• Korean small business review
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.107-128
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• 2019

The Employment Permit System (EPS), a system of bringing in low-skilled foreign workers, has been implemented since 2004 to relieve labor shortages in SMEs. Despite the increasing number of foreign workers under this system, due to lack of research we have very limited managerial understanding. Moreover, previous studies focused on economic or legal perspectives, which calls for a different perspective of business and management. In this study, we examined how to foster organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) of low-skilled immigrant workers at the workplace by integrating two analytical frames-social support from management studies and cultural adjustment from immigrant literature. We tested our model using a sample of 661 immigrant workers from 11 countries working in Korea. Our results indicated that, social support perception triggered not only a direct effect on organizational citizenship behaviors of immigrant workers but also indirect effects via the level of cultural adaptation. Our findings indicated that two views are all meaningful in explaining OCB of immigrants, and provided practical implications to SMEs using EPS.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.49-62
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• 2023

In order to create an organizational culture that prevents women's career breaks and promotes economic activities, this study aimed at developing educational content for workplace culture improvement for both male and female workers working at small and medium-sized enterprises in Jeollanam-do. The core content composition and content design specifically consider the characteristics of Jeollanam-do based on an advisory meeting of the field experts and researchers to ensure the on-site utilization of the content and the validity and consistency of the teaching content. The educational content is divided into three areas: understanding, effectiveness, and the implementation of a gender-sensitive work-life balance organizational culture. The aim of the content is for all employees to understand the meaning of work-life balance and to improve the organizational culture of their company from the perspective of individuals, families, companies, and society. In particular, the intention was to personally identify and implement measures to improve a gender-equal work-life balance, not only at work, but also with regard to domestic labor and leisure time. Furthermore, the content is presented from a gender-sensitive perspective that encompasses diversity, systems, and programs targeting women, men, single people, married people, young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities - all these groups are explained as examples. The content emphasizes that we should all actively participate in improving the organizational culture of our companies. In addition, the Women's New Work Center should seek ways to increase the motivation for the voluntary participation by companies and strengthen the expertise of instructors in work-life balance education.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.135-154
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• 2020

This paper analyzes the 5,521 samples of the small and medium-sized businesses(SMBs) obtained from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund. From January 2014 to September 2019, 85% of the SMBs have 5 or fewer full-time employees. The proportion of SMBs is overwhelmed by the elderly men, and most founders are the CEO. Also, about 87% of the workplace types are rented, while 64% of the CEO's residence types are owner-occupation. 47% of the financial grade score is less than 10 points out of 100 and 80% of SMBs have less than 200 million won of the loan guarantee. In particular, the total guarantee loan amount or the days of net guarantee have significantly positive relations with the working period of the CEO in the same industry, the number of employees, the operation period of SMBs, and the corporate business type. In the case of the financial grading score which has the highest weight in overall credit rating gets higher with the higher number of employees, the longer the operation period, and the corporate business type. However, the quantified non-financial grading score has no significant relationship with other explanatory variables, except for the corporate business type. This implies that a non-financial grade score is measured by other determinants that are not observed by the Korea credit guarantee fund. The pure non-financial grade score has positive relations with the working period of the CEO. Overall, this paper would help Korean SMBs upgrade their credit ratings and expand the money supply when there is no standardized credit rating model or no publicly available evaluation criteria for SMBs. We expect this paper provides important insights for further research and policy-makers for SMBs. In particular, to address the financial needs of thin-filers such as SMBs, technology-based financial services (TechFin) would use alternative data to evaluate the financial capabilities of thin-filers and to develop new financial services.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.482-492
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• 2015

Objectives: Exposure Assessment for workplace hazards where the exposure level is below occupational exposure limits(OELs) has been performed without considering either the degrees of risk or exposure levels and has failed to lead to intervention in many cases. The objective of this study was to suggest and test an application framework for risk assessment methodology under the current exposure assessment system in Korea. Materials: First, we investigated the exposure assessment systems in Korea and other countries. To adopt some risk assessment techniques, we also analyzed risk assessment systems and compared them to exposure assessment systems. A few suggestions were made. We held a public hearing during an industrial hygiene conference and took surveys using a questionnaire. Results: The first suggestion was to implement the risk assessment and exposure assessment through a "one-stop" system. In that case, one expected question would be who has been doing the jobs so far. In most cases, industrial hygiene consulting services or laboratories have been performing exposure assessment for business owners. Business owners are required to perform risk assessment. As two different groups of people will be required to implement two things in a one-stop system, they need to share information. As an information vehicle to share information, commonly filed survey checklists were suggested. The second suggestion was to categorize exposure level into four groups instead of the current binary divisions based on OELs. In the risk assessment system, exposure level is divided into four groups utilizing the cut-points of 10%, 50%, and 100% of OELs. The same schema can be adopted in the exposure assessment system and different levels of requirements can be assigned for each group. The third suggestion was regarding the regulation system. To provide the suggestions some thrust toward being implemented in the field, changes should be made in the legal system. Two different types of new exposure assessment result reporting forms were suggested. Some investigations such as an ergonomic survey are officially accepted as risk assessment under the current legal system. A few items were suggested to be included in the exposure assessment result reporting to be accepted as risk assessment. A pilot study in two small factories was performed and pointed out the strengths and weakness of our suggestions. Conclusions: Discussions and studies on the improvement of the exposure assessment system have been held for decades and no tangible changes have yet been made. We hope this result can help realize healthy lives for workers in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.83-96
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• 1998

The study was conducted to analyze employees' and employers' awareness of occupational health programs for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the program employed in small-scale enterprises (SSE). The 400 SSE that have under 50 employees and have been supported by the Government were selected for mail survey, and 120 employers and 318 employees of 183 factories returned the questionnaires. The results are as follows; 1) 33.8% of employees were not aware of the fact that their factories have been supported by Government, and 69.1% of employees did not know who was the monitor of that program. Only 147% of employees and 35.5% of employers agreed that the supported program reflected their opinions well. 2) 45.1% of employees participated in health education classes more than once. But only 15.6% of them considered the classes as very helpful. 21.1% of employers were much aware of health education schedule, and 44.2% reported that it was helpful for the prevention of occupational diseases. 3) 68.8% of employers were aware of the possibility of occupational diseases that could occur in their factories. And 36.5% of employers reported that some criteria were used for job reallocation to their employees. But only 9.7% of employees were assigned new job based on the result of health status examination. 4) 65.6% of employees were aware of the periodic evaluation for work environment, and 43.3% knew the evaluation results. Among participated SSE, 5.9% have a planning department for improving work environment, and 46.2% actually carried out the program for improving work environment. The findings showed that the employers and employees of SSE had insufficient knowledge of the occupational health program that have been employed in their workplace. It is essential to lead more active participation of employers and employees in their occupational health programs so as that the programs are to improve their health status as well as work environment more effectively.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.342-347
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• 2020

Recently, as the collaborative robot has been introduced into the domestic industrial robot market, it is installed mainly in the manufacturing industry. Collaborative robots are subject to the safety regulations of industrial robots by Article 93 of the Safety Inspection of the Industrial Safety and Health Act. The sites where collaborative robots are to be installed must perform risk assessments for robots-humans, work environments, and work methods and reduce the risks according to ISO 10218-2 and ISO 12100. On the other hand, because it is early in the introduction of collaborative robots, new risks for collaborative robots have not been issued, and risk assessments are unfamiliar and difficult to apply in the workplace. The risk assessment of collaborative robots aims to identify and reduce the risk of a high probability of occurrence by focusing on the abnormal behavior of humans, human errors, equipment defects, and interlock functions. In this study, a risk assessment was applied to a domestic automobile parts production plant, and improvement measures were drawn. This risk assessment is expected to be useful for improving the safety of small businesses by continuously discovering risk assessment examples of collaborative robots.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.74-83
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• 2004

Raw-fish food contains a lot of moisture and is a high-protein food. It is a first-stage processed food taking a lot of manual work. Therefore, it is classified as a PHF food, very liable to cause a bacterial food-poisoning. But its manufacturers are usually small-sized and a systematic sanitation management is difficult to expect. But the manufacturer participating in this study produces chilled fresh raw-fish food. Fish are sliced into two fillets, which are packaged under vacuum, kept and distributed in refrigerators, and sold within a day. It is a newly-developed kind of raw-fish food, and a more improved kind of raw-fish food making possible a systematic sanitation management. The HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) is a systematic and continuous process-control method which is very efficient for controling food sanitation and reducing the expenses. A new HACCP model has been developed to be applied to a large-sized chilled fresh raw-fish food manufacturer. To ascertain its efficiency, the baterial examination was done to its workplace and products. The significance test was done on its data by "SPSS 12.0 for Window" and "Mann-Whitney U Test". The numbers of bacteria on its final products were significantly different in flatfish and porgy. The number of bacteria tended to decrease in each time-differential sampling (P＜.00l). The final food products showed no food-poisoning bacteria in all the time-differential tests and in all the samplings, which proves that the CCP of the HACCP system is under control. After the SSOP program was applied, no pathogenic bacteria were found in the work-place, and the kinds and numbers of bacteria decreased. The numbers of general bacteria and colon bacilli also showed a significant difference from those before the SSOP program in the filleting board (P＜.05), in the skinning board (P＜.0l), in the neck-removing knife (P＜.05), and in the filleting knife (P＜.01). The working equipments, periodically disinfected, also showed a significant difference in sanitary conditions (in the dehydrator, P＜.05). The number of bacteria found on the food-touching surface was within the standard (below 500/l00 cm$^2$) After the SSOP program was applied, the general bacteria and colon bacilli were not found. The quality of water used in the food processing was also within the standard. The numbers of bacteria falling from the air in the work-place were negligible in all the samplings (＜30CFU/l000ι). The staphylococci and fungi were not found.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.111-125
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• 2000

To compare the differences in the recognition on hospital utilization and satisfaction, 368 hospital employees and 485 patients were selected in four hospitals in Seoul and Kyung-gi do. The survey was done using a constructed form of checklist from Apr. 30 to May 10, 1999. And the results are as follows: l. Gaining knowledge of hospitals available among hospital employees differed from that of patients. When finding out about sources of information concerning hospitals, direct visit to the hospital was recognized to be the main factor for the hospital employees in contrast to the patients' recognition which were mass media, personal involvement of job related workplace and recommendations from other hospitals. There was no difference between university and general hospitals. 2. The factors that concern which hospital to choose there was a difference between hospital employees and patients. Hospital employees recommended their own hospital solely based on the reason that it was their work place. On the other hand, the patients made a choice based on the type of medical staff, transportation available and whether it was a university hospital or not. There was no difference between university and general hospitals. 3. The recognition of employees concerning hospital image of a hospital between hospital employees and patients was different. In university hospitals, the employees recognized the name value of university hospital and cooperation as most important, whereas the patients thought convenience, kindness were the main factors. Patients considered general hospitals to be more convenient. There was some difference between university and general hospitals. For university hospitals employees' recognition was higher and for the general hospital patients' recognition is higher on hospital image. 4. The recognition of employees was different from that of patients' on hospital satisfaction. The patients' satisfaction was higher than that of employees'. There was no difference between university and general hospitals. Based on the above findings, the employees' recognition on hospital utilization and satisfaction was different from that of the patients, but there was no difference between university and general hospitals. In both groups choice of hospital was associated with satisfaction. Results showing difference between employees' and patients' recognition can be applied to implement customer-oriented attitude and be used as a baseline data for internal-external marketing planning of hospital management. The study may be limited in that the results cannot be generalized due to its small sample size and not being able to reflect demographic variables and life style. Further studies to investigate the difference of hospital utilization and hospital satisfaction will be necessary to define demographic characteristics and recognition of employees which influences patients' hospital satisfaction.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 2018

Objectives: To protect individuals working at the site as well as the surrounding general population from a chemical accident, several emergency exposure guidance levels have been used to set a level of concern for certain chemicals. However, a level of concern has not been established for many substances that are frequently used or produced in large quantities in Korean workplaces. In the present study, we investigated the guidance levels for protecting populations from chemical exposure and the estimation of level of concern using acute inhalation and oral toxicity data. Methods: The number of chemicals to which emergency exposure guidance levels (e.g., ERPG-2, AEGL-2, PAC-2, and IDLH) can be applied were determined among 822 hazardous chemicals according to the 'Technical Guidelines for the Selection of Accident Scenarios (revised December 2016)'. The ERPG and AEGL values were compared across all three tiers for the 31 substances that appeared on both lists. We examined the degree of difference between the emergency exposure guidance levels and the estimates of level of concern calculated from acute inhalation or acute oral toxicity data. Results: Among the 822 hazardous chemicals, emergency exposure guidance levels can be applied to 359 substances, suggesting that the estimates of level of concern should be calculated using acute toxicity data for 56.3% of the hazardous chemicals. When comparing the concordance rates of ERPG and AEGL for 31 substances, the difference between the two criteria was generally small. However, about 40% of the substances have values diverging by more than three-fold in at least one tier. Such discrepancies may cause interpretation and communication problems in risk management. The emergency exposure guidance levels were similar to the estimates of level of concern calculated using acute inhalation toxicity data, but the differences were significant when using acute oral toxicity data. These results indicate that the level of concern derived from acute oral toxicity data may be insufficient to protect the population in some cases. Conclusion: Our study suggests that the development of standardized guidance values for emergency chemical exposure in the Korean population should be encouraged. It is also necessary to analyze acute toxicity data and fill the information gaps for substances that are important in Korean workplace situations.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.29-34
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• 2015

Accidents in laboratory dealing with chemicals have constantly occurred. In the case of a gas explosion or an accident related to leakage of chemical materials, the damage is much greater, thereby leading to a serious accident. Especially, the safety of laboratory in University is important because students build up knowledge and skills and accumulate experience as the main researchers. In this paper, 5 gases(CO, $NH_3$, $H_2$, $CH_4$, $N_2$) are selected to model since they are often used in university laboratories. From the scenarios where the gases are released, the diffusion process is estimated and analyzed to predict damage degree by PHAST v.6.7. Internal diffusion process is modeled through FLUENT which is Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD) tool. Also, we compare indoor damage with outdoor one when discharged to the outside through the laboratory's window. In the modeling results, the outdoor damages for accident scenarios in the results are far less than then of real plants since the vessel usually used in laboratory(i.e. the capacity of the cylinder; 47 L or less) is significantly less than workplace's one(using ton measure). However as shown in the results small amount can have high consequences for indoor accidents.