Earticle

In this study, various characteristics of R&D related economic variables were studied to analyze complexity of science and technology activities in Korea, as reliance of R&D activities of the private sector is growing by the day. In comparison to other countries, this means that it is likely to be fluctuated by economic conditions. This complexity characteristic signifies that the result of science and technology activities can be greatly different from the anticipated results - depending on the influences from economic conditions and the results of science and technology activities which may be unpredictable. After reviewing the results of 17 variables related to science and technology characteristics of complex systems intended for time-series data - in the total R&D expenditure, and private R&D expenditure, numbers of SCI papers, the existence of chaotic characteristics were. using Lyapunov Exponent, Hurst Exponent, BDS test. This result reveals science and technology activity of the three most important components in Korea which are; heavy dependence on initial condition, the long term memory of time series, and non-linear structure. As stable R&D investment and result are needed in order to maintain steady development of Korea economy, the R&D structure should be less influenced by business cycles and more effective technology development policy for improving human resource development must be set in motion. And to minimize the risk of new technology, the construction of sophisticated technology forecasting system should take into account, for development of R&D system.

Crowdsourcing is a popular tool for firms to harness external knowledge and resources. One variation of crowdsourcing entails the use of corporate channels in social network services (SNS) such as Twitter to hold public idea competitions. This study examined the role of feedback interaction between participants of idea competitions. More specifically, the study examined the impact of incentives to provide feedback on other participants’ ideas. We found that idea competitions where explicit incentives were introduced to elicit crowdsourced feedback in the form of qualitative comments resulted in improved idea generation performance-with more ideas generated overall, and more ideas generated through participant collaborations, through increased comment-posting activities. Based on the findings, implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This study aims to examine how the relationship with an information source affects people to perceive credibility of online information. We developed a conceptual framework that explained how people perceived information credibility when they were familiar with the information source and/or when the information source seemed credible. We then compared the models in two different contexts, namely, online review and social media sites, to examine differences. We surveyed 136 online social media users with their online shopping experiences. Among our eight hypotheses, three (H6: the personality similarity between an information provider and an information seeker enhances the perceived credibility of the former; H7: the credibility of an information provider produces a much stronger mediating effect in review sites than in social media sites; H8: the familiarity of an information seeker with an information provider produces a stronger mediating effect in social media sites than in review sites) are fully supported and four (H1: the credibility of an information provider has a positive influence on the perceived credibility of the online information; H2: the familiarity of an information seeker with an information provider has a positive influence on the perceived credibility of the online information; H3: the goal similarity between an information provider and an information seeker enhances the perceived familiarity of the latter with the former; H5: the personality similarity between an information provider and an information seeker enhances the perceived familiarity of the latter with the former) are partially supported. The hypothesis of H4: the goal similarity between an information provider and an information seeker enhances the perceived credibility of the former is rejected. The result confirms that credibility of information is strongly mediated by credibility of information source than familiarity with information source in online review sites and vice versa in social media sites.

It is important to keep learners’ feeling positive during learning to enhance learning performance. According to flow theory,challenge-skill balance is a precondition for flow experience: Learnersfeel anxietywhen the challenge of learning is higher than their ability, feel boredom when the challenge of learning is lower than learners’ ability, and engage in flow status when the challenge of learning matches the learners’ ability. However, the current empirical study reveals that emotions related to enjoyment may appear when the learners’ skill is equal to or higher than the learning challenge. Nevertheless, boredom emotion may appear when learners perceive the courses are difficult but unimportant. These empirical survey results revealed the necessary of rethinking the appearance of boredom and enjoyment emotions in computer education.

Ubiquitous learning has aroused great interest and is becoming a new way for foreign language education in today’s society. However, how to increase the learners’ initiative and their community cohesion is still an issue that deserves more profound research and studies. Emotional intelligence can help to detect the learner’s emotional reactions online, and therefore stimulate his interest and the willingness to participate by adjusting teaching skills and creating fun experiences in learning. This is, actually the new concept of smart education. Based on the previous research, this paper concluded a neural mechanism model for analyzing the learners’ emotional characteristics in ubiquitous environment, and discussed the intelligent monitoring and automatic recognition of emotions from the learners’ speech signals as well as their behavior data by multi-agent system. Finally, a framework of emotional intelligence system was proposed concerning the smart foreign language education in ubiquitous learning.

In Kenya during the last one decade, public and private sectors have invested a lot of resources in computer based Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve the quality of education in schools. The main objective has been to integrate ICT in the delivery of curriculum in order to improve the quality of teaching-learning and to produce ICT literate workforce. The computer based technologies are used in management, pedagogy, and communication. This paper presents results from a study that was conducted in Nairobi County in Kenya to determine the key factors in the integration of computer based ICT in teaching-learning in pre-primary and lower primary schools. Results had revealed that the use of computer based ICT in teaching-learning by both pre-primary and lower primary schools was influenced by accessibility of resources, capacity to use the technology, availability of time, and provision of technical support.

People can differently act online than in real-life. Their virtual identities may allow them to express themselves more freely. In this perspective, there is a self-discrepancy between virtual- and real-life. Due to the anonymity, people can feel free to express who actually they are online without considering social pressure. Especially, for those people who live in a repressed society, virtual-selves can play a significant role to achieve their well-being. For this reason, a self-discrepancy between actual- and virtual-self related to well-being was studied. With 183 survey responses, political freedom, extraversion and neuroticism are identified as significant influencers of subjective well-being (SWB). In addition, an increase in self-discrepancy between virtual- and real-life for ‘unhappy’ people leads to an increased online well-being, which is contradictory to Higgins’ self-discrepancy theory.

Prior to the 2000s, internal control had not been among the high priority issues in the management’s agenda. Since then, however, it has become one of the hottest issues, and has received a significant attention as the means of improving the transparency, sustainability, and competitiveness of a company. The objectives of this paper are to examine if there has been any noticeable changes in the level of internal controls of Korean companies before and after the 2010, and to analyze the underlying drivers and issues thereto. Accounting manipulation and moral hazard were among the factors to cause the Korean financial crisis in 1997 and 2008. Since then, the capital market has had a strong pressure on Korean companies to enhance the transparency of management and accounting while the government has made the laws, requirements, and recommendations to alleviate the moral hazard problems of management and enhance the accounting transparency. Both market and government have driven companies to put more priority on the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of applicable laws and regulations. Thereby, the market and governmental forces has led companies to enhance the level of internal controls which contribute to the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance The pressure on companies to enhance the level of internal controls may be different across industries. The capital market and government experiencing the severe financial crisis in 1997 and 2008 put even more pressure on financial companies such as banks to upgrade the reliability of financial reporting and the compliance of regulations to the global level than on non-financial companies. A survey is performed on the changes in the level of internal controls of 54 major companies consisting of 10 financial and 44 non-financial companies in Korea. The survey results show that the average level of internal controls of Korean companies has noticeably improved and that the change in the level of control environment factor is higher than that of IT control factor. The analysis on the industry differences shows that financial companies increased the level of control environment factor more than non- financial companies did while non-financial companies upgraded the level of IT control factor more than financial companies did relatively. Among internal control categories, the most improved area since the economic crisis is “Risk Assessment.” The global best practices for risk management have been developed primarily in the financial industry and then spread to other industries. The general level of control practices of Korean companies has been improving significantly, but still appears below the global advanced practices.

The Online business model for purchasing agent service is getting more popular. However, consumers perceive more risk when buying products from foreign online purchasing agents (FOPA) than from common online sellers (COS). This study focuses on finding out how consumers manage risk when they perceive risk and what different risk-reliever strategies they use when buying from high-risk FOPA and low-risk COS. This study has proved the following two. First, when consumers perceive risk at online purchasing, they tend to select risk-reliever strategies, such as the use of communication media, online assurance mark, seller’s record, and secure payment to mitigate risk. With the application of those risk-reliever strategies, they built trust with the seller. Second, risk-perception of FOPA influences usage of communication media and check of online assurance mark more strongly than that of COS. On the contrary, risk -perception of COS influences the check of seller record more strongly than that of FOPA. This study helps to explain why FOPA is proliferating, despite its inherent high risk due to the fact that buyers and sellers are separated in time and space and that buyers and sellers have different social and cultural backgrounds. This study also helps managers of E-commerce to relieve consumer’s risk-perception and to build trust.