A Pilot Study on Cross Cultural Communication of Thai Expatriate Managers working in Taiwan-Based Thai Organizations
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Date
2008-05-23
Authors
Phonmang, K.
Lai, Chih-Chien
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Abstract
With the on going of the competitive world, one of the developing countries, Thailand, is
now overwhelmingly confronted with globalization and obligatory has to conduct business with
various countries around the world in order to survive in this contentious era. Recently, not only
Thailand encouraged and welcomed the foreign direct investment companies to conduct their
business in Thailand, but also sent a lot of potential multinational companies abroad in order to
revive its economy. Thai people, formerly familiar with working only Thai way may be now in a
state of confusion because they must adjust themselves to new working environments where they
communicate with people from different cultures in multi-national companies.
This pilot study explored the cross cultural communication issues of Thai expatriate
managers working with Taiwanese employees in Taiwan R.O.C. The purpose is to find out the
similarities and differences of Thai and Taiwanese national cultures that affect the
communication in the workplace, and how they handle with those cross cultural
communicational issues. Moreover, the researcher places an emphasis on human resource
professionals and organizations to understand the importance of development needed to assist
expatriates before departure in order to understand the overall cross-cultural issues. Not only the
qualitative in-depth interviews were employed to explore those significant matters, but also the
multiple cases were then proceeded to observe the differences in communication of Thai
expatriate managers who work in Taiwan R.O.C.
The pilot research primarily finds that Thai expatriate managers do not face many
difficulties of having communication with Taiwanese employees. Due to the fact that there are
some similarity between Thai and Taiwanese cultures, which will not be a major cause that can
have the influence on their communicational styles. Moreover, the influences of cultural
differences are reducing on account of having such an openly internationalized workplace.
Besides, the study also finds that there is no huge conflict between Thai expatriate managers and
Taiwanese employees since Taiwanese local employees do follow the Chinese cultures and
norms which are mostly concerned with the hierarchical concept.