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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of customer deference to service providers in service encounters, and articulate its chief antecedents, experiences and consequences.

Data were collected in Thailand, using critical incident technique. A total of 253 subjects share their experiences of being “deferential” (i.e. “kreng-jai” in Thailand) during everyday service encounters.

The findings indicate that in cultures in which the cultural norm (i.e. kreng-jai) is to be considerate of others, customers often become deferential of the service provider during service encounters, especially when customers perceive that the service provider’s well-being is compromised. However, customer deference involves aversive feelings which lead customers to devise coping strategies and avoid future contact with a company.

Using a specific cultural norm, the findings challenge prior finding that people from collectivist culture are more likely to tolerate and be satisfied with service encounters, and document the role of previously unexamined customer-related factors in driving satisfaction in ordinary service encounters.

The findings recommend service providers to preempt customers’ deference by establishing and communicating the role and acceptable behaviors, managing physical distance with customers, and monitoring customer non-verbal behavior and facial expressions to detect the customers’ true feelings.

No prior research has comprehensively examined the phenomenon whereby consumers seek to benefit service providers at the expense of their own well-being. This study demonstrates that customer deference degrades customer satisfaction even in ordinary service encounters.

The purpose of this paper is to present details of a study investigating learning styles differences of Thai students in England compared to local students in England and Thailand. It also discusses key issues in using learning styles in multicultural and international education, given their wide availability online.

A mixed methods design is used, including a psychometric approach using Vermunt's Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS) with three postgraduate Business student samples – Thai (in England, n=26), European (in England, n=16) and Thai (in Thailand, n=122) and a qualitative approach using focus groups, interviews and open‐ended questionnaires with the Thai (in England, n=43) sample only.

One‐way independent analysis of variance analyses on ILS scores show that learning styles differ significantly between the three samples on each of the test occasions, particularly in meaning‐directed learning and undirected learning. The qualitative data analysis shows that Thai students in England perceive culturally‐determined differences in teaching and learning behaviour between Thai and English higher education environments that can cause difficulties for them.

The use of mixed methods gives data of greater breadth and depth than a single method; however, the sample sizes are somewhat limited.

Thai students in England require additional support from educators and educational institutions.

This paper provides a valuable insight into the learning styles and needs of Thai students in England, given the paucity of research in this area.

This study aims to explore the links among supplier relationship (SR), customer relationship (CR) and supply performance (SP): cost, flexibility, partnership and responsiveness for manufacturing sector in Thailand.

Having extensively reviewed literature, the survey instruments were proposed and validated by experts and statistical techniques. Path analysis of structural equation modeling was used to assess the hypotheses.

It revealed that CR has significant positive direct effects on every SP construct. SR has a significant positive direct effect on CR but has no significant positive effects on SP. However, SR has significant positive total effects and indirect effects on every SP through CR.

This study presents insights into the arguments about the links among SR, CR and SP. SR should not be introduced alone. It should be applied together with CR to improve SP.

This chapter analyzes the impact of intercultural academic experiences on students in the areas of intercultural sensitivity and multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

Cottey College’s mission statement includes a clause about educating students to be useful members of a global society (Mission, n.d., para. 1). Toward achieving the mission, each of Cottey College’s second year students is offered an international experience over spring break that is largely paid for by endowed funds. For spring break 2015, the author of this chapter and a colleague offered a trip to Thailand. To participate, students were required to take part in a Step into the World!: Thailand course that was intended to prepare them to successfully navigate, and later reflect upon, their experience abroad. The trip portion of the course spanned 10 days. To measure what impacts the course may have had, students were asked to complete a pre-course and post-course survey, the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (Fritz, Möllenberg, & Chen, 2002), and to complete journal entries and a personal impact statement by which their multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills were assessed.

Analysis of the results suggests the Step into the World!: Thailand course had a positive impact on the majority of students’ intercultural sensitivity and multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

The findings support the importance of intentionally combining inside and outside of the classroom experiences to enhance student outcomes.

This study aims to examine the extent to which clients’ perceptions of a financial auditor’s communication style affect their psychological comfort and trust when considering whether to retain the incumbent firm for future financial audits.

A multistage method was used comprising integrated results from a literature review and findings from five in-depth interviews with chief financial officers of listed firms. A cross-sectional survey then yielded valid responses from 190 incorporated firms listed on The Stock Exchange of Thailand or Market for Alternative Investment.

The results reveal that, consistent with social interaction theory, an affiliation communication style positively influenced client’s psychological comfort and trust in an auditor. On the other hand, a dominant communications style negatively impacted psychological comfort. Cognitive social capital was found to moderate the links between dominant communication–psychological comfort, psychological comfort–trust and trust–relationship commitment.

From a managerial perspective, an affiliation communication style is fundamental for building client comfort and trust, especially for professional service firms, but especially in Eastern collectivist cultures that are relationship rich, where people seek to avoid conflict and prefer indirect communication styles over more direct styles.

This research highlights the central role that interpersonal communication style plays in developing psychological comfort and trust with a professional service firm. In addition, this study introduces the role of client psychological comfort as a key mediator between communications and trust.

To provide information regarding international/intercultural communication problems, along with management tactics for coping and handling such problems occurring in the international business work setting in foreign companies operating in Thailand.

Exclusive 14 in‐depth interviews with expatriate executives and Thai senior employees were conducted in four Japanese, two German, and two multinational companies in Thailand. Both expatriates and Thai employees were asked to identify communication problems and describe how they managed such problems with international/intercultural partners, supervisors, or subordinates.

The sample was quite small. The subjects reacted to the interview protocol based upon their own personal experience working in eight foreign companies in Thailand, which might not represent the entire intercultural/international viewpoints.

This study provides guidelines for prospective expatriates who will be assigned to work in the Thai host country and for Thai newcomers who are interested in working in foreign companies and must prepare to cope with the problems they may have in working with foreign managers.

It is hoped to be beneficial for both expatriates and Thai employees to perceive and learn each other's understandings, needs, and expectations. Also, it is hoped that information presented in this paper can trigger more thoughts and generate further discussions in international/intercultural business communication classrooms. The study also provides a framework for further investigation of commonalities and differences in tactics for dealing with international/intercultural communication problems at work in other countries compared with those found in Thailand.

The purpose of this study is evaluate whether the high performance organization (HPO) framework can satisfy the recent urgent request of Thai business leaders to create a unique organization which is better able to deal with unpredictable circumstances and increased competition. To establish the suitability of the HPO Framework it first has to be made sure that this framework is applicable to the Thai business context as previous research has shown that management techniques originating from the Western world cannot be indiscriminately transferred into non-Western contexts.

During several workshops and seminars in Bangkok, participants were asked to complete the HPO questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using a second-order confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate whether the data on the 35 items in the HPO framework group into the five independent factors: continuous improvement, openness and action orientation, management quality, workforce quality and long-term orientation.

The data yielded, with a high reliability, four of the five HPO factors as present in the original HPO framework. The dropped items were either confounded with other factors or items that may be another dimension in the data or a sub-dimension of other factors. The long-term orientation factor was dropped, as the accompanying items did not unidimensionally measure this construct. This did not mean that long-term orientation (LTO) is not relevant in the Thai context; there simply were no items included that measured LTO properly in the Thai context.

The HPO framework proved to be a validated and valuable technique for Thai organizations to improve in a sustainable way. Further research should focus on testing the HPO framework in practice by implementing the framework in Thai organizations and then tracking the performance of these organizations over time. In this way, it can be evaluated if the advantages experienced by organizations while applying the HPO framework can also be enjoyed by Thai organizations.

This is the first research into the validity of the HPO framework in the specific Thai context.

The purpose of this study is to determine effective online safety awareness education for young people in less developed countries. The research followed an explanatory mixed methods design starting with an online survey (quantitative element) and then interesting or anomalous findings were followed up with one-on-one interviews (qualitative element). The data gathered on the online habits and views of young people were fed into the Young People Online Model. It was also used to create online safety workshops. The standout issue from this research is the prevalence of cyberbullying, and this was used as the core theme. They were carried out using the action-research approach, whereby after each workshop, the facilitators would reflect and analyse and suggest improvements for the next one.

The majority of online safety awareness education programmes have been developed in and for advanced countries. In less developed countries, there are fewer programmes as well as a lack of research on the factors that influence the online behaviour of young people online. The Young People Online Education Framework seeks to address this and provide educators, researchers and policymakers an evidence driven construct for developing education programmes informed by issues affecting young people in their respective country/region.

The framework was applied in Thailand. As there were very few previous studies, original research was conducted via surveys and interviews. It was found that a high proportion of young people had experienced negative interactions online with cyberbullying the main concern. This was confirmed during the workshop phase indicating the need for more research and workshops. There is a plan to continue the research in Thailand, and it is hoped that other researchers will make use of the framework to extend its scope and application.

A novel feature of this framework is the cultural mask. The cultural context of learners is often overlooked in education, especially when education programmes are imported from other countries. This research contends that effective learning strategies and programmes will have a better chance to succeed if the cultural makeup of the target audience is considered and that all topics and activities are parsed through the cultural mask element of the framework.

This study focuses on variations of the importance of core values through motivational domains of individuals by their cultural background. The effect of motivational domains on operational performance has also been investigated.

The study used survey as the main data collection method to elicit data from managerial workers in spa businesses in four regions of Thailand. An unpublished database of spa businesses was provided to the study by the Thai Chamber of Commerce.

Significant variations of the importance of motivational domains of managerial workers can be found according to the subculture of each of the four regions of Thailand. In addition, the motivational domains have found their significant impact on worker operational performance.

One of the limitations of this study may be the distribution of samples because the study focuses on spa businesses, most of which in each region are located in big tourism provinces that may not be wholly representative of the characteristics of each region.

This study will be of practical value for practitioners or managers of any firms since it is important to consider value variations when assessing the operational performance; workers, especially managerial workers, in each subculture may have different priorities in the motivational domains of their lives. This could affect their operational performance.

This is an original attempt to ascertain variations of core values through motivational domains by subculture. It fills a knowledge gap in under-researched area in the literature since so far a few studies have examined this issue in the ASEAN countries.

To examine organizational diagnostics taken from the best practice model of change as organizational diagnostic factors in a specific type of business such as family businesses. These account for many of companies in Asia and are regarded as a special from the mixture of management focus on business, family and ownership.

In order to manage changes in family business successfully, the organizational diagnostic factors are analyzed from executives' in‐depth interviews with Thai family businesses that implement new IT systems.

Communication, generation, ownership, family structure, politics and national culture are six diagnostic factors in Thai family businesses that are not the same as the model of change.

Consultants and change agents in family businesses, especially in Asia, can use these factors as an additional guideline for their effective change management.