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An onsite experimental study was conducted in order to observe conflict management styles of 90 middle‐level managers from a large Korean furniture manufacturing company. By using accomplices, conflict conditions were introduced in a controlled setting which simulated the features of a work environment. The experiment manipulated the relative status among the subjects and observed the influence of this treatment on the subjects' choices among different conflict management styles. Both structured observations and self‐report questionnaires converged to show that conflict management styles differed significantly when the managers interacted with superiors, peers, or subordinates: the managers were mainly avoiding with superiors, compromising with peers, and competing with subordinates. The current research suggests that the relative status among the parties in conflict determines the choice of conflict management styles.

Previous studies as well as anecdotes have indicated that parental involvement in adult children’s marital conflicts is fairly common in Korea. This study attempts to explain how in-law conflicts – arguably a structural outcome of the traditional Confucian family – lead to marital disruption in contemporary families.

This study adopts the hypotheses of the corporate group, mother identity, and gendered-role expectations, which are instrumental to understanding the social context in which the legacy of the Confucian culture interacts with the knowledge-based neoliberal economy to revive in-law conflicts. Divorced-couple data are from in-depth interviews and court rulings, and their analysis illustrates the trajectories of marital breakdown.

The findings provide support for the hypotheses. Parents, especially mothers, who heavily invested time and money in their children’s education and career building meddle in their marriages in hopes to ensure the best returns to their investment. Normative prescriptions of gendered roles provide references for the parents regarding the roles of their children and children-in-law, and the gaps between their expectations and perceived reality trigger parental meddling and in-law conflicts. Adult children who are indebted to the parents for their status formation may acquiesce to the parental intervention.

In the traditional patriarchal family, in-law conflicts were restricted to mother- and daughter-in-law relationships, but are now extended to mother- and son-in-law relationships, reflecting a paradoxical twist in gender-role expectations. This chapter suggests that heavy parental investment in their children can have an unexpected consequence increasing the probability of adult children’s marital disruption.

The current study investigated the conflict management styles used by Korean local government employees with superiors, peers, and subordinates. A mail survey and personal interviews were used. Six hundred and seventy‐five usable responses were received. Personal interviews were conducted with 100 government employees. With written consents, all interviews were tape‐recorded and then quantified using content analysis. Overall, both mail surveys and personal interviews indicated conflict management styles varied according to the relative status of employees. Implications of the research findings for training and development of organizational members are provided, and areas for further research are suggested.

The purpose of this study is to provide models to analyze the efficiency of programs and efficiency of fundraising to apply the models to non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Korea and to draw out improvement points of inefficiency using data envelopment analysis (DEA).

Using DEA, this study analyzed the program efficiency and fundraising efficiency of 22 Korean NPOs in the field of humanitarian assistance.

Of 22 NPOs, 15 were identified as being efficient in the program efficiency and 7 of 15 NPOs were found efficient in the fundraising efficiency. In all, four organizations were found efficient in both the program and the fundraising efficiency. Using CCR and BCC model, this study proposed the cause of inefficiency and state of returns of scale.

This study presents non-profit efficiency evaluation models regarding program efficiency and fundraising efficiency. This study provides the inefficient DMUs with their reference set of efficient DMUs to improve efficiency and the cause of inefficiency, whether the inefficiency is because of the pure technical inefficiency or the scale inefficiency. This study also indicates the state of variable returns to scale to propose the way of improving inefficiency by controlling the scale of inputs. The methods and the results of this study can serve as a model for researchers and practitioners to follow when evaluating efficiency in the NPOs.

This study has the value of performing the empirical studies of efficiency analysis of Korean NPOs and providing non-profits with the model of efficiency analysis in programs and fundraising activities and basis for establishing strategies to improve both efficiencies.

The study investigated the relationships of the five dimensions of emotional intelligence: self‐awareness, self‐regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills of supervisors to subordinates' strategies of handling conflict: problem solving and bargaining. Data (N = 1,395) for this study were collected with questionnaires from MBA students in seven countries (U.S., Greece, China, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and Macau, South Africa, and Portugal). Psychometric properties of the measures were tested and improved with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of indicator and internal consistency reliabilities, and the hypotheses were tested with a structural equations model for each country. Results in the U.S. and in the combined sample provided support for the model which suggests that self‐awareness is positively associated with self‐regulation, empathy, and social skills; self regulation is positively associated with empathy and social skills; empathy and social skills are positively associated with motivation; which in turn, is positively associated with problem solving strategy and negatively associated with bargaining strategy. Differences among countries in these relationships are noted and implications for organizations discussed.

A dual transportation analysis is considered as a strategic matter for plant facility expansion/contraction decision making in manufacturing operations. The primal-dual problem is presented in a generalized mathematical form. A practical technique of generating the dual solution is illustrated with a plant facility expansion/contraction example as a tutorial. Demand forecasting is performed based on the time series data with seasonal variation adjustments. The dual solution helps facilitate operations decision making by providing useful information.

An appropriate assessment of sustainability in venture business is an important managerial and investment decision making. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is utilized for sustainability assessment for venture business firms’ performance. Venture business firms are primary decision-making units (DMUs). Required information for this study is collected from Korea Listed Companies Association (KLCA) database. The proposed DEA model incorporates multiple inputs and outputs to assess the relative operational efficiency of the DMUs, identifying the best performance group among the peer venture business firms. The proposed model provides decision-makers with more accurate information for strategic insights to make better investment decisions in the competitive business environment.

China is currently developing and promoting an industrial cluster policy at the government level. By enacting the ‘Opinion on promoting industrial cluster development’, China is supporting the development of industrial clusters. Building an industrial cluster is done by using a single factor but requires many additional factors like regional characteristics, competitiveness factors are also diversified. To evaluate the competitiveness of the Chinese automobile industry cluster, a competitiveness element index should be developed and a competitiveness evaluation method is needed to evaluate the importance of each element. To accomplish this objective, this research applied the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and focused on the importance of the competitiveness elements.

This research investigated the character is tics regarding cases of clusters and also analyzed the competitiveness of the Changchun automobile cluster located in northeastern China. The purpose of this research is to help Korean enterprises who enter China in the hopes that Korea will emerge as a top automobile production country.

Proper performance measurement is an important issue in library operational management. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is applied to evaluate the relative operational efficiency of 25 U.S. private research-university library members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Operations of each library decision-making unit are considered as a production process using four resource input and four service output variables. The model results are analyzed and compared with the efficient group and a peer group by using a t-test. The model provides decision-makers with more accurate information to implement better library services with appropriate resource allocation.