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The purpose of this paper is to examine the politicization of senior civil service (SCS) in Korea from a human resource perspective. To be specific, it is to explore how much the SCS has been politicized after its inception in 2006 and to discover what has strengthened it.

This paper employs the human resource management perspective with five stages, selection, rotation, education, promotion and compensation, which are related with different weights to four causes of politicization: political desire to control, leadership change, public demands and political interest.

This paper argues that politicization of SCS in Korea has gradually increased during the last 10 years. It also found that, while selection and promotion is strongly politicized, education and compensation is weakly politicized.

This paper mainly draws increasing politicization after it was introduced. Little prior literature has explored the politicization of SCS in human resource management processes and its causes for Korea.

This chapter focuses on South Korea’s newly found regional leadership, as the emergent middle power of East Asia, in order to advance regional integration and institution-building. Policy leadership is observed and analyzed from an international lens, linked to the literature of middle powers. The chapter first conceptualizes middle powers in connection with the issue of international leadership, since such states often play important roles in promoting cooperation. The chapter looks especially into South Korea’s foreign policy behavior toward East Asian regional processes and how it has manifested innovative and capable leadership. More specifically, the last three presidencies of Kim Dae-jung (1998–2002), Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008), and Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) are scrutinized in the hope of underscoring how their particular administrations, political leadership, and strategic approaches to foreign policy toward the region influenced South Korea’s regional leadership attempts and middle power status.

The COVID-19 pandemic deteriorated the economic situation and raised the issue of the quality of banks’ assets and, in particular, the growth of non-performing loans (NPLs). The study approaches a topical subject that is of interest to banks and society at large, as credit availability is likely to be reduced. Over the last 10 years, the Baltic countries’ banking sector has significantly improved its risk management policies and practices, increased capital ratios on its balance sheets, and created risk reserves. The current chapter examines the factors affecting NPLs in the Baltic States based on advanced econometric modelling applied to data extracted from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Eurostat. The study results show that credit risk management in the Baltic States has significantly improved compared to the period before the global financial crisis (GFC), the capitalisation of credit institutions is one of the highest in the European Union (EU), and banks are liquid and profitable. Lending recovered from the downturn in the first phase of the pandemic, and credit institutions have taken advantage of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) long-term funding programme ITRMO III to improve the liquidity outlook. Although the credit quality of commercial banks has not deteriorated, as the exposures of credit institutions in the most affected sectors are insignificant and governments have provided fiscal support to businesses and households, some challenges remain. The increase in credit risk is expected due to rising production prices as well as the rebuilding of disrupted supply chains. The findings allow conclusions to be drawn on the necessary actions to mitigate the credit risk of the banking sector.

This study examines the mediating role of motivation on outdoor recreation on the attitude–behavior and social marketing–behavior linkages. The paper scrutinizes the moderating impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risk perception in transforming individual motivation on nature-based outdoor recreation into environmentally responsible behavior.

Data were collected and conducted in Vietnamese National Parks. The dataset consists of 900 valid responses by domestic travelers. The research was operationalized using empirical data and employed structural equation modeling (SEM) and SPSS PROCESS analysis.

First, this study confirms that outdoor recreation activities and business's marketing on social networks tend to transform into support for individual behavior in terms of protecting environment and having responsibility for environment. Second, the current paper also represents the academic efforts to contribute to outdoor recreation literature by explaining the current global problem that has caused serious upheaval in global society as well as individual life. The findings not only confirmed the mediating role of nature-based outdoor recreation motivation between attitude and behavior, but also examined the moderating effect of COVID-19 risk perception in the relationship between motivation and behavior.

The findings indicate the significant association of social marketing, environment attitudes, outdoor recreation motivation and environmentally responsible behavior. The findings not only confirmed the mediating role of nature-based outdoor recreation motivation between attitude and behavior, but also examined the moderating effect of COVID-19 risk perception in the relationship between motivation and behavior. These results provide key insights about examining visitors' behavior for environment protection during future infectious disease outbreaks.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the mechanism of festival attachment and examine how it serves as a significant predictor of place attachment and place loyalty.

Through on-site survey with convenience sampling, 465 visitors were surveyed at the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, which is one of the most famous Taiwanese festivals. Structural equation modeling is used to examine the proposed research model.

Empirical results of this study reveal that “hedonism” is the most important antecedent for improving festival attachment, followed by novelty seeking, attractions and cultural exploration. Festival attachment exerts positive effects on place attachment, which then increases place loyalty. Moreover, place attachment partially mediates the relationship between festival attachment and place loyalty.

By hosting festivals, festival managers can induce festival attachment in visitors and then transfer the attachment with festivals into the host place. The findings of this study demonstrate the major role of festivals in promoting local tourism.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse international political economy (IPE) thought in Korea during its pre-modern and colonial eras.

It divides these eras into three periods. The first period is the eighteenth century, in which Silhak arose. The second is the mid- and late nineteenth century, a time characterised by conflicts between Wijeong-cheoksa and Gaehwa thoughts. The final period is that of colonial Korea under imperial Japan, and during this time economic nationalist movements were pursued while Marxist theories were also introduced to the country.

This research shows that IPE thoughts analogous to Western economic liberalism and economic nationalism did emerge endogenously in Korea when its environment was similar to those in which these Western thoughts arose, although in ways that reflected Korea’s peculiar situations of the times. This study also demonstrates that the “economic” thoughts of the Koreans in these periods were shaped largely by their political thoughts.

This research contributes to the building of a more “globalised” intellectual history of classical IPE thought.

The study examines organization citizenship behavior (OCB) as a mediating variable between instrumental work values (IWVs) and organizational performance; and group differences between family manager and nonfamily manager for integrated models in family hotels. Data were collected from 189 hotels (n = 921) ranging from budget to three-star family hotels in Ghana using questionnaire administered conveniently. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Work value positively influences OCB and organizational performance of family hotels. OCB mediates the relationship between work values and organizational performance. The study also found significant support for group differences between family and nonfamily firms for IWVs and mediating effect of OCB on the relationship between IWVs and performance.

Airbnb has emerged as one of the most prominent examples of sharing economy platforms in the tourism industry. The growing popularity of Airbnb among tourists has boost revenue in the accommodation rental industry. Considering its significant impact on tourism industry growth, this paper aims to shed some light on guests’ booking intentions on Airbnb, Malaysia.

A web-based survey was designed to collect the data, which yielded 174 usable and valid responses. Structural equation modelling, partial least square technique was used to analyse the data.

The results confirmed that Airbnb’s reputation and guests’ unique experience expectation positively affect guests’ attachment to Airbnb, which, in turn, drives guest booking intention. However, price consciousness did not exert any effect on guests’ attachment to Airbnb.

The findings of this study will equip Airbnb managers, accommodation platform owners and service providers in developing appropriate marketing plans and strategies to better understand the implications of both internal and external causes that may lead to guests’ intention to book their accommodations.

This research has its merits in adding value to the tourism literature by understanding the drivers of guests’ booking intentions on Airbnb. Furthermore, the study findings contribute to the existing literature by investigating few new linkages such as the role of guests’ attachment to Airbnb as a mediator between guests’ unique experience expectation, price consciousness, reputation and guests’ booking intention.

This chapter investigates the effect of customer orientation and CRM organization on hotel financial performance. A model of enhancing hotel financial performance through customer satisfaction practices was tested. Customer satisfaction was hypothesized to be a mediator in the relationships between customer orientation and CRM organization and the result being financial performance. The sample consisted of 54 hotels that was made up of three 5-star, fifteen 4-star, and thirty-six 3-star hotels in Ghana. A quantitative deductive approach was employed to gather data using cross-sectional survey, which was analyzed using PLS-SEM to check the validity, reliability and factor loading of the data. The findings revealed that, CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction and financial performance of hotels. Also, customer orientation showed significant positively related to customer satisfaction in the hotels. Surprisingly, the effects of CRM organization and customer orientation on financial performance through customer satisfaction were insignificant. Thus, customer satisfaction failed to mediate the effect of CRM organization and customer orientation on the financial performance of hotels. This suggests that though an effective CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction, it directly affects the financial performance of hotels. The outcomes have useful implications for CRM implementation on hotel financial performance in Ghana.