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Although Korean sociology of sport is relatively unknown to the international community of scholars, it is a mature field in Korea. Sociology of sport was first introduced in Korea in the mid-1960s when the field first evolved in North America and Europe. However, the development of the field shows different aspects from its Western counterpart due to unique cultural and environmental factors both in academia and in society. There are three major research trends that form Korean sociology of sport. First, there is the research focus on the benefit of sport and physical activity by examining empirical data using quantitative methodologies. The second group of researchers pays attention to individual experience in diverse sport fields and utilize qualitative methodologies to investigate empirical or secondary data. The third and most recent trend is a critical approach that theoretically analyzes ideologies, power relations, and identity politics in sport and society. When looking at the future, there are problems and limitations within the field in Korea. These include lack of continuity in terms of conference sub-themes, over-production of doctoral degree graduates, conservatism rooted in the field, and a danger of regarding sport policy research as an exit for sport sociologists. However, there are also possibilities and reasons for optimism. The biggest possibility for Korean sociology of sport is globalization of the field. Another significant possibility is the need for sport sociologists in planning, developing, and evaluating sport policy. Finally, diversification of the field gives ample opportunities for future research.

After the Korean War, South Korean politics was dominated by national security concerns. Reversing Carl von Clausewitz's well-known dictum, in South Korea, “politics is the continuation of war by other means.” Until the late 1980s, politics in South Korea was far from democratic. South Korea had five direct presidential elections (1987, 1992, 1997, 2002, and 2007) and six national assembly elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008) after the democratic transition of 1987. In 1992, a civilian candidate, Young Sam Kim, was elected president. Young Sam Kim (1993–1998) prosecuted and punished former generals turned presidents Doo Hwan Chun (1980–1988) and Tae Woo Roh (1988–1993) for corruption, mutiny and treason in 1995. Dae Jung Kim (1998–2003) was elected president in 1997. For the first time in South Korean political history, regime change occurred between a ruling party and an opposition party.

In this chapter, the change and continuity of civil–military relations through the fluctuating dynamics of the democratic transition and consolidation in South Korea is examined. A positive consolidation of democratic reform is one that, while securing indisputable civilian supremacy, grants the military enough institutional autonomy for the efficient pursuit of its mission. Civilian supremacy should be institutionalized not only by preventing military intervention in civilian politics but also by ensuring civilian control over the formation and implementation of national defense policy.

In sum, despite three terms of civilian presidency, civilian supremacy has not yet fully institutionalized. Although significant changes in civil-military relations did occur after the democratic transition, they were not initiated by elected leaders with the intention of establishing a firm institutional footing for civilian supremacy. South Korea's political leaders have not crafted durable regulations and institutions that will sustain civilian control over the military.

More than six decades, Korea is still divided. The most highly militarized zone in the world lies along the demilitarized zone. How to draw the line prudently between seeking national security and promoting democracy shall be the most delicate task facing all the civilian regimes to come in South Korea. That mission will remain challenging not only for civilian politicians but also for military leaders.

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history and overview of the original theorists of the Austrian school in order to set the stage for the subsequent development of their ideas by Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. In discussing the main ideas of Mises and Hayek, we focus on how their work provided the foundations for the modern Austrian school, which included Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner. These scholars contributed to the Austrian revival in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary Austrian school in the 1980s. We review the contemporary development of the Austrian school and, in doing so, discuss the tensions, alternative paths, and the promising future of Austrian economics.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Scholars have shown that organizations active in social movements are important because they carry out a number of critical tasks such as recruitment, coordination, and sustained contention. However, these accounts do not explain how a number of recent movements using the tactic of occupation and featuring a seemingly minimal formal organizational structure nevertheless engaged in a number of critical organizational tasks. This paper draws from in-depth ethnographic research on the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City and finds that the movement’s sustained occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan carried out four critical functions: messaging, recruitment, building commitment, and connecting participants to each other. These findings move past a general overemphasis in the literature on social movements on organizational structure, and instead point toward the utility of a perspective that accounts for the role of nonorganizational factors in the accomplishment of fundamental movement tasks.

This chapter studies the dynamic responses of the conditional quantiles and their applications in macroeconomics and finance. The authors build a multi-equation autoregressive conditional quantile model and propose a new construction of quantile impulse response functions (QIRFs). The tool set of QIRFs provides detailed distributional evolution of an outcome variable to economic shocks. The authors show the left tail of economic activity is the most responsive to monetary policy and financial shocks. The impacts of the shocks on Growth-at-Risk (the 5% quantile of economic activity) during the Global Financial Crisis are assessed. The authors also examine how the economy responds to a hypothetical financial distress scenario.