• 기호학연구
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• no.56
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• pp.45-70
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• 2018

Criticism of the postmodern philosophy of the system of representation, which has continued since the Renaissance, is based on a critique of the dichotomy that separates the subjects and objects and the environment from the human being. Interactivity, highlighted in a series of works emerging as postmodern trends in the 1960s, was transmitted to an interactive aspect of digital art in the late 1990s. The key feature of digital art is the possibility of infinite variations reflecting unpredictable changes based on public participation on the spot. In this process, the importance of computer programs is highlighted. Instead of using the existing program as it is, more and more artists are creating and programming their own algorithms or creating unique algorithms through collaborations with programmers. We live in an era of paradigm shift in which programming itself must be considered as a creative act. Simulation technology and VR technology draw attention as a technique to represent the meaning of reality. Simulation technology helps artists create experimental works. In fact, Baudrillard's concept of Simulation defines the other reality that has nothing to do with our reality, rather than a reality that is extremely representative of our reality. His book Simulacra and Simulation refers to the existence of a reality entirely different from the traditional concept of reality. His argument does not concern the problems of right and wrong. There is no metaphysical meaning. Applying the concept of simulation to algorithmic art, the artist models the complex attributes of reality in the digital system. And it aims to build and integrate internal laws that structure and activate the world (specific or individual), that is to say, simulate the world. If the images of the traditional order correspond to the reproduction of the real world, the synthesized images of algorithmic art and simulated space-time are the forms of art that facilitate the experience. The moment of seeing and listening to the work of Ian Cheng presented in this article is a moment of personal experience and the perception is made at that time. It is not a complete and closed process, but a continuous and changing process. It is this active and situational awareness that is required to the audience for the comprehension of post-representation's forms.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.35
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• pp.147-180
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• 2020

'The Great Nest of Being (The Great Chain of Being)' is a key ontological concept in Perennial Philosophy. The Great Nest of Being shows the depth of the world's religions that have existed historically, and in this context, they represent holarchies of existence and consciousness. This paper examines the nests of various beings in order to grasp the depths of the world's mainstream religions, and reveals that the great nest of being that appear in the Daesoon Thought has the characteristic of synthesizing other nests that have emerged previously in history. According to Perennial Philosophy, the differences among different religions in regards to ultimate reality are not differences in reality but merely differences in semantics. In other words, these differences are only 'different expressions of the same ultimate reality.' Thus, linguistically, ultimate reality in the great nest of being can be summarized as the 'same in what is signifié (signified, 記意)' and 'different in the signifiant (signifier, 記標).' As stated in a preceding study; however, ultimate reality in Daesoon Thought is both transcendent and personal, as well as intrinsic and impersonal. This fact is specifically stated in the Four Tenets (4大 宗旨) of Daesoon Thought. In other words, the Tenets of Daesoon implicitly acknowledge not only the concepts of reality and the direction that emerges from the base of existence in existing systems of religious thought, but also can encompass the ideologies of those systems of religious thought. Considering the four quadrants as the Kosmos (AQAL), it encompasses a universal ideology. Therefore, the tenets of Daesoon Thought encompass the same significance (meaning) of the major systems of religious thought throughout the world in regards to ultimate reality and provide a clue to the solution to the presence of different signifiers (signs).

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.27-40
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• 2020

The marathon has long been established as a representative lifestyle for all ages. With the recent expansion of the Work and Life Balance trend across the society, marathon with a relatively low barrier to entry is gaining popularity among young people in their 20s and 30s. By analyzing the issues and related words of the marathon event, we will analyze the spottainment elements of the marathon event that is popular among young people through keywords, and suggest a development plan for the differentiated event. In order to analyze keywords and related words, blogs, cafes and news provided by Naver and Daum were selected as analysis channels, and 'JTBC Marathon' and 'Culture' were extracted as key words for data search. The data analysis period was limited to a three-month period from August 13, 2019 to November 13, 2019, when the application for participation in the 2019 JTBC Marathon was started. For data collection and analysis, frequency and matrix data were extracted through social matrix program Textom. In addition, the degree of the relationship was quantified by analyzing the connection structure and the centrality of the degree of connection between the words. Although the marathon is a personal movement, young people share a common denominator of "running" and form a new cultural group called "running crew" with other young people. Through this, it was found that a marathon competition culture was formed as a festival venue where people could train together, participate together, and escape from the image of a marathon run alone and fight with themselves.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.63-81
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to utilize the Photovoice qualitative research method targeting university students. Through this method, we aimed to understand the perceptions of environmental issues, environmental barriers, and eco-friendly behaviors among university students. By employing the Photovoice methodology, we sought to share the perspectives of university students on eco-friendly behaviors, explore the motivations and manifestations of these behaviors, and reflect on their significance. The ultimate goal was to provide practical suggestions for fostering eco-friendly behaviors through an in-depth examination of the visual narratives and reflections of university students. Under the overarching theme of the environment, participants were given the opportunity to individually select and explore three specific sub-themes: 'My Concept of the Environment,' 'Environmental Barriers in My Life,' and 'My Eco-friendly Behaviors.' Participants engaged in the process of capturing photographs from their daily lives related to each theme, expressing their thoughts and perspectives through the selected images. Subsequently, they shared and discussed their insights, actively listening to the opinions of others in the group. The results of this study revealed several key findings. Firstly, participants assigned meaning to the photographs they selected by directly capturing aspects related to the environment, such as 'waste,' 'discomfort,' 'fine dust=environmental pollution,' and 'indifference.' Secondly, participants attributed meaning to the selected photographs related to environmental barriers, associating them with concepts like 'invisibility,' 'apathy,' 'social stigma,' 'inefficiency,' and 'compulsion.' Lastly, participants ascribed significance to photographs selected in the context of eco-friendly behaviors, with themes like 'recycling,' 'energy conservation,' 'reuse,' and 'reducing the use of disposable items.' Based on these research findings, the confirmation of the V-A-B (Values-Attitudes-Behavior) model was established. It was observed that consumers structure a hierarchical relationship between their personal values, attitudes, and behaviors. The study also identified clear impediments in consumers' daily lives hindering the practice of eco-friendly behaviors. In light of this, the research highlighted the need for strategies to address the discomfort or inconvenience associated with implementing environmentally friendly consumer behaviors. The implications of the study suggest that interventions or solutions are necessary to alleviate barriers and promote a more seamless integration of eco-friendly practices into consumers' daily routines.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-149
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• 2024

This study was important considering the prevalence of small business owners in the Korean economy and the challenges they faced amidst an economic downturn. The business performance of these owners was crucial for their survival. Thus, an empirical analysis was conducted to identify factors influencing their management performance. The analysis included personal characteristics of small business owners such as innovativeness, management capability, need for achievement, and technical capability as independent variables, along with product differentiation factors. Additionally, the moderating effect of social capital on these variables and their impact on management performance was tested. To achieve this, a survey targeting small business owners across Korea was conducted, and data from 250 respondents were utilized. Hierarchical regression analysis using SPSS 24.0 was employed for the empirical analysis. The results indicated that management capability, need for achievement, and product differentiation significantly positively impacted business performance. However, the impact of innovativeness and technical capability was not tested. The influence of the variables on business performance ranked as follows: product differentiation, management capability, and need for achievement. The moderating effect of social capital was significant in the relationship between management capability, need for achievement, and management performance, enhancing these relationships. However, the moderating effect of social capital on the relationship between innovativeness, technical capability, product differentiation, and management performance was not tested. These findings underscored the importance of management capability, need for achievement, and product differentiation as key factors affecting the management performance of Korean small businesses. This study was significant as it provided insights into improving the management performance of small business owners in challenging economic conditions by highlighting how the influence of these factors varied depending on the social capital possessed by the owners.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.27
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• pp.171-200
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• 2016

This paper will analyze the filial piety based ethics of Daesoonjinrihoe (大巡眞理會) and the traditional filial piety of Confucianism (儒敎), Buddhism (佛敎) and Taoism (道敎) through comparing and contrasting their unique systems. The traditional Korean ethics regarding filial piety are in great need of reformation as the relationship between the parents and children should not be vertical or unilateral but parallel and reciprocal. However, there have not been sufficient in-depth studies on this specific ideology and alternative approaches. Regarding this prospect, one representative Korean indigenous new religion, Daesoonjinrihoe has emerged and directly engages in the collision between traditionalism and modernity. The modernity of Daesoonjinrihoe, enables the observation of how the filial piety based ethics have developed within a system of doctrine and thereby provides an exemplary model of traditional filial piety reimagined in accordance with modern sensibilities. A brief summary of comparative findings is as follows: First, Daesoonjinrihoe and Confucianism have taken serving parents with respect as an ethic within filial piety, but Confucianism engenders this ideal through the unilateral and unconditional sacrifice of younger people based on patriarchal feudalism whereas Daesoonjinrihoe has rejected such unilateral sacrifice and instead promotes mutual beneficience between parents and children. This difference occurs, in part, due to the filial piety of Confucianism rising in the midst of the feudal order whereas the ideology of Daesoonjinrihoe contains ideals such as "the reciprocation of favor for mutual beneficence (報恩相生)" and "respect for humanity (人尊)," both of which serve as key principles of the new religious world as envisioned by Daesoonjinrihoe. Second, filial piety in Buddhism and Taoism tends to be passive and inactive and is often expressed by praying for happiness and longevity for one's parents while they are alive and later praying for the heavenly rebirth of one's parents after they die. The filial piety of Daesoonjinrihoe also partially contains such ideas, however; they are extended much further and arrive upon novel and profound expressions. The spectrum of the filial piety in Daesoonjinrihoe expands to the extent children perform actions to resolve their parent's sins and pave a new road for their parents. This filial piety requires a cultivation practice from both parents and children. This system of dual cultivation was established because the world-view of Daesoonjinrihoe enables both parents and children to enjoy happiness and wealth both of which are achieved through the completion of religious objectives following cultivation practice. Third, Confucianism and Daesoonjinrihoe hold memorial services for ancestors with sincerity as an expression of filial piety. Filial piety in the Confucian context excludes ideas from Shamanism and thereby memorial services are held for impersonal entities, however; in the Daesoonjinrihoe context, memorial services are held for personal-entities. Accordingly, holding a memorial service for ancestors with sincerity has a greater sense of realism in Daesoonjinrihoe than it does in Confucianism. Fourth, while Confucianism and Daesoonjinrihoe both aim to requite the grace received from ancestors, the contents of grace and reciprocation of favors (報恩) are viewed differently. In Confucianism, since the ancestors existed previously and bestowed the gift of life to their children and indirectly, all of their descendents. Therefore, memorial services for ancestors are held to convey gratitude and filial piety. However, in Daesoonjinrihoe, ancestors not only bestowed the gift of earthly life to their descendents, in the spirit realm, ancestral spirits also spend sixty years accumulating the merit necessary to imbue each of their descendents with spiritual insight. Consequently, filial piety is expressed through memorial services as well as spiritual cultivation. Fifth, in Confucianism, achieving the fame and prestige indicative of success in the mundane world can be an act of filial piety as it would bring pride to one's ancestors, but in Daesoonjinrihoe, succeeding in religious objectives through spiritual cultivation is considered to be a higher form of filial piety. Sixth, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism all observe filial piety as system of familial ethics based in morality. This is likewise true of Daesoonjinrihoe, however; Daesoonjinrihoe confers greater importance on filial piety as an essential form of ethics for religious redemption. This is due to the Daesoon interpretation that the absence of filial piety was the direct cause which led to the sickened state of the world and its collapse. Forgetting the grace of parents who have given the gift of life or the grace of ancestral spirits who have accumulated merit on behalf of their descendents are acts of ingratitude which are unacceptable during the period of Reordering of the Universe. Judging from these findings, Daesoonjinrihoe embraces parts of traditional filial piety as it exists in Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, but it does so on the ground of its own unique culture. Through re-interpretation and re-creation, ideas regarding filial piety are being further developed. Namely, filial piety in Daesoonjinrihoe is regulations founded upon the reciprocation of favors for mutual beneficence and respect for humanity. Therefore, it is understood as a concept wherein one's own cultivation practice is performed in order to reach religious objectives, the perfection of personal character, and spiritual insight. This requires that even recipents of filial piety (i.e., parents) perform certain cultivation practices to enjoy happiness and wealth. Additionally, filial piety in Daesoonjinrihoe manifests a reinforced religious character and also serves as a system ethics which is soteriologically essential for salvation during the period known as the Reordering of the Universe.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.285-301
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• 2020

Looking at the problem of aging in the nation from a demographic perspective, it is not a problem of the overall population, but of the structure of the population. It is the baby boomer and post-baby boomers, the largest population in the country. Baby boomers were born between 1955 and 1963, and currently have a population of 7001,333, which is 13.6 percent (as of 2015). The Post-Baby Boomer generation was born between 1964 and 1974, with a total population of 9,567,171, accounting for 18.8 percent of the total population. In particular, baby boomers and post-baby boomers (32.4% of the total population) have begun to retire or will retire soon. The average life expectancy continues to increase due to the development of medical technology, and the falling birth rate of newborns and the declining population of the production population are darkening the domestic economy. In a policy proposal aimed at easing the nation's falling economic growth rate, women's participation rate is as high as Sweden and men's efforts to increase it as high as Japan's, while the elderly rate is desirable to maintain Korea's high level. This is because the expansion of the elderly generation's participation in economic activities could ease a sharp drop in economic growth and reduce the burden of supporting the elderly population. The study, based on this social problem awareness and problem solving plan, looks at the relationship between career orientation and satisfaction in start-up education based on the diverse career base of active seniors, and also suggests the importance of customized start-up education on the diversity of active seniors by clarifying the relationship between them, and suggests the desirable direction of senior start-up policy design, funding, and start-up education. Based on the theoretical background, the concept of five factors was defined: active senior, career-oriented, satisfaction level of start-up education, willingness to start a business, and the concept definition of an active senior, which is particularly key to the baby boomers in their 50s and 60s, is generally regarded as a source of consumption or welfare benefits, but in this study, the concept of active start-up is reflected in the domestic start-up market by young people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. As a result of a hypothesis test. Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 5: Career orientation has been verified to affect the willingness to start a business and the behavior of preparation for a start-up. Hypothesis 3: The willingness to start a business has been verified as having an effect between startup preparation actions. Hypothesis 4: The satisfaction level of start-up education has been verified to affect start-up preparation behavior. However, hypothesis 2: The satisfaction level of education for start-ups does not affect the willingness to start a business. Such results can be inferred that satisfaction in start-up education does not have a direct effect on the will to start a business and increases the will to start a business through the influence of personal career orientation.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.131-145
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• 2020

In line with the trend of industrial innovation, IoT technology utilized in a variety of fields is emerging as a key element in creation of new business models and the provision of user-friendly services through the combination of big data. The accumulated data from devices with the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is being used in many ways to build a convenience-based smart system as it can provide customized intelligent systems through user environment and pattern analysis. Recently, it has been applied to innovation in the public domain and has been using it for smart city and smart transportation, such as solving traffic and crime problems using CCTV. In particular, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the easiness of securing real-time service data and the stability of security when planning underground services or establishing movement amount control information system to enhance citizens' or commuters' convenience in circumstances with the congestion of public transportation such as subways, urban railways, etc. However, previous studies that utilize image data have limitations in reducing the performance of object detection under private issue and abnormal conditions. The IoT device-based sensor data used in this study is free from private issue because it does not require identification for individuals, and can be effectively utilized to build intelligent public services for unspecified people. Especially, sensor data stored by the IoT device need not be identified to an individual, and can be effectively utilized for constructing intelligent public services for many and unspecified people as data free form private issue. We utilize the IoT-based infrared sensor devices for an intelligent pedestrian tracking system in metro service which many people use on a daily basis and temperature data measured by sensors are therein transmitted in real time. The experimental environment for collecting data detected in real time from sensors was established for the equally-spaced midpoints of 4×4 upper parts in the ceiling of subway entrances where the actual movement amount of passengers is high, and it measured the temperature change for objects entering and leaving the detection spots. The measured data have gone through a preprocessing in which the reference values for 16 different areas are set and the difference values between the temperatures in 16 distinct areas and their reference values per unit of time are calculated. This corresponds to the methodology that maximizes movement within the detection area. In addition, the size of the data was increased by 10 times in order to more sensitively reflect the difference in temperature by area. For example, if the temperature data collected from the sensor at a given time were 28.5℃, the data analysis was conducted by changing the value to 285. As above, the data collected from sensors have the characteristics of time series data and image data with 4×4 resolution. Reflecting the characteristics of the measured, preprocessed data, we finally propose a hybrid algorithm that combines CNN in superior performance for image classification and LSTM, especially suitable for analyzing time series data, as referred to CNN-LSTM (Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short Term Memory). In the study, the CNN-LSTM algorithm is used to predict the number of passing persons in one of 4×4 detection areas. We verified the validation of the proposed model by taking performance comparison with other artificial intelligence algorithms such as Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and RNN-LSTM (Recurrent Neural Network-Long Short Term Memory). As a result of the experiment, proposed CNN-LSTM hybrid model compared to MLP, LSTM and RNN-LSTM has the best predictive performance. By utilizing the proposed devices and models, it is expected various metro services will be provided with no illegal issue about the personal information such as real-time monitoring of public transport facilities and emergency situation response services on the basis of congestion. However, the data have been collected by selecting one side of the entrances as the subject of analysis, and the data collected for a short period of time have been applied to the prediction. There exists the limitation that the verification of application in other environments needs to be carried out. In the future, it is expected that more reliability will be provided for the proposed model if experimental data is sufficiently collected in various environments or if learning data is further configured by measuring data in other sensors.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.49-71
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• 2010

Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.13, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.07, p<.001)were significant. However, when participants divided into high and low self-efficacy groups, results of multiple regression analyses showed that only the relationship between achievement-oriented leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.14, p<.001) was significant in the high self-efficacy group. In the low self-efficacy group, the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.17, p<.001),and the relationship between participative leadership style and commitment ($\beta$=.10, p<.001) were significant. The study focused on the franchisee's self-efficacy in order to explore the possibility that regulation, originally intended to protect the franchisee, may not be the most effective method to maintain the relationships in a franchise business. The key results of the data analysis regarding the moderating role of self-efficacy between leadership behavior style as proposed by path-goal and commitment theory were as follows. First, this study proposed that franchisor should apply the appropriate type of leadership behavior to strengthen the franchisees commitment because the results demonstrated that supportive and participative leadership styles by the franchisors have a positive influence on the franchisee's level of commitment. Second, it is desirable for franchisor to validate the franchisee's efforts, since the franchisee's characteristics such as self-efficacy had a substantial, positive effect on the franchisee's commitment as well as being a meaningful moderator between leadership and commitment. Third, the results as a whole imply that the government should provide institutional support, namely to put the franchisor in a position to clearly identify the characteristics of their franchisees and provide reasonable means to administer the franchisees to achieve the company's goal.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.65-96
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• 2012

Brand has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume product or services, they are exposed to a lot of brand related stimuli. These contain brand personality, brand experience, brand identity, brand communications and so on. A special kind of new crisis occasionally confronting companies' brand management today is the brand related rumor. An important influence on consumers' purchase decision making is the word-of-mouth spread by other consumers and most decisions are influenced by other's recommendations. In light of this influence, firms have reasonable reason to study and understand consumer-to-consumer communication such as brand rumor. The importance of brand rumor to marketers is increasing as the number of internet user and SNS(social network service) site grows. Due to the development of internet technology, people can spread rumors without the limitation of time, space and place. However relatively few studies have been published in marketing journals and little is known about brand rumors in the marketplace. The study of rumor has a long history in all major social science. But very few studies have dealt with the antecedents and consequences of any kind of brand rumor. Rumor has been generally described as a story or statement in general circulation without proper confirmation or certainty as to fact. And it also can be defined as an unconfirmed proposition, passed along from people to people. Rosnow(1991) claimed that rumors were transmitted because people needed to explain ambiguous and uncertain events and talking about them reduced associated anxiety. Especially negative rumors are believed to have the potential to devastate a company's reputation and relations with customers. From the perspective of marketer, negative rumors are considered harmful and extremely difficult to control in general. It is becoming a threat to a company's sustainability and sometimes leads to negative brand image and loss of customers. Thus there is a growing concern that these negative rumors can damage brands' reputations and lead them to financial disaster too. In this study we aimed to distinguish antecedents of brand rumor transmission and investigate the effects of brand rumor characteristics on rumor spread intention. We also found key components in personal acceptance of brand rumor. In contextualist perspective, we tried to unify the traditional psychological and sociological views. In this unified research approach we defined brand rumor's characteristics based on five major variables that had been found to influence the process of rumor spread intention. The five factors of usefulness, source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness, encompass multi level elements of brand rumor. We also selected product involvement as a control variable. To perform the empirical research, imaginary Korean 'Kimch' brand and related contamination rumor was created and proposed. Questionnaires were collected from 178 Korean samples. Data were collected from college students who have been experienced the focal product. College students were regarded as good subjects because they have a tendency to express their opinions in detail. PLS(partial least square) method was adopted to analyze the relations between variables in the equation model. The most widely adopted causal modeling method is LISREL. However it is poorly suited to deal with relatively small data samples and can yield not proper solutions in some cases. PLS has been developed to avoid some of these limitations and provide more reliable results. To test the reliability using SPSS 16 s/w, Cronbach alpha was examined and all the values were appropriate showing alpha values between .802 and .953. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted successfully. And structural equation modeling has been used to analyze the research model using smartPLS(ver. 2.0) s/w. Overall, R² of adoption of rumor is .476 and R² of intention of rumor transmission is .218. The overall model showed a satisfactory fit. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. According to the results, the variables of brand rumor characteristic such as source credibility, message credibility, worry, and vividness affect argument strength of rumor. And argument strength of rumor also affects rumor intention. On the other hand, the relationship between perceived usefulness and argument strength of rumor is not significant. The moderating effect of product involvement on the relations between argument strength of rumor and rumor W.O.M intention is not supported neither. Consequently this study suggests some managerial and academic implications. We consider some implications for corporate crisis management planning, PR and brand management. This results show marketers that rumor is a critical factor for managing strong brand assets. Also for researchers, brand rumor should become an important thesis of their interests to understand the relationship between consumer and brand. Recently many brand managers and marketers have focused on the short-term view. They just focused on strengthen the positive brand image. According to this study we suggested that effective brand management requires managing negative brand rumors with a long-term view of marketing decisions.