A WRITTEN RESEARCH PROPOSAL;
JOHN was a student from Thailand who returned home from U K to complete his M A dissertation. His
proposed dissertation concerned the applicability of western methods of involving employee’s decision
making in Thai organizations.
An abbreviated version of John proposal follows:
TITLE; The Influences of Thai culture on Employee involvement.
BACK GROUND; Involving employees in the decision making of their employee organizations has been
increasingly popular in Europe and in North America in recent years. The influx of American
organizations in to Thailand has meant that similar approaches are being adopted. However, this
assumes that Thai employees will respond to these techniques as readily as their European and
American counterparts.
Doubts about the validity of these assumptions derive from studies of Thai national culture (Komin
1990) . Using Rokeachs (1979) conceptual frame work, Komin characterized, Thai culture in a number of
ways. I have isolated those that relate to employee involvement. These are that Thais wish to;
a save face, avoid criticism and show consideration to others;
b Exhibit gratitude to those who have shown kindness and consideration;
c Promote smooth, conflict free interpersonal relations;
d Interpret rules in a flexible way with little concern for principles;
e Promote interdependent social relations;
f be seen to be achieving success through good social relations rather than individual success
I intend to demonstrate in this section that these six cultural values contradict the values of employee
involvement (e.g. employee involvement may involve employees, in openly criticizing managers, which
directly contradicts a above)
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES;
1 To examine the assumptions behind the management technique of employee involvement.
2 To establish the characteristics of the Thai national culture.
3 To identify the opinions Thai employees and their managers, working in American owned
organizations in Thailand, towards values under-pinning employee involvement.
4 To draw conclusions about the applicability of employee involvement to Thai employees.
METHODS;
1 Conduct a review of the literature son employee involvement and Thai national culture in order to
develop research hypotheses.
2 Carryout primaries researching three American owned petrochemical and manufacturing
organizations in Thailand to assess the opinions of Thai employees and their managers towards values
underpinning employee involvement. Informal approval has been gained from three organizations,
American owned organizations are relevant because it is in these that employees’ involvements is most
likely to be found and values underpinning employee involvement exhibited
Petrochemical and manufacturing organizations are chosen because the occupations carried out in
these organizations are likely to be similar, thus ensuring that any differences are a function of Thai
national culture rather than of occupational culture.
A questionnaire will be developed with questions based on Thai values a-f in the background section
above. Each value will lead to a hypothesis (e.g employee involvement may not be appropriate to Thai
culture because it may mean that employees openly their managers). The questions in the questionnaire
will seek to test these hypotheses. The questionnaire will be distributed to a sample (size to be agreed)
of employees and of managers across all three organizations.
Data analysis will use the SPSS software. Statistical tests will be run to ensure that results are a function
of Thai culture values rather than of values that relate to the individual organizations.
Timescale:
January-March 2008: review of literature
April 2008: Draft literature review
May 2008: review research methods literature and agree research strategy
June 2008: agree formal access to three organizations for collection of primary data
July- August 2008: compile, pilot and revise questionnaire.
September 2008: administer questionnaire
October-November 2008: final collection of questionnaires and analysis of data.
November 2008- February 2009: completion of first draft of project report.
March-May 2009: final writing of project report
Resources; I have access to computer hardware and software access to three organizations has been
negotiated, subject to confirmation. Employers agreed to pay all incidental costs as a part of my course’s
expenses
References:
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