• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.45-70
• /
• 2009

This article investigates which types of the strategies announced by the listed firms contribute to enhancing the long-term performance of the companies. Since 2002, Korean Exchange adopted the "faire disclosure policy" which mandates that all publicly traded companies must disclose material information to all investors at the same time. Thanks to the policy, Korean investors can, now, easily access the board's decision on management strategies on the same day the decision is made. If the companies trustfully carry out their announced strategies, we can decide which types of strategies actually enhance or deteriorate the long-term performance, simply by comparing the announced strategies and the firm's performance. The sample companies are confined to 60 firms that became listed in the KOSDAQ market through back-door listing from 2003 to 2005. Using only the newly listed companies, we can avoid the interference on the long-term performance of the strategies pursued before the event date. This often holds true, for many companies radically modify their strategies after the listing. Furthermore, the back-door listing companies serve our purpose better than IPO companies do, because the former tend to have a variety of announcement within a given period of time beginning the listing date. Using these sample companies, this article analyzes the effect on one year buy-and-hold returns and abnormal buy-and-hold returns after the listing of the various types of strategies announced during the same period of time. The results show that those evidences of restructuring such as 'reduction of capital' and 'resignation of incumbent board members', actually contribute to the increase in adjusted long-term stock returns. Those strategies which can be view as evidence of new investment such as 'increase in tangible assets', 'acquisition of other companies', do also helps the stockholders better off. On the contrary, 'increase in bank loans', 'changes of CEO' and 'merger' deteriorate the equity value. The last findings let us to presume that the back-door listing companies appear to use the bank loans for value-reducing activities; the change in CEO is not a sign of restructuring, but rather a sign of failure of the restructuring; another merger carried out after back-door listing itself is also value-reducing activity. This article's findings on reduction of capital, merger and bank loans oppose the results of the former empirical studies which analyze only the short-term effect on stock price. Therefore, more long-term performance studies on public disclosures are in order.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.336-344
• /
• 2010

Considering the increasing trends of the consumption of livestock products in Korea, proper hygienic management and policies for ensuring their safety to protect public health and strengthen consumer confidence are demanded. It is particularly important to manage the livestock distribution processes to provide safe meat and meat products. This study was conducted to examine factors related to the hygiene management of livestock products and to check out the condition of hygienic management in meat markets. To accomplish this, 156 meat markets divided into HACCP-certified and non certified and evaluated for five factors, which received the following scores: facility and equipment management (1.00/2.0 points, 50.0%), storage and transport management (1.93/2.0 points, 96.5%), work place management (0.76/2.0 points, 38.0%), personal hygiene management (0.75/2.0 points, 37.5%), and inspection management (0.22/2.0 points, 11.0%). The results revealed that the scores of HACCP-certified meat markets were significantly higher than those of the non certified markets (p<0.05, p<0.01, p<0.001). These findings suggest that meat markets that are not HACCP-certified must improve hygienic management conditions and educate their employees to improve the safety of livestock products during distribution.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.3-33
• /
• 1991

Since the early 1980's, the Korean government has gradually been widening the Korean market to foreign consumer goods. This, combined with the increased purchasing power of the Korean consumers resulting from the continued economic growth of the country, has sparked a spectacular influx of foreign consumer goods into Korea, ranging from BMW's to chopsticks. Import of foreign consumer goods amounted to more than 6 billion dollars in 1989 and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The increased import of foreign consumer goods doubtlessly improved the overall welfare of the Korean consumers by providing them with a wider range of options to choose from, by lowering the prices of some of the consumer goods domestically produced, and also by forcing the producers of some Korean goods to face competition with better foreign goods, thus giving them an incentive to raise the quality of their products. However, it is agreed by most economists that this increase in general welfare has been much smaller than what they had expected at the outset. Consumer prices of most imported consumer goods are easily double the import price, and in some cases, more than treble the import prices. Further, there has not been a noticeable drop in the prices of domestically produced consumer goods. Much of the blame has been attributed to the distribution sector of Korea. The objective of this paper is to analyze the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea, focusing on the possible sources of the poor performance of that sector, and to make policy suggestions that could potentially increase the welfare. This paper differs from all the previous research by others on this subject in that it analyzes the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea as a vertical structure. The distribution sector of an imported consumer good is a vertical structure since it consists of an international market, an import stage, and domestic wholesale and retail markets, in that order vertically. Our study naturally includes the analysis of the vertical restraints as well as the analysis of the industrial organization of each horizontal stage in the vertical structure. Each horizontal component of the imported consumer goods distribution sector is basically a monopolistically competitive market differentiated by characteristics of goods and by the locations and the services of firms. Further, restrictive dealership and resale price maintenance are found to be widely in use. Our main findings are the follwing; First, most consumer goods are imported monopolistically or oligopolistically through restrictive dealership contracts between foreign producers and domestic importers. Such restrictive dealership gives importers market power in the domestic market and explains many of the large discrepancies betwen the consumer prices and the import prices of many goods. Korean anti - trust law does not cover the issues arising from the market power of an importer resulting from a restrictive dealership contract. Second, some major producers of Korean goods are also importers of foreign goods that are substitutes of their products. The import of substitutes by major domestic producers is anti - competitive because it tends to raise the prices of both domestic goods and foreign goods, and also because it reduces the incentive of the domestic producers to raise the quality of their products. Third, wholesalers and retailers widely use resale price maintenance as a price fixing mechanism, and while this is against the anti- trust law, it seldom gets noticed. Fourth, the high level of rents of real estate for commercial use works as an entry barrier to the distribution sector and results in reduced competition by the firms in that sector. Finally, there are information problems. Consumers have inferior information to firms about the quality of a foreign consumer good that they have not tried before. Such information asymmetry often enables firms to raise prices. In addition, information asymmetry between importers frequently delays the import of cheaper substitutes. In order to alleviate the problems indentified above, we suggest the following policy changes. The government should strengthen the anti - trust law and its enforcement to regulate restrictive import contracts, import of competing goods by major domestic producers, and RPM by wholesalers and retailers that is aimed at price fixing. In addition, the government should loosen its tight real estate policy to encourage investment in the distribution sector. Finally, we suggest that the import price revelation policy that has been in use for some items since 1990 be expanded to most imported consumer goods that are introduced for the first time to give consumer better information and be used only for the period of time needed to inform sufficient number of consumers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.27-52
• /
• 2010

It is not new that today's business organizations are expected to exhibit ethical and moral management and to carry out social responsibility as a good corporate citizen. Since South Korea emerged as a newly industrialized country during the 1980s, Korean corporations have become active in carrying out their social responsibility as a good corporate citizen to society. In spite of the short history of corporate social responsibility, Korean companies have actively participated in corporate philanthropy. Corporations' significant donations to various social causes, no-lay-off policies, corporate volunteerism and green marketing are evidences of their commitment to corporate citizenship. Corporate social responsibility is now an essential management practice whereby corporation can strengthen its sustainable value creation processes by enhancing the trust assets underlying the relationships between the business and the stakeholders. Much of the conceptual work in the area of corporate social responsibility(CSR) has originated from researches conducted in the management field. Carroll(1979) proposed that corporations have four types of social responsibilities: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. Most past research has investigated CSR and its impact on consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. Although there exists a large body of literature on how consumers perceive and respond to CSR, the majority of past studies were conducted in the United States. The stability and applicability of past findings need to be tested across different national/cultural settings, especially since corporate social responsibility is a reflection of implicit conformation with the expectations and criticism that society may have toward a corporation(Matten and Moon, 2004). In this study, we explored whether people in Korea perceive CSR of Korean corporations in the same four dimensions as done in the United States and what were the measurement items tapping each of these four dimensions. In order to investigate the dimensions of CSR and the measurement items for CSR perceived by Korean people, nine focus group interviews were conducted with several stakeholder groups(two with undergraduate students, two with graduate students, three with general consumers, and two with NGO groups). Scripts from the interviews revealed that the Korean stakeholders perceived four types of CSR which are the same as those proposed by Carroll(1979). However we found CSR issues unique to Korean corporations. For example for the economic responsibility, Korean people mentioned that the corporation needed to contribute to the economic development of the country by generating corporate profits. For the legal responsibility, Koreans included the "corporation need to follow the consumer protection law." For the ethical responsibility, they considered that the corporation needed to not promote false advertisement. In addition, Koreans thought that an ethical company should do transparent management. For the philanthropic responsibility, people in Korea thought that a corporation needed to return parts of its profits to the society for the betterment of society. The 28 items were developed based on the results of the nine focus group interviews, while considering the scale developed by Maignan and Ferrell(2001). Following the procedure proposed by Churchill(1979), we started by developing an item poll consisting of 28 items and purified the initial pool of items through exploratory, confirmatory factor analyses. 176 samples were sued for this analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the 28 items in order to verify the underlying four factor structure. Study 1 provided new measurement items for tapping the Korean CSR dimensions, which can be useful for the future studies exploring the effects of CSR on Korean consumers' attitudes toward the corporations and corporate performances. And we found the CSR scale(17 items) has good reliability, discriminant validity and nomological validity. Economic Responsibility: "XYZ company continuously improves the quality of our products", "XYZ company has a procedure in place to respond to customer complaint", "XYZ company contributes to the economic development of our country by generating profits", "XYZ company is eager to hire people". Legal Responsibility: "XYZ company's products meet legal standards", "XYZ company seeks to comply with all laws regulating hiring and employee benefits", "XYZ company honors contractual obligations to its suppliers", "XYZ company's managers try to comply with the law related to the business operation". Ethical Responsibility: "XYZ company has a comprehensive code of conduct", "XYZ company does not promote a false or misleading advertisement", "XYZ company seems to conduct a transparent business", "XYZ company does a fair business with its suppliers or sub-contractors". Philanthropic Responsibility: "XYZ company encourages partnerships with local businesses and schools", "XYZ company supports sports and cultural activities", "XYZ company gives adequate contributions to charities considering its business size", "XYZ company encourages employees to support our community". Study 2 was condusted for comprehensive validity. 655 samples were used for this anlysis. Collected samples were tested by factor analysis and Crnbach's Alpha coefficiednts and were found to be satisfactory in terms of validity and reliability. Furthermore, fitness of the measurement model was tested by using conformatory factor analysis. χ²=880.73(df=160), GFI=0.891, AGFI=0.854, NFI=0.908, NNFI=0.913, RMR=0.059, RMESA=0.070. We hope that CSR scale could greatly facilitate research on Corporate social resposibility, it is by no means the final answer.

• Korean Security Journal
• /
• no.44
• /
• pp.7-35
• /
• 2015

The objective of this article is to inform and document the contemporary development of the private security industry in Queensland Australia, a premier holiday destination that provide entertainment for the larger region. The purpose of this review is to examine the comtemporary development of mandated licensing regimes regulating the industry, and the necessary reform agenda. The overall aim is threefold: first, to chart the main outcomes of the two-wave of reforms since the mid-'90s; second, to examine the effectiveness of changes in modes of regulation; and third, to identify the criteria that can be considered a best practice based on Button(2012) and Prenzler and Sarre's(2014) criteria. The survey of the Queensland regulatory regime has demonstrated that, despite the federal-guided reforms, there remain key areas where further initiatives remain pending, markedly case-by-case utilisation of more proactive strategies such as on-site alcohol/drug testing, psychological evaluations, and checks on close associates; lack of binding training arrangement for technical services providers; and targeted auditing of licensed premises and the vicinity of venues by the Office of Fair Trading, a licensing authority. The study has highlighted the need for more determined responses and active engagements in these priority areas. This study of the development of the licensing regimes in Queensland Australia provides useful insights for other jurisdictions including South Korea on how to better manage licensing system, including the measures required to assure an adequate level of professional competence in the industry. It should be noted that implementing a consistency in delivery mode and assessment in training was the strategic imperative for the Australian authority to intervene in the industry as part of stimulating police-private partnerships. Of particular note, competency elements have conventionally been given a low priority in South Korea, as exemplified through the lack of government-sponsored certificate; this is an area South Korean policymakers must assume an active role in implementing accredited scheme, via consulting transnational templates, including Australian qualifications framework.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.1120-1133
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to validate the failure attribution factors affecting emotional changes after a failed service by local restaurant users, and the relapse effects of the perceived failure of a customer's brand relationship. In this study, the implications of this study can be divided into the null theory and the homogenous theory, in which the study of the relationship between individual belief that influences the null theory and the post-gender emotional response is minimal. The independence of the crash response (angerous VS compassion) has been equally validated as building a belief-gathering-emotion three-step model. First, emotional BRQ (intimate and love) has a reduction effect on controllable geeks, and behavioral BRQ (relative existence) has an extended effect on controllable geeks. From a management perspective, restaurant managers should be less aware of the repeatability of a customer's service failure and call for customer sympathy. Integratedly, restaurant managers must control the customer's perception of service failure and restore the impact of the customer's BRQ on emotional reactions. A variety of service recovery measures should be established and the cerumen should be controlled. In addition, since BRQs have different effects on anger and sympathy (extended VS), different service failure recovery plans should be presented depending on the characteristics of the customer BRQ. For example, measures such as monetary compensation or fair dealing, emotional distribution to close and loving customers, and persuasion of reciprocal benefits to interdependent customers should be developed according to circumstances. This study explored the effectiveness of the geeks after a service failure and has limitations that do not take into account the various regulatory factors in the BRQ-return-Empression process. Thus, in further studies, the effects of adjusting service failure strength should be considered and a more complete model should be built.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.81-119
• /
• 2022

Medical device market is strongly related with health care market. Public regulation in medical device market tends to be more lenient than health care market. In this market, competition law, administrative law and intellectual property law are intertwined, and thereby a variety of legal issues could be developed. Recently, dominant undertaking's abuse case was dealt with KFTC(Korea Fair Trade Commission) and Seoul High Court. The issues were whether dominant undertaking discriminated trading partners and this discrimination was anticompetitive. In this case, Seoul High Court revoked the KFTC's decision, holding that the undertaking did not harm competition, though it has dominant power in the relevant medical device market. This decision would be a meaningful precedent, not only that there have been small numbers of dominance abuse cases in Korea, but also that this case happened in medical device market. This case dealt with various issues like market definition, market power, alleged abuse and its anticompetitive effect. The court held that medical device markets are distinguished from medical device repairing market. However, the court did not clarify that medical device repairing market is a single branded market only for repairing the plaintiff's medical devices. Second, plaintiff's dominance is based on the lock-in effect, which means that hospitals could not switch devices like CT or MRI from plaintiff to other competitors. This could be supplemented from the fact that medical devices are expensive and the using period are significantly long. However market definition based on single branded market theory could be applied in rare and exceptional cases. Therefore the general application of single branded market theory might result in overestimate of market power. This type of abuse pattern requires improper condition contrary to resonable trade practice. KFTC asserted free charge for plaintiff's copy right. However, it is not clear whether the cases for free charge are general or not. Even if so, the intention and motive of providers for free charge should be proved. The main issue of anticompetitive effect was whether plaintiff raised rival's cost. Competitor's cost was increased due to plaintiff's copy right and its license fee. However the charge for license could be within the scope of fair and legal exercise of copy right. If competitors are excluded due to legal exercise of copy right or efficiency, the exclusionary abuse could not be proved.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
• /
• v.35 no.2
• /
• pp.247-280
• /
• 2020

For customs-free and liberalization on the trade of aircraft parts, the WTO Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft was separately concluded as plurilateral trade agreement at the time of launching WTO in 1995, and currently 33 countries including the United States and the EU are acceded but Korea does not. Major details of the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft include product coverage, the elimination of customs duties and other charges, the prohibition of government-directed procurement of civil aircraft, the application of the Agreement on Subsides and Countervailing Measures, and the consultation on issues related to this Agreement and dispute resolution. Article 89 paragraph 6 of the current Customs Act was newly established on December 31, 2018, and the tariff reduction rate for imports of aircraft parts will be reduced in stages from May 2019 and the tariff reduction system will be abolished in 2026. Accordingly, looking at the impact of the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft on the aviation industry, first, as for the impact on the air transport industry, an tariff allotment of the domestic air transport industry is expected to reach about 160 billion won a year from 2026, and upon acceding to the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, the domestic air transport industry will be able to import aircraft parts at no tariff, so it will not have to pay 3 to 8 percent import duties. Second, as for the impact on the aviation MRO industry, if the tariff reduction system for aircraft parts is phased out or abolished in stages, overseas outsourcing costs in the engine maintenance and parts maintenance are expected to increase, and upon acceding to the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, the aviation MRO industry will be able to import aircraft parts at no tariff, so it will reduce overseas outsourcing costs. If the author proposes a policy direction for the trade liberalization of aircraft parts to ensure competitiveness of the aviation industry, first, as for the tariff reduction by the use of FTA, in order to be favored with the tariff reduction by the use of FTA, it is necessary to secure the certificate of origin from foreign traders in the United States and the EU, and to revise the provisions of Korea-Singapore and Korea-EU FTA. Second, as for the push of acceding to the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, it would be resonable to push the acceding to Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft for customs-free on the trade of aircraft parts, as the tariff reduction method by the use of FTA has limits. Third, as for the improvement of the tariff reduction system for aircraft parts under the Customs Act, it is expected that there will take a considerable amount of time until the acceding to the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, so separate improvement measures are needed to continue the tariff reduction system of aircraft parts under Article 89 paragraph 6 of the Customs Act. In conclusion, Korea should accede to the WTO Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft to create an environment in which our aviation industry can compete fairly with foreign aviation industries and ensure competitiveness by achieving customs-free and liberalization on the trade of aircraft parts.