• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.199-223
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to clarify the mechanism and essence of problems by understanding the whole structure of the complicated problems that exist in the social welfare field with DEMATEL method, one of structural models. This paper consists of (1) What kind of social welfare problems exist in the community that is related to welfare? (2) What kind of thoughts do people who work in social welfare field have related to these problems? (3) Are there any differences in structure of thoughts among social welfare civil servants who take charge of planning and dividing budgets for community welfare, social workers who provide services personally and civic activists who criticize and keep watch on behalf of civilians? In order to achieve the purpose of this study, data were collected in Busan Busanjingu and the survey was conducted from the year of 2005 when community welfare plan was first established up to now. The major structural problems of the community welfare of the Pusan Jin-gu, Korea, are: 1) welfare budget allocation procedure is not logical, 2) the outskirts of the Pusan Jin-gu are isolated as poor areas, 3) geographic imbalance is severe among communities, and 4) the social welfare response system to support future population structure needs to be more developed. All of these problems are the fundamental origin to the social resource disparity within communities. The major problems of the community social welfare in Pusan Jin-gu, Korea were recognized by different perspective in terms of professional career such as social welfare civil servants, social workers, and civic activists. Majority of the social welfare civil servants thought "severe geographic imbalance"; majority of the social workers believed "lack of the social welfare response system to support the structure of the population in the future" and "disparity in social resources within the communities"; and majority of the civic activists said "limitation for understanding various social welfare needs because of short term need assessments" as main issues of the community social welfare. It seems that this paper is able to be used as a framework to establish community welfare plans and individual programs in Busan Busanjingu.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.97-116
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• 2012

Conceptual modeling is an important step for successful system development. It helps system designers and business practitioners share the same view on domain knowledge. If the work is successful, a result of conceptual modeling can be beneficial in increasing productivity and reducing failures. However, the value of conceptual modeling is unlikely to be evaluated uniformly because we are lack of agreement on how to elicit concepts and how to represent those with conceptual modeling constructs. Especially, designing relationships between components, also known as part-whole relationships, have been regarded as complicated work. The recent study, "Representing Part-Whole Relations in Conceptual Modeling : An Empirical Evaluation" (Shanks et al., 2008), published in MIS Quarterly, can be regarded as one of positive efforts. Not only the study is one of few attempts of trying to clarify how to select modeling alternatives in part-whole design, but also it shows results based on an empirical experiment. Shanks et al. argue that there are two modeling alternatives to represent part-whole relationships : an implicit representation and an explicit one. By conducting an experiment, they insist that the explicit representation increases the value of a conceptual model. Moreover, Shanks et al. justify their findings by citing the BWW ontology. Recently, the study from Shanks et al. faces criticism. Allen and March (2012) argue that Shanks et al.'s experiment is lack of validity and reliability since the experimental setting suffers from error-prone and self-defensive design. They point out that the experiment is intentionally fabricated to support the idea, as such that using concrete UML concepts results in positive results in understanding models. Additionally, Allen and March add that the experiment failed to consider boundary conditions; thus reducing credibility. Shanks and Weber (2012) contradict flatly the argument suggested by Allen and March (2012). To defend, they posit the BWW ontology is righteously applied in supporting the research. Moreover, the experiment, they insist, can be fairly acceptable. Therefore, Shanks and Weber argue that Allen and March distort the true value of Shanks et al. by pointing out minor limitations. In this study, we try to investigate the dispute around Shanks et al. in order to answer to the following question : "What is the proper value of the study conducted by Shanks et al.?" More profoundly, we question whether or not using the BWW ontology can be the only viable option of exploring better conceptual modeling methods and procedures. To understand key issues around the dispute, first we reviewed previous studies relating to the BWW ontology. We critically reviewed both of Shanks and Weber and Allen and March. With those findings, we further discuss theories on part-whole (or part-of) relationships that are rarely treated in the dispute. As a result, we found three additional evidences that are not sufficiently covered by the dispute. The main focus of the dispute is on the errors of experimental methods: Shanks et al. did not use Bunge's Ontology properly; the refutation of a paradigm shift is lack of concrete, logical rationale; the conceptualization on part-whole relations should be reformed. Conclusively, Allen and March indicate properly issues that weaken the value of Shanks et al. In general, their criticism is reasonable; however, they do not provide sufficient answers how to anchor future studies on part-whole relationships. We argue that the use of the BWW ontology should be rigorously evaluated by its original philosophical rationales surrounding part-whole existence. Moreover, conceptual modeling on the part-whole phenomena should be investigated with more plentiful lens of alternative theories. The criticism on Shanks et al. should not be regarded as a contradiction on evaluating modeling methods of alternative part-whole representations. To the contrary, it should be viewed as a call for research on usable and useful approaches to increase value of conceptual modeling.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.61-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.