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The purpose of this paper is to propose the knowledge management (KM) model of the Thai “One Tambon One Product” (OTOP) community business by investigating the KM practices of the selected five‐star OTOP businesses of Thailand and identifying the KM factors that affect the success of their businesses.

A qualitative research method was used. The research units were three groups of Thai OTOP Champions with a score of five stars who have become successful in community income building, with national renown and ethnic representations. The research had three phases. Phase 1 was the study of KM practices of top OTOP businesses and factors affecting their successes of these businesses. Data were collected by in‐depth interviews, focus groups, and participatory observations. The informants were the OTOP businesses' administrators, operating staff, and members. Phase 2 involved data analysis and synthesis using content analysis. Phase 3 consisted of the development of a KM model for top OTOP businesses based on the results of Phase 1 and KM theories. The model was confirmed via a seminar technique and expert knowledge.

The findings lead to proposal of a KM model for top successful Thai OTOP businesses, with the following components: KM processes propelling the process of OTOP business management, and KM success factors including leadership, organizational cultures, man, and knowledge/intellect.

This research has developed a KM model for community business, which is based on the practices of successful national businesses. Therefore it can be applied for the management of any OTOP business in Thailand.

This paper aims to provide information about various digital initiatives in libraries in Thailand and especially use of Dublin Core metadata in cataloguing digitized objects in academic and government digital databases. Design/methodology/approach – The author began researching metadata use in Thailand in 2003 and 2004 while on sabbatical from the University of Vermont. A small number of government libraries were in the process of building up their digital databases. These were identified from a survey conducted by the author at that time. The author continues to monitor the development of digital initiatives and has identified several new digital initiatives created by academic institutions since then. The digital initiatives operated by Thai government agencies and academic institutions that existed in 2007 are presented, along with one example of a metadata record randomly selected from each of these projects. These examples illustrate Dublin Core metadata use and cataloguing practice employed in these digital databases. The author's current research on the development of digital initiatives is included. Findings – This paper presents what the author feels are some significant technical and legal issues facing Thai digital initiatives. A major copyright issue in Thailand, the ineffective enforcement of intellectual property laws relating to access rights, is presented. Also discussed is the significant obstacle to record retrieval created by the structure and complexity of the Thai language. Originality/value – This paper identifies important issues and problems related to Thai digital initiatives and offers suggestions and comments aimed at enhancing the development and progress of digital initiatives both in the Thai library community and internationally.

This practitioner's chapter presents a “how-to” approach to establishing a college system that is decentralized and rooted in local communities, using the Thai system as an example. The Thai system “borrowed” programs from US community colleges – offering associate degrees, certificate programs, continuing education programs, and remedial education. While the author presents clear challenges that these institutions face, he is optimistic that the community college system is a positive aspect of the Thai higher education system.

This paper aims to help understand how community-based social entrepreneurs experience world-class “performance excellence” models and to explore the core values that enable social enterprises to become high-performance organizations.

Underpinned by Mindsponge processes, the proposed conceptual framework critiques the Baldrige criteria for performance excellence (BCPE) model in a global south context. The mixed-methods study fosters an in-depth analysis. First, it validates the BCPE mechanism in community-based social enterprises (CBSEs) before identifying the significant core values and concepts of BCPE that influence CBSEs to achieve high performance.

The BCPE, adapted from global north corporate principles and applied at a community level, can significantly develop global south organization performance excellence. Five core values and concepts from the 11 fundamental beliefs in driving performance excellence were found to support performance excellence in CBSE management. These values and concepts are “customer-focused excellence,” “social responsibility,” “systems perspective,” “visionary leadership” and “focus on success.”

First, factors influencing performance excellence are not limited to the core values elements discussed. Future research may clarify factors extracted from the “Process” category of BCPE to explore further how CBSEs can enhance their performance in a different formation path. Second, this study only considered the Thai-Phuan community in Pho Tak village, Nong Khai, Thailand, to represent as a single case study. However, different, clustered or contrasting CBSEs in other regions remain open for further exploration to enrich the knowledge of “performance excellence” in a community organization. Finally, a longitudinal study would be a welcome addition.

The following must be considered. First is setting a clear direction: the organization’s vision and mission, by purposeful design, should ensure that CBSE managers are leading by example and demonstrating the importance of social and environmental value creation. Second is developing institutional culture: fundamental core values focused predominantly on “customer-focused excellence” and “social responsibility” encourage collaboration by “working together to drive success”. Third is developing integrated management system: CBSEs need to ensure that the management systems can collaborate and complement each component to create performance excellence. Fourth is creating a learning organization: CBSEs need to create a culture of continuous learning through data collection, measurement, analysis and modification.

This study clarifies that the implementation of BCPE is crucial to the establishment of performance excellence at both macro- and micro-level organizations. According to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the fundamental drivers of BCPE are the same for all types of organizations and in all sectors, whether in the private sector, education, health care or government (Blazey and Grizzell, 2021). By applying the Baldrige excellence model at the community level, this study found that CBSE can similarly strive for excellence and improved performance. This can lead to strengthened services, increased productivity and enhanced quality of life for the community.

This study provides a novel viewpoint on the Baldrige paradigm. Expressly, BCPE is compatible with global south community-based organizations to enhance performance excellence. Its essential contribution demonstrates that Baldrige model concepts are more widespread within smaller and underdeveloped territories than imagined. The recent (post-study) inclusion of “Community” as an independent sector in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards validates the research findings and recommendations proposed by this study.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Thai immigrants who relocated to Auckland, New Zealand, looked for and found the information they needed during their settlement process.

The study used a qualitative methodology through semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions that were conducted with nine Thai immigrants living in the greater Auckland region. Mwarigha’s three stages of settlement and Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology were used as theoretical frameworks for understanding the information-seeking behaviour of the Thai immigrants and their information needs and associated barriers to accessing information at different stages of the settlement process.

The information needs of Thai immigrants in Auckland were diverse based on the stage of each participant’s settlement process. The main information needs of the participants were for employment, English language-learning, housing, health and making connections. Their main information sources during settlement were family, friends and the internet. The participants saw Auckland Libraries as a useful source but did not take full benefit of the library’s services. The main barriers in accessing services were English language incompetence, lack of resources available in the Thai language, lack of time and library staff behaviour.

The results of this study will provide library and information professionals with new insights into Thai immigrants’ information-seeking behaviour and their information needs, which may contribute to providing immigrants with the information tools they need to improve the quality of their lives in New Zealand. As this study is limited to Thai immigrants in Auckland only, there is a need to conduct a study on the information needs and seeking behaviour of Thai immigrants in other locales. It may be of interest to researchers to conduct a quantitative study of a larger sample to further generalise the findings.

There is minimal research that specifically investigates the information needs, sources and barriers to information experienced by immigrants throughout the settlement process. This study is unique in that it focuses on a specific ethnic community of Thais. The findings of this study can be a stepping stone towards further research to gain a deeper understanding of Thai and other immigrants’ information needs, sources, barriers and their perceptions towards public libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong.

In-depth interviews and case studies are employed in relation to Thai restaurant and grocery shop owners and employees in Hong Kong.

This study is an attempt to explain the clustering of Thai ethnic small businesses in Kowloon City through a discourse on the ethnic enclave economy. The Thai migrant enclave in Hong Kong is explored with dimensions of segregation, namely evenness, exposure, clustering, concentration and centralization (Massey and Denton’s, 1988). This study suggests that these Thai enclave businesses have two differentials compared to the findings of Zhou (1992) in Chinatown restaurants in New York.

The findings provide evidences for social workers, migrant associations and policy makers in developing ideas of ethnic business enabling. There should be wide range of supporting and welfare policies for the empowerment of migrants and minority ethnic groups. An immigrant enclave should no longer be regarded as a ghetto for many business chances can be found there.

Two ethnic economy development differentials are developed. First, ethnicity similarity between the minority group and the majority ethnic enables ethnic business accessing earlier to an interethnic clientele from wider society. Second, internal factors of the ethnic enclave and external factors of the wider society have constrained the diversification of ethnic business.

The challenges of both community-based and heritage tourism result in significant impacts that have occurred in many tourist areas. These negative effects are the main problems that damage indigenous communities and are involved with cultural heritage preservation and economic development. This study aims to apply a qualitative method to scrutinize the problems and their causes in a community.

This study applied a qualitative method to scrutinize the actual data. The 50 informants from the relevant stakeholder groups of Ban Wangka village were interviewed with 22 themed questions based on the indicators of sustainable cultural heritage destinations.

Results indicate that tourism development at Ban Wangka village faces significant challenges due to the conflict between economic development and cultural heritage preservation.

The limitations also exist. First, the Mon people use their own language which resulted in the need for an interpreter during interviews. Therefore, sometimes it was impossible for the researcher to access the informants’ actual emotions. Second, this study is based on the concept of sustainable tourism development, which is an abstract idea to the local people, and thus Mon people understand it but are never concerned. Finally, this study focused only on the Mon community, which is not enough to fully achieve sustainability. Therefore, the community from the Thai side of the river must also be involved.

Such challenges have a direct impact on the sustainability of tourism operations. This indicates that the problems will lead to serious conflicts in the future unless they are resolved gently. The Ban Wangka Mon village is faced with problems that are not very different from other tourist attractions in Thailand, especially the intense growth during this time, which has brought significant changes to the destination. Subsequently, conflicts arose easily and quickly because of the motivational power of income. To overcome these problems, the community needs to be strong in fighting against the influence of tourism income.

The challenges of the destination have a direct impact on the sustainability of tourism operations. This indicates that the problems will lead to serious conflicts in the future if they are not resolved. Ban Wangka Mon village is faced with problems that are not very different from other tourist attractions in Thailand, To overcome these problems, the community needs to be strong in fighting against the influence of tourism income. In addition, good tourism planning that places importance on all stakeholders equally and providing a balanced income management plan and a fair share of income will surely eliminate many of the conflicts.

This case study of Ban Wangka Mon Village is based on the theory of sustainable tourism development, which contains three dimensions: environmental, economic and social and ethical. All impacts from tourism at Ban Wangka Mon village can be summarized into four challenges consisting of severe tourism growth, economic growth conflict, identity deterioration and behavioral changes. Some of these challenges are similar to other destinations such as the Vlorë Region.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate direct, cultural, and structural violence in education system in the midst of armed conflict in Southern Thailand.

The exploratory qualitative case study conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with 40 participants, consisting of students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, principals, experts, education specialists, and administrators from seven schools across the three southern border provinces.

The study reveals some misconceptions of violence, normalization of direct violence in armed conflict, and pinpoints the ways in which cultural violence is used to legitimize structural and direct violence in the education system, as well as adverse effects and ethno-religious segregation in schools and the larger society.

Some policy recommendations are offered to address violence and promote sustainable peace through the education system in Southern Thailand.

This paper offers new perspectives on the inter-relationship between education and violence and adverse effects on violence in the education system in the midst of armed conflict in Southern Thailand.

This research investigates cross‐cultural business networks between Australian engineering consultants and their Thai customers. A qualitative research study was conducted into business relationships, gathering data on different aspects of actors' perceptions of their relationships. The theoretical foundation of the research was the actors‐activities‐resources model, a western model developed by members of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group. The results prompted an adaptation to the original model through the addition of two new constructs: network constraint and actor bond negative. A detailed description of the models’ constructs and their antecedents is given, thus contributing to the richness of data on cross‐cultural business relationships. The modified model adds to the development of a universal model of business relationships that can form the basis for applications in both western and eastern business cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the social enterprises and human resource management (HRM) literatures by examining how institutional and cultural contexts influence human resources (HR) practices, i.e., recruitment practices (specifically, recruitment channels) and employee relations (ER) practices that are adopted in social enterprises in the developing country of Thailand.

This paper applies an embedded cross-case analysis of four social enterprises in Thailand across a variety of industries. The case study evidence in this paper draws on semi-structured interviews with each social enterprise’s representatives; field visits to each social enterprise in Bangkok and in other provinces in Thailand; and a review of archival documents and web-based reports and resources. This paper uses thematic analysis to pinpoint, examine and record the patterns or themes found in the data.

Based on these four case studies, this paper proposes that the deficiencies in the Thai skill formation system, especially skill shortages, are associated with the adoption of alternative or substream recruitment channels among social enterprises. Additionally, the weak and highly fragmented ER institution and the cultural context that favor conflict avoidance and unassertiveness among workers within the workplace are associated with the adoption of a paternalistic ER practice in these enterprises.

This paper has only focused on the role of national skill formation system, ER system, and the cultural context that favor conflict avoidance and unassertiveness among workers within the workplace. Future research may explore how other institutional and cultural domains influence the adoption of HR practices in these enterprises in the context of emerging market economies. Additionally, because this research is based on the case studies of four social enterprises in a variety of industries in Thailand, the findings of this paper may not be generalizable to all social enterprises across countries. Another limitation of this research is that it did not include social enterprises in several other industries, including the entertainment and media industry and the printing and publishing industry, and it does not include other forms of social enterprises, such as community-led social ventures. Future research may explore how institutional and cultural contexts influence HR practices adopted in social enterprises in other industries or in other types of social enterprises. Moreover, quantitative studies using large samples of social enterprises across industries might be useful in deepening our understanding of a topic that is significant from the perspective of both social enterprises and HRM.

This paper provides practical implications for HR professionals, founders and top managers of social enterprises not only in Thailand but also in other countries that face the problem of a skill shortage in the labor market.

This paper provides policy implications for the government of Thailand and the governments of several other emerging market economies in which the skill shortage is particularly severe. These governments should focus on solving this problem to alleviate severe competition among several types of organizations in the labor market. Furthermore, these governments should foster the implementation of a partnership model for employee–management relationships within the workplace. In this model, employees and management perceive each other as partners rather than enemies to sustain win–win solutions to any problems or disputes that may occur.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature regarding how social enterprises manage HR across contexts, especially in developing countries where institutional and cultural contexts might differ from those of developed countries. Batt and Banerjee (2012) suggested that the literature on HRM, including strategic human resource management (SHRM), should extend beyond the organizational context and examine how institutional contexts influence the adoption of organizations’ HR practices. Additionally, Batt and Banerjee (2012) noted that the majority of studies in the HRM literature focus on profit-oriented firms in the private sector and ignore other types of organizations such as non-profits or social enterprises.