Existing global ESG models are limited in terms of applicability and predictability, especially in countries with an unstable environment. On the other hand, utilizing internally made or privately sourced ESG models have caused issues relating to generalizability, comparability, and continuity. In our research, we present an ESG framework that is specific to South Korea, which has both global and country-specific factors in all three categories. The AHP model is used to determine how the three categories’ materiality would be viewed by institutional investors as well as how country-specific factors rank against global factors. The results of this study show that institutional investors place more importance on environmental and governance factors compared to social factors. Factors including shareholders’ rights, pollution and waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and risk and opportunity management are found to have greater influences on investors’ investment decisions. In addition, it was confirmed that both of the country-specific variables for South Korea, partnership with subcontractor and CEO reputation, have a significant influence on investment decisions. By having the ESG model validated by institutional investors, who are the main users of ESG disclosures of corporations, our methodology of presenting a country-specific model can be benchmarked by studies on other emerging markets with a variety of country-level specificities.

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has a necessary goal of performing a firm’s social and environmental responsibilities, and SMEs employ GSCM practices with constrained resources. SMEs need to determine which areas they need to concentrate their limited resources to result in positively noticeable economic outcomes. This study aims to identify what GSCM practices would influence economic and business profitability for first-tier suppliers in the electronics industry. Specifically, this examines whether internal environmental management (IEM), green purchasing (GP), cooperation with customers (CC), and eco-design (ECO) have a role in enhancing an organization’s economic performance (ECP) and business performance (BP). Survey data from 193 South Korean electronics firms were collected to test the proposed model. The survey responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of the present study showed that IEM, CC, and ECO of the responding SMEs had direct positive influences on ECP. Moreover, economic performance has a statistically significant influence on BP. However, GP did not show a significant relationship with ECP. This study investigated first-tier suppliers within the electronics industry and identified what GSCM practices would be important in improving the performances of SME manufacturing companies.

This study attempts to investigate the relationships among Korean hotel employees’ perception of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), their intrinsic motivations, and their organizational commitment (OC). The mediating effect of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between employees’ perception of customer- and employee-related CSR and OC is explored, and the moderating role of job level on the relationship between CSR perceptions and intrinsic motivation is tested. The data were collected via online survey, and the Hayes’ Process macro was used as an analysis tool. We found that (1) both types of CSR perceptions are important in creating intrinsic motivation and OC, (2) intrinsic motivation enhances OC, and (3) job level moderates the link between employee CSR perceptions and intrinsic motivation positively. Interestingly, we found that when customer-related CSR or employee-related CSR is high, the level of intrinsic motivation will significantly differ between managerial and non-managerial employees. This study’s results will contribute to the current literature on CSR, and will aid human resources departments that are considering CSR practices as a means to enhancing employee intrinsic motivation and OC.

The scaffold-free cartilage fabrication system we have reported previously for human application with nonpassaged cells has a big limitation in securing the enough cell number. Therefore, autologous chondrocytes from small biopsy of cartilage tissue inevitably have to be expanded through multiple passages, which result in poor engineered cartilage in terms of quality and quantity. This study applied basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) to overcome the limitation and produce an engineered cartilage tissue with clinically applicable size and quality. Porcine articular chondrocytes were expanded until passage 2 in the absence or presence of 5 ng/mL bFGF, and then subjected to the two-stage scaffold-free cultures for 21 days again in the absence or presence of 5 ng/mL bFGF. The fabrication of cartilage tissues was evaluated along with time in comparison with the constructs from unpassaged chondrocytes. Expansion of chondrocytes in the presence of bFGF increased accumulation of cartilage extracellular matrices and resultantly fabricated the larger size of cartilage tissues in the subsequent stages, being comparable to those of unpassaged cells. In contrast, bFGF showed no positive, but adverse, effects on the cartilage tissue formation, when treated additionally during the scaffold-free fabrication stages. These results suggested that use of bFGF during the expansion stage of chondrocytes could overcome the limitation of previous two-stage scaffold-free cartilage fabrication system, and provided a novel three-stage system to construct a clinically applicable quality of cartilage tissues.

Service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior refers to service workers' helping, cooperating, sharing, and donating actions that benefit others at a cost to themselves. Based on ethical climate theory, this research investigates whether corporations adopting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management enhance service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (SO OCB) among service employees. A total of 230 surveys were collected from call center workers in the insurance industry, and STATA 14.0 was used to analyze the 204 responses with useable data. The results show that employees' recognized ESG activities enable SO OCB through organizational commitment. Additionally, ESG activity recognition has a positive relationship with self-efficacy and empowerment, which helps service employees regulate external expectations. Thus, this finding is significant for call center workers experiencing emotional labor. Furthermore, the results suggest that firms can contribute to employees' SO OCB by practicing ESG activities. Firms should inform employees of their ESG management efforts as employees' recognition of an ethical climate can enhance their willingness to perform service-oriented behavior. Finally, ESG activity recognition can increase employees’ organizational commitment, an important predictor of employee satisfaction and negative turnover rates.