Post-Crisis Financial Reform in Korea: A Critical Appraisal

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1997-98 South Korea has undertaken a number of financial reforms under IMF auspices. One of such reforms was in financial supervision, which created the Financial Supervisory Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service. In spite of these reforms Korea has recently experienced a costly financial instability relating to credit-card companies and household debts. Korea’s success in bringing about rapid economic recovery from the crisis may have lessened, as suggested by the World Bank, the urgency for full financial reform. This paper, however, argues that the newly created supervisory agencies, although created as independent agencies, have not in fact functioned as such and thus failed to carry out proper supervision over credit-card companies. It is argued that those agencies have not been able to function independently due to institutional constraints imposed on them by other extant, formal as well as informal, institutions in Korea.Financial reform, financial supervision, institutions

Structuring social and environmental management control and accountability: behind the hotel doors

Purpose: This study sets out to investigate the construction of social and environmental strategies and the related implementation of management control by a key organization located in a pivotal Asian location in the global hospitality industry. In doing so it sets out to elucidate the forms and processes of strategic social and environmental control as well their relationship to the traditional financial control system. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs field based case study of a single case operating in both a regional and global context. Drawing upon documentary, survey and interview sources, the study employs structuration theory to inform its design and analysis. Findings: The findings reveal the interaction of top-down global corporate framing and bottom-up local level staff initiatives that combine to develop a locally focussed and differentiated social and environmental program and expedite an associated management control and accountability system. The study also reveals the dominance of the traditional financial control system over the social and environmental management control system and the simultaneously enabling and constraining nature of that relationship. Practical implications: Signification and legitimation structures can be employed in building social and environmental values and programs which then lay the foundations for related discourse and action at multiple levels of the organisation. This also has the potential to facilitate modes of staff commitment expressed through bottom-up initiatives and control, subject to but also facilitated by the dominating influence of the organisation’s financial control system. Originality/value: The paper offers an intra-organisational perspective on social and environmental strategising and control processes and motivations that elucidates forms of action, control and accountability and the relationship between social/environmental control and financial control agendas. It further reveals the interaction between globally developed strategic and control frameworks and locally initiated bottom up strategic initiatives and control

The Chern-Simons Coefficient in the Higgs Phase

We study one-loop corrections to the Chern-Simons coefficient $\kappa$ in abelian self-dual Chern-Simons Higgs systems and their $N=2$ and $N=3$ supersymmetric generalizations in both symmetric and asymmetric phases. One-loop corrections to the Chern-Simons coefficient of these systems turn out to be integer multiples of $1/4\pi$ in both phases. Especially in the maximally supersymmetric $N=3$ case, the correction in symmetric phase vanishes and that in asymmetric phase is $\kappa/(2\pi |\kappa|)$. Our results suggest that nonabelian self-dual systems might enjoy similar features. We also discuss various issues arising from our results.Comment: 10 pages, phyzzx macro, CU-TP-647 and SNUTP94-7