Values, culture and the Thai international education experience

Abstract

The cross culture management literature abounds with journals measuring cultural variability between countries using a variety of value based dimensional models and providing subsequent prescriptive management advice for improved cross cultural understanding and operating synergies. These models however have not explicitly assessed the impact of the growing international education phenomenon on international students’ values, a privileged population segment that have significant nfluence in international organizations in their countries. This paper is exploratory and aims to initiate research on the impact an international education has on indigenous cultural value orientations,specifically between Thai international students who have studied in an Anglocluster country and Thai domestically educated students, using a Schwartz Value Survey. Schwartz’s national culture dimension embeddedness was the only dimension to show statistically significant difference between the two groups’ means with Thai international participants embracing traditional Thai values to a greater extent than the both domestically educated Thai participants and the Thai population in general.