Purpose - The recent establishment of many varieties of English language in the globe has created many models of English such as world Englishes (WEs), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), English as a family of languages, and English as an Intercultural Language (EIcL). Among the models, the present study highlights 'English as an intercultural language (EIcL)' in relation to distribution science business English teaching to elucidate what EIcL is and why it is critical and how it can be realized in the business English classrooms. Research design, data, and methodology - This study look into the EIcL paradigm that empowers all active users to view English as universal and at the same time enables them to develop critical skills to bridge intercultural gaps or to cross borders. Results - Rather than just focusing on an acquisition of standardized English(es), EIcL serves as a major contextual factor facilitating success in getting competence among the different English languages. Conclusions - EIcL is a promising and ultimately rewarding approach to the contemporary business English teaching arena. EIcL should be achieved through policies, textbooks or living abroad, and, above all, learners/teachers' active awareness and understanding' of the EIcL mainstreams.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to provide a systematic literature review related to environmental upgrading in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and suggest possible future research agendas in advancing environmental upgrading and ultimately GVC boundaries. Research design, data, and methodology - The academic databases such as Science Direct, EBSCO, ProQuest and Google Scholar were explored using a structured keywords searches to identify relevant research in the environmental upgrading area in GVCs. Only relevant papers were selected after reading the abstracts, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results - Overall analysis of the literature review suggests two critical developments in the field of environmental upgrading. The first and foremost major development is an enhanced understanding of environmental upgrading as a concept and phenomenon. The second significant development is that environmental upgrading has been empirically proven to be fundamentally based on relationships and power structures within GVCs. Conclusions - Environmental upgrading in GVCs has been studied individually and not in relation to financial outcomes and social upgrading. Hence, the relationship of environmental upgrading with financial outcomes and social upgrading needs to be investigated. Furthermore, the impact of the interaction of varying institutional structures on environmental upgrading is worthy of future study.

Purpose - This study investigates the financial ratio of savings banks and the effect of the ratio having influence upon bankruptcy by quantitative empirical analysis of forecast model to give material of better management and objective evidence of management strategy and way of advancement and risk control. Research design, data, and methodology - The author added two growth indexes, three fluidity indexes, five profitability indexes, and four activity indexes CAMEL rating to not only the balance sheets but also the income statement of thirty savings banks that suspended business from 2011 to 2015 and collected fourteen financial ratio indexes. IBMSPSS VER. 21.0 was used. Results - Variables having influence upon bankruptcy forecast models included total asset increase ratio and operating income increase ratio of growth index and sales to account receivable ratio, and tangible equity ratio and liquidity ratio of liquidity ratio. The study selected total asset operating ratio, and earning and expenditure ratio from profitability index, and receivable turnover ratio of activity index. Conclusions - Financial supervising system should be improved and financial consumers should be protected to develop saving bank and to control risk, and information on financial companies should be strengthened.

Purpose - Research on community empowerment based on superior commodities to improve the economic resilience of the tourist village of Lumajang Regency is an investigative descriptive study to obtain an overview of the problems of community economic development, especially regarding economic resilience. The output of this research activity is the formation of integrated and comprehensive strategic programs and activities in order to improve economic empowerment and food security of the community around the tourist village. Research design, data, and methodology - This research method applies several methods of analysis such as the Loqation Quotion (LQ) method, SWOT analysis, Trend analysis, and analysis of Community Economic Empowerment in the agricultural sub-sector. Results - This research has strategic values and objectives in addition to providing important information to improve food security of tourism villages in Lumajang district in particular and disadvantaged communities in Indonesia in general. Through this supportive community economic empowerment programs, Lumajang District has an agricultural area and at the same time as a nature-based tourism area that supports it. Conclusion - Village tourism community empowerment activities are taken based on existing superior commodities. The existing tourism village program in Lumajang district can be used as one of the references for the upcoming tourism village program.

Purpose - Recently, large quantities of factors have affected the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between two countries. Due to this background, this paper selects South Korea as an example to explore the determinants of Free Trade Agreement from Asian countries. Research design, data, and methodology - A cross sectional data of 2016 will be employed and some variables such as real income and GDP will be used to run an empirical analysis under the linear probability model, probit model and logit model. Results - The findings show that the Asian countries' exchange rate regime, real income, GDP and so forth can increase the probability of signing the Free Trade Agreement with Asian countries. Conversely, the distance can lower the probability of signing the Free Trade Agreement with Asian countries. Meanwhile, although the Asian countries' import, consumer price index and population also can affect the probability of signing the Free Trade Agreement with Asian countries, the estimated coefficients are not statistically significant at 5% level. Conclusions - According to the empirical results, this paper provides a new scope for South Korea's government to sign the Free Trade Agreement with other Asian countries.

Purpose - In this research, the expectation level of service of Incheon International Airport was investigated. Service expectation level is critical to the customers' satisfaction and should be managed. Regarding the expectation level of service, the concepts have been defined and introduced by some researchers including Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1993). However, due to the difficulties of measuring the level, researches on the expectation level of service have been limited. The main reason of difficulties of measuring the effects is that desired service, adequate service, perceived service, predicted service which are the conceptual components of the expectation level of service are psychologically described concepts and thus are hard to set up standards and to measure numerically. All that one can discern is that desired service level is higher than adequate service level or perceived service level is lower than predicted service level under the certain conditions, etc. Research design, data, and methodology - In this research, the level of service and factors affecting the level are investigated using the case of an Airport. The main idea of research is to investigate whether a supposed factor that is alleged to affect the expected service level is working empirically. The supposed factor is service provider's promise to provide certain level of service to customers. Results - The research results can be summarized as follow. First, service provider's promise, in this case the Airport's Service Quality Award by Airports Council International which can be regarded as objective promise to provide the certain level of service to customers is turned out to be influential to factors affecting expectation level of service. Second, service provider's promise affects to move the customers' expectation level of service upward especially the service of delivering the necessary information to customers in the airport correctly and swiftly. Conclusions - The implications of the research results are, first, customers' expectation level of service in influenced by service provider's promise, second, airport's service award increases the level of customers' service level and as a result for the airport to meet the customers' expectation level of service more efforts should be made.

Purpose - As the importance of salesperson attitudes and behaviors enhancing customer perception and loyalty have increased, many retail companies put emphasis on internal marketing activities. The issue also has captured the interest of academics, but most of the previous research tends to be limited to investigating antecedents of salesperson job satisfaction and commitment. Based on the consumer-brand relationship concepts, this study aims to examine the effects of the salesperson-brand relationships on customers' service evaluation and store loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology - In a structural equation model, it is hypothesized that salesperson brand identification influences salespersons' brand trust and affect, which are the two dimensions of consumer-brand relationships. Salespersons' brand trust and affect are expected to increase salespersons' customer orientation, which in turn influences customers' service evaluations and store loyalty. To test this hypotheses a set of data collected from department stores in Seoul is utilized. Results - First, it was found that salesperson brand identification is a significant antecedent to salespersons' brand trust and affects, the two dimensions of salesperson brand relationships. Second, salespersons' brand trust and affect were found to enhance salespersons' customer-oriented behaviors. Third, salespersons' customer orientation showed a significant effect on customers' service evaluation. When a salesperson makes more effort to provide useful information for fulfilling customer needs, customers evaluate the salesperson's service more positively. Finally, customers' service evaluation had a positive impact on customers' store loyalty. Conclusions - This study provides significant academic and practical implications. First, based on the theory of consumer-brand relationships, the concept of salesperson-brand relationships was introduced and found to be an effective motivator of salespersons' customer oriented attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, the two dimensions of brand relationships, brand trust and affect, should be considered as the critical factors both in developing theoretical research and improving long-term company performance. Also, internal marketing activities should focus on maximizing employees' brand identification. That is, retail companies need to put emphasis on sharing their brand values and personality with internal customers to strengthen the brand relationships with salespersons and to enhance customer responses.

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of ex ante governance mechanisms that can be exercised by franchisers on franchise contract compliance and various relationship outcomes. There are many previous studies on control mechanisms in inter-firm relationship, however, most studies focus on ex post governance mechanisms and identify the effects of behavior control and outcome control on performances. Based on transaction cost theory and agency theory, this study defines the ex ante governance mechanisms of franchisers as contractual completeness and extra contractual incentives. The author have examined the two ex ante control mechanisms on contract compliance, recontract intention, multi-shop running intention and opportunistic behaviors of franchisee. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, 137 questionnaires of food and beverage franchise stores were collected through a specialized research company. The reliability and validity of the variables were analyzed using SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 18.0 programs and hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modeling. Results - As a result of hypothesis testing, contractual completeness and extra contractual incentives have a positive effect on the contract compliance of the franchisee. It is shown that franchisee's contract compliance has a positive effect on recontract intention and multi-shop running intention and has a negative effect on opportunistic behaviors. Conclusions - This study examines the ex ante governance mechanisms such as contractual completeness and extra contractual incentives, which is relatively rare compared to ex post governance mechanism in B2B relationship. According to the results of this research, these two tools can be used as ex ante control mechanisms for franchise headquarters to use their franchisees. In addition, franchisee's contract compliance affects various relationship outcomes between franchisor and franchisees.