Eastern and western business communication, more than communication styles: communicating logic and thinking styles

Marie-Thérèse Claes PhD

WU Symposium on International Business Communication

Vienna 2009

Introduction Western managers in Thailand

Thais don’t have the same logic, or maybe they have no logic Thais cannot manage a project, there is no critical thinking or argumentation amongst Thais. How for example can Thais block the international airport, knowing

that it will probably have a negative impact on the tourism industry, the number one industry in the country?

This paper will examine critical thinking in Thailand, compared to what Westerners call critical thinking and logic.

I will contrast cultural aspects of differences in values, and the impact Asian values in general, and Thai values in particular, have on thinking styles and business decision styles.

In order to work well with Thais, Western managers need to understand the relative importance of rational, emotional and spiritual values, in their own culture, and in Thai culture.

Thailand

Events since September 2006 Military coup PM Thaksin

Shinawatra Corruption Parties:

Thai rak Thai People Power Party:

PM Samak; Thaksin’s brother in law

People’s Alliance for Democracy P.A.D

November 2008

P.A.D demonstrations, government seat & airports in BKK yellow

P.P.P. demonstrations Red

Role of colours: days of the week King born on a Monday: Rama IX

Thaksin

Violence September 2008

BKK Airport November 2008

Red Shirts

ASEAN Summit Pattaya April 10-11 2009

Tourism Council of Thailand

The council had projected 12.8 million foreign visitors, generating revenue of 440 billion baht.

This compares with 540 billion baht last year. There were 12.7 million foreign tourist arrivals

last year, down from 14.4 million in 2007.

Thai culture

Collectivist Hierarchical, authoritarian Role of religion: Buddhist and Animism

Reincarnation Making merit

Role of emotions: nam jai (feelings) sabai jai – happy jai yen - cool heart jai lorn – angry jai dee - good hearted jai dum - black hearted

Thai values

Emotional values Spiritual values

Emotional values

Mai pen raiNever mind.It's cool.Don't get mad, get glad.Take it easy.No worries.Oh well, I can't do anything about it.

mai pen rai is ultimately a philosophy of life: Bend with the wind, like a bamboo tree.

Sanuk Fun, pleasure, including workplace Comes from within, listen to your feelings Avoid confrontations, anything unpleasant

Role of emotional vs rational values in decision-making

Rational values, based on objective analysis Consequential values: result in a good outcome Consensual: values of the majority

Western use of consequential values: If A, followed by B, this will lead to C Simple, predictable, manageable

Thai actions

Contradiction with consequential thinking: Elect a government that makes promises it cannot

deliver without ruining the country Admire and support a politician with such dubious

character Close the airport and harm the tourism industry

Emotional values

Consensual values Shared with friends, colleagues, community Acceptance of ideas without questioning Community loyalty and political polarisation Social harmony vs critical argumentation

Relationship oriented

Thai businessman

“We Thai are not a society of law; we are a society of relationship… It is not what a person has done that is wrong; it’s who he is… If he is your cousin, or your friend, then what he has done is not wrong. But if another person does the same thing, and it is somebody you don’t like, then what he has done is wrong…”

What trumps what

Social harmony vs critical argumentation Priorities may change Decisions taken

Spiritual values

Rely on faith, not on rationality Decisions based on faith in business and

politics: offerings, astrologers

Thaksin: “ his giant ego and fierce stubbornness definitely play a role in his

political tantrums. So does his choice to listen only to the fortune-tellers who tell him what

he wants to hear.” (Bangkok Post 2/4/2009)

Spiritual values

Deep, sacred and spiritual connection to the King Cult-like status of powerful/ rich people:

Faith in Thaksin above rational logic Disbelief in his wrongdoing

Karma can be described as that our conscious actions will result in an effect. This does not involve unconscious acts though.

Karma means action or deed in sanskrit and involves that unselfish good deeds results in good karma, but selfish, "evil" deeds results in bad karma. "What you do is what you get" or

Tham dii, dai dii - Tham chua, dai chua in Thai.

Question by Westerner

“Why does a self-declared democratic movement fall back on someone like Thaksin, a gifted but impulsive political operator so frightfully contradictory that any popular movement that returns him to power would need to watch its back?”

Michael Connors, City University HK

Power of spiritual values

Take precedence over rational values and over emotional values

Demand commitment Conviction they are morally right

Priorities are different

Rational

Emotional

Spiritual

The Geography of Thought (Nisbett)

Western Categories Rules Liberty, personal agency Investigation, theory, debate Finding Truth Logic: decontextualise Focus: static, object, syntax One-many: individualism Right-wrong; either-or

Eastern Context Relationships Harmony, collective agency Common sense, golden mean Finding Tao (way to live) Dialectic: context changes Focus: context, topic, relation Part-whole:collectivism Both-and

Western Formal, logical approach,

abstraction Analytical thought: discrete

objects, categories Importance of language:

concrete Single-motive: either-or Behaviour results from personality traits

Eastern Content, plausibility, Middle

Way Holistic approach: context,

relations, cycles Verbal expression limits

holistic cognition Context: both-and Importance of situational

factors

Thinking and the brain

Psychological research has established that American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes

the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the

contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural

differences can influence memory and even perception.

But are they reflected in brain activity patterns?

McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT 10 East Asians recently arrived in the United States

and 10 Americans Subjects were shown a sequence of stimuli consisting

of lines within squares and were asked to compare each stimulus with the previous one.

In some trials, they judged whether the lines were the same length regardless of the surrounding squares (an absolute judgment of individual objects independent of context, ignoring the visual context).

In other trials, they decided whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares, regardless of absolute size (a relative judgment of interdependent objects, taking the visual context into account).

Culture influences brain functions In previous behavioral studies of similar tasks, Americans were

more accurate on absolute judgments, and East Asians on relative judgments.

In the current study, the tasks were easy enough that there were no differences in performance between the two groups.

However, the two groups showed different patterns of brain activation when performing these tasks.

Americans, when making relative judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar absolute judgments.

East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging the brain's attention system more for absolute judgments than for relative judgments.

Americans show more activity during relative judgments than absolute judgments, presumably because the former task is less familiar and hence more demanding for them. East Asians show the opposite pattern.

The arrows point to brain regions involved in attention that are engaged by more demanding tasks.

MIT research

“We were surprised at the magnitude of the difference between the two cultural groups, and also at how widespread the engagement of the brain's attention system became when making judgments outside the cultural comfort zone.”

The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those individuals who identified more closely with their culture.

Culture and the brain

"Everyone uses the same attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks, but they are trained to use it in different ways, and it's the culture that does the training,"

"It's fascinating that the way in which the brain responds to these simple drawings reflects, in a predictable way, how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social relationships."

Implications for business communication Westerners in East-Asian cultures:

Accept different communication patterns Accept different thinking patterns Differences:

rules vs relationships either-or vs both-and object vs context linear vs cyclical logic vs emotions categories vs holistic: differences in language!