• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.211-221
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• 2012

The word 'chintz' is thought to be a corruption of spotted cloth. Printing remained a relatively primitive method of decorating textiles in Europe until the second half of the 17th century. The formation of the English East India Company sparked the influx into the West of painted and printed Indian cotton textiles. A William Sherwin took out the first English patent in 1676. The earlist European designs were florals in the Indian manner. Patterns of European flowers returned to England as birds, flowers, trees, vines and stained glass for Victorian chintz. In France, the original and most successsful manufacturer of the distinctive printed fabrics from Jouy was Christophe Philippe Oberkampf. Copperplate printing was introduced to Jouy in 1770, probably reaching the pinnacle of achievement in the craft after 1783 when Jean-Baptiste Huet became chief designer. Huet's style was widely imitated in France and abroad, and the term 'toile de Jouy' has come to be universally applied to monochrome figurative designs wherever and by whomsoever they were produced. Oberkampf served his apprenticeship as an engraver with some leading manufacturers, including a period in Mulhouse. In Alsace, which was not part of France until 1798, the first factory had opened in 1746 in Mulhouse, and the area soon had the largest number of print-works in France.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1-14
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• 1995

Recently Korean textile industry has been in the phase that requires its strategy change from the less-develped country style of the labor-intensive products to the developed country style of the technology-intensive products. It needs to make more efforts to develop the value-added products to meet the customer's various needs. In addition, development of technology, equipment, and design is required to implement its corporate strategy successfully. Although Korean textile companies have currently kept skillful labor and advanced equipments, they are losing their share in the international textile markets. This is mainly because corporate management has not been involved with efficient strategy. Strategy is an adoption of a company to environment by its corporate members, thus leading to the requirement of coordination of the main functions such as manufacturing and marketing. In fact, the coordination of the two departments toward reaching the corporate goal is not easy since the two are interested in different areas, respectively. Manufacturing people show their interests in production capacity, equipment layout, process technology, quality, purchasing, and labor while marketing people, target customer, product mix, advertisement, product specification, and customer service. For this reason, conflicts sometimes happen between the two departments. There are, however, many area that need a horizontal cooperation, for instance, in layout, process technology, product mix, and potential demand. Therefore, reciprocal coordination is necessary for achieving the firm's common objectives. This study was concerned with determining the factors that enhance the competitiveness of textile firms so that they could reach the common goal of the two departments with a horizontal collaboration.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1-21
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• 2015

The mobile market has introduced unprecedented shopping opportunities to customers and is expected to grow rapidly over time. However, little is known about how customers make purchase decisions in the mobile market. The purpose of this study is to investigate the drivers of mobile VOD purchases and to deliver valuable insights to mobile business operators. We focus on the purchase of VOD contents that have to be purchased and consumed using mobile devices and examine how individual-level purchase decisions are determined by three factors: perceived usefulness, usage behavior, and privacy concern. We obtained the panel data from a leading market research company that contains the mobile logs and survey results. Our main results suggest the followings. First, the perceived usefulness affects customers' mobile VOD contents purchases positively whereas the usage behavior exerts no influence on mobile contents purchases. Moreover, the privacy concern lowers the positive effect of perceived usefulness on mobile content purchases; however, it enhances the effect of the usage behavior on mobile contents purchases. These empirical findings indicate that mobile business operators should pay more attention to potential differences in perception and behavior using mobile devices and keep in mind that the privacy concern plays an additional key role in driving mobile contents purchases.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.169-191
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• 2008

Information technology instruments arc being rampantly used for knowledge management in companies. IT is used as an interplay tool to enhance the flow of knowledge and information between people. KMS, especially, supports the knowledge management process including sharing, creating, and using of knowledge within a company, and maximizes the value of knowledge resources within an organization. The purpose of this paper is to understand how IT is changing the knowledge management activity. through various examples based on exploratory research from MANDO, the Korean automotive parts manufacturer, and POSCO, the global leading steelmaker. The result shows that IT boosts communication skills, thus creates a mutual relationship outcome. In the same context, the process of knowledge conversion by Nonaka's SECI model simplifies to an Externalization-Internalization process. This process accelerates the birth of explicit knowledge and Socialization, supplements the Limitations of the creation of knowledge in the E-I cycle. The E of knowledge simultaneously promotes the I, and eventually brings an advanced learning skill. IT aids the E of knowledge and furthermore, I and E activity, through the knowledge sharing, brings vitality into an organization. The interplay stage for knowledge activity is to be reorganized to a cyber ba. Furthermore, IT will galvanize the formation of core knowledge through systemized acquisition, management of core knowledge and standardization of work.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.67-89
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• 2015

Improving productivity of knowledge workers is an important issue in the 21st century referred as knowledge-based society. The core key word is knowledge sharing among constituents of an organization. The purpose of this study is to combine the social network position factors with attitude and behavior factors, and develop an integrated research model for the knowledge sharing among members of an organization. This study adopted the integrated theoretical framework based on social capital, self-efficacy, transactive memory, and knowledge sharing. Surveys were conducted to 42 organizational members from a department in a leading IT outsourcing company to empirically test the proposed research model. In order to validate the proposed research model, social network analysis tool, UCINET, a structural equation modeling tool, SmartPLS, were utilized. The empirical result showed that, first of all, organizational members' familiarity network position had significant influence on knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability. Second, knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability affected knowledge sharing intention. Third, knowledge sharing intention also had an impact on the job performance. However, organizational members' expertise network position had no significant influence on knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability. This finding reveals the importance of the emotional approach rather than the rational approach in knowledge management. The theoretical and practical implications on the research findings were discussed along with limitations.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.5-8
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• 2016

Purpose - With its considerable water resources, Lao People's Democratic Republic, hereafter Lao PDR, is considered to become the "battery" of the Southeast Asia region in the next 20 years. This paper explores the investment opportunity in the hydroelectricity development project in the Lao PDR. Research design, data, and methodology - Three significant investment factors including cultural factor, political factors, and economic factors are being literally analyzed. In fulfilling the purpose of this analysis, Num Theun 2 Power Company or NTPC, a current largest hydropower project in the country, is selected for an example of a mega investment project model in the country. Results - NTPC's investment plan, budgets, and current revenue and rate of return are briefly discussed throughout the paper. In addition, this paper also briefly compares and contrasts of the investment in the Lao PDR and investment in its neighboring Singapore who is considered one of the leading developed economies in the region. Conclusions - A recommendation is being proposed on the last section of this paper in the areas that Lao PDR may consider adopting in order to make its investment environment becomes more attractive to foreign investors.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.45-64
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• 2016

As the digital retail environement becomes prevalent, consumers are given greater opportunities to make purchases across physical and digital boundaries. Prior research emphasizes that the attractiveness of the digital or online channel is relatively determined by spatial specifics of physical locations. The overall market trend combined with prior research suggests that understanding spatial specifics becomes a key to managing both offline and online sales performance together. In this study, we focus on geographic variation in sales performance through offline and online channels and aim to investigate the channel-level sales difference between central and subsidiary areas. To this end, we obtain sales data of skincare and makeup products from a leading cosmetic company. Next, we examine spatial autocorrelations in data and then employ the spatial error models to study the effects of spatial specifics. The empirical findings are as follows. First, there are significant differences in category-specific and channel-level sales between central and subsidiary areas. Second, Moran's I statistics demonstrate the spatial autocorrelations of each variable. Third, spatial error models outperform simple regression models with lower AIC values. Finally, spatial specifics play a greater role in understanding online sales in subsidiary areas whereas they exert greater influence on offline sales in central areas. We believe our study advances the related theory and knowledge of multi-channel retailing and also contributes practically to location-dependent multi-channel strategies and sales data analytics.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.183-203
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• 2006

Firms are increasingly adopting online communities-of-practice (CoPs) with strong managerial support in hopes of promoting knowledge sharing and creation within the organization. Excessive managerial concern and sponsoring, however, could harm the spontaneity of CoP participants, which is one of the pivotal characteristics of virtual communities, and in the end, have negative impact on their smooth operation. In this regard, this study examines the factors which affect the stimulation of CoPs and explores the difference in their operating mechanisms under two differing organizational structural settings by the existence of a sponsor. By analyzing 133 samples of CoPs in a globally leading company, this study found that the existence of a sponsor designated by the organization, has serious influence on the working of CoPs, That is, leaders' enthusiasm and the level of off-line activities are critical factors for the stimulation of CoPs which have no sponsor, while in case of CoPs that have their sponsors, neither leaders' enthusiasm nor the level of off-line activities are significantly related to the stimulation of CoPs. At the same time, the performance of CoPs which have their sponsors was found significantly higher than that of CoPs which have no sponsor. These results indicate that firms need to pay special attention to organizational sponsorship when introducing CoPs within their organizations.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.212-219
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• 2012

This study focus on what methods of MOT are needed and utilized to solve a technical problem in the MOT leading company. We first classified the MOT methods by project life cycle and R&D job quality based on the several discussion with working group. In order to study, the survey was carried out by 168 experts working on MOT practices. Our main research findings are as follows. The level of utilized MOT methods was above average because MOT sector was beginning to represent an increasing share of total R&D business. But the satisfaction level on the MOT majors was below average. The more utilized MOT methods in practices were 'environment analysis and opportunity research,' 'business feasibility,' 'roadmapping,' 'portfolio,' 'technology tree,' 'scheduling,' 'risk management,' 'six sigma,' 'design of experiment,' 'quality control,' 'cost analysis' etc. And the subjects of product realization process were also needed to MOT practice such as 'design for reliability,' 'design for cost,' 'design for performance,' 'design for safety' deeply involved to product quality. Finally, the capability requested to University students were 'problem define and solving,' 'technology planning and strategy,' 'creative thinking.'

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.566-573
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• 2016

Sustainability in fashion cannot ignore fashion attributes required for the design of rapidly changing and innovative products. This study examines "Re-Birth Design" development and provides a means to apply academic and industry perspectives to the investigation of Re-Birth fashion product development. This study defines "Re-Birth Design" as stock that has been designed and launched through distribution channels, subsequently returned unused, then improved and reborn into a new product for redistribution. This study analyzed specific cases. We selected 100 designs for Re-Birth from 11 brands of "K" fashion company in Korea, to be successfully sold in 2014. These cases are used in the analysis and are categorized into design types. As a result of the analysis, "Re-Birth Design" had five levels: Level 1. Changes in supplementary materials such as adding or removing decoration, Level 2. Changes in patterns or materials (changes within the product), Level 3. Partial changes in design (leading to a new design), Level 4. Complete deconstruction and rebirth of the design, and Level 5. Complete deconstruction followed by the use of the design source for a new product that is not a garment. This study analyzed products owned by brands, as well as successful cases of Re-Birth designs that reused existing resources, reduced energy consumption, and increased environmental and economic efficiency by recreating new products that could be resold.