• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.189-216
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• 2010

This study is to show the effect of single mothers' community participation on empowerment and the mediation effect of gender consciousness that mediate the causal relationship between this two variables defining the organization, which single mothers have been participated, as a community based on that there are common goals, emotional bond, and reciprocal action between the members. 439 single mothers, who have been participated in one of 14 organizations in Pusan and Gyeongnam, have been surveyed and the practice elements of emporwerment, gender consciousness, and empowerment have been analyzed from it. The results are first, There was significant differences at the practice elements of empowerment, gender consciousness, and empowerment according to the types of single mothers' community. Mostly it was high among job training type community and low among social welfare institution type community. Second, it has been shown that the determinant factors of empowerment are the degree of community participation and the practical elements of empowerment. Third, The changes in gender consciousness should be proceeded before that the practice of community empowerment, which the changes in gender consciousness represent the full mediation in the relationship between the practical elements and empowerment effect, leads the improvement of single mothers' empowerment.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.207-233
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to understand direct and indirect impact and the paths of community participation and social capital, which affect improvement of single mother's community participation factors, social capital, and empowerment. To accomplish this purpose structural relationships between single mother's community participation factors, social capital and empowerment have been analyzed. For the analysis 420 single mothers, who had participated various types of communities, were surveyed and structural equation modeling had been used and optical theory structure model(χ²=86.851, df=28, GFI=.958, CFI=.944), which explains the structural relationship among the factors, had been chosen. From the result, first, there was differences between empowerment and community participation levels, which is single mothers' community participation factors, of the impact on social capital and empowerment. Empowerment level of community, which was mediated by community participation level and social capital, affected empowerment, in the other hand, community participation level affected empowerment more directly than the impact of social capital. Second, single mothers' community participation factor affected more improvement of empowerment when it mediated by the accumulation of social capital. Third, single mothers' social capital directly affected the most improvement of empowerment. Based on the fact the implications of the study were presented.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.85-108
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• 2009

The quickening pace of international migration in the last twenty years brought fundamental demographic and social changes to the Korean society. Increasing number of marriage-based immigrant families imposes new challenges on social work community; however, the social work community has not been equipped with necessary practice models, sets of skills and professionals with cultural competency. This study aims to explore an integrative framework of social work practice with this client group. Research foci include the profile of marriage-based immigrant families in Korea, available social services at the time, challenges and issues they face, the compatibility of the empowerment based social work practice, and micro/mezzo/macro level concerns that arise for the effective service provision. Challenges among marriage-based immigrant families are converged into personal/familial, community related, and larger social-cultural issues. Empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process to help people gain control over their lives; a process that fosters power in people, for use in their lives, their communities and in their society. Empowerment based social work practice can be the most competent framework for working with multi-cultural families considering their multi-faceted acculturation issues while they navigate thru Korean society. Issues of educating and training of culturally competent social workers are discussed.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.307-332
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• 2009

This study is about the development and effectiveness of the 'Empowerment Program' for the persons with disabilities caused by industrial accidents. The program was developed on the basis of the analysis of focus group interviews for the rehabilitation counselors who work with the persons with disabilities caused by industrial accidents. Also, it was based on Miley et al's empowerment model and the group social work practice. The goal of the program was to strengthen the level of empowerment and decrease emotional frustration for the persons with disabilities caused by industrial accidents. The program consisted of two different types: one for the hospitalized person and the other for the discharged person. The program practiced once a week for 6 weeks and 8 weeks by the choice of the rehabilitation counselors. In order to verify the effectiveness of the program, the participants included 11 persons for the experimental group and 10 persons for the control group. The empowerment scores of the two groups were estimated at the point of pre-test and post-test and were analysed through the Wilcoxon signed rank test and Mann-Whitney U test. As the results of the analyses showed, there were significant differences in the increases in the areas of total empowerment and self-image as a sub-scale between the two groups. In conclusion, the effectiveness of the program was confirmed. Also, it has been verified that the program can be an important social work practice tool for strengthening the empowerment level of the persons with disabilities caused by industrial accidents.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.331-357
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• 2017

In this study, we explored the degree to which foreign workers in Korea are satisfied with their lives. We examined the extent of the respondents'educational mismatch, their experiences of discrimination, and the empowerment influence on their degree of life satisfaction. Based on this, we developed practical implications to improve foreign workers'life satisfaction in the country. The results show that life satisfaction significantly rises as the respondents'educational credentials increasingly match with the criteria for their respective jobs, given that they have not experienced discrimination and their empowerment level is high. Based on these outcomes, we proposed the following important policy measures: mediation and diminishing educational mismatch during job searches, establishing legal and institutional frameworks to prevent discrimination, and placing greater emphasis on efforts to improve foreign workers'empowerment. We expect our findings to provide an important empirical basis for efforts to facilitate foreign workers'integration into Korean society. This study is the first attempt to apply concepts such as foreign workers'empowerment and educational mismatch -as defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (OECD PIAAC) -to foreign workers in Korea.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.57-82
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• 2012

The purpose of the study is to suggest the measure for the improvement of job satisfaction and level of empowerment of sanatoriums' social workers by analyzing factors of empowerments' effect on the job satisfaction, and investigating level of empowerment and job satisfaction of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped. The result of investigation and analysis on subjects of 420 social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped in Youngnam area for this is as follows: First, job characteristic that is empowerments' influence factor of sanatoriums' social workers is appeared in order of feedback, and function variety, and in organization characteristic is appeared in order of leadership, reward, and employee development. Second, level of empowerment that is recognized by sanatoriums' social workers is appeared a little higher than normal level and significance is appeared highest, and next are capability, self-determination ability, and influence. Third, features that showed significant difference with significance in general characteristic of sanatoriums' social workers were 'sex', 'marital status', and 'religion', and features that showed significant difference with capability were sex, age, marital status, academic background, and employment history. And features that showed significant difference with self-determination ability were sex, age, marital status, and employment history, and features that showed significant difference with influence were sex, age, employment history and types of facilities. Fourth, the whole average of job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers was 3.82 out of 5, which is generally high, features that showed significant difference statistically were age, marital status, academic background, employment history, and types of facilities. Thus, job satisfaction was appeared as high as 'more than age of thirty' in age, 'married' in marital status, 'under graduates of colleges' in academic background, and 'less than three years' in employment history. Fifth, as for factors that had influence on job satisfaction, the indirect effect with empowerment was appeared that had significant effect in organization characteristic, and had few effect in organization features. On these results, practical measures to increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers are as follows: First, political approach is required to standardize duty system(by various types of facilities and clients' characteristic) of social workers of sanatoriums for elderly and the handicapped, and help to do the role as professionals with giving better treatment and building self-respect by enough reward. Second, to suggest chances to perform the responsibility for the duty of the scenes by the regular supervision, establish regular supervision system of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, and the extension of duty to increase the functional varieties. Third, it is required to motivate to have self confidence for the work and to use potential ability with transforming leadership, and to have more chances of education for the self-development. To increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers who give direct services in sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, more active and positive empowerment's level improvement is in need by improvement of empowerment for them.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.146-160
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• 2014

Objective: This study was performed to explore the effectiveness of community organization as a strategy for health promotion. Methods: We used data from community health interviews from 6 administrative sections (eup, myeon, or dong) with high mortality from August to October, conducted once in both 2010 and 2013 as part of the Health Plus Happiness Plus Projects based on the concept of community empowerment in Gyeongsangnam-do Province. For 2010, the study subjects comprised a systematic sampling of 220 adults from each of the six sections for a total of 1320 subjects, and for 2013, 200 from each section for a total of 1200 subjects. We compared main health behavior indicators and empowerment score between these two years. Results: Smoking prevalence in men was 47.4% in 2013, and 47.7% in 2010, respectively. Prevalence of walking 5 days or more per week was 35.6% in 2013, significantly lower than 46.2% in 2010. Also, during that period, both biennial health examination rate and biennial gastric cancer screening rate among those 40 years of age and over significantly increased from 57.7% to 63.6% and from 49.3% to 55.0%, respectively. Mean empowerment score at the community level significantly increased from 12.6 to 14.0. Conclusions: This study suggests that the three-year implementation of community organization might have helped to increase the participation rate of biennial health examinations including cancer screenings in the community. However, this was not the case for smoking cessation and walking. Further studies are needed for evidence-based health promotion.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.61-83
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effects of psychological empowerment between participative leadership and creative behavior. Especially, it aims to analyze the unidimension and multidimension of psychological empowerment in an integrated manner, and to suggest effective practice of participative leadership together with theoretical and methodological implications. In this study, the dependent variable was measured separately with time lag as a method to solve the common method bias that can be shown by the self-report type survey method, and positive emotions and negative emotions expressing emotional states in job situations were employed as control variables along with rank. A total of 283 questionnaires were collected from employees who work for companies in various industries with more than 300 domestic employees. SPSS PROCESS macro program('model 4') was used for statistical analysis. Results, First, the full mediation effect of psychological empowerment(unidimension) was confirmed in the relationship between participative leadership and creative behavior. Second, the analysis of the multidimension of psychological empowerment revealed the full mediating effect of meaning, self-determination, and impact, and the mediating effect of competence was not significant. Third, as a result of comparing the mediating effects of unidimension of psychological empowerment and the mediating effects of multidimension, the magnitude of mediating effect of unidimension was found to be much greater than mediating effect of multidimension. And The magnitudes of the three multidimensional mediating effects were similar. This is a case in which the motivational model of participative leadership revealed in the overseas study is proven in the domestic management environment and is significant in that it is the basis of future research. Based on the results of the empirical studies, the implications and limitations of the study and future research directions are presented.