• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.75-97
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• 2012

Knowledge residing in the heads of employees has always been regarded as one of the most critical resources within a firm. However, many tries to facilitate knowledge transfer among employees has been unsuccessful because of the motivational and cognitive problems between the knowledge source and the recipient. Social capital, which is defined as "the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit [Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998]," is suggested to resolve these motivational and cognitive problems of knowledge transfer. In Social capital theory, there are two research streams. One insists that social capital strengthens group solidarity and brings up cooperative behaviors among group members, such as voluntary help to colleagues. Therefore, social capital can motivate an expert to transfer his/her knowledge to a colleague in need without any direct reward. The other stream insists that social capital provides an access to various resources that the owner of social capital doesn't possess directly. In knowledge transfer context, an employee with social capital can access and learn much knowledge from his/her colleagues. Therefore, social capital provides benefits to both the knowledge source and the recipient in different ways. However, prior research on knowledge transfer and social capital is mostly limited to either of the research stream of social capital and covered only the knowledge source's or the knowledge recipient's perspective. Social network theory which focuses on the structural dimension of social capital provides clear explanation about the in-depth mechanisms of social capital's two different benefits. 'Strong tie' builds up identification, trust, and emotional attachment between the knowledge source and the recipient; therefore, it motivates the knowledge source to transfer his/her knowledge to the recipient. On the other hand, 'weak tie' easily expands to 'diverse' knowledge sources because it does not take much effort to manage. Therefore, the real value of 'weak tie' comes from the 'diverse network structure,' not the 'weak tie' itself. It implies that the two different perspectives on strength of ties can co-exist. For example, an extroverted employee can manage many 'strong' ties with 'various' colleagues. In this regards, the individual-level structure of one's relationships as well as the dyadic-level relationship should be considered together to provide a holistic view of social capital. In addition, interaction effect between individual-level characteristics and dyadic-level characteristics can be examined, too. Based on these arguments, this study has following research questions. (1) How does the social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient influence knowledge transfer respectively? (2) How does the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient influence knowledge transfer? (3) How does the social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient influence the effect of the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient on knowledge transfer? Based on Social capital theory and Social network theory, a multi-level research model is developed to consider both the individual-level social capital of the knowledge source and the recipient and the dyadic-level strength of relationship between the knowledge source and the recipient. 'Cross-classified random effect model,' one of the multi-level analysis methods, is adopted to analyze the survey responses from 337 R&D employees. The results of analysis provide several findings. First, among three dimensions of the knowledge source's social capital, network centrality (i.e., structural dimension) shows the significant direct effect on knowledge transfer. On the other hand, the knowledge recipient's network centrality is not influential. Instead, it strengthens the influence of the strength of ties between the knowledge source and the recipient on knowledge transfer. It means that the knowledge source's network centrality does not directly increase knowledge transfer. Instead, by providing access to various knowledge sources, the network centrality provides only the context where the strong tie between the knowledge source and the recipient leads to effective knowledge transfer. In short, network centrality has indirect effect on knowledge transfer from the knowledge recipient's perspective, while it has direct effect from the knowledge source's perspective. This is the most important contribution of this research. In addition, contrary to the research hypothesis, company tenure of the knowledge recipient negatively influences knowledge transfer. It means that experienced employees do not look for new knowledge and stick to their own knowledge. This is also an interesting result. One of the possible reasons is the hierarchical culture of Korea, such as a fear of losing face in front of subordinates. In a research methodology perspective, multi-level analysis adopted in this study seems to be very promising in management research area which has a multi-level data structure, such as employee-team-department-company. In addition, social network analysis is also a promising research approach with an exploding availability of online social network data.

• Archives of design research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.185-196
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• 2003

The demand for an environment-friendly transportation system, equipped with low energy consumption, and low-or zero-pollution has been on the increase since the beginning of the World Trade Organization era. Simultaneously, the consistent growth of high-speed tram technology, combined with market share, has sparked a fierce competition among technologically-advanced countries like France, Germany, and Japan in an effort to keep the lead in high-speed train technology via extensive Research and development(R＆D) expenses. These countries are leaders in the race to implement the next-generation transportation system, build intercontinental rail way networks and export the high-speed train as a major industry commodity. The need to develop our own(Korean) 'high-speed train' technology and its core system technology layouts including original technology serves a few objectives: They boost the national competitive edge; they develop an environmental friendly rail road system that can cope with globalization and minimize the social and economic losses created by the growing traffic-congested delivery costs, environment pollution, and public discomforts. In turn, the 'G7 Project-Development of High Speed Railway Technology' held between 1996 and 2002 for a six-year period was focused on designing a domestic train capable of traveling at a speed of 350km/h combined and led to the actual implementation of engineering and producing the '2000 high-speed train:' This paper summarizes and introduces one of the G7 Projects-specifically, the design segment achievement within the development of train system engineering technology. It is true that the design aspect of the Korean domestic railway system program as a whole was lacking when compared with the advanced railroad countries whose early phase of train design emphasized the design aspect. However, having allowed the active participation of expert designers in the early phase of train design in the current project has led to a new era of domestic train development and the implementation of a way to meet demand flexibly with newly designed trains. The idea of a high-speed train in Korea and its design concept is well-conceived: a faster, more pleasant, and silent based Korean high-speed train that facilitates a new travel culture. A Korean-type of high-speed train is acknowledged by passengers who travel in such trains. The Korean high-speed prototype train has been born, combining aerodynamic air-cushioned design, which is the embodiment of Korean original design of forehead of power car minimized aerodynamic resistance using a curved car body profile, and the improvement of the interior design with ergonomics and the accommodation of the vestibule area through the study of passenger behavior and social culture that is based on the general passenger car.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.282-288
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the amount of roadside fine dust generated from newly constructed specially modified asphalt pavement and general asphalt pavement from existing roads. We collected the 1,000 g (100 g/day) of dust samples from the roadside of the express bus terminal and commercial facility area in Chungcheongnam-do's C site at three-day intervals during the summer of 2022 and 2023. The collected samples were separated from fine dust according to size in the 75-150 ㎛ range and, were separated only from Tire and Road Wear Particles through density separation. No.1-3 are general asphalt pavement section as an existing road. Fine dust and Tire and Road Wear Particles in No.1-3 were 24.27 g, 24.36 g, 0.53 g, and 0.53 g, respectively, and the quantitative results for 2022 and 2023 were similar. On the other hand, No.4-6 are newly constructed specially modified asphalt pavement section. Fine dust decreased by 14.8 % and tire and road wear particles decreased by 29.6 % in 2023 compared to 2022 in No.4-6. In addition, according to the results of thermogravimetric analysis, Tire and road wear particles in No.1-3 are tire and road components at 30 % and 70 %, respectively. And Tire and road wear particles in No.4-6 are tire and road components at 35 % and 65 % in 2023, respectively. From these results, it was confirmed that the newly constructed specially modified asphalt pavement can be effective in reducing roadside fine dust and Tire and Road Wear Particles. However, there may be some shortcomings in conclusive research results due to limited space and sample collection period. In the future, we plan to conduct various case studies.

• 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.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2018

From the 21st century, various high-quality services have come up with the growth of the internet or 'Information and Communication Technologies'. Especially, the scale of E-commerce industry in which Amazon and E-bay are standing out is exploding in a large way. As E-commerce grows, Customers could get what they want to buy easily while comparing various products because more products have been registered at online shopping malls. However, a problem has arisen with the growth of E-commerce. As too many products have been registered, it has become difficult for customers to search what they really need in the flood of products. When customers search for desired products with a generalized keyword, too many products have come out as a result. On the contrary, few products have been searched if customers type in details of products because concrete product-attributes have been registered rarely. In this situation, recognizing texts in images automatically with a machine can be a solution. Because bulk of product details are written in catalogs as image format, most of product information are not searched with text inputs in the current text-based searching system. It means if information in images can be converted to text format, customers can search products with product-details, which make them shop more conveniently. There are various existing OCR(Optical Character Recognition) programs which can recognize texts in images. But existing OCR programs are hard to be applied to catalog because they have problems in recognizing texts in certain circumstances, like texts are not big enough or fonts are not consistent. Therefore, this research suggests the way to recognize keywords in catalog with the Deep Learning algorithm which is state of the art in image-recognition area from 2010s. Single Shot Multibox Detector(SSD), which is a credited model for object-detection performance, can be used with structures re-designed to take into account the difference of text from object. But there is an issue that SSD model needs a lot of labeled-train data to be trained, because of the characteristic of deep learning algorithms, that it should be trained by supervised-learning. To collect data, we can try labelling location and classification information to texts in catalog manually. But if data are collected manually, many problems would come up. Some keywords would be missed because human can make mistakes while labelling train data. And it becomes too time-consuming to collect train data considering the scale of data needed or costly if a lot of workers are hired to shorten the time. Furthermore, if some specific keywords are needed to be trained, searching images that have the words would be difficult, as well. To solve the data issue, this research developed a program which create train data automatically. This program can make images which have various keywords and pictures like catalog and save location-information of keywords at the same time. With this program, not only data can be collected efficiently, but also the performance of SSD model becomes better. The SSD model recorded 81.99% of recognition rate with 20,000 data created by the program. Moreover, this research had an efficiency test of SSD model according to data differences to analyze what feature of data exert influence upon the performance of recognizing texts in images. As a result, it is figured out that the number of labeled keywords, the addition of overlapped keyword label, the existence of keywords that is not labeled, the spaces among keywords and the differences of background images are related to the performance of SSD model. This test can lead performance improvement of SSD model or other text-recognizing machine based on deep learning algorithm with high-quality data. SSD model which is re-designed to recognize texts in images and the program developed for creating train data are expected to contribute to improvement of searching system in E-commerce. Suppliers can put less time to register keywords for products and customers can search products with product-details which is written on the catalog.

• Korean small business review
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.209-223
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• 2010

Korea's business is composed of a few large-sized enterprises (which can be abbreviated as LSE) and a majority of small-sized enterprises (SSE). Although there has been a growing recognition of the need for the development of medium-sized enterprises (MSE) which can serve as a link between SSE and LSE, as yet there has not yet been a consensus on the definition, characteristics and the function of the MSE in Korea. Nowadays, the world is being globalized, and Japan and China are in competition to ne a great economic power. While East Asia is experiencing rapid changes, promoting MSE which can secure flexibility and efficiency through covering up the limitation of LSE and SSE is needed in order to respond the global market which is being specialized. The features of MSE in Japan can be listed as follows. First, the MSE in Japan is developing the company through getting into niche markets which are hard for major companies to enter rather than developing markets in order to compete against major companies directly. While MSEs are endeavoring to build the business firmly in the domestic market, they can possess special and competitive technical skills through trials and errors; so that they can get a chance develop their business through independent business system rather than putting their effort to compete against major companies. Second, from the MSEs with competitive edge in the market, there are many contributions to the national exportation. Those MSEs produce in domestic and maintain the quality of high price products which need cutting-edge technology, while they relocate the low and middle priced goods to the country where manufacturing costs are low, so that they can maintain the price competitiveness. Third, the industrial structure in Japan is formed from dual structure between major companies and small sized companies. In other words, in Japan's industrial structure which are composed of subcontract structure, this dual structure has taken a major role of small sized companies' growth and manufacturing businesses' international competitive power. Forth, MSE in Japan adopt a strategy of putting their value on qualitative scale growth rather than quantitative scale growth. In this paper, the case of Japanese MSE is analyzed. Along with its long history of Industrialization, Japan has a corporate environment where the SSEs can develop as a MSE and later a LSE through a full-support system. Among its SSEs, there are a number of world class corporations equipped with a large domestic market, win-win cooperation with the LSEs and an independent technology development. It can also be observed that these SSEs develop into MSEs with sustainable growth potentials. This study will focus on the condition under which the MSEs of Japan have been developed, and how they have survived the competition between SSEs and LSEs. Through this study, this paper attempts to offer solutions to Korea's polarization between the SSE and LSE, while providing the basis for SSEs revitalization. In general, if both extremities phenomenon deepen between LSE and SSE, there are possible fears of occurring disutility in national economy by the monopolization of LSE. For that reason, enterprise group, which can make SSE or MSE compete LSE in some area and ease the monopoly and oligopoly problem, is needed. This awareness has been shared for ages long. Nevertheless, there is no legal definition for MSE in Japan, and there is no definition about the enterprise size or unified view of MSE between scholars, but it is defined differently by each of academical person or research institution and study meeting. For that reason, this paper will organize the definition of MSE in Japan, and then will propose the characteristics of the background which has made MSE secure competitiveness and sustainable growth in global market. This study focus on that because through this process, the positive change to the awareness of MSE can be proposed in Korea and to seek the policy direction for building institutional framework which can make SSE become MES. Through this way, the fundamentals for SSE to become MSE can be managed and some appropriate suggestions which will be able to make MSE enter the global market in the future can also be proposed. Due to these facts, this study is very important and well timed task. In a sense of this way, this study will examine the definition and role of MSE in Japan. after this examination, this study will deal with the status, special feature, and promotion policy for MSE. Through this analysis of MSE in Japan, the foundation which be able to set the desirable role model for MSE in Korea can be proposed. Also, the political implication which is needed to push ahead to contribute to creating employment and economic growth through sustainable growth of MSEs in economic system of Korea can be offered through this study. It has been found that Japan's MSE functions as an indispensable link among various industrial structures by holding a significant position in employment rate, production and value added. Although the MSEs took up less than 1% of the entire number of businesses with 2700 manufacturing firms and 7000 non-manufacturing firms, its employment ratios are about 15%, while taking about 25% of the manufacturing industry's exports. In industries such as machinery and electronics which is considered Japan's major industry, the MSEs showed a higher than average ratio of manufacturing exports and employment rate. It can be analyzed that behind Japan's advantageous industries, close and deeply knit MSEs exist. Although there are no clearly stated policies geared towards the MSEs by the Japanese government, various political measures exist such as the R&D Project and the inducement of cooperation between enterprises which gives room for MSEs to participate in the SSE policies. In relation to these findings, the following practical measures can be considered in order to revitalize Korea's MSEs: First, there is a need for a legal definition of MSE and the incentives to provide legal support for its growth. Second, if a law to support the MSEs is established, it could provide a powerful inducement for the SSE to grow as a MSE, rather than stay as a SSE. Third, there is a need for a strategy of MSEs to establish a stable base in the domestic market and then advance to the global market with the accumulated trial and error and competitiveness. Fourth, the SSE themselves need the spirit of entrepreneurship in order to make the leap to a MSE. Because if nothing is to be changed about the system on the firms that grew, and the parts of the past custom was left to be managed alone, confusion and absence of management can take place. No matter how much tax favors the government will give and no matter how much incentive there could be through the policies, there are limits for industries to higher the ability to propagate. And because of that it is a period where industries need their own innovative skills to reform their firms.