• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.145-156
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• 2014

Objectives: Korean medicine hospitals, since they first emerged in the early 1970s, have rapidly become a new member of the hospital population. As it was a new organizational frame for traditional medicine, we tried to analyze the changes of Korean medicine hospitals coping with institutional environment and their relative positioning in the whole health care sector. Methods: On the basis of Scott and his colleagues' identification of the three components of institutional environments, changes in organizational logics, actors, and governance of Korean medicine hospitals during the period from 1971 to 2010 were analyzed. Results: First, Similar to previous literature on institutional eras of Korean health sector, three distinct periods were characterized: the foundation of Korean medicine hospitals to consolidate the legal status(1971~1986), a rapid increase of entrepreneurial hospitals through cultural-cognitive legitimacy(1987~2001), and the reinforcement of specialization and competition(2002~present). Conclusions: Results suggested that: (1) changes in institutional environments hada heavy impact on structural and behavioral changes among Korean medicine hospitals, but the pace was slower than that of western medicine hospitals. (2) In structure, Korean medicine hospitals have positioned themselves as unofficial long-term care hospitals, focusing on chronic diseases(e.g. cerebrovascular disease). Our study demonstrated that organizational theories can provide useful framework for the analysis of Korean medicine and related policies. Indeed, one of the most important implications of this study is that understanding changes in institutional environments is important to understand the process of how members of the health care sector live, grow, change, decline and survive.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.67-84
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• 2015

Although the bottom-up rural area development project was conceived with great expectations, the general evaluation of the project so far reveals that it does not significantly differ from projects carried out in a top-down manner. This paper examines the nature of the bottom-up rural area development project with a focus on its background, including the roles of authority and project participants. Results revealed that the project was designed to be implemented in line with the state affairs ideology of the leader in a negative position of bureaucratic society. Though the form of implementation for the project seemed bottom-up as seen in the process of the roles and authorities in supporting organizations the top-down method of implementation can be seen in the authorities and roles of the central government. It was also noticed that the private sector, designed to elicit participation of various experts, looked to be managed and controlled by public organizations. The abovementioned signifies that the Korea rural area development project has been implemented not in a bottom-up manner but rather in an ever-strong top-down manner, which means that the central government holds more responsibility for the project's results, evaluation, and discussions. Furthermore, as seen in the background of the project, policies have been implemented in a top-down manner without the confidence of the bureaucratic society. Therefore, in order to implement a proper bottom-up rural area development project, there is a need for the bureaucratic society to have confidence in the rural societies.

• Survey Research
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.107-130
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• 2009

This study examines the factors affecting Korean firms' adoption of maternity protection practices. From a neo-institutional perspective, we argue that firms adopt institutionally legitimized practices mainly for their legitimacy concern rather than technical efficiency. Analysis of data from Establishment panel survey reveals that firms which belong to public sector, has received foreign investment, bench-mark leading firms, or have HR department are more actively adopting maternity protection practices and are showing lower level of decoupling between model and reality. These results imply that legitimacy concern matters among Korean firms in terms of adopting maternity protection practices. We propose that it is important for government agencies to take institutional factors into account when they try to promote maternity protection policy among firms in dealing with the problems of low fertility and gender equity.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.29-43
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• 2013

The dominant perspective on institutional change of the GRI is the environment-dependence. GRI's institutions are, however, prone to change due to the endogenous factors. Therefore, we need a dynamic alternative model to analyze the interaction between the exogenous and endogenous factors around the GRI's institutions. In this paper, authors examined the changes in GRI's funding system. The results were verified in the layering which is a one of the dynamic institutional change forms. Owing to the interaction between the exogenous and endogenous factors, institutional reform's layers of the institution funding expansion have been continuously accumulated in order to modify the Project-Based System(PBS). Eventually expansion layers of the institution funding have grown more quickly than the Project-Based System(PBS), as a result, GRI's funding system has been changing centered on the Block funding.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.433-461
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• 2011

This study investigated changes and determinants of public pension generosity and pension spending in welfare states during the last retrenchment period. Path-dependency thesis, industrialization theory and power resources model were examined with the twelve welfare states from 1980 to 2007. The main results are as follows. First, the developments of benefit generosity and pension spending have been differently presented according to pension structure. Second, the cross-national pooled-time series analysis confirmed that pension structure is the most significant factors to determine the level of benefit generosity and pension spending. Third, the positive effect of population ageing on pension spendings were proved even without any changes of pension generosity. New social risks, however, have restrained the pension spending. Fourth, the power of the left party and labor union did not affect the pension policy, which implies that power resources theory cannot explain the development of pension policy in this retrenchment period.