The top country of organic agriculture becomes nowadays well known Germany in terms of technical levels not only in the field of organic plant & animal production but also food processing & marketing. In this paper, 3 main factors which exerted a strong influence on the evolution & development of German organic agriculture in Germany were discussed.First, German Universities such as University of Bonn, University of Giessen, and Hohenheim University established Dept of Organic Agriculture and offers the organic agriculture major in the Master & Ph D course, while University of Kassel established College of Organic Agriculture and offers 23 major courses in various organic agriculture sectors. Furthermore most agriculture colleges in Germany offers some organic agriculture subjects to the students, because organic agriculture is one of the emerging industries in the agricultural sector, and farmers and consumers pay a great attention. There are 50 universities which offer agriculture courses in Korea, nevertheless none of Korean university offers Dept of Organic Agriculture. Second, German federal government established National Institute of Organic Agriculture in Trenthorst and tried to develop new scientific technology and skills for organic plant and animal production. And these new technical information was transferred to organic farmers through Demonstration Farm which is located in more than 200 sites. Third, Organic Agriculture Extension Service Center such as Kompetenzzentrum Oekolandbau Niedersachen (KÖN) was established in each states from 2002. These Organic Centers offer various advices for organic farmers verified scientifically or and the technical package for conversion farmer too.

중국 경제성장에 핵심적 역할을 해왔던 광동성(廣東省) 동관시(東蒄市)는 지리적으로 근접해 있는 홍콩을 이용하여 줄곧 경제발전을 추구해 왔다. 1980 년대 초반은 홍콩으로부터 가전산업 관련 중소 다국적 기업이 동관지역에 진출하여 생산 공장을 세우고, 그 후 1990년 중반에는 대만의 PC제조업체의 진 출이 잇따르면서 현재 동관에는 정보통신산업과 PC부품 및 전자산업 중심으로 지역 산업클러스터가 발전해 왔다. 동관시 산업클러스터 사례는 개혁개방 이후 중국 제조업 산업의 발전뿐만 아니라, 글로벌 시대에 해외직접투자와 아 시아지역 후-후발산업국가에서의 지역경제의 성장 및 산업발전과정의 연구에 대한 이론적 시사점을 줄 수 있는 지역적 사례 중의 하나다. 본 연구는 광동 성 동관시 지역산업클러스터의 사례를 중심으로 이론적으로는 지역산업발전의 내생적 성장요인 분석(NMID) 혹은 글로벌 생산네트워크와의 외부적 연계성을 기초로 하는 산업의 지역적 분화(GPN)에 대한 이 두 관점을 상호 비교하 고, 글로벌 생산체계에서 공간적으로 현재 동관시 지역이 가지고 있는 산업클 러스터의 위치와 역할을 설명하였다. 또한 산업적인 측면에서 생산네트워크 접근틀과 제도적 역량이라는 이론적 관점을 활용하여 중국 동관시 지역산업과 기업들이 보유하고 있는 상대적 경쟁력을 분석하였다.

This study empirically analyzes the effect of IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity on their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development. This research constructs a mediating model based on the open innovation perspective and tests it with the 138 samples of South Korean IT SME ventures based on the ordinary least squares regression. This research is expected to make a good contribution by shedding a new light on the following three points about the critical role of IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity in increasing their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development which has scarcely been illuminated in the extant studies in the field of the management of technology for SMEs. First, IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity positively influences their production period reduction. Second, the external information network diversity positively influences IT SMEs’ ventures’ productivity improvement. Third, IT SME ventures’ production period reduction partially mediates the influence of IT SME ventures’ external network diversity on their productivity improvement. These three fresh points are expected to provide useful theoretical and practical implications. Related to the theoretical implication, this research provides a fresh implication that IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity positively influences not only their production period reduction but also productivity improvement generated from technology development. Concerning the practical implication, this study suggests that the CEOs in IT SME ventures make strategic efforts to use more diverse external information sources in order to increase their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development.

IT 영업 역량 모델과 측정도구를 활용하면 IT 영업 인력의 수행 향상과 다양한 방식의 형식, 무형식학 습을 제공할 수 있다. 하지만 국내 IT 영업 인력의 역량에 대한 모델과 이를 측정할 수 있는 도구 개발 연구는 미진하다. 이에 따라 IT 영업 인력에게 필요한 영업 역량을 탐색하여 역량 모델을 구성하였다. 또한 구성된 IT 영업 역량 모델을 통해 국내 영업 현장에 적합하고 신뢰도와 타당도가 검증된 IT 영업 역량 측정도구를 개발하였다. 이를 위해 역량 모델의 개발, 측정도구의 예비문항 개발, 측정도구의 타당화의 세 단계를 거쳤다. 연구 결과 다음과 같은 결론을 내릴 수 있었다. 첫째, 국내 IT 영업 환경에 맞는 IT 영업 역량 모델은 성취와 행동 역량군, 대인 서비스 역량군, 관계 역량군, 지적 능력 활용 역량군, 자기 통제감 역량군, 영업 활동의 6개 역량군과 14개 역량으로 구성된다. 둘째, IT 영업 현장 전문가와 교육 전문가로 구성된 전문가 협의회를 각각 실시하여 예비문항을 개발하였고, 예비 IT 영업 역량 측정도구의 타당도를 확보하였다. 셋째, 검증된 예비문항을 사용하여 IT 영업 현장 인력 580명을 대상으로 본조사를 실시하여 신뢰도 및 교차타당도 검증으로 최종 도구를 확정하였다. 최종 확정된 IT 영업 역량 측정도구는 6개 역량군, 14개 역량, 78문항이다.

This article aims to find the answer to the question whether it is possible for the international society to denuclearize North Korea or not in the situation that North Korea is fast developing nuclear weapons and missiles in defiance of economic sanctions. For this aim, I approached this issue in the following steps. Firstly, I reviewed some basic points related to this issue. 1) I constructed the model for relationships between two countries. The types are confrontation, war and normal relationship. 2) I classified strategies for survival of a country. The types are self-reliance, forming alliance, collective security and world government. 3) I classified statuses of nuclearized countries. The statuses are being recognized, having declared and not having declared. Secondly, I checked the characteristics of the strategies of North Korea for its survival. Even though they are seeking the strategies of self-reliance, forming alliance and collective security, they are laying emphasis on self-reliance. This might be deeply related to their persistent seeking of nuclear weapons. Thirdly, I reviewed the development of North Korean nuclear issue focusing on the movements for nuclearization and denuclearization. Fourthly, I checked the opinions of some experts about the question whether its nuclearization is North Korea’s real goal or not. Fifthly, I constructed the dynamics of the North Korean nuclear issue focusing on the goals and means of the key players (North Korea, the U.S. and China). Sixthly, I checked the possibility of denuclearizing North Korea based on the analysis. Seventhly, I raised the task of preparing for the possibility that denuclearizing North Korea is hard to be attained.

According to Software Quality Assurance (SQA) and the Human Centred Design (HCD) guidelines for e-navigation by Maritime Safety Committee of International Maritime Organization, software quality related activities and practices will be in demand in the maritime field. To provide high quality software and a usable system to users, e-navigation SQA is supported by Republic of Korea. After merging with the HCD as suggested by Australia, it has been endorsed as IMO Circ.1512 in June 2015. To apply SQA to the maritime industry, it needs to achieve the current status of maritime software related industries. This article introduces the IMO Circ.1512 and the progress of e-navigation SQA so far including the international workshop held in Busan, Korea as previous accomplishments. Also, the result of a survey on the status of software quality management of the Korean domestic maritime IT related industry will be described. The purpose of survey is to find out how SQA is dealt with in domestic industry, what experiences the industry have had so far and what software project related issues they have. The questionnaire is composed of two parts. The first part mainly deals with fundamental knowledge about the scale of the company and the number of development teams s. The second part consists of three sub-parts with Quality Management, Configuration Management, and Process Management. Otherwise, several questions are surveyed with respect to engineering tools for SQA and education support. Approximately 150 cases were gathered. The outcome of the survey shows some points that both of industry and government can contemplate for the future.

Bloom of small centric diatom Stephanodiscus is quite occasional in winter season in temperate freshwater ecosystems. It often leads to degradation of water quality and affects the quality of supplied drinking water. In a previous study, we have found that naphthoquinone (NQ) 4-6 derivate is an effective tool for efficient mitigation of natural S. hantzschii blooms. In the present research, polylactide (PLA) and agar foam were used as immobilized agent for NQ 4-6 to improve the efficiency of NQ 4-6 compound releasing process for its application under various field conditions. Mesocosm experiments at 10 ton scale suggested that the abundance of S. hantzschii was continuously increased in the control and upon treatment of the mesocosm with immobilized NQ 4-6 from PLA and agar foam. Their algicidal activities were 78.8% and 77.1%, respectively, on S. hantzschii after 10 days. In the mesocosm experiments, the dynamics of biotic (bacteria, HNFs, ciliates, zooplankton) and abiotic (water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, nutrients) factors remained unaffected. They exhibited similar trends in the control and treatment groups. Therefore, the immobilized NQ 4-6 from PLA and agar foam has potential to be used as an alternative algicidal substance to effectively mitigate natural S. hantzschii blooms under various field conditions. In addition, it not only can be used to control S. hantzschii, but also is an effective technique. The immobilized NQ 4-6 showed stable controlled release in desired system.

본고에서는 한중 양국에서 사용하는 동형한자어 중 특히 형태는 같지만 의미가 전혀 다른 동형완전이의어에 주목하여 연구를 진행하였다. 먼저 중국어 ‘기본어휘표’에 있는 2음절 단어 중 한중 동형완전이의어를 골라 각 단어의 의미를 비교해 살펴보았다. 그리고 선별한 한자어 들을 단어의 의미변화 유형에 따라 의미가 확대된 경우, 의미가 축소된 경우, 의미가 전이된 경우, 어원이 다른 경우 등 네 가지로 분류하고, 동형이의어가 발생하게 된 원인을 언어적, 역사적, 사회 문화적 원인, 외국어의 영향 등 네 가지로 나누어 살펴보았다. 이어서 선행연구 를 통해 몇 가지 동형이의어 교육방법을 살펴보고 이를 활용해 동형완전이의어를 효과적으로 교수-학습할 수 있는 방법으로 대비 분석을 통한 교육방법과 Ausubel의 선행조직자를 이용 한 유의미 학습 방안을 제시하였다.

In several industries, including the agriculture industry, information and communication technology (ICT) expenditure has been gradually increasing. This study explores the ICT investment of Korean agricultural corporations, and examines the effect of ICT investment on their profitability using an IT portfolio framework. As the organizational capabilities and environment in which ICT is used is critical in examining its impact, the IT-savvy level is used as a moderator. An increase in ICT investment size results in a significantly positive effect on profitability in organizations with higher IT-savvy levels, whereas there is no effect in organizations with lower IT-savvy levels. This study shows the necessity of understanding the structure of ICT investments in the agriculture industry, and suggests the importance of organizational capabilities and environment in making best use of ICT.

Synthetic membranes, based on polymers or inorganic membranes, are now used in a wide variety of gas separations. For gas separation membranes, during the 1980’s, permeability data on six common gases were complied, and the tradeoff relationship was analyzed. The upper bound relationship was established empirically. Recognizing the exquisite permeability and selectivity of biological membranes and the deleterious nature of broad pore size distributions and flexibility of polymer chains on permeability/selectivity combinations, a number of approaches have been pursued to develop membranes with better transport and separation properties. There has been an evolution in design of materials for both gas and liquid separation membranes, brought about by advances in structural control of materials and by better understanding of natural membranes.

Well-developed listening skills are crucial to success in the marketing profession. Poor listening skills have been rated as the most important contributing factor to salesperson failure (Ingram et al., 1992). Listening errors can result in conflicts, missed business opportunities, alienated relationships, and a waste of time and money (Bergeron & Laroche, 2009). Recognizing the importance of effective listening, organizations such as Pfizer, Ford, IBM have introduced listening training programs for all their personnel (Shepherd et al., 1997). A number of definitions exist for “listening” (e.g., Bergeron & Laroche, 2009). From the marketing perspective, this paper adopts a well-accepted listening definition as “the cognitive process of actively sensing, interpreting, evaluating and responding to the verbal and nonverbal messages of present or potential customers” (Castleberry & Shepherd, 1993, p.36). Prior research has underscored the importance of “active listening” strategies such as active empathetic listening (Drollinger et al., 2006; Bodie, 2011); adaptive selling (Spiro & Weitz, 1990); and listening across cultures (Imhof & Janusik, 2006). However, despite its importance, neither marketing students nor professionals receive coaching or instruction for situations when listening is particularly difficult – i.e., when we are required to listen carefully to another person in the presence of hindrances to communication (distractions, inattention, poor delivery). Salespeople, students, journalists, counselors … are often faced with the task of “tough listening” - when they must listen carefully to a person that is not communicating in an interesting or engaging manner, when the environment is full of distractions, or when they as listeners are fatigued. The major hindrances to effective listening have been well documented, but extant research that addresses how people might overcome those hindrances is scant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the range of strategies that people use to improve their comprehension and empathy of others when they wish to listen carefully but find it difficult to do so. The practice of effective listening is perhaps one of the most human and fundamental components of community, commerce, and culture. Several academic disciplines such as marketing, education, communication, and psychology have closely examined the listening process in an effort to understand and improve it.

Medical tourism has becoming a topic of increase interest for both researchers and practitioners all around the world. The current article intends to propose a conceptual framework that presents antecedents and outcomes of consumers (patients) desires to undergo medical tourism practices, as well as moderators that can strengthen or weaken the established relationships. In the future the model should be tested in cross cultural context and so contribute to give more insights for researchers and mangers of medical tourism.

Loyalty programs are one of the most widely used strategy to promote sales and manage consumer relationship. According to Stourm, Bradlow, and Fader (2015), loyalty programs are divided into two types: non-linear programs and linear programs. Of these two programs, linear loyalty programs are increasingly expanding thanks to the development of digital technology. However, it is doubtful whether the findings of previous researches investigating non-linear loyalty programs also hold true for linear loyalty programs. Our study aims to investigate what induces consumers to stockpile or use their points in linear loyalty programs. This is particularly important because it seems that consumers really have no economic incentive to stockpile points in such programs. They are not rewarded for their “stockpiling” behavior- the amount of points accumulated for 1 dollar remains the same regardless of whether a consumer has already accumulated 100 points or 10000 points. The present research shows that in linear loyalty programs, consumers stockpile points just for the sake of “it”. That is, our studies show that the degree to which consumers perceive their effort to invest until they reach certain point level (goal) to be high or low influences consumers’ stockpiling decision. Specifically, when consumers expect that they have to invest greater effort, they are more likely to accumulate points compared to when they expect they don’t have to invest a lot of effort. In the main study, we show that this effect was mediated by consumers’ anticipation utility. Also, we found an interesting phenomenon that shows even when a certain point level is not obviously given consumers still set their own goals and calculate their effort needed to reach the goal.

This paper offers a discursive perspective to studying corporate identity and brand. It extends existing scholarship that adopts alternative approaches to understanding corporate identity, seeing it as polysemic, rather than unitary; and constructed, rather than pre-existing. Using a case study of a contemporary global church that combines religion, marketing and popular culture, it shows how disparate and potentially contradictory cultural resources are combined in corporate branding. Church text and corporate communication materials were collected and analysed to identify the presence and combination of different discourses. Our analysis shows how Christian, market, popular and contemporary spirituality discourses were combined using three discursive strategies which we call: differentiation, spectacularizing and personalizing. The research demonstrates the process of how a corporate brand identity is ‘made’ as well as how disparate and contradictory discourses can be successfully combined. This approach can be practically extended to studying other types of organizations, corporate and non-corporate.

There are approximately 116 straits used for international navigation around the world. Some of them are important international maritime chokepoints, namely the Dover Strait, Hormuz Strait, Straits of Malacca and Singapore and the Russian straits across the Northeast Arctic Passage. Due to the high number of navigational traffic going through these straits, vessel-source pollution is endemic in these waters. This article examines the applicable international legal framework on protection of the marine environment of straits used for international navigation such as Part XII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and other related legal measures like International Maritime Organization conventions on protection of the marine environment. This article concludes by stating that the present framework is not sufficient in properly balancing two vital interests in the maritime world – protection of the marine environment vis-à-vis shipping.

This study intended to exploratively depict both the influence of Environmental Turbulence, Market Orientation, and Learning Orientation of IT companies on Marketing Capability which is one of the organizational performance, and the moderating effects of Learning Orientation and Environmental Turbulence of IT companies on the relationship between Market Orientation and Marketing Capability as well as the relationship between Learning Orientation and Marketing Capability based on respective interactions among related variables. Through this study, several factors contributing to the enhancement of organizational performance such as competitor orientation, shared vision, and open-mindedness were highlighted as major ones, with the fact that competitive intensity, market and technological turbulence of environmental turbulence dimension make effects on organizational performance through interaction effect.

Hemerobius contumax Tjeder, 1932 is a well known species of Hemerobiidae (Neuroptera) in Europe and Middle East countries, but has never been found in Asia. In Korea, a total of eight hemerobiid species have been recorded including the genus Hemerobius. So far only two species, Hemerobius humulinus and Hemerobius harmandinus are reported. Recently we collected another species of which the specific identity is in question: morphologically very similar to Hemerobius contumax but with c.a. 5% difference in COI barcode sequences. With 5% genetic difference, it may be easily considered as a different species from H. contumax. However, the adult image from the specimen sequenced for H. contumax found in the BOLD site is morphologically slightly off from the usual H. contumax, and there is still an investigation needed to confirm its specific identity. In any case, here we provide a brief description, photos of adult and male genitalia and DNA barcode sequence based the specimen examined.