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The purpose of this paper is to explore how multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) women leaders in South Korea (Korea) have overcome career challenges in the process of becoming CEOs. The two guiding questions for this study included: what career challenges have MNCs’ women leaders in Korea faced to become CEOs? How have they overcome their career challenges?

The authors used a basic qualitative research design, the goal of which is to understand how people make sense of their lives and experiences. Qualitative data were collected by semi-structured interviews with 15 women CEOs at MNCs in Korea to capture their lived experiences (challenges and strategies) in their careers. The authors used NVivo 11, a qualitative data analysis software, to analyze the interview data.

From data analysis, the authors identified five themes including: becoming a CEO, key success factors, MNC culture, career challenges and career development strategies. The authors found that in the process of becoming CEOs, 15 women leaders faced career challenges that are largely generated by traditional culture, work stress and work–life balance. The authors also found that the women leaders became CEOs through diverse on-the-job experiences (e.g. marketing and sales) and positions (e.g. managers, senior managers and regional directors) with organizational support (e.g. supervisor support).

Given research on organizational support for leadership, human resource practices and working conditions, this study’s findings have qualitatively confirmed the importance of organizational support for women CEOs’ career success. For theory building in women in leadership, the authors suggest that researchers investigate the complex process of becoming women CEOs, including their early experiences in their career in tandem with family background, organizational climate and national culture.

The study findings on women CEOs’ career strategies can be used as a reference for women in the leadership pipeline who aspire to take leadership positions in organizations. A lack of role models or mentors for women leaders is one of the reasons why women give up on their career. Learning career strategies (e.g. global development programs, mentoring and networks) that women CEOs have employed to overcome their career challenges can help women in the leadership pipeline from their early career on.

The authors found that both internal and external factors combined were instrumental in the women CEOs’ career success. What stood out from this study was that the women’s desirable personality attributes might not have materialized without the MNC culture that has been supportive for these women. The women CEOs shared their company’s values and philosophy that is based on gender equality, received supervisor support that is crucial for their career success, experienced diverse jobs and positions along the way and were recognized for their work ethic. Given research on women leaders conducted largely in western contexts, this qualitative study on the lived experiences of women CEOs in MNCs contributes to emerging non-western research by capturing the importance of culture that is uniquely Korean.

The purpose of this study was to compare South Korean female executives’ definitions of career success with those of male executives, identify their career development strategies for success and provide implications for research and practice. Two research questions guiding our inquiry included: How do female executives’ definitions of career success differ from those of male executives? What career development strategies do male and female executives use for career success?

A basic qualitative research design was used and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 male executives and 15 female executives in diverse corporations by using an interview protocol of 13 questions regarding participants’ background, definitions of career success and final thoughts. To analyze the interview data, we used both NVivo 11 and a manual coding method.

Gender differences were detected in the participants’ definitions of career success and success factors. As previous studies indicated, male and female executives had different perspectives on career success: men tended to define career success more objectively than women. Many male executives, through experiencing transforming changes in their careers, began to appreciate work–life balance and personal happiness from success. Gender differences were also detected in their career development challenges, meanings of mentors and networking activities. While work stress surfaced as a challenge that men faced, experiencing the token status in the gendered workplace was a major challenge for female participants.

In this study, three research agendas are presented, needing further investigation on career success, women’s token status and comparative analyses.

Three implications for practice have been provided, including organizational support, government’s role and HRD’s role.

Gender differences in this study were not as distinctive as previous literature has indicated. Some male executives valued more subjective career success than others, while a few female executives spoke of more objective definitions than others. These subtle differences could be captured through in-depth interviews. By hearing the participants’ stories, both objective and subjective definitions of success, for both genders, could be observed, which might not have been possible in quantitative research. In addition, the study findings reflect the nature of a uniquely Korean context. The participants worked in a Confucian and military culture, which operates in hierarchical structures and the command and control system, coupled with a heightened camaraderie spirit in the workplace.

The purpose of this study was to investigate South Korean women entrepreneurs’ motivations to start a business, the challenges they faced in business development and key factors that contributed to their career success.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 women entrepreneurs to gather qualitative details on their experiences and performed a survey with 125 women Chief Executive Officers who are affiliated with the Korean Venture Business Women’s Association.

The authors found necessity-driven push (e.g. economic necessity for family) and opportunity-based pull (e.g. a strong sense of self) motivational factors, challenges (e.g. gender stereotypes) and opportunities (e.g. creating a family-like organizational culture) and key success factors (e.g. personality and loyal employees) for their career success.

There is a strong need to emphasize the import of culture at the national level that would impact women entrepreneurs’ careers and business success. A majority of the studies on HRD in small- and medium-sized enterprises shed light on individual owners’ perspectives only. Researchers need to take multiple-level (i.e. national, organizational and individual) factors into consideration in research on women’s entrepreneurship. Quantitative analysis in this study did not have any statistical significance and there were a few inconsistent findings (e.g. disadvantage as woman Chief Executive Officers) between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Future research is called for to investigate where and why different results occurred by using a mixed-methods research design and inferential statistical analysis for significance.

The increased support at the national level for entrepreneurship education before and after school that has not received sufficient attention in Korea will allow aspiring women to embark on entrepreneurial career paths from early on. At the organizational level, women entrepreneurs’ efforts to create a family-like organizational culture can be used as references for aspiring women who want to start and develop a business. At the individual level, HRD practitioners can develop leadership programs to share internal and external success factors so that aspiring women entrepreneurs can develop required individual (e.g. personality attributes) and social competencies (e.g. networking) in business development.

The two unique study findings that reflect the importance of cultural context include: our study showed how women entrepreneurs in Korea transformed the challenges they faced in business development into opportunities that can be used for entrepreneurship education for aspiring women entrepreneurs; and women entrepreneurs in Korea were humble enough to ascribe their career and business success to their loyal employees who have stayed in their companies with commitment, which has not been captured in research on women’s entrepreneurship in western contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the structural relationships among transformational leadership, affective organizational commitment and job performance, as well as the mediating effect of employee engagement on their relationships.

To examine the structural relationships among the research variables, structural equation modeling analysis and bootstrap estimates were performed using the data of 600 full-time employees working in Korean private organizations.

The results of the data analysis suggest that transformational leadership had a significant impact on employee affective organizational commitment and job performance through employee engagement as a mediator. Specifically, employee engagement partially mediated the mechanism in which transformational leadership affects employee affective organizational commitment, whereas there existed a full mediation of the association between transformational leadership and job performance.

The study finding suggested that transformational leadership was the key catalyst in both encouraging affective organizational commitment and task performance of employees throughout the mediator, employee engagement. Thus, organizations need to create a safe and positive environment that promotes employee engagement and should offer interventions for leaders to build skill sets of transformational leadership.

Because previous studies had explored the impacts of transformational leadership on employee positive attitude and job performance separately, there is little known about how these three constructs correlate. By investigating the impacts of transformational leadership on attitude and performance simultaneously in this study, this study expanded to the extant literature by providing better understanding of transformational leadership. Moreover, given that articles on transformational leadership have been limited in the HRD literature, findings of this study can offer trustworthy information for HRD practice and encourage HRD scholars to explore transformational leadership-related research.

In response to the lack of connection between employee development and employee engagement, this study explores the existing empirical findings regarding these two concepts. Based on the conservation of resources theory, the authors propose a novel theoretical framework that can better leverage the identified antecedents and relationships for future research.

An integrative literature review of 64 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals was conducted.

Three different levels of antecedents, including the work environment, social exchange and individual characteristics, are identified. Employee development and employee engagement exhibit reciprocal relationships. Considering the role of job performance as a catalyst, the authors propose an upward gain spiral model to advance both research and practice.

This integrative literature review aims to facilitate discussions based on three distinct sub-dimensions: physical, emotional and cognitive energies, relevant to both employee development and employee engagement. Through this distinction, a more comprehensive understanding of the connection between employee development and employee engagement can be cultivated.

The objective of this study was to develop wearable suit platforms with various anchoring structure designs with the intention of improving wearability and enhancing user satisfaction.

This study selected fabrics and materials for the suit platform through material performance tests. Two anchoring structure designs, 11-type and X-type are compared with regular clothing under control conditions. To evaluate the comfort level of the wearable suit platform, a satisfaction survey and electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements are conducted to triangulate the findings.

The 11-type exhibited higher values in comfort indicators such as α, θ, α/High-β and lower values in concentration or stress indicators such as β, ϒ, sensorimotor rhythm (SMR)+Mid-β/θ, and a spectral edge frequency of 95% compared to the X-type while walking. The 11-type offers greater comfort and satisfaction compared to the X-type when lifting based on the EEG measurements and the participants survey.

It is recommended to implement the 11-type when designing wearable suit platforms. These findings offer essential data on wearability, which can guide the development of soft wearable robots.

With the rapidly improving communication technologies, a growing number of people communicate with each other in online environments. In particular, social networking services (SNSs) are one of the widely used and common places that enable active communication among users. To understand what drives successful online conversations in SNSs, this study aims to explore the roles of posts and first comments in successful online conversations.

To address the purpose, the data of news-related channels in Reddit were collected and analyzed.

The study found that successful conversations tend to have the post and first comment with high scores. Also, the first comments in successful online conversations tend to be easier than those in other conversations.

The results reveal that successful online conversations can be generated not only with empathic posts but also with touching or attractive first comments. In other words, users are likely to participate in an online conversation that starts with an empathic post and first comment. Moreover, both practical and theoretical implications are presented.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between collaboration product attributes, consumption value, customer equity and purchase intention – specifically, the moderating effect of fashion brand type (luxury and sports).

Online game and fashion (luxury and sports) brands were selected and online game items showing items' logos were used as stimuli. A total of 328 South Korea consumers answered a survey. The hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model (SEM).

Collaboration product attributes influence consumption value, which links to customer equity. Customer equity increases purchase intention. The multi-group analysis confirmed the difference between variables according to the brand.

Research on collaboration with the online environment is limited. This study provides theoretical background for future research and suggests multiple items to measure collaboration product attributes.

Fashion brands can utilize online games to extend target markets. However, consumers perceive collaboration products differently depending on the brand types. Thus, companies should consider brand characteristics or identity when designing collaboration products with online games.

This study focuses on collaboration of fashion brands in the online environment. The results will help fashion brands establish relevant brand extension strategies.

Although existing studies demonstrate positive relationships between ethical cultures and innovativeness, their explanations of why an ethical culture leads to innovativeness are limited. This study explores the relationship between ethical organizational culture and knowledge workers' innovativeness

Based on Kierkegaardian existential philosophy, this study proposes a research model that employs knowledge workers' existential affirmation as the link between ethical culture and innovativeness. The main hypothesis proposed in this study is that ethical organizational culture offers knowledge workers the opportunity to find their existential affirmation, which leads them to become more innovative. A structural equation modeling analysis is based on data collected from a survey of 348 knowledge workers from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in different hi-tech industries.

The findings suggest that among the four subdimensions of an ethical organizational culture, ethics training and awareness raising had the strongest relationships with knowledge workers' existential affirmation, which, in turn, had a significant relationship with their innovativeness.

Based on this philosophical reflection, this study develops a research model that examines knowledge workers' existential affirmation as the factor that links ethical organizational culture and knowledge workers' innovativeness. The authors test ethical organizational culture as an environment that allows knowledge workers to validate their existential affirmation. Further, they test the link between knowledge workers' existential affirmation and their innovativeness.

This study aims to look at the current state of academic research on innovative work behavior (IWB) and how far it has progressed by using key performance analysis and science mapping techniques of bibliometric analysis.

This study has analyzed 246 publications from Web of Science database on IWB from 1989 to 2021. Data were analyzed using MS Excel and VOSviewer.

There has been a rise in the number of academic studies on IWB during the past decade. In addition, it was discovered that a significant percentage of papers had multiple authors working together on them and that collaborations between institutes in Asia and the developed world are taking place.

IWB research trends and trajectories may be assessed to enable academics and practitioners better understand the current and future trends and research directions. Future studies in this field might use the findings as a starting point to highlight the nature of the topic.

Bibliometric techniques provide a far more comprehensive and reliable picture of the field. This article has the potential to serve as a one-stop resource for researchers and practitioners seeking information that can aid in transdisciplinary endeavors by leading them to recognized, peer-reviewed papers, journals and networks.