Earticle

In this study, optimal forecasting method was developed to manage inventory efficiently in stainless service center, and thereby the service and safety stock levels can be set based on demands. Since raw materials are very expensive and demands of them are fluctuated seasonally, demand forecasting is greatly important to ensure the availability of an adequate supply. First, the research subjects were defined based on ABC analysis in this study. Second, moving average, weighted moving average, exponential smoothing, Winter’s method and least squares method were performed to evaluate accuracy of five models. As a result, Winter’s method and least squares method were superior to the other methods. Third, new safety stock and service levels can be established based on the forecasting results.

This study examines the causal relationships among organizational culture, top management characteristics, market orientation, and business performance as well as moderating effect of market dynamism using structural equation model in the context of credit card industry. Support is found for a number of hypothesized structural relations. The findings show that all types of organizational culture except for hierarchical culture influence positively on market orientation, and most factors of top management leadership influence positively on market orientation except for factors such as sensitivity to the environment and unconventional behavior. Also, market dynamism mostly moderates the relationship between organizational culture and market orientation, the relationship between top management leadership and market orientation, and thr relationship between market orientation and business performance. Some implications for enhancing market orientation are briefly discussed.

Biotechnology offers technological solutions for the issues: the limited availability of fossil fuel in the future, the overdependence on oil-exporting countries, and the reduction of greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions. The application of biotechnology could result in an emerging "bioeconomy" where biotechnology contributes to a significant share of economic output. Adaption and implementation of biotechnologies will greatly affect and change the way people live. For the successful bioeconomy era, considerable uncertainties facing both public and private sectors in our economies will need to be throughly discussed. So, this study estimated and evaluated the impact of the bioeconomy by input-output table. It turns out that the production inducement coefficients is 1.8687p with bio-industry. Comparing to 1.8445p without bio-industry, 0.0242p is increased. Consequently, if bio-industry is not promoted, local productive capacity will be spilled with dependence on overseas bio-industry. It is induced growth potential of bio-industry deteriorated. To capture and to enhance the benefits of the bio-industry, positive support is required.

The green policies have actively been paid attention to as the green growth is one of global issues from the economic and environmental perspectives. This paper analyzes the green productivity growth index for the OECD countries over the period 1991-2009 in order to explore the trajectory of the green policy, aiming at effective policy implication. We used the macroeconomic and CO2 emissions indicators for the empirical investigation. We also decomposed the green productivity growth index into efficiency change and technical change indexes. The empirical results tell us that i) in a short term Korea needs to focus on catching up with the Northern European countries, and ii) in a long term she needs to spur the green innovation. We believe that this research is helpful for the policy makers to develope policies about the green growth.

This paper explores how compensation practices in Korean companies in 2000s had been changed, focusing on principles of base-pay, group-level performance-based plan, ESOP and stock-option, and wage increase. For the purpose, the WPS(Workplace Panel Survey) data by the KLI(Korean Labor Institute) in 2003, 2005 and 2007 were chosen and analyzed here. There was a general expectation that the importance of seniority in determining base-pay, compared to the importance of job in itself or job-holder's ability, would have been decreased in 2000s. However, it seems that the data do not support the expectation. For the period, the portion of establishments running group level performance-based bonus plan and the portion of establishments which had ever distributed the bonus to their employees among the recent 3 years were decreased significantly. The portion of establishments providing the ESOP remained around 10% and the share of the ESOP also remained around 10%. Regarding wage level, the size of average wage increase for high school graduates of blue-collar at entry level is larger than that of wage increase for 4-year university graduates. Taken together, it seems that no significant changes in compensation practices occurred in the Korean establishments in 2000s. Still two thirds of the Korean establishments are based on the seniority-based wage scheme. The importance of pay-for-performance in Korea in 2000s is circumscribed considerably.

This study aims to perform data envelopment analysis(DEA) and the Malmquist productivity index(MPI) analysis to compare and assess efficiency by hospitals, courses, and clinical departments of five large upper-scale general hospitals in Seoul in terms of outpatients, inpatients, and comprehensive conditions. For this purpose, this study divided the data of 2009 and 2010 for five large upper-scale general hospitals in Seoul into internal and surgery departments and subdivided 60 of their clinical departments into decision-making units(DMUs) for efficiency analysis. This study obtained several important results: First, while there was no significant difference in efficiency among five large upper-scale general hospitals in Seoul, making the comparative analysis less meaningful, it was possible to know which area produced inefficiency by analyzing the changes in efficiency in terms of areas for inpatients and outpatients. Second, the efficiency analysis was carried out in terms of internal and surgery departments; as a result, the former affected efficiency for outpatients’ affairs and the latter affected hospitalization efficiency, which caused surgery to make higher general efficiency than internal department. Third, while the gap between hospitals was not significant in terms of efficiency, there was a large gap between clinical departments in terms of efficiency, indicating specifically which clinical department induced the cause of inefficiency and what to improve to which extent. The results of this study provide an important managerial implication. An analysis on the efficiency of hospitals as decision-making units(DMUs) can be used to compare the levels of efficiency among medical institutions. In order to decide on the direction of specific investment internally or implement a management innovation policy with the objective of improving efficiency, it is necessary to show specific causes and improvements by analyzing efficiency in terms of clinical department units.

We conducted a literature review on plural channel forms in multiple industry of multiple countries. and in a study on fast food restaurant franchise in U.S. market, we found that plural forms can have multiple positive effects on the growth and operation of a retail company. we deducted 4 major processes from bradach's research(1997, 1998), which can be applied to automobile retail channel operation. and we did a pilot survey about this concepts for the 1 regional headquarter of hyundai motor company. finally we drew a practical implication and direction of future research.

This study aims at providing necessary informations to decide what services would be conducted preferentially in the family restaurant by limited resources. So this study introduced DINESERV to evaluate customer's perception of service quality in family restaurant. And this study revalued the customer's perception about the qualities of the family restaurant services by the Kano model, and examined the customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction coefficients suggested by Timko. I conducted a survey from the customers of some family restaurant in Seoul and Daejeon region. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. It was found that the total 29 items are could be classified into 6 attractive quality elements, 6 must-be quality elements, 12 one-dimensional quality elements, and 5 indifferent quality elements. The highest score element of the customer's satisfaction coefficients was identified as the providing of accurate food(0.67), and the lowest score items were attractive building and comfortable seat(0.35). When the family restaurant services was not sufficient to the customer, the highest score element of the customer's dissatisfaction coefficients was comfortable seat(0.70), and the lowest score items were the providing accurate food and appropriate response for special requirements(0.43). From the analyses, several academic and practical implications for family restaurant service quality were proposed.

Port has become a critical logistics link connecting maritime and land transportation of goods worldwide. Especially, considering that most of the goods and materials are being delivered in containers, the importance of trade through ports cannot be overemphasized. The 8 of the world 10 container ports are located in Asia including China and Korea and the efforts for maintaining the competitive edge over the others will grow much more intense. In this regard, the increase in productivity of a port will be an advantage to take a lead in port industry. Therefore, in this study, the competitiveness of a port is calculated through the PROMETHEE, one of the widely known multi criteria decision making techniques using container throughput. The port of Hong Kong proved to be the most competitive, whereas Busan port ranked 9th out of 10 ports.

This paper provides a longitudinal analysis of internationalization strategies of Hyundai Motor Company in relation with the competitiveness improvement not only from home country's industry level but also firm's competitive advantage level. The characteristics of Hyundai's internationalization experiences can be summarized as 1) maintaining global market focusing attitude, 2) speedy decision making of export and FDI(foreign direct investment) toward overseas markets, and 3) never-ending challenge to overcome trials and error. The case study of Hyundai does not support the incremental expansion of foreign markets asserted by Johanson and Vahlne, but demonstrates that the home country environment such as cheap labour cost was the most important in the early stage of internationalization. However, as the company accumulated international experience, it relied more upon its internal competitive advantages. Locational factors related to the host country environment also affected Hyundai's internationalization strategies but their relative importance declined over time.

This paper empirically analyzes the currency risk exposure of a 301 of manufacturing firms listed in the Korea Stock Exchange market using daily panel data over the period 2000:01:02-2010:12.31. The paper employs a random effect model allowing for asymmetric and lagged effects of exchange rate changes on the firm value. To investigate the currency exposure risk, the paper estimates the reponses of stock returns to the changes in the exchange rates on both daily and monthly basis. The empirical results are as follows. First, significance of foreign exchange rate risk exposure is found to be higher in the industry level than in the firm level. This implies that volatility of foreign exchange rates should reduce firm profitability and thus firm value. Second, the empirical results show that stock returns respond more sensitively to daily exchange rates than to monthly rates. Third, the foreign exchange risk exposure to Japanese Yen rates should have stronger effects on stock returns than to won dollar rates. Finally, there are substantial evidences for asymmetric and lagged effects of foreign exchange rates on the firm value. These findings imply that the central bank may have stronger incentive to intervene markets for stabilization of foreign exchange and thus for prevention of reduction in the firm value unstably.

The educational service of the future focuses on nurturing the key talent advancing the nation, building knowledge-based infrastructure, and supporting various teaching and learning methods through the utilization of the Internet. Particularly e-learning service is increasingly providing educational services anywhere, anytime without space and time limitation. Accordingly in teaching and learning fields, applications of e-learning continue to progress in various ways along with the soaring interest from learners. Therefore, this study intends to explore the relationship between e-learning service quality factors and satisfaction of learners for self-leading learning and self-enrichment, involved in e-learning, as it plays an important role along with traditional education. More specifically, we classify e-learning service quality into factors of learning contents, learning system, learning usefulness and learner perspective and investigate their relationship to learner satisfaction and in turn revisit and positive referral intention from a learner-oriented service quality standpoint. As a result, we could reveal that all the e-learning service quality factors except for learning usefulness have significantly positive effects on learner satisfaction and that the satisfaction positively affects both learners' revisit and positive referral intentions.