학교급식 식품안전규제의 순응에 관한 연구

Abstract

Many administrators and managers understand the importance of regulatory response behavior on food safety regulation in school lunch program and introduce the regulatory management paradigm in their organizations. However little is known about the determinants of the individual's regulatory response behavior. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of the factors affecting the group's regulatory response behavior and to apply the government regulation theory as well as food safety regulation theory in the social control context to understand how these factors affect the regulatory response behavior. The research model of the government regulation theory and food safety regulation theory include various constructs based on market failure theory, regulation theory, and safety regulation. On the ground of government regulation theory and other social control theories, this research suggests the research model and ten hypotheses to explain regulatory response behaviors. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, this research developed measurements for each variable. Research constructs are operationalized based on the related literature review and various theories. Questions to measure the role acceptance of the policy target group were adopted from the previous safety regulation studies. Items to measure official control and unofficial control were modified from Jaworski and MacInnins(1989)'s previous work to make them relevant to the regulatory response context. Items for regulatory response behaviors were adopted from the previous studies. The final questionnaire used in the main survey(24 items in total) are shown in Appendix. The questionnaire is carefully ordered to prevent the respondents' common method variance. In the questionnaire, the multiple-item method is used and each item is measured based on a 7 point Likert scale from 'very rarely' to 'very frequently.' To assess the measurement, the data for pretest were gathered from a questionnaire answered early in July in 2005. The sample consisted of 60 school feeding employees from the Gwangju and Chonnam elementary and middle to high school organizations. Of the 60 questionnaire distributed, 51 survey were received and 47 were usable. The final items were decided based on the test of construct validity which is analysed by convergent validity and discriminant validity and on the test of reliability which is investigated through the usage of Cronbach's alpha. The main sample consisted of 181 school feeding employees in Gwangju and Chonnam elementary and middle to high school organizations. The data was gathered by means of a quota sampling in July of 2005. Overall, 400 questionnaire were distributed, 193 questionnaire were received and 181 were usable. The unit of analysis, for this study, was the individual. The hypothesized relationships were tested by the structural equation model. The result of this study suggests that the role acceptance of regulatory target group have an impact on the type of regulatory control. Role acceptance as an exogenous variable in the analysis model turned out to be a powerful tool for expecting the regulatory control type of formal control (0.263) and informal control (0.418). This results mean if the regulatory target group admit and support the regulatory authority each other, then some kinds of social association and communication mechanism begin to build up. Likewise, we could infer that accepting the role admit the formal control which is one of the regulatory authority's mission. In the explanatory powers toward response of regulatory target group from the regulatory control types, the formal control proved to have a statistical significance to the regulatory compliance (0.207) and opportunism (0.516). As the formal control of regulatory authority increases, the regulatory target group seemed to adapt themselves to the policy implementation of regulatory authority and also increase the opportunism behavior, accordingly. It is confirmed that the informal control variable does not have a significant relationship with the regulatory target group response. Even though the regulatory authority make an offer a social guidance with consulting to the regulatory target group, the regulatory target group does not seemed to adapt themselves to the change with implementation. In order to examine the mediating relationship between control variables and responses of regulatory target group, we introduced the regulation agreement as a mediating variable. It is confirmed that the regulation agreement variable seem to have a statistical significant mediating relationship between formal control and opportunism (2.207) and between informal control and opportunism (2.056). However, there is no significant mediating relationship of regulation agreement between formal control and regulatory compliance (1.546) and between informal control and regulatory compliance (1.034). We could infer that the regulatory agreement variable has no mediating relationship between formal control and regulatory compliance as well as informal control and regulatory compliance. This study provides a meaningful implication on the regulatory compliance strategy having decreased opportunism of regulatory target group on the food safety regulation context. The main focus of this study is that the degree of regulatory acceptance has an mediating effect on the relationship between regulation and opportunism in the food safety regulation. It suggests that types of regulatory implementation strategy need to be selective according to the regulatory acceptance level of regulatory target group on the food safety regulation. The regulatory target group shows negative response to the food safety regulation if they do not agree on. However, the level of opportunism did not show any difference to the types of regulatory implementation in case of their level of agreement is high. Thus, it is need to increase the agreement level of regulatory target group with utilizing the education and communication strategy to the regulatory target group. Even though this research has drawn theoretically and practically meaningful implications, there are a few limitations. First of all, the use of self-report scales to measure the study variables involves the possibility of common method variances for some of the results obtained. In order to pursue further investigation of the conceptual model, it would be appropriate to develop more direct measures for regulatory compliance behavior in food safety regulation in school lunch program. Data of this study was collected from regionally confined public organizations. The results may not be generalizable due to the organizational characteristics unique to those regions. In order to generalize the results from this study, we need to collect data from various regions.