KJC Korea
Journal Central

The Public Institutions Management Act of 2007 stipulates the criteria for designating and classifying of public institutions. Public institutions are classified into the three main categories of state-owned enterprises(SOEs), quasi-governmental institutions and non-classified public institutions by their number of personnel, asset size, and self-generated revenue ratio. The designation and classification of public institutions is of great significance because such action has an enormous impact on a range of aspects, including their governance structure and management system. But, there is still ambiguities in the criteria for determining which institutions to include in the scope of application and category. Within the public institutions, it is also difficult to demarcate the boundary between SOEs and quasi-governmental institutions, mainly because of ambiguities in distinguishing market from non-market activities. In particular, the criteria for designation and classification of public institutions in Korea do not coincidence with the conceptual framework provided by the System of National Accounts 2008. According to the 2008 SNA, to identify which non-market nonprofit institutions are treated as quasi-governmental institutions, conditions for control by government must be identified. And, to determine which enterprises are treated as SOEs, it is necessary to specify conditions for control by government and the concept of economically significant prices. It makes clear a set of indicators which can be used to determine whether the government controls quasi-governmental institutions and SOEs. It provides also 50% criterion as to the concept of economically significant prices. In order to resolve the existing problems in the designation and classification system, it is necessary to elaborate more precisely the notion of control of government which is the main criterion distinguishing the public and private sectors, and the notion of economically significant prices which is used for distinguishing between quasi-governmental institutions and SOEs.

The efforts of the Lee Myung-bak administration to reform public institutions have included an emphasis on labor-management relations, as well as more general management issues. Against this background, this study reports the results of an empirical analysis on current conditions and the influence of internal human resource management (HRM) on labor-management. The analysis is based upon the collective labor agreements of the 88 public institutions, along with indices of labor-management relations and HRM, which were constructed by the author. The empirical results reveal the influence of labor-management relations on HRM. This influence is stronger upon working conditions and welfare benefits, rather than the scale and activity of labor unions.

In recent years, it has been increasingly argued that the public policy implementation structures are changing from hierarchies to network structures. However, some scholars have questioned this argument, observing that policy implementation networks are the exception, not the rule. To provide an empirical contribution to this debate, this study analyzes 250 acts that were legislated in two periods; the 11th Korean National Assembly (1981-1985) and the 17th Korean National Assembly (2004-2008). The results reveal that the formal policy implementation structures in Korea are dominated by multi-actor network structures, rather than single-actor hierarchical structures. However, there is little evidence that multi-actor network structures are becoming predominant. Another finding demonstrates that the actual policy implementation networks in Korea tend to consist of actors from inside the public sector, rather than inter-sectoral networks between the public and private sector. Finally, the results support the observation that implementation structures in Korean government vary according to the policy area. The major implication of this study is that while the evidence generally supports the dominance of multi-actor network structure in Korean policy implementation, the landscape of policy implementation is much more complex in reality than the hierarchy-network dichotomy.

Involuntary non-compliance is the unique situation which occurs when a target group cannot comply with a policy in spite of their willingness to do so. This state of affairs stems from errors in policy design. In this situation, while members of the target group may not expect meaningful policy benefits, they tend to adapt their behavior in order to avoid being penalized. However, this behavior may be opportunistic and lead to policy failure. In order to understand involuntary non-compliance more deeply, this study attempts to establish a dynamic model, which categorizes policy compliance according to decision and implementation. In involuntary non-compliance, most of the problems occur in the implementation stages, such as the target group’s opportunistic behavior, unintended consequences of policy design, and policy failure. To verify this model, this study analyzes a unique case; regulations to enhance the employment rate for universities.

This study analyzes the factors which have influenced non-compliant behavior in the two-stage competition process of the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) system of Public Procurement Service of Korea since 2009. Based on previous studies, expectations, accuracy, and effectiveness of policy were included as factors in the policy contents category. For the policy application group category, suppliers' psychology, pertinent suppliers that have experience with competitive bids, and capabilities were selected. In regard to the policy implementation group category, reliability of persons-in-charge, policy legitimacy, and extent of demand for policy were chosen. These nine prerequisite factors were ascertained to examine the relationship with the degree of non-compliance. Analysis of the focus group interview results reveals that expectations on policy effectiveness were the major factors that caused supplier non-compliance in the policy contents category. For the policy application group category, the group of pertinent suppliers with experience of competitive bidding was the most influential factor, while in the policy implementation group category, policy legitimacy was the most influential factor. The study found typical non-compliant behaviors, such as bringing about heated price competition due to excessively low sales prices, attempting to supply poor quality goods with sub-standard specifications, distorting price data, and trying to avoid the MAS two-stage competition process.

This study analyzes the credibility of the evaluation system in the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), which is responsible for funding and promoting IT R&D programs, and which plays a significant role in the ‘Technology Innovation Program for Knowledge Economy’. In addition, policy suggestions for improving the credibility of NIPA’s evaluation system are made. The results reveal that NIPA’s evaluation system has been more focused on impartiality rather than expertise in terms of the selection of evaluators, evaluation practice, and the career management system of evaluators. Therefore, in order to improve the credibility of NIPA’s evaluation system, it is necessary to enhance the evaluation system as a whole through focusing on expertise in the individual stages of the evaluation process.

This study categorizes the functions of water management policy according to the differences in domain and policy values, as well as analyzing the overlapping policy, and also suggests effective improvement measures to minimize the problems caused by overlapping functions. The analysis results for the policy domain center on the Ministry of Environment. Water quality control and management were found to be at the heart of the work of the Ministry, however, water supply control occupied the fringes, and river conservation resided in no man’s land. In addition, underground-water management and dam administration were found to be on the peripheries of the work of the Ministry of Environment, while the management of hot springs and the development of water resources were considered to be largely alien territories. In terms of measures to improve overlapping policy functions, this study suggests the readjustment of the major functions of government departments, the establishment of a government organization for integration and arbitration, and integrated administration among several government departments. The contribution of the present study is that it goes beyond simple suggestions to improve the problems of water control, and is based on a close investigation of why overlapping functions occur.

This study utilizes a structural equation model in order to analyze the factors which influenced the performance of an inter-local governmental collaborative project. According to the results of the analysis, all factors positively affected the outcome of the project. As such, this study has the following implications for inter-local government collaboration. Institutional and financial factors, participation, and local government capability all have a positive effect on the outcome of inter-local governmental collaboration, while trust has a moderating effect. The trust factor therefore has an indirect positive effect on the outcome of collaboration.

Coordinating mechanisms include hierarchies, markets, and networks. Recent administrative reforms can be understood as attempts to utilize markets or networks as major coordinating mechanisms, rather than the hierarchies that have been regarded as the main governing structure for most of the 20th century. This study, based on analyses of the British reform cases of CCT and JUG, aims to highlight the difficulties of utilizing markets and networks in their pure forms, and finds that they can be applied in reality only as hybrid forms which contain elements of hierarchies. The results of the study suggest that hierarchies are necessary elements for coordination, and successful administrative reforms depend on the effective amalgamation of markets or networks with hierarchical coordinating mechanisms.

This study aims to explore how environmental NGOs formed interorganizational networks as environmental policies evolved, and also to analyze NGO networks in terms of their structural characteristics and changes. The relational approach revealed that under President Kim Young-Sam, this sector displayed network characteristics by interacting with the environmental union movement. Under President Kim Dae-Jung’s presidency, a new structural characteristic arose from the fact that different organizations corresponded with various environmental NGOs. Using the positional approach and the Euclidean distance between three environmental NGOs, the findings reveal that as changes occurred in the government, the Environmental Movement Organization and the Green Coalition became more closely entwined. This study also analyzed the changes within the overall network of environmental NGOs, which was found to undergo changes in response to the social and environmental shifts that occurred under each government. At the time of the early environmental movements, the environmental NGO sector displayed a network characteristic with a focus on one organization. Yet, in the first years of the Kim Dae-Jung administration, interorganizational networks began to form according to environmental issues, and by the time of the Roh Mu-Hyun presidency, network characteristics involved a similar central role for environmental NGOs and a focus on regional environmental problems in addition to wider environmental issues, and thus underwent a transformation into more pluralistic networks.

This study explores the relationships between organizational collaboration, organizational politics, and organizational conflicts, and investigates the links to organizational performance. The results from the structural equation model analysis reveal that organizational collaboration has a statistically significant positive impact upon organizational politics and conflicts. In other words, collaborative organizational processes help to diminish political behavior and conflict situations. Consequently, organizational collaboration can be seen to positively affect organizational performance both directly and indirectly.

This study examines the mediating effect of perceived performance‐based organizational culture on the relationship between leadership behaviors and organizational member development, through a comparison of the U.S. federal government and Korean central government organizations. The survey results reveal that performance‐based culture mediated the relationship between leadership behaviors and organizational member development in U.S. federal agencies, but not Korean central agencies. Moreover, this comparative study discovered both universal and unique relationships among leadership behaviors, performance‐based culture, and organizational member development in the U.S. and Korea. These findings will contribute to the study of organizational culture.

Since the Constitutional Court may exercise its influence on politics and policies, it is vitally important that Constitutional Court Justices are elected fairly. On February 9, confirmation for the new Constitutional Justice candidate, Cho Yong-hwan was rejected by the National Assembly. This study empirically investigates the causes of the rejection. Based on a content analysis of the Confimartion Committee sessions of the Justice nominee, this study attempts to test if the legislature acted in a non-partisan, inter-partisan, or cross-partisan mode. The result of the analysis shows that the inter-partisan mode is one of the dominant features in the debates of the Committee. In other words, the opposition party which nominated the candidate took a positive attitude toward the confirmation, but the ruling party took a tough stance against the candidate. In addition, this research reveals that the cross-partisan mode affected the discussion about the confirmation. In particular, the differences between assemblymen qualified as lawyers and those not qualified are statistically significant. Thus, it shows that partisan bias and interest of particular groups can have an effect on the confirmation of the Constitutional Court Justice. The study concludes by recommending an alternative election system.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether nepotism has influences on public servant corruption. A target group of empirical research is various personal relations of high position public servants (i.e. more than assistant secretary level) and their level of corruption in the current Lee Administration. The study divided the corruption into two types, individual corruption and power-related corruption to check which one has associated with nepotism. The main findings of the study are; 1) personal relations built in the previous job seem to have more association with corruption than alumni relations or region-related relations, 2) while nepotism is closely associated with power-related corruption, it does not have influence on individual corruption, and 3) public servants whose background is merit system showed far less degree of both individual and power-related corruption than those appointed by spoils system.

This study examines how citizens’ corruption intentions are affected by their perception of corrupt practices. Two types of corruption perception and their associated moral costs are addressed; perception of seriousness and prevalence of corruption. Using game theory, we found that these perceptions can explain the extent of moral costs and the evolutionary stability of corruption in a society. We surveyed 267 participants of the ‘Korea Public Procurement Expo 2012’ and measured their experiences of corruption, perceived seriousness and prevalence of corruption, expected return of corruption, and the perception of corrupt practices. The multiple regression analysis results suggest that citizens who believe that corruption is serious show less intention to act in a corrupt way. On the contrary, the perception of prevalence of corruption has a positive relationship with corrupt intentions. This implies that anti-corruption policy should take into account citizen's socially constructed perceptions of corruption, and also be able to raise awareness of the seriousness of corrupt practices even if they are prevalent in society.

This paper is to survey and analyze the cognitions and the attitudes of central governmental officers in the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security about the governance using the structural equation model. The exogenous latent variables are related to understanding, education-learning, NGO-experiences, socialization, the open-participation culture of organization, the degree of organizational structural reformation, and the ministers' leadership in the departments. The endogenous latent variables are used for the cognition of effectiveness, the supporting extent of governance, the public servant's mind of roles and responsibility. Results of the analysis are the following: 1) the leadership, socializations, and open-participation culture, and the supporting extent are the most important and influencing variables, 2) the education-learning factor is very lack variable of influence, and 3) the effectiveness factor do not directly influence the mind of roles and responsibility, but indirectly influence it via the supporting extent factor. As a result of the analysis, the way how to improve the cognition of the central governmental officers are proposed.

This study categorized research on public expenditure from the last 10 years and analyzed the main trends through a meta-analysis. Themes in government expenditure, drawn form public finance textbooks and journals, are divided into three groups; overall expansion of public finance, public service demand, and public service costs. The findings are as follows. First, studies on the overall expansion of public finance examined theories of expansion and determinants of the budget structure. Empirical studies in this area supported Wagner's Law for the most part, and confirmed that government expenditure is related to budgetary incrementalism, socioeconomic variables, and bureaucratic behavior in support of the local community. Second, studies about public service demand discussed the measurement of demands, the characteristics of public services, and intergovernmental grants. A direct measure of the demand of public goods is expected to be developed in the future. Studies on the publicness of public services and intergovernmental grants report different results than studies based upon traditional theory. Third, studies on public service costs can be classified into studies on economies of scale, factor prices, the Tiebout hypothesis, and environmental factors. These studies proved the benefits of economies of scale and confirmed that city-county consolidation can hinder efficiency. On the other hand, studies about factor prices are in their infancy and there are limits to the application of the Tiebout hypothesis in the Korean context, due to the lack of variety in local government structures. Finally, environmental factors were found to have a noticeable effect on government expenditure, and demographic factors in particular.

The study of the Japanese colonial period has been considered significant in that the modern Korean administrative system not only began to emerge in earnest in this period, but also as the influence of the colonial period can still be seen on the current administrative system in Korea. In this vein, the authors examine the macro characteristics of the administrative system in the era of Japanese colonization with a focus on the major administrative institutions. According to the research results, not only was the modern administrative system institutionalized in the areas of public finance, police and local administration, but diverse information systems were established in this period with the aim of improving administrative efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, Japanese imperialists took control of Korean society through a diverse range of intermediary organizations which linked state and society, such as semi-governmental unions and associations. Through these institutions and information systems, the Japanese imperialists were able to achieve colonial exploitation and coercive rule.