Blockchain is an immutable ledger that records transactions and tracks assets using a common communication protocol. It stores a copy of the blockchain and implements a consensus function to verify transactions. Blockchain is applied to industries beyond finance, such as retail, to maintain security and transparency. Consumers with knowledge of blockchain technology are likely to be affected when evaluating products with blockchain embedded, impacting their product evaluation. The study investigates the impact of blockchain technology on consumers' product evaluation and how knowledge of blockchain and product quality moderate its effects.

The aspiration of entrepreneurs to extensively grow their firms has been found to make stronger contribution to economic growth than the entrepreneurship rate in general. Formal and informal institutions shape the business environments in which companies are operating. Thus, they affect entrepreneurs’ beliefs about firm growth. However, prior research gives little attention to the interaction effects of formal and informal institutions on entrepreneurial growth aspiration.

This study presents how two types of integrated science and engineering lessons affect students’ engineering problem solving skills and their perceptions of engineering. In total, 146 middle school students participated in this study. Eighty-six students participated in the Type I lesson (complete engineering design lesson with a science knowledge application) and 60 students participated in the Type II lesson (engineering design without a science knowledge application). Two main datasets, (1) students’ Creative Engineering Problem Solving Propensity (CEPSP) measurement scores and (2) open-ended survey questions about students’ perceptions of engineering, were collected before and after the lessons. The results of this study show that after participating in the Type I lesson, students’ CEPSP scores significantly increased, whereas the CEPSP scores of the students who participated in the Type II lesson did not increase significantly. In addition, students who participated in the Type I lesson perceived engineering and the engineering integrated science lesson differently compared to the students who participated in the Type II lesson. The results of this study show that engineering integrated science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) lessons should include a complete engineering design and a science knowledge application to improve students’ engineering problem solving skills.

본 연구는 지역 클러스터 내에 존재하는 기술지식 교류 네트워크의 전반적인 구조적 특징을 파악하기 위해 사회네트워크 분석에 토대한 구조적 등위성 분석을 실증적으로 수행한다. 지금까지 기존 연구들은 구조적으로 등위적인 집단들 간에 성과차이가 존재하는 것으로 개념적으로 주장하였다. 그러나, 이에 대한 실증연구가 거의 없어 본 연구가 이를 보완하기 위해 수행되었다. 분석을 위해 구미국가산업단지 내에서 53개의 기술지식 교류 관련 협회 등을 조사하여 2550개 기업의 2-mode 네트워크 데이터를 활용하였다. 분석결과, 구조적 등위 집단들이 규정되고 중요한 기업들의 속성에 기초하여 네트워크 기존기업(established firms), 중개 기업(broker firms), 신생기업(emerging firms), 고립 기업(isolationist firms)으로 4개의 역할이 결정될 수 있었다. 또한, 블록 1에서 불록 4로 구분된 각각의 구조적 등위 집단들 즉, 역할들 간의 성과(매출액), 급진적 혁신성향, 기술혁신역량 차이에 대한 검증에서는 역할마다 검증결과가 차별적일 수 있음이 본 연구를 통해 제시되었다. 마지막으로 본 연구는 구조적으로 등위적인 집단들 간의 성과차이에 대한 연구를 발전시킬 필요성을 제안한다.

Despite the recognized importance of morphological knowledge to literacy outcomes such as vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, two of its subconstructs— morphological awareness and morphological processing—have received comparatively little attention. In response, the aim of the study reported here was to examine how the relationships between morphological awareness and morphological processing, especially in terms of morphological transparency and morphological frequency, contribute to the vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of 62 native Korean-speaking secondary school students—27 eighth-graders and 35 tenth-graders— learning English as a foreign language. The students’ performance on the Test of Morphological Structure and the Word Reading Test was assessed to gauge their compounding awareness, inflectional awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. The results indicated that the students’ performance was varied depending on morphological transparency and frequency. In addition, it was not morphological processing, but rather morphological awareness that explained variances in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, when compounding awareness and inflectional awareness were controlled for. This paper discusses what such findings imply for teaching English as a foreign language to Korean learners.

With the development of information technology, the market situation is changing more rapidly than ever. The change is most rapid in the preferences and lifestyle of consumers. For companies to survive in such an environment, it is indispensable to develop innovative and competitive new products by better understanding the needs of consumers. Any novel and meaningful idea of a new product basically originates from knowledge, which plays an important role in the performance of new products because it is the most valuable asset for a business entity. In this study, the author considers the knowledge sharing process as a dynamic aspect based on the term “knowledge,” carrying a static meaning as used in the existing research. The nature of the knowledge sharing process pertaining to new product development has been largely divided into three terms and then re-established. The author focuses on a new product development team as the subject of sharing and providing knowledge on new products, and regards the solution to problems that may arise in the development process as the stability of the team. The moderating effect was examined by the relationship between the type of knowledge sharing process and the outcome of the new product with the variable of team stability. The results indicate that the convergence and similarity of the knowledge sharing process affect new product performance as positive variables, whereas the tacitness of the knowledge sharing process does not lead to a significant result in terms of performance of new products. This study also shows that the stability of the team has a positively direct effect on the outcome of the new product. Thus, the convergence process of various kinds of knowledge positively affects the diversity and innovation of new product concepts. Moreover, the same recognition area or shared goal awareness and sense of responsibility play important roles in the performance of the new product. The moderating effect of team stability between the type of knowledge sharing process and new product performance is described in the convergence and tacitness of the knowledge sharing process. In the process of merging existing knowledge with new knowledge or sharing embedded knowledge in the members with, the activity wherein the members of the NPD team communicate and collaborate with each other over a long period of time will provide opportunity to improve the performance of the new product. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the type of knowledge sharing process, the stability of the team, and new product performance. Academic and managerial implications and the directions for future research are discussed as well.

The importance of Social Networking Services (SNS) has increased in recent years because consumers are able to communicate with each other to share their information and experiences via SNS. This allows to easily distribute critical information and is beneficial to other potential consumers. Current studies confirm the important role of social media so that firms can get valuable information to respond to the heterogeneous customers’ needs through SNS (e.g., Rishika, Kumar, Janakiraman, & Bezawada, 2013). This paradigm shift allows firms to consider the important role of SNS on the current fashion market. A firm communicates with consumers sharing their opinions, experiences, and feedback existing on SNS, called social platform, which provides valuable information to respond to consumers’ needs. In the last decades, rapid advancements in technology and customer demands pushed firms to collaborate with outside partners to collect information, creating valuable products or services. In such competitive environments, customers’ involvement is increasingly important because integrating external sources of knowledge from them can result in major advantages for the firm (Nooteboon, 1999). Further, Von Hippel (1986) emphasizes the importance of the participation of the lead users whose present strong needs will become general in a marketplace months or years in the future. They have the tendency to adopt new products earlier than normal customers. According to Von Hippel (2006), lead users may provide valuable ideas for the firm which results in novel products. Lead users can diffuse product information to other customer groups and may play a pivotal role between the firm and traditional customer groups. Likewise, the fashion leaders in the fashion industry have an important role because firms are able to know future market trends from them. Further, the role of fashion leaders is much more important because of the characteristics of the fashion industry. It is very difficult to foresee a trend as customer demand changes rapidly and becomes more heterogeneous. Fashion leaders purchase new fashion products quicker than other people, are more interested in clothing, and invest more in fashion than the general consumer (Goldsmith, Freiden, & Kilsheimer, 1993). Thus, fashion leaders hold an important role as a source of information and for the word-of-mouth effect in the fashion market (Kim & Hong, 2011). The fashion information that fashion leaders deliver builds more trust and interest than direct fashion advertisement or PR, and they have an important influence on the spread of new fashion styles (Vernette, 2004). Additionally, the effects of online word-of-mouth are different from the traditional word-of-mouth effects because there are numerous senders and receivers, and conversations last much longer. Moreover, viral content that includes vivid visual images can especially be influential on network participants (Kulmala, Mesiranta, & Tuominen, 2013; Wolny & Mueller, 2013). We argue that fashion leaders may have a strong impact on leading a trend in the current fashion industry and influence the consumers who share information and experiences with them on fashion platforms to purchase products. Thus, the purpose of our study is to examine the role of fashion leaders in influencing purchase intention of the potential customers who are using the fashion platforms to take information from them. Further, we will outline how fashion leaders influence the creation of valuable fashion platforms and valuable information through sharing their knowledge through fashion platforms. Online surveys were administrated to conduct empirical analyses for this study. Taking the gender and age characteristics of interest based SNS users into consideration, the research sample concentrated on female users in their teenage to 30s, who had the experience with fashion social platforms. The main research results are as follows. First, we found that fashion leaders create valuable information for the other users to visit fashion platforms, providing correct, trendy and trustworthy information to other users. Second, the quality of information and value of a fashion platform that are created by fashion leaders positively influence the users when considering their future purchase decision making and recommendations to other potential consumers to visit the fashion platform. We have some implications in our study. First, we contribute by finding a factor to explain how the value of social fashion platforms can be created and how important the value of information provided by fashion leaders is in the fashion industry in Korea. We found that the role of fashion leaders in influencing a trend of current fashion in the Korean industry is important. The advent of social media, such as SNS, allows us to explain how one-way communication with consumers to set up a firm’s marketing strategy is limited. As the results of this study are specific to the fashion industry, they can be used as a fundamental study to understand the role of fashion leaders to create value on social platforms and share valuable information to normal users. Moreover, this study can contribute to the understanding how social platforms affect the fashion industry through two-way communication to the potential customers using the fashion leaders. It is important for fashion corporations that are interested in social services to have a valuable knowledge of social platform users. Therefore, fashion marketers who are attempting to utilize social platforms can use this study as preliminary data to understand fashion social platform users, who are the potential consumers.

This study investigated the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and strategy use to L2 listening success, especially in bottom-up and top-down dominant listening tasks. Participants (n = 130) were Korean college students in a required listening course. The tested variables for linguistic knowledge were sentence processing speed, grammar, receptive vocabulary, and productive vocabulary. Listening strategy use was measured with a metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire. We hypothesized that linguistic knowledge will make greater contributions to Bottom-Up-Listening-Comprehension (BULC) than to Top-Down-Listening Comprehension (TDLC), and different aspects of strategies will be accessed in each comprehension type due to different psycholinguistic features of the tasks. A series of stepwise multiple regressions were conducted and confirmed our prediction. The unique variance explained by linguistic knowledge was 27.8% in BULC, but 22.4% in TDLC. Strategy items that address problem solving and mental translation were significantly related to BULC, while items dealing with directed attention and person knowledge had significant explanatory power for TDLC.

This study aimed to investigate the influence of spiritual leadership on innovative work behavior and the effect of knowledge sharing on job crafting. Furthermore, the roles of knowledge sharing as a mediator for the impact of spiritual leadership on innovative work behavior, and job crafting as a mediator for the relationship between variables, were also examined. This research employed quantitative analysis, including the PLS-SEM approach; SMART-PLS, a measurement and structural equation model was employed to explain the relationship between variables, and the effect of mediation. The population study consisted of all lecturers at the Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Economics and Business at the PTKIN in East Java, Indonesia, comprising 220 randomly-selected samples. The result showed spiritual leadership does not directly influence innovative work behavior, while knowledge sharing directly affects job crafting. The findings indicated knowledge sharing mediates the impact of spiritual leadership on innovative work behavior, and the role of job crafting as a mediator for the relationship between variables was accepted. Therefore, this research confirms a positive influence of knowledge sharing on job crafting, and indicates both factors play an important role in mediating between variables, and are important for lecturers’ innovative work behavior.

The purpose of the study is to explore the psychological empowerment of the worker as a moderator to explain the link between knowledge sharing and innovative work behaviour within the telecommunication sector of Saudi Arabia. This study is based on a quantitative approach, having collected data through a series of questionnaires developed on previous studies. This study has applied Smart-Partial Least Squares (PLS) for the data analysis. The results revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between knowledge sharing and innovative work behaviour. The knowledge sharing increases the competencies of the workers, bringing about more creativeness and perfection. Furthermore, this study elaborates that psychological empowerment plays an important role as a moderator in making a strong relationship between knowledge sharing and innovative work behaviour. This study concluded that the innovative work behaviour in any organisation depends on the practice, experience, and capabilities of the workers and, most importantly, the interdepartmental knowledge shared amongst them. The sharing of knowledge psychologically empowers the worker to bring creativity, modernization and excellence in the work that affects the marginal productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction at a great extent. These factors provide long-run sustainability to business in a highly competitive market environment.

As various types of information technology systems are becoming more pervasive than ever, many studies have evaluated the systems from the user perspective. Some of them have used surveys to measure consumers’ cognitive responses to the target technology. However, this method may cause problems if the survey participants do not have a useful frame of reference for evaluating an unfamiliar system. To examine this issue, the current study empirically tested the effect of personal product knowledge on the predictability of a behavioral model, such as Technology Acceptance Model. A series of measurement invariance tests as well as multi-group comparison tests were conducted for rigorous examination of the data. Our analysis showed that the variance of attitude that is explained by the two believes (perceived usefulness and ease of use) was relatively small when the survey respondents had lower amount of product knowledge. Moreover, the group had weaker causal relationship between attitude and intention to use the technology, hindering the predictability of the research model. The results indicated that respondents should have a certain amount of knowledge of the target system in order to form accurate beliefs and behavioral decisions. The findings of this study provide important implications on sampling strategies for researchers with new technology.

The study aims to predict the behavior of tourists in Hadong County, which is registered as KIAHS. Based on the theory of planning behavior, we intend to verify the theory of planned behaviour, which adds descriptive parameters of the perceived value and prior knowledge of an agricultural heritage. In detail, first, the perceived value and prior knowledge of tourists about an agricultural heritage understand the influence of tourists’ Attitude. Second, we could see the role of the behavioral factors in the causal relationship of the planned behavioral theory. We have identified the planned behavioral theory that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceptual behavior controls affect the intention of the revisit. Hadong should remember that by sending and providing various information about Hadong Green Tea and World Agricultural Heritage sites, it is possible to elicit changes in visitor attitudes and revisit visits.