• Women's Health Nursing
• /
• 제25권3호
• /
• pp.273-284
• /
• 2019

Purpose: As the number of infertile couples has grown, many infertile women have experienced depression during the diagnosis and treatment of their infertility. This study aimed to identify the factors related to depression in infertile women who underwent reproductive treatments. Methods: The study subjects were 149 infertile women who underwent reproductive treatments. The data were collected by self-administered questionnaires from August 1 to December 24, 2018. The questionnaire consisted of questions about fatigue, health-promoting behavior, and depression. Analyses of the descriptive statistics, t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, correlation, and multiple regression were conducted using the SPSS 25.0 Windows program. Results: Thirty-six of the women in the study (24.2%) were in the probably depressed group and 113 (75.8%) were in the definitely depressed group and 100% of the subjects experienced symptoms of depression. Depression was positively correlated with fatigue and negatively correlated with health-promoting behavior. Multiple regression analysis revealed that fatigue and interpersonal relationships were factors significantly related to depression in the model (p<.001), with an explanatory power of 42.6%. Conclusion: The results confirmed that fatigue and interpersonal relationships, which is a subfactor of health-promoting behavior, were factors related to depression. To alleviate depression in infertile women, efforts should be made to identify and reduce psychological and physical fatigue. In addition, minimizing relational difficulties that they experience during an infertility diagnosis and treatment and strengthening positive interpersonal relationships can be positive strategies to alleviate depression.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• 제14권5호
• /
• pp.81-89
• /
• 2016

Purpose - Prior researches have empirically focused on the effect of management consulting quality and consultant capability on entrepreneurial firms' performance. This study, however, focused on investigating the moderating role of absorptive capacity and resource capability between management consulting and entrepreneurial firms' performance. So, this study investigated the relationship among consulting quality, consultant capability, absorptive capacity, resource capability, and entrepreneurial firms' performance from the resource based view (RBV). Especially, this study focused on the mediating role of absorptive and resource capability in relational structure of entrepreneurial firms' dimensions. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, research hypotheses and model are established by the prior researches from the fields of strategic management and entrepreneurial behavior. Concretely, H1~H4 are the relationship between consulting (consulting quality, consultant capability) and innovation (absorptive capacity, resource capability); H5 is the relationship between absorptive capacity and resource capability; and H6~H7 are the relationship between innovation (absorptive capacity, resource capability) and management performance. The data was collected 207 copies from entrepreneurial firms in South Korea. These firms were established in January 2014 and maintained by November 2015 in high-tech industry. The questionnaire was consisted of five dimensions; consulting quality, consultant capability, absorptive capacity, resource capability, and management performance. Each dimension measured multi items on a 5-point Likert scale. The hypotheses and research model are analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 22. Results - The results of this study are as follows. 1) Consulting quality significantly influenced on the absorptive capacity of entrepreneurial firms. 2) But, consultant capability did not influence on the absorptive capacity of entrepreneurial firms. 3) Consulting quality and consultant capability significantly influenced on the resource capability of entrepreneurial firms. 4) Absorptive capacity significantly influenced on the resource capability of entrepreneurial firms; 5) Absorptive capacity did not significantly influence on the management performance of entrepreneurial firms. 6) Resource capability, however, significantly influenced on the management performance of entrepreneurial firms. By these results, absorptive capacity of entrepreneurial firms had a mediating role partly among consulting quality, consultant capability, and management capability. The resource capability of entrepreneurial firms had a mediating role among consulting quality, consultant capability, and management capability, perfectly. Conclusions - According to this study, the high level of consulting quality and consultant capability may enforce the resource capability of entrepreneurial firms. It means, practically, that external knowledge is a driver for innovation, and then the innovation effects on the management performance of entrepreneurial firms. So, at the initial stage, the management consulting programs are very important to entrepreneurial firms and should be conceived as an essential element. This study may contribute to the advancement of academic in field of new start business, small business, or venture business based on resources, especially the role of absorptive capacity and resource capability between consulting programs and management performance. However, this study has some limitations. They are the measurement of consulting quality's items, cross-sectional research, and the limitation of concept and industry.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• 제9권1호
• /
• pp.43-72
• /
• 2007

The recent development of industrial marketing explains the near absence of research on brand equity in business-to-business markets. With recent change, industrial companies have shifted from a production focus to a customer focus. Industrial brand concept is rapidly developing. The basic purpose of this study is to investigate industrial brand equity affecting the result of business relationship between industrial buyers and suppliers. This research presented a comprehensive constructive model consisting of components of industrial brand equity, and then propose the research model base on prior researches and studies about relationships among components of industrial brand equity. Data were gathered from respondents who work in industrial buying center. For this study, Data were analyzed by SPSS 11.0 and AMOS 5.0. The results of this research analysis were as fallow. Industrial brand loyalty was positively related with perceived value, perceived quality, brand awareness, relationship satisfaction, switching cost, relationship commitment. Also, Industrial corporate performance and purchasing value was positively related with brand loyalty and relationship commitment.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• 제13권2호
• /
• pp.29-57
• /
• 2008

Empirical model was developed to test the building mechanism of trust dimensions and loyalty with the suppliers' bonding tactics to service firms. And interactive effects between suppliers' bonding tactics and service firms' store age was hypothesized in the trust-loyalty building processes. The model was tested in the context of animal clinics which belong to Korean Animal Hospital Association (KAHA). The data was analysed using structural equation model (SEM). The findings are as follows. First, two different relational bonding tactics play different roles in their effects on building trust dimensions toward suppliers. While supplier's social bonding tactic significantly influences on both the affective and cognitive trust of service firms, suppliers' structural bonding tactic only influences significantly on affective trust of service firms. Second, while suppliers' social bonding tactic influences on building service firms' loyalty significantly, suppliers' structural bonding tactic doesn't influence on building their loyalty. Suppliers' structural bonding tactic influences on building their loyalty indirectly through affective trust. Third, while service firms' affective trust influences on building loyalty significantly, cognitive trust doesn't. Their cognitive trust influences on building loyalty indirectly through affective trust. Fourth, the higher the firms' store age is, the more suppliers use social bonding tactics to build trust and loyalty directly. While the shorter the firms' store age is, the more suppliers partially use both the social and structural bonding tactics to build trust and loyalty. In conclusion, in the context of animal clinics' distribution channels, suppliers' relational bonding tactics with service firms differently influence to build trust sub-dimensions and loyalty. And, suppliers should take note of the interactive role of service firms' store age in the utilization of the different bonding tactics to build service firms' trust and loyalty toward suppliers. At the end of the paper, managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are suggested.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• 제9권4호
• /
• pp.29-42
• /
• 2011

With the many advantages of the internet, online shopping has become one of the fastest growing types of retail businesses. However, internet-based firms are much more firmly required to retain existing customers rather than secure new ones, and to make them revisit the site by strengthening trust and loyalty, thereby improving profits and outrivaling competitors. Commitment is an essential part of successful long-term relationships between buyers and sellers. Although commitments by both parties in an exchange can provide the foundation for the development of relational social norms, disproportionate commitments can lead to opportunism by the less committed partner. Moreover, flow, which is characterized by intense concentration and enjoyment, was found to be significantly linked with exploratory use behavior, which in turn was linked to the extent of computer use. The level of flow was, itself, determined by the individual's sense of being in control, and the level of challenge perceived in maneuvering a website. Website attractiveness goes hand in hand with the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, and it can be conceptualized as the persuasive effectiveness of a message by the use of familiarity, favor, similarity, etc. It occurs when information receivers try to achieve self-satisfaction when they actually or emotionally identify themselves with an information source. This study investigates the relationship between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the loyalty of online consumers, and it examines how perceived website attractiveness and flow play mediating roles between the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall and the affective commitment in the context of a clothes internet shopping mall. For these purposes, a structural model comprising several variables was developed. That model was tested with an analysis of moment structure (AMOS) using data from respondents who had purchased clothing through the internet during the past three months. In this model, the perceived system characteristics of an internet shopping mall, such as familiarity, reputation, uniqueness, positive emotions, self-efficacy, and interactivity, were proposed to affect the website's attractiveness and flow, and lead to a higher affective commitment over time. Thus, the perceived website attractiveness and flow were proposed as core mediating variables between perceived system characteristics and affective commitment. The results of a reliability test using Cronbach's Alpha, and a confirmatory factor analysis warranted using unidimensionality for the measures for each construct. In addition, the nomological validity of the measures was warranted from the results of a correlation analysis. The results of empirical analyses indicated that systematic attributes resulting in website attractiveness and user's characteristics, thereby triggering customers' flow, play a crucial role in inducing customers' affective commitment, and a user's characteristics are twice as important as systematic attributes in this study. Moreover, familiarity, reputation, and uniqueness all have a significant effect on website attractiveness, and the research showed that uniqueness took the first place, and that familiarity and reputation followed in order of magnitude. The fact that reputation was not the most important factor that affects the attractiveness of an internet shopping mall, with uniqueness or familiarity having a greater impact, suggests much deeper implications. Finally, positive emotion, self-efficacy, and interactivity all have a significant effect on customers' flow. In particular, the fact that positive emotion, compared to self-efficacy or interactivity, has much more impact on flow is very suggestive.

• Ecology and Resilient Infrastructure
• /
• 제5권1호
• /
• pp.35-44
• /
• 2018

Social, economic and environmental problems caused by rapid urbanization have been recently overcome by various civic participation projects. Local governance and resident - led partnership through field - based cooperative operating systems from urban regeneration to village projects are considered success factors. Among these, the village greening project which directly affects the residents and requires spontaneity requires the role and cooperation of the various participating actors due to the sharing of public space and private space. Social capital plays a key role in the sustainability and participation of the above - mentioned business as a relational capital centered on trust and participation, network and norms. Therefore, empirical research is needed. In this study, basic research was carried out to build a formation model of social capital in participation - type greening project expanding urban green space system to living area. We analyzed the elements of participation, the components of business progress, and the factors of social capital formation through literature review and in - depth interviews with participating experts. The purpose of this study is to provide basic data of social capital formation model for analyzing sustainability and activation strategies in the future.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• 제18권2호
• /
• pp.65-88
• /
• 2008

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1978, the Chinese economy grows rapidly at an average annul growth rate of 9% over the post two decades. Franchising has been widely recognized as an important source of entrepreneurial activity. Trust is important in that it facilitates relational exchanges by permits partners to transcend short-run inequities or risks to concentrate on long-term profits or gains. In the relationship between the franchisors and franchisees, trust has been described as an important source of competitive advantage. However, little research has been done on the factors affecting trust in Chinese franchisor-franchisee relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate what factors affect the trust in the franchise system in China, and to provide guidelines and insights to franchisors which enter Chinese market. In this study, according to Morgan and Hunt (1994), trust is defined as the extending when one party has confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity. We offered a conceptual model of the empirical study. The model shows that the factors affecting the trust include franchisor's supports, communication, satisfaction with previous outcome and conflict. We also suggested the franchisor's supports and communication like to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and the franchisor's supports, communication and he franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome tend to decrease conflict. Before the formal study, a pretest involving exploratory interviews with owners from three franchisees was conducted to make sure the questionnaire was relevant and clear to the respondents. The data were collected using trained interviewers to carry out personal interviews with the aid of an unidentified, muti-page, structured questionnaire. The respondents comprised of owners, managers, and owner managers of franchisee-owned food service franchises located in Beijing, China. Even though a total of 256 potential franchises were initially contacted, the finally usable sample consisted of 125 respondents. As expected, the sampling method was successful in soliciting respondents with waried personal and firm characteristics. Self-administrated questionnaires were used for all measures. And established scales were used to measure the latent constructs in this study. The measures tapped the franchisees' perceptions of the relationship with the referent franchisor. Five-point Likert-type scales ranging from "strongly disagree" (=1) to "strongly agree" (=7) were used throughout the constructs (trust, eight items; support, five items; communication, four items; satisfaction, six items; conflict, three items). The reliability measurements traditionally employed, such as the Cronbach's alpha, were used. All the reliabilities were greater than.80. The proposed measurement model was estimated using SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 5.0 analysis package. We conducted A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The results indicate reasonable overall fits between the model and the observed data. The overall fit of measurement model were $X^2$= 159.699, p=0.004, d.f. = 116, GFI =.879, NFI =.898, CFI =.969, IFI =.970, TLI =.959, RMR =.058. The results demonstrated that the data reasonably fitted the model. We also examined construct reliability and reliability and average variance extracted (AVE). The construct reliability of each construct was greater than.80 and the AVE of each construct was greater than.50. According to the analysis of Structure Equation Modeling (SEM), the results of path model indicated an adequate fit of the model: $X^2$= 142.126, p = 0.044, d.f. = 115, GFI =.892, NFI =.909, CFI =.981, IFI =.981, TLI =.974, RMR =.057. As hypothesized, the results showed that it is strategically important to establish trust in a franchise system, and the franchisor's supports, communication and satisfaction with previous outcome tend to reinforce franchisee's trust. The results also showed trust seems to decrease as the experience of conflict episodes increases. And we also noticed that franchisor's supports and communication tend to enhance the franchisee's satisfaction with previous outcome, and communication tend to decrease conflict. If the trust between the franchisor and franchisee can be established in a franchise system, franchising offers many benefits and reduces many costs. To manage a mutual trust of relationship with their franchisees, franchisor's should provide support effectively to their franchisees. Effective assistant services have direct effect on franchisees' satisfaction with previous outcome and trust in franchisor. Especially, franchise sales process, orientation, and training in the start-up period are key elements for success of the franchise system. Franchisor's support is an accumulated separate satisfaction evaluation with different kind of service provided by the franchisor. And providing support definitely can improve the trustworthy image of the franchisor. In the franchise system, conflicts of interests and exertions of different power sources are very common. The experience of conflict episodes seems to negatively relate to trust. Therefore, it is important to reduce the negative side of the relationship conflicts. Communication actually plays a broader role in reducing conflict and establish mutual trust in franchisor-franchisee relationship. And effective communication between franchisors and franchisees can improve franchisees' satisfaction toward the franchise system. As the diversification of Chinese markets, both franchisors and franchisees must keep the relevant, timely, and reliable communication. And it is very important to improve the quality of communication. Satisfaction with precious outcomes seems to positively relate to trust. Franchisors and franchisees that are highly satisfied with the previous outcomes that flow from their relationship will perceive their partner as advancing their goal achievement. Therefore, it is necessary for both franchisor and their franchisees to make the welfare of partner with effort. Little literature has focused on what factors affect the trust between franchisors and their franchisees in China. This study developed the hypotheses regarding the factors affecting trust in the transaction relationship. The results of data analysis supported the hypotheses strongly. There are certain limitations in this study. First, we may point out that some other factors missed in this study could be significantly important. Second, the context of this study, food service industry, limits its potential generalizability for all franchise systems. More studies in different categories of franchise system are needed to broaden its generalizability. Third, the model was tested empirically in a sample in Beijing, more empirical tests of the proposed model in other Chinese areas are needed. Finally, the analysis in this study was solely based on the perception of franchisees and the opinions of franchisors were not included.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• 제20권2호
• /
• pp.149-162
• /
• 2014

Course guidance is a mentoring process which is performed before students register for coming classes. The course guidance plays a very important role to students in checking degree audits of students and mentoring classes which will be taken in coming semester. Also, it is intimately involved with a graduation assessment or a completion of ABEEK certification. Currently, course guidance is manually performed by some advisers at most of universities in Korea because they have no electronic systems for the course guidance. By the lack of the systems, the advisers should analyze each degree audit of students and curriculum information of their own departments. This process often causes the human error during the course guidance process due to the complexity of the process. The electronic system thus is essential to avoid the human error for the course guidance. If the relation data model-based system is applied to the mentoring process, then the problems in manual way can be solved. However, the relational data model-based systems have some limitations. Curriculums of a department and certification systems can be changed depending on a new policy of a university or surrounding environments. If the curriculums and the systems are changed, a scheme of the existing system should be changed in accordance with the variations. It is also not sufficient to provide semantic search due to the difficulty of extracting semantic relationships between subjects. In this paper, we model a course mentoring ontology based on the analysis of a curriculum of computer science department, a structure of degree audit, and ABEEK certification. Ontology-based course guidance system is also proposed to overcome the limitation of the existing methods and to provide the effectiveness of course mentoring process for both of advisors and students. In the proposed system, all data of the system consists of ontology instances. To create ontology instances, ontology population module is developed by using JENA framework which is for building semantic web and linked data applications. In the ontology population module, the mapping rules to connect parts of degree audit to certain parts of course mentoring ontology are designed. All ontology instances are generated based on degree audits of students who participate in course mentoring test. The generated instances are saved to JENA TDB as a triple repository after an inference process using JENA inference engine. A user interface for course guidance is implemented by using Java and JENA framework. Once a advisor or a student input student's information such as student name and student number at an information request form in user interface, the proposed system provides mentoring results based on a degree audit of current student and rules to check scores for each part of a curriculum such as special cultural subject, major subject, and MSC subject containing math and basic science. Recall and precision are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The recall is used to check that the proposed system retrieves all relevant subjects. The precision is used to check whether the retrieved subjects are relevant to the mentoring results. An officer of computer science department attends the verification on the results derived from the proposed system. Experimental results using real data of the participating students show that the proposed course guidance system based on course mentoring ontology provides correct course mentoring results to students at all times. Advisors can also reduce their time cost to analyze a degree audit of corresponding student and to calculate each score for the each part. As a result, the proposed system based on ontology techniques solves the difficulty of mentoring methods in manual way and the proposed system derive correct mentoring results as human conduct.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
• /
• 제25권5호
• /
• pp.765-772
• /
• 2011

Knowledge which is represented by formal logic are widely used in many domains such like artificial intelligence, information retrieval, e-commerce and so on. And for medical field, medical documentary records retrieval, information systems in hospitals, medical data sharing, remote treatment and expert systems need knowledge representation technology. To retrieve information intellectually and provide advanced information services, systematically controlled mechanism is needed to represent and share knowledge. Importantly, medical expert's knowledge should be represented in a form that is understandable to computers and also to humans to be applied to the medical information system supporting decision making. And it should have a suitable and efficient structure for its own purposes including reasoning, extendability of knowledge, management of data, accuracy of expressions, diversity, and so on. we call it ontology which can be processed with machines. We can use the ontology to represent traditional medicine knowledge in structured and systematic way with visualization, then also it can also be used education materials. Hence, the authors developed an Shanghanlun ontology by way of showing an example, so that we suggested a methodology for ontology development and also a model to structure the traditional medical knowledge. And this result can be used for student to learn Shanghanlun by graphical representation of it's knowledge. We analyzed the text of Shanghanlun to construct relational database including it's original text, symptoms and herb formulars. And then we classified the terms following some criterion, confirmed the structure of the ontology to describe semantic relations between the terms, especially we developed the ontology considering visual representation. The ontology developed in this study provides database showing fomulas, herbs, symptoms, the name of diseases and the text written in Shanghanlun. It's easy to retrieve contents by their semantic relations so that it is convenient to search knowledge of Shanghanlun and to learn it. It can display the related concepts by searching terms and provides expanded information with a simple click. It has some limitations such as standardization problems, short coverage of pattern(證), and error in chinese characters input. But we believe this research can be used for basic foundation to make traditional medicine more structural and systematic, to develop application softwares, and also to applied it in Shanghanlun educations.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
• /
• 제8권4호
• /
• pp.21-32
• /
• 2017

Purpose - In hotel business, how to build the relationship between leader and employees is very important, because it affects on the customer satisfaction. Thus, this research examines the effect of authentic leadership on job performance in the context of hotel industry and identifies mediating roles of organizational engagement, job satisfaction, and creativity in the relationship between authentic leadership and job performance. This study suggests the guidelines for how hotel companies should improve employee productivity and build a desirable organizational culture by presenting employee attitudes and behavioral models that explain the relationship between leaders and employees. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between authentic leadership, organizational engagement, job satisfaction, creativity, and job performance from the employee's perspective. Authentic leadership divide into four sub-dimensions such as self-awareness, balanced process of informations, internalized moral perspective, and relational transparency. In order to test the purposes of this study, research model and hypotheses were developed. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and tested in the previous studies. The data were collected from 114 franchise hotel employees and were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. program. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, authentic leadership have significant impacts on organizational engagement and creativity, but does not have impact on job satisfaction directly. Second, organizational engagement have significant impacts on job satisfaction and job performance, but does not have impact on creativity directly. Third, job satisfaction has significant impact on creativity, but does not have impact on job performance. Fourth, creativity has significant impact on job performance. Conclusions - The findings of this study indicate that hotel leaders should properly implement the authentic leadership and consider how to build a corporate culture to improve an organizational and employee productivity through authentic leadership. Due to the nature of the hotel industry, which relies heavily on human resources, hotel companies must manage their employees with authenticity in order to increase organizational engagement, job satisfaction, and creativity that affect hotel and employee productivity. If hotel employees perceive their leader's authentic leadership, they show more organizational engagement that increases creativity and leads to job performance. Finally, hotel employees can propose creative ideas only if they will be satisfied with their jobs. Therefore, the leader should develop non-monetary or monetary reward system for the employees and, make an efforts to foster creativity of the employees.