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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
In this chapter I would like to offer some practical examples from real life of what foreign business people encounter when they work in Thailand. Much is said about the challenges of doing business in Thailand. There are a lot of books on how to, and how not to do business across cultures, so what is the reality?
Most of what I have to say is based on the experience of my company, Beasley Intercultural, which assists clients to better navigate the complexities of working globally. It is really tough working globally for a lot of our clients. We don't only focus on Thailand; we work across the Asia-Pacific region and we are doing increasing amounts of consulting in China and India. What we help our clients with is: “How do you navigate these complexities?” We use the term “navigate” because as I am going to explain today, it is not necessarily appropriate for Australians to learn to behave like Thai people or Thais to learn how to behave like Australians. How do you navigate the differences and get the job done? That is what we focus on. So we provide consultancy and training services and we are doing increasing amounts of consultancy work in intercultural management, pre-departure, orientation and re-entry. Intercultural communications issues in virtual teams are increasingly important. For example, how do you work with people using teleconferencing when there may be six to eight different countries represented? We work with government and have a contract to do all pre-departure and re-entry teams with the Youth Ambassadors. That is, about 240 young people each year going to live and work in the Asia-Pacific region. We work with the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, and with corporate clients. We work with a variety of different organizations dealing with these types of issues.
I would like to start off with the mythology of doing business in Thailand. There is a huge mythology about doing business in Thailand and a lot of it can be found in the bookstores of many airports in the region.
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