KJC Korea
Journal Central

Conflict assessment has been widely utilized in Korea for the prevention and diagnosis of public conflict. Although conflict assessment has developed in response to the characteristics of complex and diversified public conflicts, a limitation of the approach is its tendency to overlook the variety of opinions among stakeholders. This study was conducted in order to establish whether recognition exists for stakeholder groups usually separated from public conflict. More specifically, a Q analysis was undertaken of the Dangjin City transmission towers case. The results reveal various types of recognition among the groups and confirm the subjective characteristics of each type. On the basis of the results, suggestions are made for closer identification and recognition of stakeholders in conflict assessment. It is hoped that this study could serve as a starting point for strengthening the public conflict management capacity of government through more systematic and effective conflict assessment.

Against the backdrop of the new concept of 'Government 3.0', this study investigates how government information sharing policy, including information system connection and integration, can be more effectively implemented. Based on survey questionnaire responses of government officials, the influence of factors differs by government information sharing policy, for example information sharing, system information connection, and system information integration. This suggests that there is a need for a differentiated approach to activating government information sharing. The level of individual cognition of the benefits of using government information sharing services turns out to be the most important influencing factor, especially in terms of information system connection and integration. However, macro environmental factors including technical, managerial, and political variables are not found to significantly influence usage levels of the government information sharing service. Finally, recommendations are made for policy change toward a more individualized and customized approach for more effective use of government information sharing services.

This study empirically examines the Public Relations (PR) effects of local government based on administrative social network service (SNS) utilization conditions in Daegu City. An offline survey was conducted on the exposure of civil servants and citizens, and to measure the public's recognition of and perspectives on the influence of administrative PR effects. The results can be summarized as follows: First, a number of SNS traits (connection, participation, opening to the public, conversation, and community) affect the PR public relationship, meaning that this is a determining factor on administrative PR effects. Second, there is an SNS invitation possibility problem, as well as expectation effect, and limits to SNS activation. Recommendations are made for government management of SNS vitalization strategies.

This research empirically tests the impact of factors that are thought to influence positive organizational behavior (POB), and draws out the institutional, administrative and theoretical implications. Questionnaire surveys of 500 public employees from four central ministries in four policy areas of Korean government are examined through factor analysis, reliability test, and hierarchical regression analyses (Hierarchical Linear Model). The results reveal the following factors to have statistically significant positive effects: (i) personal factors such as position level and length of experience, (ii) organizational structural variables including formalization and complexity, (iii) transformational leadership factors such as charisma and knowledge stimulus, (iv) organizational cultural variables including relational culture and achievement-oriented culture, and (v) socialization resource factors such as social support. The impacted elements of POB include self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism. Based on these results, various institutional, administrative and theoretical implications are drawn with the aim of fostering and increasing the POB of public employees.

With the relocation of a number of government agencies to Sejong City, perceptual discrepancies between public managers remaining in Seoul and those in Sejong City have begun to emerge. These discrepancies may result in negative consequences such as a lack of human integration in the organizational context. This study attempts to empirically examine whether perceptual differences between the two groups exist, explore the reasons why the differences occur, and draw out the theoretical and practical implications based on the findings. In order to do so, both survey and in-depth interview data is utilized. Based on mixed methods data, our analytical results clearly show perceptual discrepancies to exist in terms of administrative inefficiencies, bureaucratic and organizational behaviors, and policy alternatives. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we speculate the reasons for the perceptual differences between the two groups and suggest a variety of managerial alternatives to overcome the associated issues.

Grade 6 civil servants in Korean basic local government play a significant role as a linking-pin in the hierarchy, and more specifically, they also take on the role of mid-level managers. Nevertheless, the research community has paid little attention to Grade 6 public managers to date. To bridge this gap, the present study focuses on identifying who they are, investigating what roles they play, and analyzing their behavioral characteristics. Q methodology is employed due to its capacity to measure civil servants’ subjective perceptions of their own roles. The analysis identifies four types of civil servants at the sixth grade. The first type is ‘zealots and the upwardly mobile’, the second type is ‘passive indifferents’, the third type is ‘climbers and advocates’, and the fourth type is ‘conservers’. The results reveal that, contrary to current views, Grade 6 civil servants cannot be neatly categorized into a single homogeneous group. Rather, their roles and behaviors are various. Consequently, there is a need to devise new approaches and systems with a view to motivating Grade 6 civil servants, such as promotion, compensation, and career management.

This study is based upon a meta-analysis of Korean policy implementation cases, in order to overcome a limitation of existing policy implementation studies: A focus on single case studies. The purpose of this study is to explore theory building possibilities for implementation research, and to investigate factors and characteristics which influenced policy implementation. A total of 55 articles, published in Korea from 1990 to 2015, were selected. Based on the theoretical and case surveys, 47 detailed factors are identified that can influence the policy implementation process. The analysis results are as follows: First, key high frequency factors are policy clarity, policy consistency, bureaucratic expertise, capacity and leadership, executive resources such as budget, collaboration among organizations, target group behavior and interest, and environmental support. Second, there were relative differences among significant variables according to policy type or level of government. Based on these results, policy consistency, collaboration among organizations, and target group characteristics need to be explored further in future implementation studies. Lastly, this study has important implications concerning the considerations of policy practitioners at the early-design stage in order to increase policy feasibility.

This study uses Q methodology to analyze perceptions of the problems and countermeasures of government 3.0, as handled by the Park Geun-hye government. Towards this end, 32 Q statements are made on the basis of interviews and previous studies of government 3.0. Q sorts were collected from 25 respondents, including public officials, professors, researchers and students. Four different Q factors were produced: Entitled as a perspective of policy distrust, a closed bureaucracy perspective, street-level bureaucrats’ perspective and a type of regime brand. This study also found four different perspectives on problems and countermeasures of government 3.0. Interestingly, despite differences in perception, the perspectives were pessimistic about government 3.0. As a result, it is essential to improve the perceptions of policy actors if government 3.0 is to successfully meet its intended outcomes.

This study aims to investigate whether current efficiency evaluation methods are appropriate for evaluating the welfare service efficiency of local governments. We suggest that the concept of accessibility should be considered as an output of welfare services. For this purpose, we added an accessibility index to the provider or user-based output elements which are generally used in the extant literature. The relationship between the different output elements for elderly welfare services is then examined in Seoul. The analysis results reveal accessibility to have different characteristics from existing measured outputs. When considering accessibility as an output, we found it to be significantly related to a decrease in problems in elderly welfare services, a result which cannot be found in the efficiency evaluation results alone. This result means that efforts to help people access welfare services should be considered as an important output along with physical outputs such as welfare facilities.

Amid the pressure for financial deregulation followed by the International Monetary Fund’s conditionalities, the South Korean government decided to adopt the bancassurance (banking+insurance) program in 2003. Along with the coercion imposed by the international financial community, an emulative motivation held by the Korean financial bureaucrats were behind the decision. In spite of bureaucratic conviction of the neoliberal program, South Korea’s bancassurance has been downsized in a series of policy tinkering and is still drifting at best. The main cause of such a policy change during the adaptation period since 2004 was the interest group politics between the banking and insurance sectors that virtually paralyzed the autonomy of financial bureaucrats.

What are the major differences between fathers with preschool children who support and/or use the work-family reconciliation policy and those who do not? Previous studies have not drawn on valid quantitative and qualitative data to answer this question. This study seeks to answer this question by dividing male workers with preschool children into four different groups: The positive supporting and positive participating group, the positive supporting and passive participating group, the passive supporting and positive participating group, and the passive supporting and passive participating group. Assigning the passive supporting and passive participating group as the reference group, this study analyzed the major differences between this reference group and the three other groups. First, the critical difference between the positive supporting and positive participating group and the reference group is the level of income substitution as policy benefit. Also, both gender role attitude and parent role stress level influence the likelihood of belonging to the positive supporting and positive participating group. Second, the major differences between the positive supporting and passive participating group and the reference group are whether their wives are working or not and the level of work-involvement. Male workers with working wives and with high levels of work involvement are apt to be members of the positive supporting and passive participating group rather than the reference group. Third, there is no significant difference between the passive supporting and positive participating group and reference group.

The development of information and communication technology is believed to lead to the appearance of electronic government and the advent of electronic democracy. It is believed that citizen participation in the electronic government could enhance the efficiency and democracy in public administration and government. However, there are both positive and negative perspectives about the future of electronic government and electronic democracy. This study analyzes electronic public hearings organized by the Korean government and discusses the way in which they evolve through discussions from the citizens. Gookminshinmungo is one of the most typical electronic public hearings in Korea. The types of citizen discussion in the electronic public hearings consist of ‘conflict formation between groups’ and ‘conflict formation among individuals’. Discussions via electronic media advanced by groups and citizens were analyzed using three criteria concerning citizens’ democratic attitudes - variety of opinions, logic of debates and citizenship of opinions. It was found that the debates of ‘conflict formation between groups’ showed more varied opinions than an individual-based counterpart. Most opinions in electronic public hearings characterized as both ‘conflict formation between groups’ and ‘conflict formation among individuals’ resulted from the participants’s emotional eruptions. In the aspect of ‘citizenship of opinions’, two types of electronic public hearings appeared low level of citizenship. Overall, there are high correlations in the types of citizen participation in electronic public hearings and the above-mentioned three aspects of democratic attitudes of citizens.

This study analyzed the inter-organizational differences of budget securing ratio in the National Informatization Policy(NIP) that was representative cross-cutting policy in Korea. To explain the reasons of the differences, this study applied Resource Dependence Theory(RDT), selected 41 organizations’ NIP data of 2011-2012. Average budget securing ratio of the 41 organizations was 73.5%(min 21.2%, max 117.0%). The result showed that budget securing ratio was lowered as the importance of the resource or the number of the employee was increasing. In addition, the ratio of programs that follows master plan, the leader’s term of office and the function of the organization were important factors that affected to budget securing ratio. But the distance between organization and financial stakeholder was not important. The implication of this study is that RDT, a organizational theory, could be good frame to explain budget process. And some strategies can be developed to improve NIP process.

This study investigates how the emotional labor of street-level police officers affects burnout and organizational effectiveness. It also explores the role of social support that moderates the relationships between emotional labor and expected outcomes. Conducting a survey of 400 police officers working in the Seoul Metropolitan area, this research implements OLS regression analysis to examine the effect of emotional labor. The analysis result confirms the negative effects of emotional dissonance, one of the dimensions of emotional labor. It depletes the emotions and facilitates dehumanization. It also decreases organizational commitment and job involvement, while increasing turnover intention. On the other hand, the analysis demonstrates the positive role of social support by supervisors and colleagues. It directly decreases burnout and increases organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, it indirectly contributes to organizational effectiveness by moderating the negative effect of emotional labor. In other words, when social support is high, the negative effect of emotional labor on burnout and organizational effectiveness is relieved to some extent. Altogether, the analysis result implies that a systematic treatment of emotional labor is required and social support has a potential as a managerial tool to alleviate the negative effects of emotional labor.

Using ACPN model as the research framework that combines Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and Policy Network Framework (PNF), this study explored a medical privatization policy change in Korea. There are two different views about the health care. One is understood as the industry to enhance national competitiveness and the other is recognized as the public welfare. The policy change process of medical privatization since 2002 was firstly classified into three periods that incubate, express, and intensify policy conflict. Secondly this study explored relatively stable and dynamic variables that have greatly affected on the medical privatization policy. Thirdly this study perceived advocacy coalitions from a variety of networks that are formed by the policy actors’ interaction, and analyzed belief systems of the pros and the cons in terms of the health care privatization. Finally, the future medical privatization policy is discussed that might be resulted from conflict, bargaining and negotiation of those advocacy coalitions. Recently the health care policy entered upon a new phase in the middle of being brought up for the need of distance treatment with serious MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) situation as momentum.