• Title/Summary/Keyword: Decision-support

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Health Assessment of the Nakdong River Basin Aquatic Ecosystems Utilizing GIS and Spatial Statistics (GIS 및 공간통계를 활용한 낙동강 유역 수생태계의 건강성 평가)

  • JO, Myung-Hee;SIM, Jun-Seok;LEE, Jae-An;JANG, Sung-Hyun
    • Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.174-189
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    • 2015
  • The objective of this study was to reconstruct spatial information using the results of the investigation and evaluation of the health of the living organisms, habitat, and water quality at the investigation points for the aquatic ecosystem health of the Nakdong River basin, to support the rational decision making of the aquatic ecosystem preservation and restoration policies of the Nakdong River basin using spatial analysis techniques, and to present efficient management methods. To analyze the aquatic ecosystem health of the Nakdong River basin, punctiform data were constructed based on the position information of each point with the aquatic ecosystem health investigation and evaluation results of 250 investigation sections. To apply the spatial analysis technique, the data need to be reconstructed into areal data. For this purpose, spatial influence and trends were analyzed using the Kriging interpolation(ArcGIS 10.1, Geostatistical Analysis), and were reconstructed into areal data. To analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of the Nakdong River basin health based on these analytical results, hotspot(Getis-Ord Gi, $G^*_i$), LISA(Local Indicator of Spatial Association), and standard deviational ellipse analyses were used. The hotspot analysis results showed that the hotspot basins of the biotic indices(TDI, BMI, FAI) were the Andong Dam upstream, Wangpicheon, and the Imha Dam basin, and that the health grades of their biotic indices were good. The coldspot basins were Nakdong River Namhae, the Nakdong River mouth, and the Suyeong River basin. The LISA analysis results showed that the exceptional areas were Gahwacheon, the Hapcheon Dam, and the Yeong River upstream basin. These areas had high bio-health indices, but their surrounding basins were low and required management for aquatic ecosystem health. The hotspot basins of the physicochemical factor(BOD) were the Nakdong River downstream basin, Suyeong River, Hoeya River, and the Nakdong River Namhae basin, whereas the coldspot basins were the upstream basins of the Nakdong River tributaries, including Andong Dam, Imha Dam, and Yeong River. The hotspots of the habitat and riverside environment factor(HRI) were different from the hotspots and coldspots of each factor in the LISA analysis results. In general, the habitat and riverside environment of the Nakdong River mainstream and tributaries, including the Nakdong river upstream, Andong Dam, Imha Dam, and the Hapcheon Dam basin, had good health. The coldspot basins of the habitat and riverside environment also showed low health indices of the biotic indices and physicochemical factors, thus requiring management of the habitat and riverside environment. As a result of the time-series analysis with a standard deviation ellipsoid, the areas with good aquatic ecosystem health of the organisms, habitat, and riverside environment showed a tendency to move northward, and the BOD results showed different directions and concentrations by the year of investigation. These aquatic ecosystem health analysis results can provide not only the health management information for each investigation spot but also information for managing the aquatic ecosystem in the catchment unit for the working research staff as well as for the water environment researchers in the future, based on spatial information.

Business Relationships and Structural Bonding: A Study of American Metal Industry (산업재 거래관계와 구조적 결합: 미국 금속산업의 분석 연구)

  • Han, Sang-Lin;Kim, Yun-Tae;Oh, Chang-Yeob;Chung, Jae-Moon
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.115-132
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    • 2008
  • Metal industry is one of the most representative heavy industries and the median sales volume of steel and nonferrous metal companies is over one billion dollars in the case America [Forbes 2006]. As seen in the recent business market situation, an increasing number of industrial manufacturers and suppliers are moving from adversarial to cooperative exchange attitudes that support the long-term relationships with their customers. This article presents the results of an empirical study of the antecedent factors of business relationships in metal industry of the United States. Commitment has been reviewed as a significant and critical variable in research on inter-organizational relationships (Hong et al. 2007, Kim et al. 2007). The future stability of any buyer-seller relationship depends upon the commitment made by the interactants to their relationship. Commitment, according to Dwyer et al. [1987], refers to "an implicit or explicit pledge of relational continuity between exchange partners" and they consider commitment to be the most advanced phase of buyer-seller exchange relationship. Bonds are made because the members need their partners in order to do something and this integration on a task basis can be either symbiotic or cooperative (Svensson 2008). To the extent that members seek the same or mutually supporting ends, there will be strong bonds among them. In other words, the principle that affects the strength of bonds is 'economy of decision making' [Turner 1970]. These bonds provide an important idea to study the causes of business long-term relationships in a sense that organizations can be mutually bonded by a common interest in the economic matters. Recently, the framework of structural bonding has been used to study the buyer-seller relationships in industrial marketing [Han and Sung 2008, Williams et al. 1998, Wilson 1995] in that this structural bonding is a crucial part of the theoretical justification for distinguishing discrete transactions from ongoing long-term relationships. The major antecedent factors of buyer commitment such as technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance were identified and explored from the perspective of structural bonding. Research hypotheses were developed and tested by using survey data from the middle managers in the metal industry. H1: Level of technology of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H2: Comparison level of alternatives is negatively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H3: Amount of the transaction-specific assets is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H4: Importance of the relationship partner is positively related to the level of structural bonding between the buyer and the seller. H5: Level of structural bonding is positively related to the level of commitment to the relationship. To examine the major antecedent factors of industrial buyer's structural bonding and long-term relationship, questionnaire was prepared, mailed out to the sample of 400 purchasing managers of the US metal industry (SIC codes 33 and 34). After a follow-up request, 139 informants returnedthe questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 35 percent. 134 responses were used in the final analysis after dropping 5 incomplete questionnaires. All measures were analyzed for reliability and validity following the guidelines offered by Churchill [1979] and Anderson and Gerbing [1988]., the results of fitting the model to the data indicated that the hypothesized model provides a good fit to the data. Goodness-of-fit index (GFI = 0.94) and other indices ( chi-square = 78.02 with p-value = 0.13, Adjusted GFI = 0.90, Normed Fit Index = 0.92) indicated that a major proportion of variances and covariances in the data was accounted for by the model as a whole, and all the parameter estimates showed statistical significance as evidenced by large t-values. All the factor loadings were significantly different from zero. On these grounds we judged the hypothesized model to be a reasonable representation of the data. The results from the present study suggest several implications for buyer-seller relationships. Theoretically, we attempted to conceptualize the antecedent factors of buyer-seller long-term relationships from the perspective of structural bondingin metal industry. The four underlying determinants (i.e. technology, CLalt, transaction-specific assets, and importance) of structural bonding are very critical variables of buyer-seller long-term business relationships. Our model of structural bonding makes an attempt to systematically examine the relationship between the antecedent factors of structural bonding and long-term commitment. Managerially, this research provides industrial purchasing managers with a good framework to assess the interaction processes with their partners and, ability to position their business relationships from the perspective of structural bonding. In other words, based on those underlying variables, industrial purchasing managers can determine the strength of the company's relationships with the key suppliers and its state of preparation to be a successful partner with those suppliers. Both the supplying and customer companies can also benefit by using the concept of 'structural bonding' and evaluating their relationships with key business partners from the structural point of view. In general, the results indicate that structural bonding gives a critical impact on the level of relationship commitment. Managerial implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.

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Effects of firm strategies on customer acquisition of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers: A mediating and moderating role of SaaS technology maturity (SaaS 기업의 차별화 및 가격전략이 고객획득성과에 미치는 영향: SaaS 기술성숙도 수준의 매개효과 및 조절효과를 중심으로)

  • Chae, SeongWook;Park, Sungbum
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.151-171
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    • 2014
  • Firms today have sought management effectiveness and efficiency utilizing information technologies (IT). Numerous firms are outsourcing specific information systems functions to cope with their short of information resources or IT experts, or to reduce their capital cost. Recently, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a new type of information system has become one of the powerful outsourcing alternatives. SaaS is software deployed as a hosted and accessed over the internet. It is regarded as the idea of on-demand, pay-per-use, and utility computing and is now being applied to support the core competencies of clients in areas ranging from the individual productivity area to the vertical industry and e-commerce area. In this study, therefore, we seek to quantify the value that SaaS has on business performance by examining the relationships among firm strategies, SaaS technology maturity, and business performance of SaaS providers. We begin by drawing from prior literature on SaaS, technology maturity and firm strategy. SaaS technology maturity is classified into three different phases such as application service providing (ASP), Web-native application, and Web-service application. Firm strategies are manipulated by the low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy. Finally, we considered customer acquisition as a business performance. In this sense, specific objectives of this study are as follows. First, we examine the relationships between customer acquisition performance and both low-cost strategy and differentiation strategy of SaaS providers. Secondly, we investigate the mediating and moderating effects of SaaS technology maturity on those relationships. For this purpose, study collects data from the SaaS providers, and their line of applications registered in the database in CNK (Commerce net Korea) in Korea using a questionnaire method by the professional research institution. The unit of analysis in this study is the SBUs (strategic business unit) in the software provider. A total of 199 SBUs is used for analyzing and testing our hypotheses. With regards to the measurement of firm strategy, we take three measurement items for differentiation strategy such as the application uniqueness (referring an application aims to differentiate within just one or a small number of target industry), supply channel diversification (regarding whether SaaS vendor had diversified supply chain) as well as the number of specialized expertise and take two items for low cost strategy like subscription fee and initial set-up fee. We employ a hierarchical regression analysis technique for testing moderation effects of SaaS technology maturity and follow the Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if firm strategies affect customer acquisition through technology maturity. Empirical results revealed that, firstly, when differentiation strategy is applied to attain business performance like customer acquisition, the effects of the strategy is moderated by the technology maturity level of SaaS providers. In other words, securing higher level of SaaS technology maturity is essential for higher business performance. For instance, given that firms implement application uniqueness or a distribution channel diversification as a differentiation strategy, they can acquire more customers when their level of SaaS technology maturity is higher rather than lower. Secondly, results indicate that pursuing differentiation strategy or low cost strategy effectively works for SaaS providers' obtaining customer, which means that continuously differentiating their service from others or making their service fee (subscription fee or initial set-up fee) lower are helpful for their business success in terms of acquiring their customers. Lastly, results show that the level of SaaS technology maturity mediates the relationships between low cost strategy and customer acquisition. That is, based on our research design, customers usually perceive the real value of the low subscription fee or initial set-up fee only through the SaaS service provide by vender and, in turn, this will affect their decision making whether subscribe or not.

A Study on the Application of Outlier Analysis for Fraud Detection: Focused on Transactions of Auction Exception Agricultural Products (부정 탐지를 위한 이상치 분석 활용방안 연구 : 농수산 상장예외품목 거래를 대상으로)

  • Kim, Dongsung;Kim, Kitae;Kim, Jongwoo;Park, Steve
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.93-108
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    • 2014
  • To support business decision making, interests and efforts to analyze and use transaction data in different perspectives are increasing. Such efforts are not only limited to customer management or marketing, but also used for monitoring and detecting fraud transactions. Fraud transactions are evolving into various patterns by taking advantage of information technology. To reflect the evolution of fraud transactions, there are many efforts on fraud detection methods and advanced application systems in order to improve the accuracy and ease of fraud detection. As a case of fraud detection, this study aims to provide effective fraud detection methods for auction exception agricultural products in the largest Korean agricultural wholesale market. Auction exception products policy exists to complement auction-based trades in agricultural wholesale market. That is, most trades on agricultural products are performed by auction; however, specific products are assigned as auction exception products when total volumes of products are relatively small, the number of wholesalers is small, or there are difficulties for wholesalers to purchase the products. However, auction exception products policy makes several problems on fairness and transparency of transaction, which requires help of fraud detection. In this study, to generate fraud detection rules, real huge agricultural products trade transaction data from 2008 to 2010 in the market are analyzed, which increase more than 1 million transactions and 1 billion US dollar in transaction volume. Agricultural transaction data has unique characteristics such as frequent changes in supply volumes and turbulent time-dependent changes in price. Since this was the first trial to identify fraud transactions in this domain, there was no training data set for supervised learning. So, fraud detection rules are generated using outlier detection approach. We assume that outlier transactions have more possibility of fraud transactions than normal transactions. The outlier transactions are identified to compare daily average unit price, weekly average unit price, and quarterly average unit price of product items. Also quarterly averages unit price of product items of the specific wholesalers are used to identify outlier transactions. The reliability of generated fraud detection rules are confirmed by domain experts. To determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, normal distribution and normalized Z-value concept are applied. That is, a unit price of a transaction is transformed to Z-value to calculate the occurrence probability when we approximate the distribution of unit prices to normal distribution. The modified Z-value of the unit price in the transaction is used rather than using the original Z-value of it. The reason is that in the case of auction exception agricultural products, Z-values are influenced by outlier fraud transactions themselves because the number of wholesalers is small. The modified Z-values are called Self-Eliminated Z-scores because they are calculated excluding the unit price of the specific transaction which is subject to check whether it is fraud transaction or not. To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, a prototype of fraud transaction detection system is developed using Delphi. The system consists of five main menus and related submenus. First functionalities of the system is to import transaction databases. Next important functions are to set up fraud detection parameters. By changing fraud detection parameters, system users can control the number of potential fraud transactions. Execution functions provide fraud detection results which are found based on fraud detection parameters. The potential fraud transactions can be viewed on screen or exported as files. The study is an initial trial to identify fraud transactions in Auction Exception Agricultural Products. There are still many remained research topics of the issue. First, the scope of analysis data was limited due to the availability of data. It is necessary to include more data on transactions, wholesalers, and producers to detect fraud transactions more accurately. Next, we need to extend the scope of fraud transaction detection to fishery products. Also there are many possibilities to apply different data mining techniques for fraud detection. For example, time series approach is a potential technique to apply the problem. Even though outlier transactions are detected based on unit prices of transactions, however it is possible to derive fraud detection rules based on transaction volumes.

Predicting the Direction of the Stock Index by Using a Domain-Specific Sentiment Dictionary (주가지수 방향성 예측을 위한 주제지향 감성사전 구축 방안)

  • Yu, Eunji;Kim, Yoosin;Kim, Namgyu;Jeong, Seung Ryul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.95-110
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    • 2013
  • Recently, the amount of unstructured data being generated through a variety of social media has been increasing rapidly, resulting in the increasing need to collect, store, search for, analyze, and visualize this data. This kind of data cannot be handled appropriately by using the traditional methodologies usually used for analyzing structured data because of its vast volume and unstructured nature. In this situation, many attempts are being made to analyze unstructured data such as text files and log files through various commercial or noncommercial analytical tools. Among the various contemporary issues dealt with in the literature of unstructured text data analysis, the concepts and techniques of opinion mining have been attracting much attention from pioneer researchers and business practitioners. Opinion mining or sentiment analysis refers to a series of processes that analyze participants' opinions, sentiments, evaluations, attitudes, and emotions about selected products, services, organizations, social issues, and so on. In other words, many attempts based on various opinion mining techniques are being made to resolve complicated issues that could not have otherwise been solved by existing traditional approaches. One of the most representative attempts using the opinion mining technique may be the recent research that proposed an intelligent model for predicting the direction of the stock index. This model works mainly on the basis of opinions extracted from an overwhelming number of economic news repots. News content published on various media is obviously a traditional example of unstructured text data. Every day, a large volume of new content is created, digitalized, and subsequently distributed to us via online or offline channels. Many studies have revealed that we make better decisions on political, economic, and social issues by analyzing news and other related information. In this sense, we expect to predict the fluctuation of stock markets partly by analyzing the relationship between economic news reports and the pattern of stock prices. So far, in the literature on opinion mining, most studies including ours have utilized a sentiment dictionary to elicit sentiment polarity or sentiment value from a large number of documents. A sentiment dictionary consists of pairs of selected words and their sentiment values. Sentiment classifiers refer to the dictionary to formulate the sentiment polarity of words, sentences in a document, and the whole document. However, most traditional approaches have common limitations in that they do not consider the flexibility of sentiment polarity, that is, the sentiment polarity or sentiment value of a word is fixed and cannot be changed in a traditional sentiment dictionary. In the real world, however, the sentiment polarity of a word can vary depending on the time, situation, and purpose of the analysis. It can also be contradictory in nature. The flexibility of sentiment polarity motivated us to conduct this study. In this paper, we have stated that sentiment polarity should be assigned, not merely on the basis of the inherent meaning of a word but on the basis of its ad hoc meaning within a particular context. To implement our idea, we presented an intelligent investment decision-support model based on opinion mining that performs the scrapping and parsing of massive volumes of economic news on the web, tags sentiment words, classifies sentiment polarity of the news, and finally predicts the direction of the next day's stock index. In addition, we applied a domain-specific sentiment dictionary instead of a general purpose one to classify each piece of news as either positive or negative. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we performed intensive experiments and investigated the prediction accuracy of our model. For the experiments to predict the direction of the stock index, we gathered and analyzed 1,072 articles about stock markets published by "M" and "E" media between July 2011 and September 2011.

An Intervention Study on Integration of Family Planning and Maternal/Infant Care Services in Rural Korea (가족계획과 모자보건 통합을 위한 조산원의 투입효과 분석 -서산지역의 개입연구 평가보고-)

  • Bang, Sook;Han, Seung-Hyun;Lee, Chung-Ja;Ahn, Moon-Young;Lee, In-Sook;Kim, Eun-Shil;Kim, Chong-Ho
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.20 no.1 s.21
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    • pp.165-203
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    • 1987
  • This project was a service-cum-research effort with a quasi-experimental study design to examine the health benefits of an integrated Family Planning (FP)/Maternal & Child health (MCH) Service approach that provides crucial factors missing in the present on-going programs. The specific objectives were: 1) To test the effectiveness of trained nurse/midwives (MW) assigned as change agents in the Health Sub-Center (HSC) to bring about the changes in the eight FP/MCH indicators, namely; (i)FP/MCH contacts between field workers and their clients (ii) the use of effective FP methods, (iii) the inter-birth interval and/or open interval, (iv) prenatal care by medically qualified personnel, (v) medically supervised deliveries, (vi) the rate of induced abortion, (vii) maternal and infant morbidity, and (viii) preinatal & infant mortality. 2) To measure the integrative linkage (contacts) between MW & HSC workers and between HSC and clients. 3) To examine the organizational or administrative factors influencing integrative linkage between health workers. Study design; The above objectives called for quasi-experimental design setting up a study and control area with and without a midwife. An active intervention program (FP/MCH minimum 'package' program) was conducted for a 2 year period from June 1982-July 1984 in Seosan County and 'before and after' surveys were conducted to measure the change. Service input; This study was undertaken by the Soonchunhyang University in collaboration with WHO. After a baseline survery in 1981, trained nurses/midwives were introduced into two health sub-centers in a rural setting (Seosan county) for a 2 year period from 1982 to 1984. A major service input was the establishment of midwifery services in the existing health delivery system with emphasis on nurse/midwife's role as the link between health workers (nurse aids) and village health workers, and the referral of risk patients to the private physician (OBGY specialist). An evaluation survey was made in August 1984 to assess the effectiveness of this alternative integrated approach in the study areas in comparison with the control area which had normal government services. Method of evaluation; a. In this study, the primary objective was first to examine to what extent the FP/MCH package program brought about changes in the pre-determined eight indicators (outcome and impact measures) and the following relationship was first analyzed; b. Nevertheless, this project did not automatically accept the assumption that if two or more activities were integrated, the results would automatically be better than a non-integrated or categorical program. There is a need to assess the 'integration process' itself within the package program. The process of integration was measured in terms of interactive linkages, or the quantity & quality of contacts between workers & clients and among workers. Intergrative linkages were hypothesized to be influenced by organizational factors at the HSC clinic level including HSC goals, sltrurture, authority, leadership style, resources, and personal characteristics of HSC staff. The extent or degree of integration, as measured by the intensity of integrative linkages, was in turn presumed to influence programme performance. Thus as indicated diagrammatically below, organizational factors constituted the independent variables, integration as the intervening variable and programme performance with respect to family planning and health services as the dependent variable: Concerning organizational factors, however, due to the limited number of HSCs (2 in the study area and 3 in the control area), they were studied by participatory observation of an anthropologist who was independent of the project. In this observation, we examined whether the assumed integration process actually occurred or not. If not, what were the constraints in producing an effective integration process. Summary of Findings; A) Program effects and impact 1. Effects on FP use: During this 2 year action period, FP acceptance increased from 58% in 1981 to 78% in 1984 in both the study and control areas. This increase in both areas was mainly due to the new family planning campaign driven by the Government for the same study period. Therefore, there was no increment of FP acceptance rate due to additional input of MW to the on-going FP program. But in the study area, quality aspects of FP were somewhat improved, having a better continuation rate of IUDs & pills and more use of effective Contraceptive methods in comparison with the control area. 2. Effects of use of MCH services: Between the study and control areas, however, there was a significant difference in maternal and child health care. For example, the coverage of prenatal care was increased from 53% for 1981 birth cohort to 75% for 1984 birth cohort in the study area. In the control area, the same increased from 41% (1981) to 65% (1984). It is noteworthy that almost two thirds of the recent birth cohort received prenatal care even in the control area, indicating that there is a growing demand of MCH care as the size of family norm becomes smaller 3. There has been a substantive increase in delivery care by medical professions in the study area, with an annual increase rate of 10% due to midwives input in the study areas. The project had about two times greater effect on postnatal care (68% vs. 33%) at delivery care(45.2% vs. 26.1%). 4. The study area had better reproductive efficiency (wanted pregancies with FP practice & healthy live births survived by one year old) than the control area, especially among women under 30 (14.1% vs. 9.6%). The proportion of women who preferred the 1st trimester for their first prenatal care rose significantly in the study area as compared to the control area (24% vs 13%). B) Effects on Interactive Linkage 1. This project made a contribution in making several useful steps in the direction of service integration, namely; i) The health workers have become familiar with procedures on how to work together with each other (especially with a midwife) in carrying out their work in FP/MCH and, ii) The health workers have gotten a feeling of the usefulness of family health records (statistical integration) in identifying targets in their own work and their usefulness in caring for family health. 2. On the other hand, because of a lack of required organizational factors, complete linkage was not obtained as the project intended. i) In regards to the government health worker's activities in terms of home visiting there was not much difference between the study & control areas though the MW did more home visiting than Government health workers. ii) In assessing the service performance of MW & health workers, the midwives balanced their workload between 40% FP, 40% MCH & 20% other activities (mainly immunization). However, $85{\sim}90%$ of the services provided by the health workers were other than FP/MCH, mainly for immunizations such as the encephalitis campaign. In the control area, a similar pattern was observed. Over 75% of their service was other than FP/MCH. Therefore, the pattern shows the health workers are a long way from becoming multipurpose workers even though the government is pushing in this direction. 3. Villagers were much more likely to visit the health sub-center clinic in the study area than in the control area (58% vs.31%) and for more combined care (45% vs.23%). C) Organization factors (admistrative integrative issues) 1. When MW (new workers with higher qualification) were introduced to HSC, it was noted that there were conflicts between the existing HSC workers (Nurse aids with less qualification than MW) and the MW for the beginning period of the project. The cause of the conflict was studied by an anthropologist and it was pointed out that these functional integration problems stemmed from the structural inadequacies of the health subcenter organization as indicated below; i) There is still no general consensus about the objectives and goals of the project between the project staff and the existing health workers. ii) There is no formal linkage between the responsibility of each member's job in the health sub-center. iii) There is still little chance for midwives to play a catalytic role or to establish communicative networks between workers in order to link various knowledge and skills to provide better FP/MCH services in the health sub-center. 2. Based on the above findings the project recommended to the County Chief (who has power to control the administrative staff and the technical staff in his county) the following ; i) In order to solve the conflicts between the individual roles and functions in performing health care activities, there must be goals agreed upon by both. ii) The health sub·center must function as an autonomous organization to undertake the integration health project. In order to do that, it is necessary to support administrative considerations, and to establish a communication system for supervision and to control of the health sub-centers. iii) The administrative organization, tentatively, must be organized to bind the health worker's midwive's and director's jobs by an organic relationship in order to achieve the integrative system under the leadership of health sub-center director. After submitting this observation report, there has been better understanding from frequent meetings & communication between HW/MW in FP/MCH work as the program developed. Lessons learned from the Seosan Project (on issues of FP/MCH integration in Korea); 1) A majority or about 80% of the couples are now practicing FP. As indicated by the study, there is a growing demand from clients for the health system to provide more MCH services than FP in order to maintain the achieved small size of family through FP practice. It is fortunate to see that the government is now formulating a MCH policy for the year 2,000 and revising MCH laws and regulations to emphasize more MCH care for achieving a small size family through family planning practice. 2) Goal consensus in FP/MCH shouBd be made among the health workers It administrators, especially to emphasize the need of care of 'wanted' child. But there is a long way to go to realize the 'real' integration of FP into MCH in Korea, unless there is a structural integration FP/MCH because a categorical FP is still first priority to reduce the rate of population growth for economic reasons but not yet for health/welfare reasons in practice. 3) There should be more financial allocation: (i) a midwife should be made available to help to promote the MCH program and coordinate services, (in) there should be a health sub·center director who can provide leadership training for managing the integrated program. There is a need for 'organizational support', if the decision of integration is made to obtain benefit from both FP & MCH. In other words, costs should be paid equally to both FP/MCH. The integration slogan itself, without the commitment of paying such costs, is powerless to advocate it. 4) Need of management training for middle level health personnel is more acute as the Government has already constructed 90 MCH centers attached to the County Health Center but without adequate manpower, facilities, and guidelines for integrating the work of both FP and MCH. 5) The local government still considers these MCH centers only as delivery centers to take care only of those visiting maternity cases. The MCH center should be a center for the managment of all pregnancies occurring in the community and the promotion of FP with a systematic and effective linkage of resources available in the county such as i.e. Village Health Worker, Community Health Practitioner, Health Sub-center Physicians & Health workers, Doctors and Midwives in MCH center, OBGY Specialists in clinics & hospitals as practiced by the Seosan project at primary health care level.

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A Study on Hoslital Nurses' Preferred Duty Shift and Duty Hours (병원 간호사의 선호근무시간대에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Gyeong-Sik;Jeong, Geum-Hui
    • The Korean Nurse
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.77-96
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    • 1997
  • The duty shifts of hospital nurses not only affect nurses' physical and mental health but also present various personnel management problems which often result in high turnover rates. In this context a study was carried out from October to November 1995 for a period of two months to find out the status of hospital nurses' duty shift patterns, and preferred duty hours and fixed duty shifts. The study population was 867 RNs working in five general hospitals located in Seoul and its vicinity. The questionnaire developed by the writer was used for data collection. The response rate was 85.9 percent or 745 returns. The SAS program was used for data analysis with the computation of frequencies, percentages and Chi square test. The findings of the study are as follows: 1. General characteristics of the study population: 56 percent of respondents was (25 years group and 76.5 percent were "single": the predominant proportion of respondents was junior nursing college graduates(92.2%) and have less than 5 years nursing experience in hospitals(65.5%). For their future working plan in nursing profession, nearly 50% responded as uncertain The reasons given for their career plan was predominantly 'personal growth and development' rather than financial reasons. 2. The interval for rotations of duty stations was found to be mostly irregular(56.4%) while others reported as weekly(16.1%), monthly(12.9%), and fixed terms(4.6%). 3. The main problems related to duty shifts particularly the evening and night duty nurses reported were "not enough time for the family, " "afraid of security problems after the work when returning home late at night." and "lack of leisure time". "problems in physical and physiological adjustment." "problems in family life." "lack of time for interactions with fellow nurses" etc. 4. The forty percent of respondents reported to have '1-2 times' of duty shift rotations while all others reported that '0 time'. '2-3 times'. 'more than 3 times' etc. which suggest the irregularity in duty shift rotations. 5. The majority(62.8%) of study population found to favor the rotating system of duty stations. The reasons for favoring the rotation system were: the opportunity for "learning new things and personal development." "better human relations are possible. "better understanding in various duty stations." "changes in monotonous routine job" etc. The proportion of those disfavor the rotating 'system was 34.7 percent. giving the reasons of"it impedes development of specialization." "poor job performances." "stress factors" etc. Furthermore. respondents made the following comments in relation to the rotation of duty stations: the nurses should be given the opportunity to participate in the. decision making process: personal interest and aptitudes should be considered: regular intervals for the rotations or it should be planned in advance. etc. 6. For the future career plan. the older. married group with longer nursing experiences appeared to think the nursing as their lifetime career more likely than the younger. single group with shorter nursing experiences ($x^2=61.19.{\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=41.55.{\;}p=.000$). The reason given for their future career plan regardless of length of future service, was predominantly "personal growth and development" rather than financial reasons. For further analysis, the group those with the shorter career plan appeared to claim "financial reasons" for their future career more readily than the group who consider the nursing job as their lifetime career$(x^2$= 11.73, p=.003) did. This finding suggests the need for careful .considerations in personnel management of nursing administration particularly when dealing with the nurses' career development. The majority of respondents preferred the fixed day shift. However, further analysis of those preferred evening shift by age and civil status, "< 25 years group"(15.1%) and "single group"(13.2) were more likely to favor the fixed evening shift than > 25 years(6.4%) and married(4.8%)groups. This differences were statistically significant ($x^2=14.54, {\;}p=.000;{\;}x^2=8.75, {\;}p=.003$). 7. A great majority of respondents(86.9% or n=647) found to prefer the day shifts. When the four different types of duty shifts(Types A. B. C, D) were presented, 55.0 percent of total respondents preferred the A type or the existing one followed by D type(22.7%). B type(12.4%) and C type(8.2%). 8. When the condition of monetary incentives for the evening(20% of salary) and night shifts(40% of. salary) of the existing duty type was presented. again the day shift appeared to be the most preferred one although the rate was slightly lower(66.4% against 86.9%). In the case of evening shift, with the same incentive, the preference rates for evening and night shifts increased from 11.0 to 22.4 percent and from 0.5 to 3.0 percent respectively. When the age variable was controlled. < 25 yrs group showed higher rates(31.6%. 4.8%) than those of > 25 yrs group(15.5%. 1.3%) respectively preferring the evening and night shifts(p=.000). The civil status also seemed to operate on the preferences of the duty shifts as the single group showed lower rate(69.0%) for day duty against 83. 6% of the married group. and higher rates for evening and night duties(27.2%. 15.1%) respectively against those of the married group(3.8%. 1.8%) while a higher proportion of the married group(83. 6%) preferred the day duties than the single group(69.0%). These differences were found to be statistically all significant(p=.001). 9. The findings on preferences of three different types of fixed duty hours namely, B, C. and D(with additional monetary incentives) are as follows in order of preference: B type(12hrs a day, 3days a wk): day shift(64.1%), evening shift(26.1%). night shift(6.5%) C type(12hrs a day. 4days a wk) : evening shift(49.2%). day shift(32.8%), night shift(11.5%) D type(10hrs a day. 4days a wk): showed the similar trend as B type. The findings of higher preferences on the evening and night duties when the incentives are given. as shown above, suggest the need for the introductions of different patterns of duty hours and incentive measures in order to overcome the difficulties in rostering the nursing duties. However, the interpretation of the above data, particularly the C type, needs cautions as the total number of respondents is very small(n=61). It requires further in-depth study. In conclusion. it seemed to suggest that the patterns of nurses duty hours and shifts in the most hospitals in the country have neither been tried for different duty types nor been flexible. The stereotype rostering system of three shifts and insensitiveness for personal life aspect of nurses seemed to be prevailing. This study seems to support that irregular and frequent rotations of duty shifts may be contributing factors for most nurses' maladjustment problems in physical and mental health. personal and family life which eventually may result in high turnover rates. In order to overcome the increasing problems in personnel management of hospital nurses particularly in rostering of evening and night duty shifts, which may related to eventual high turnover rates, the findings of this study strongly suggest the need for an introduction of new rostering systems including fixed duties and appropriate incentive measures for evenings and nights which the most nurses want to avoid, In considering the nursing care of inpatients is the round-the clock business. the practice of the nursing duty shift system is inevitable. In this context, based on the findings of this study. the following are recommended: 1. The further in-depth studies on duty shifts and hours need to be undertaken for the development of appropriate and effective rostering systems for hospital nurses. 2. An introduction of appropriate incentive measures for evening and night duty shifts along with organizational considerations such as the trials for preferred duty time bands, duty hours, and fixed duty shifts should be considered if good quality of care for the patients be maintained for the round the clock. This may require an initiation of systematic research and development activities in the field of hospital nursing administration as a part of permanent system in the hospital. 3. Planned and regular intervals, orientation and training, and professional and personal growth should be considered for the rotation of different duty stations or units. 4. In considering the higher degree of preferences in the duty type of "10hours a day, 4days a week" shown in this study, it would be worthwhile to undertake the R&D type studies in large hospital settings.

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Home Economics teachers' concern on creativity and personality education in Home Economics classes: Based on the concerns based adoption model(CBAM) (가정과 교사의 창의.인성 교육에 대한 관심과 실행에 대한 인식 - CBAM 모형에 기초하여-)

  • Lee, In-Sook;Park, Mi-Jeong;Chae, Jung-Hyun
    • Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.117-134
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    • 2012
  • The purpose of this study was to identify the stage of concern, the level of use, and the innovation configuration of Home Economics teachers regarding creativity and personality education in Home Economics(HE) classes. The survey questionnaires were sent through mails and e-mails to middle-school HE teachers in the whole country selected by systematic sampling and convenience sampling. Questionnaires of the stages of concern and the levels of use developed by Hall(1987) were used in this study. 187 data were used for the final analysis by using SPSS/window(12.0) program. The results of the study were as following: First, for the stage of concerns of HE teachers on creativity and personality education, the information stage of concerns(85.51) was the one with the highest response rate and the next high in the following order: the management stage of concerns(81.88), the awareness stage of concerns(82.15), the refocusing stage of concerns(68.80), the collaboration stage of concerns(61.97), and the consequence stage of concerns(59.76). Second, the levels of use of HE teachers on creativity and personality education was highest with the mechanical levels(level 3; 21.4%) and the next high in the following order: the orientation levels of use(level 1; 20.9%), the refinement levels(level 5; 17.1%), the non-use levels(level 0; 15.0%), the preparation levels(level 2; 10.2%), the integration levels(level 6; 5.9%), the renewal levels(level 7; 4.8%), the routine levels(level 4; 4.8%). Third, for the innovation configuration of HE teachers on creativity and personality education, more than half of the HE teachers(56.1%) mainly focused on personality education in their HE classes; 31.0% of the HE teachers performed both creativity and personality education; a small number of teachers(6.4%) focused on creativity education; the same number of teachers(6.4%) responded that they do not focus on neither of the two. Examining the level and type of performance HE teachers applied, the average score on the performance of creativity and personality education was 3.76 out of 5.00 and the mean of creativity component was 3.59 and of personality component was 3.94, higher than standard. For the creativity education, openness/sensitivity(3.97) education was performed most and the next most in the following order: problem-solving skill(3.79), curiosity/interest(3.73), critical thinking(3.63), problem-finding skill(3.61), originality(3.57), analogy(3.47), fluency/adaptability(3.46), precision(3.46), imagination(3.37), and focus/sympathy(3.37). For the personality education, the following components were performed in order from most to least: power of execution(4.07), cooperation/consideration/just(4.06), self-management skill(4.04), civic consciousness(4.04), career development ability(4.03), environment adaptability(3.95), responsibility/ownership(3.94), decision making(3.89), trust/honesty/promise(3.88), autonomy(3.86), and global competency(3.55). Regarding what makes performing creativity and personality education difficult, most HE teachers(64.71%) chose the lack of instructional materials and 40.11% of participants chose the lack of seminar and workshop opportunity. 38.5% chose the difficulty of developing an evaluation criteria or an evaluation tool while 25.67% responded that they do not know any means of performing creativity and personality education. Regarding the better way to support for creativity and personality education, the HE teachers chose in order from most to least: 'expansion of hands-on activities for students related to education on creativity and personality'(4.34), 'development of HE classroom culture putting emphasis on creativity and personality'(4.29), 'a proper curriculum on creativity and personality education that goes along with students' developmental stages'(4.27), 'securing enough human resource and number of professors who will conduct creativity and personality education'(4.21), 'establishment of the concept and value of the education on creativity and personality'(4.09), and 'educational promotion on creativity and personality education supported by local communities and companies'(3.94).

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An Empirical Study on the Influencing Factors for Big Data Intented Adoption: Focusing on the Strategic Value Recognition and TOE Framework (빅데이터 도입의도에 미치는 영향요인에 관한 연구: 전략적 가치인식과 TOE(Technology Organizational Environment) Framework을 중심으로)

  • Ka, Hoi-Kwang;Kim, Jin-soo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.443-472
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    • 2014
  • To survive in the global competitive environment, enterprise should be able to solve various problems and find the optimal solution effectively. The big-data is being perceived as a tool for solving enterprise problems effectively and improve competitiveness with its' various problem solving and advanced predictive capabilities. Due to its remarkable performance, the implementation of big data systems has been increased through many enterprises around the world. Currently the big-data is called the 'crude oil' of the 21st century and is expected to provide competitive superiority. The reason why the big data is in the limelight is because while the conventional IT technology has been falling behind much in its possibility level, the big data has gone beyond the technological possibility and has the advantage of being utilized to create new values such as business optimization and new business creation through analysis of big data. Since the big data has been introduced too hastily without considering the strategic value deduction and achievement obtained through the big data, however, there are difficulties in the strategic value deduction and data utilization that can be gained through big data. According to the survey result of 1,800 IT professionals from 18 countries world wide, the percentage of the corporation where the big data is being utilized well was only 28%, and many of them responded that they are having difficulties in strategic value deduction and operation through big data. The strategic value should be deducted and environment phases like corporate internal and external related regulations and systems should be considered in order to introduce big data, but these factors were not well being reflected. The cause of the failure turned out to be that the big data was introduced by way of the IT trend and surrounding environment, but it was introduced hastily in the situation where the introduction condition was not well arranged. The strategic value which can be obtained through big data should be clearly comprehended and systematic environment analysis is very important about applicability in order to introduce successful big data, but since the corporations are considering only partial achievements and technological phases that can be obtained through big data, the successful introduction is not being made. Previous study shows that most of big data researches are focused on big data concept, cases, and practical suggestions without empirical study. The purpose of this study is provide the theoretically and practically useful implementation framework and strategies of big data systems with conducting comprehensive literature review, finding influencing factors for successful big data systems implementation, and analysing empirical models. To do this, the elements which can affect the introduction intention of big data were deducted by reviewing the information system's successful factors, strategic value perception factors, considering factors for the information system introduction environment and big data related literature in order to comprehend the effect factors when the corporations introduce big data and structured questionnaire was developed. After that, the questionnaire and the statistical analysis were performed with the people in charge of the big data inside the corporations as objects. According to the statistical analysis, it was shown that the strategic value perception factor and the inside-industry environmental factors affected positively the introduction intention of big data. The theoretical, practical and political implications deducted from the study result is as follows. The frist theoretical implication is that this study has proposed theoretically effect factors which affect the introduction intention of big data by reviewing the strategic value perception and environmental factors and big data related precedent studies and proposed the variables and measurement items which were analyzed empirically and verified. This study has meaning in that it has measured the influence of each variable on the introduction intention by verifying the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables through structural equation model. Second, this study has defined the independent variable(strategic value perception, environment), dependent variable(introduction intention) and regulatory variable(type of business and corporate size) about big data introduction intention and has arranged theoretical base in studying big data related field empirically afterwards by developing measurement items which has obtained credibility and validity. Third, by verifying the strategic value perception factors and the significance about environmental factors proposed in the conventional precedent studies, this study will be able to give aid to the afterwards empirical study about effect factors on big data introduction. The operational implications are as follows. First, this study has arranged the empirical study base about big data field by investigating the cause and effect relationship about the influence of the strategic value perception factor and environmental factor on the introduction intention and proposing the measurement items which has obtained the justice, credibility and validity etc. Second, this study has proposed the study result that the strategic value perception factor affects positively the big data introduction intention and it has meaning in that the importance of the strategic value perception has been presented. Third, the study has proposed that the corporation which introduces big data should consider the big data introduction through precise analysis about industry's internal environment. Fourth, this study has proposed the point that the size and type of business of the corresponding corporation should be considered in introducing the big data by presenting the difference of the effect factors of big data introduction depending on the size and type of business of the corporation. The political implications are as follows. First, variety of utilization of big data is needed. The strategic value that big data has can be accessed in various ways in the product, service field, productivity field, decision making field etc and can be utilized in all the business fields based on that, but the parts that main domestic corporations are considering are limited to some parts of the products and service fields. Accordingly, in introducing big data, reviewing the phase about utilization in detail and design the big data system in a form which can maximize the utilization rate will be necessary. Second, the study is proposing the burden of the cost of the system introduction, difficulty in utilization in the system and lack of credibility in the supply corporations etc in the big data introduction phase by corporations. Since the world IT corporations are predominating the big data market, the big data introduction of domestic corporations can not but to be dependent on the foreign corporations. When considering that fact, that our country does not have global IT corporations even though it is world powerful IT country, the big data can be thought to be the chance to rear world level corporations. Accordingly, the government shall need to rear star corporations through active political support. Third, the corporations' internal and external professional manpower for the big data introduction and operation lacks. Big data is a system where how valuable data can be deducted utilizing data is more important than the system construction itself. For this, talent who are equipped with academic knowledge and experience in various fields like IT, statistics, strategy and management etc and manpower training should be implemented through systematic education for these talents. This study has arranged theoretical base for empirical studies about big data related fields by comprehending the main variables which affect the big data introduction intention and verifying them and is expected to be able to propose useful guidelines for the corporations and policy developers who are considering big data implementationby analyzing empirically that theoretical base.

Factors Affecting International Transfer Pricing of Multinational Enterprises in Korea (외국인투자기업의 국제이전가격 결정에 영향을 미치는 환경 및 기업요인)

  • Jun, Tae-Young;Byun, Yong-Hwan
    • Korean small business review
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    • v.31 no.2
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    • pp.85-102
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    • 2009
  • With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.