Research

 

National Disaster Management System: COVID-19 Case in Korea

 

Junic Kim and Kelly Ashihara

 

International Journal of Environmental Resources and Public Health; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186691

September 2020, SCCI, Impact Factor (5 year: 3.127)

 

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges for governments and societies around the world and represents a global crisis of hitherto unexperienced proportions. Our research seeks to analyse disaster management systems from a national perspective by examining the Korean management of the COVID-19 crisis according to a four-phase epidemiological disaster management system. Utilising a meta-study, official documents, reports and interviews, we explore the role of the control tower mechanism related to the life-cycle of disaster management, and Korea’s sustainable containment strategy. This study begins with a discussion of the crisis and disaster management literature and provides specific information related to the Korean government’s response to COVID-19. It continues by detailing specific strategies such as wide-spread testing, tracking, treatment and quarantine that have enabled Korea to prevent wide-spread community transmission. The study concludes emphasising the relevance of systematic national disaster management, providing insight into methods for containment in Korea – a system commended by the WHO. Implications include the extension and the efficient application of disaster management theory by empirical application and integration of concepts. 

 

 

 

 

Dimensions of Leader Anger Expression Unveiled: How Anger Intensity and Gender of Leader and Observer Affect Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness and Status Conferral

 

Dongwon Yun, Heajung Jung* and Kelly Ashihara

Frontiers Psychology - Organizational Behavior, July 2020, SCCI, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01237

 

While significant organizational research evaluates effective leadership traits and decades of psychological research have investigated emotion, there is a lack of consensus in organizational behavior research related to whether emotion expressed by a leader elicits positive or negative outcomes. We seek to augment existing research by exploring the effect of three dimensions, namely, the intensity of anger expressed, the gender of the leader, and the gender of the observer on perceptions of leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. In Study 1, we recruited 40 participants from a well-known U.S. university to select appropriate terms attributable to intense, moderate, and neutral levels of anger expression. In Study 2, we recruited a diverse pool of 296 participants and employed a quasi-experimental method by randomly assigning participants into one of the six conditions created by three levels of anger expression intensity and the leader gender. Participants were asked to read a vignette in which a male or a female leader responds to an anger-provoking situation with different levels of anger expression and evaluate the leader on perceived leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. Our study findings demonstrated that a leader demonstrating no anger was perceived higher in leadership effectiveness than a leader showing either moderate or intense anger. Juxtaposed to these results, for future status conferral, a leader expressing no anger was perceived as higher in future status than a leader expressing moderate anger without significant difference found between no anger and intense anger. We also found a significant main effect of observer gender with female participants giving lower ratings for leadership effectiveness and status conferral than male participants. Possible explanations and practical implications regarding gender-specific findings are discussed.

 

 

Impact of Public Cloud Computing Service in Korean Government Organizations

 

Seogjun Lee, Kelly Ashihara*, Youngjin Choi, Jonghei Ra, Jongwoo Kim

 

ICIC Express Letters Part B: Applications ICIC International ⃝c 2020 ISSN 2185-2766 Volume 11, Number 3, March 2020 (Scopus)

 

In tandem to advanced overseas IT markets such as the U.S., U.K., China and Japan, the Korea Government has launched the Comprehensive Plan for Facilitating Public Cloud Computing and Cloud Computing Development Act. This study assesses the outcomes related to Korean Government policies to foster cloud industry growth in the public sector and efforts to mitigate associated risks related to privacy and security. Based upon a Korean Government cloud utilization survey, we identified 74 Korean public institutions using public cloud services. The purpose of our study is to analyze the Korean public institution cloud service usage and create metrics to identify and measure business and system performance including downtime, cyber security infringement, impact on business performance and the reduction of total cost of ownership. We analyzed results from 47 responding institutions that responded to our Likert 7-point scale survey.  In conclusion, we found that public cloud utilization improved business performance and imparted financial benefits with a reduction in total cost of ownership (“TCO”), with the system expansion and system stability reported as significant.

 

Do Management Level and Perceived Organizational Support of Maternity Affect Views on Gender Parity and Work Satisfaction? : A Study based on Korean SET Talent Survey with Policy Recommendations

 

Kelly Ashihara, Hyojung Kim, Yoshinori Kamo, Sanghyeon Sung

 

Journal of Korean Operations and Management Society, August, 2019 (KCI)

 

This study investigates the specific views of women in SET (science, engineering and technology) and seeks to identify how SET women in various career levels (entry, manager, and executive) and men may differ regarding issues of gender parity in recruitment, assessment, promotion, and compensation. Given known challenges in female talent retention we seek to gain deeper insight into how women are affected by children and how the organizational policies for maternity protection may impact their views on gender parity and job satisfaction. To test our hypotheses, we utilized data from a project and survey we conducted in collaboration with WISET and analyzed data from 301 employees. Organizations were categorized into private enterprises, research institutes and universities with questions framed in the context of human resource policies and human resource development programs in Korea. Empirical findings included that for SET female talent, their views of gender discrimination were more aligned with their gender than their level. Second, while women with and without children reported similar views along twelve metrics, women with children were more satisfied with their current jobs. Third, we found mostly strong correlations between CEO intention for maternity protection and all tested metrics for SET women with or without children. This study is intended to advance a workplace operation model with a desired outcome to increase recruitment and retention of WISET and in turn contribute to improved organizational culture, talent management and gender parity. We seek to contribute to insight that leads to organizational cultures that embrace egalitarian values and empower women which, in turn, will lead to a more balanced, family-friendly society.

 

 

 

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Published