to develop a project?based systematic learning module to enable the community dental hygiene practice to operate as a subject closely related to fields in other dental hygiene departments.

The Factors Affecting Attitudes Toward HSDPA Service and Intention to Use: A Cross-Cultural Comparison between Asia and Europe (대영향(对影响)HSDPA복무적태도화사용의도적인소적연구(服务的态度和使用意图的因素的研究): 재아주화구주지간적(在亚洲和欧洲之间的)-개과문화비교(个跨文化比较))

  • Jung, Hae-Sung;Shin, Jong-Kuk;Park, Min-Sook;Jung, Hong-Seob;Hooley, Graham;Lee, Nick;Kwak, Hyok-Jin;Kim, Sung-Hyun
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.11-23
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    • 2009
  • HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want. In the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are suggested as the most important factors affecting the attitudes of people adopting new technologies (Davis, 1989; Taylor and Todd, 1995; Venkatesh, 2000; Lee et al., 2004). Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree of subjective belief that using a particular technology will require little physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989; Morris and Dillon, 1997; Venkatesh, 2000). Perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness have been shown to clearly affect attitudes toward accepting technology (Davis et al., 1992). For example, pleasure in online shopping has been shown to positively impact consumers' attitudes toward online sellers (Eighmey and McCord, 1998; Mathwick, 2002; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997). The perceived risk of customers is a subjective risk, which is distinguished from an objective probabilistic risk. Perceived risk includes a psychological risk that consumers perceive when they choose brands, stores, and methods of purchase to obtain a particular item. The ability of an enterprise to revolutionize products depends on the effective acquisition of knowledge about new products (Bierly and Chakrabarti, 1996; Rothwell and Dodgson, 1991). Knowledge acquisition is the ability of a company to perceive the value of novelty and technology of the outside (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), to evaluate the outside technology that has newly appeared (Arora and Gambaradella, 1994), and to predict the future evolution of technology accurately (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Consumer innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts innovation earlier than others in the social system (Lee, Ahn, and Ha, 2001; Gatignon and Robertson, 1985). That is, it shows how fast and how easily consumers adopt new ideas. Innovativeness is regarded as important because it has a significant effect on whether consumers adopt new products and on how fast they accept new products (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Foxall, 1988; Hirschman, 1980). We conducted cross-national comparative research using the TAM model, which empirically verified the relationship between the factors that affect attitudes - perceived usefulness, ease of use, perceived pleasure, perceived risk, innovativeness, and perceived level of knowledge management - and attitudes toward HSDPA service. We also verified the relationship between attitudes and usage intention for the purpose of developing more effective methods of management for HSDPA service providers. For this research, 346 questionnaires were distributed among 350 students in the Republic of Korea. Because 26 of the returned questionnaires were inconsistent or had missing data, 320 questionnaires were used in the hypothesis tests. In UK, 192 of the total 200 questionnaires were retrieved, and two incomplete ones were discarded, bringing the total to 190 questionnaires used for statistical analysis. The results of the overall model analysis are as follows: Republic of Korea x2=333.27(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.88, CFI=0.91, IFI=0.91, RMR=0.054, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84, UK x2=176.57(p=0.0), NFI=0.88, NNFI=0.90, CFI=0.93, IFI=0.93, RMR=0.062, GFI=0.90, AGFI=0.84. From the results of the hypothesis tests of Korean consumers about the relationship between factors that affect intention to use HSDPA services and attitudes, we can conclude that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness promote positive attitudes toward HSDPA mobile phones. However, ease of use and perceived pleasure did not have a direct effect on intention to use HSDPA service. This may have resulted from the fact that the use of video phones is not necessary for everyday life yet. Moreover, it has been shown that attitudes toward HSDPA video phones are directly correlated with usage intention, which means that perceived usefulness, ease of use, pleasure, a high level of knowledge management, and innovativeness. These relationships form the basis of the intention to buy, contributing to a situation in which consumers decide to choose carefully. A summary of the results of the hypothesis tests of European consumers revealed that perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and the level of knowledge management are factors that affect the formation of attitudes, while ease of use and innovativeness do not have an effect on attitudes. In particular, with regard to the effect value, perceived usefulness has the largest effect on attitudes, followed by pleasure and knowledge management. On the contrary, perceived risk has a smaller effect on attitudes. In the Asian model, ease of use and perceived pleasure were found not to have a direct effect on intention to use. However, because attitudes generally affect the intention to use, perceived usefulness, pleasure, risk, and knowledge management may be considered key factors in attitude development from which usage intention arises. In conclusion, perceived usefulness, pleasure, and the level of knowledge management have an effect on attitude formation in both Asian and European consumers, and such attitudes shape these consumers' intention to use. Furthermore, the hypotheses that ease of use and perceived pleasure affect usage intention are rejected. However, ease of use, perceived risk, and innovativeness showed different results. Perceived risk had no effect on attitude formation among Asians, while ease of use and innovativeness had no effect on attitudes among Europeans.

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The Empirical Study on the Effects of the Team Empowerment caused by the Team-Based Organizational Structure in KBS (팀제가 팀 임파워먼트에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구;KBS 팀제를 중심으로)

  • Ahn, Dong-Su;Kim, Hong
    • 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2006.04a
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    • pp.167-201
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    • 2006
  • Korean corporations are transforming their vertical operational structure to a team-based structure to compete in the rapidly changing environment and for improved performance. However, a high percentage of the respondents in KBS said that despite the appearance of the present team structure, the organization operates much like a vertically-structured organization. This result can be attributed to the lack of study and implementation toward the goal of empowerment, the key variable for the success of the team-based structure. This study aims to provide policy suggestions on how to implement the process of empowerment, by investigating the conditions that hinder the process and the attitude of the KBS employees. For the cross-sectional study, this thesis examined the domestic and international references, conducted a survey of KBS employees, personal interviews and made direct observations. Approximately 1,200 copies of the Questionnaire were distributed and 474 were completed and returned. The analysis used SPSS 12.0 software to process the data collected from 460 respondents. For the longitudinal-study, six categories that were common to this study and "The Report of the Findings of KBS Employees' View of the Team Structure" were selected. The comparative study analyzed the changes in a ten-month period. The survey findings showed a decrease of 24.2%p in the number of responses expressing negative views of the team structure and a decrease of 1.29%p in the number of positive responses. The findings indicated a positive transformation illustrating employees' improved understanding and approval of the team structure. However, KBS must address the issue on an ongoing basis. It has been proven that the employee empowerment increases the productivity of the individual and the group. In order to boost the level of empowerment, the management must exercise new, innovative leadership and build trust between the managers and the employees first. Additional workload as a result of shirking at work places was prevalent throughout all divisions and ranks, according to the survey data. This outcome leads to the conclusion that the workload is not evenly distributed or shared. And the data also showed the employees do not trust the assessment and rewards system. More attention and consideration must be paid to the team size and job allocation in order to address this matter; the present assessment and rewards system need to be complemented. The type of leadership varies depending on the characteristics of the organization's structure and employees' disposition. KBS must develop and reform its own management, leadership style to suit the characteristics of individual teams. Finally, for a soft-landing of KBS team structure, in-house training and education are necessary.

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An Intervention Study on Integration of Family Planning and Maternal/Infant Care Services in Rural Korea (가족계획과 모자보건 통합을 위한 조산원의 투입효과 분석 -서산지역의 개입연구 평가보고-)

  • Bang, Sook;Han, Seung-Hyun;Lee, Chung-Ja;Ahn, Moon-Young;Lee, In-Sook;Kim, Eun-Shil;Kim, Chong-Ho
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.20 no.1 s.21
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    • pp.165-203
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    • 1987
  • This project was a service-cum-research effort with a quasi-experimental study design to examine the health benefits of an integrated Family Planning (FP)/Maternal & Child health (MCH) Service approach that provides crucial factors missing in the present on-going programs. The specific objectives were: 1) To test the effectiveness of trained nurse/midwives (MW) assigned as change agents in the Health Sub-Center (HSC) to bring about the changes in the eight FP/MCH indicators, namely; (i)FP/MCH contacts between field workers and their clients (ii) the use of effective FP methods, (iii) the inter-birth interval and/or open interval, (iv) prenatal care by medically qualified personnel, (v) medically supervised deliveries, (vi) the rate of induced abortion, (vii) maternal and infant morbidity, and (viii) preinatal & infant mortality. 2) To measure the integrative linkage (contacts) between MW & HSC workers and between HSC and clients. 3) To examine the organizational or administrative factors influencing integrative linkage between health workers. Study design; The above objectives called for quasi-experimental design setting up a study and control area with and without a midwife. An active intervention program (FP/MCH minimum 'package' program) was conducted for a 2 year period from June 1982-July 1984 in Seosan County and 'before and after' surveys were conducted to measure the change. Service input; This study was undertaken by the Soonchunhyang University in collaboration with WHO. After a baseline survery in 1981, trained nurses/midwives were introduced into two health sub-centers in a rural setting (Seosan county) for a 2 year period from 1982 to 1984. A major service input was the establishment of midwifery services in the existing health delivery system with emphasis on nurse/midwife's role as the link between health workers (nurse aids) and village health workers, and the referral of risk patients to the private physician (OBGY specialist). An evaluation survey was made in August 1984 to assess the effectiveness of this alternative integrated approach in the study areas in comparison with the control area which had normal government services. Method of evaluation; a. In this study, the primary objective was first to examine to what extent the FP/MCH package program brought about changes in the pre-determined eight indicators (outcome and impact measures) and the following relationship was first analyzed; b. Nevertheless, this project did not automatically accept the assumption that if two or more activities were integrated, the results would automatically be better than a non-integrated or categorical program. There is a need to assess the 'integration process' itself within the package program. The process of integration was measured in terms of interactive linkages, or the quantity & quality of contacts between workers & clients and among workers. Intergrative linkages were hypothesized to be influenced by organizational factors at the HSC clinic level including HSC goals, sltrurture, authority, leadership style, resources, and personal characteristics of HSC staff. The extent or degree of integration, as measured by the intensity of integrative linkages, was in turn presumed to influence programme performance. Thus as indicated diagrammatically below, organizational factors constituted the independent variables, integration as the intervening variable and programme performance with respect to family planning and health services as the dependent variable: Concerning organizational factors, however, due to the limited number of HSCs (2 in the study area and 3 in the control area), they were studied by participatory observation of an anthropologist who was independent of the project. In this observation, we examined whether the assumed integration process actually occurred or not. If not, what were the constraints in producing an effective integration process. Summary of Findings; A) Program effects and impact 1. Effects on FP use: During this 2 year action period, FP acceptance increased from 58% in 1981 to 78% in 1984 in both the study and control areas. This increase in both areas was mainly due to the new family planning campaign driven by the Government for the same study period. Therefore, there was no increment of FP acceptance rate due to additional input of MW to the on-going FP program. But in the study area, quality aspects of FP were somewhat improved, having a better continuation rate of IUDs & pills and more use of effective Contraceptive methods in comparison with the control area. 2. Effects of use of MCH services: Between the study and control areas, however, there was a significant difference in maternal and child health care. For example, the coverage of prenatal care was increased from 53% for 1981 birth cohort to 75% for 1984 birth cohort in the study area. In the control area, the same increased from 41% (1981) to 65% (1984). It is noteworthy that almost two thirds of the recent birth cohort received prenatal care even in the control area, indicating that there is a growing demand of MCH care as the size of family norm becomes smaller 3. There has been a substantive increase in delivery care by medical professions in the study area, with an annual increase rate of 10% due to midwives input in the study areas. The project had about two times greater effect on postnatal care (68% vs. 33%) at delivery care(45.2% vs. 26.1%). 4. The study area had better reproductive efficiency (wanted pregancies with FP practice & healthy live births survived by one year old) than the control area, especially among women under 30 (14.1% vs. 9.6%). The proportion of women who preferred the 1st trimester for their first prenatal care rose significantly in the study area as compared to the control area (24% vs 13%). B) Effects on Interactive Linkage 1. This project made a contribution in making several useful steps in the direction of service integration, namely; i) The health workers have become familiar with procedures on how to work together with each other (especially with a midwife) in carrying out their work in FP/MCH and, ii) The health workers have gotten a feeling of the usefulness of family health records (statistical integration) in identifying targets in their own work and their usefulness in caring for family health. 2. On the other hand, because of a lack of required organizational factors, complete linkage was not obtained as the project intended. i) In regards to the government health worker's activities in terms of home visiting there was not much difference between the study & control areas though the MW did more home visiting than Government health workers. ii) In assessing the service performance of MW & health workers, the midwives balanced their workload between 40% FP, 40% MCH & 20% other activities (mainly immunization). However, $85{\sim}90%$ of the services provided by the health workers were other than FP/MCH, mainly for immunizations such as the encephalitis campaign. In the control area, a similar pattern was observed. Over 75% of their service was other than FP/MCH. Therefore, the pattern shows the health workers are a long way from becoming multipurpose workers even though the government is pushing in this direction. 3. Villagers were much more likely to visit the health sub-center clinic in the study area than in the control area (58% vs.31%) and for more combined care (45% vs.23%). C) Organization factors (admistrative integrative issues) 1. When MW (new workers with higher qualification) were introduced to HSC, it was noted that there were conflicts between the existing HSC workers (Nurse aids with less qualification than MW) and the MW for the beginning period of the project. The cause of the conflict was studied by an anthropologist and it was pointed out that these functional integration problems stemmed from the structural inadequacies of the health subcenter organization as indicated below; i) There is still no general consensus about the objectives and goals of the project between the project staff and the existing health workers. ii) There is no formal linkage between the responsibility of each member's job in the health sub-center. iii) There is still little chance for midwives to play a catalytic role or to establish communicative networks between workers in order to link various knowledge and skills to provide better FP/MCH services in the health sub-center. 2. Based on the above findings the project recommended to the County Chief (who has power to control the administrative staff and the technical staff in his county) the following ; i) In order to solve the conflicts between the individual roles and functions in performing health care activities, there must be goals agreed upon by both. ii) The health sub·center must function as an autonomous organization to undertake the integration health project. In order to do that, it is necessary to support administrative considerations, and to establish a communication system for supervision and to control of the health sub-centers. iii) The administrative organization, tentatively, must be organized to bind the health worker's midwive's and director's jobs by an organic relationship in order to achieve the integrative system under the leadership of health sub-center director. After submitting this observation report, there has been better understanding from frequent meetings & communication between HW/MW in FP/MCH work as the program developed. Lessons learned from the Seosan Project (on issues of FP/MCH integration in Korea); 1) A majority or about 80% of the couples are now practicing FP. As indicated by the study, there is a growing demand from clients for the health system to provide more MCH services than FP in order to maintain the achieved small size of family through FP practice. It is fortunate to see that the government is now formulating a MCH policy for the year 2,000 and revising MCH laws and regulations to emphasize more MCH care for achieving a small size family through family planning practice. 2) Goal consensus in FP/MCH shouBd be made among the health workers It administrators, especially to emphasize the need of care of 'wanted' child. But there is a long way to go to realize the 'real' integration of FP into MCH in Korea, unless there is a structural integration FP/MCH because a categorical FP is still first priority to reduce the rate of population growth for economic reasons but not yet for health/welfare reasons in practice. 3) There should be more financial allocation: (i) a midwife should be made available to help to promote the MCH program and coordinate services, (in) there should be a health sub·center director who can provide leadership training for managing the integrated program. There is a need for 'organizational support', if the decision of integration is made to obtain benefit from both FP & MCH. In other words, costs should be paid equally to both FP/MCH. The integration slogan itself, without the commitment of paying such costs, is powerless to advocate it. 4) Need of management training for middle level health personnel is more acute as the Government has already constructed 90 MCH centers attached to the County Health Center but without adequate manpower, facilities, and guidelines for integrating the work of both FP and MCH. 5) The local government still considers these MCH centers only as delivery centers to take care only of those visiting maternity cases. The MCH center should be a center for the managment of all pregnancies occurring in the community and the promotion of FP with a systematic and effective linkage of resources available in the county such as i.e. Village Health Worker, Community Health Practitioner, Health Sub-center Physicians & Health workers, Doctors and Midwives in MCH center, OBGY Specialists in clinics & hospitals as practiced by the Seosan project at primary health care level.

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