KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN THAILAND

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN THAILAND: A STUDY OF THE IMPACTS OF THE THAI WORKING STYLE

MONGKOLCHAI WIRIYAPINIT
Chulalongkorn Business School, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road
Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
E-mail: Mongkolchai@acc.chula.ac.th

This research work aims to describe what Thai working style is and to learn how this described Thai working style impacts on knowledge management. The research method used in this research is that of focus groups. The participants were students at the post-graduate level with a number of years of full-time work experience and who had studied the subject of learning organization and knowledge management as a part of their degree program. The research findings characterize the Thai working style as ‘informal cooperation’ through the three overarching contexts of Thai working styles: 1) Pattern of Working, 2) Attitude to Working, and 3) Motivation for Working. The research findings also suggests that the Thai working style in the context of the pattern of working and attitude to working negatively impacts on knowledge management whereas the Thai working style in the context of motivation for working positively impacts on knowledge management.

1. Introduction
This section describes the background and objectives of this research work. Regarding the background, this research follows on from a suggestion in the recommended further research in the author’s own previous research work (Wiriyapinit, 2007). Firstly, this work explored aspects of Thai culture related to knowledge management in organizations. This exploration was conducted because there existed no clear common description of the term ‘culture’ across different literatures when associating it with knowledge management (Devenport & Prusak, 1998; Ford & Chan, 2003; Zhu, 2004). Thus, there was a need to identify which cultural aspects impact on knowledge management in organizations. Secondly, the same work (Wiriyapinit, 2007) also explored the possible impacts based on the identified cultural aspects. Because this work was an exploratory case study research, it revealed only preliminary findings. These findings included a description of Thai culture (relating to knowledge management) categorized into 8 different aspects validated by the research informants. These were less interactive communication, seniority system, Buddhism, dependence on parents, obedience, working style, education, and general behavior aspects. Based on the arising description of Thai culture, the research findings also revealed pessimism towards the impact of Thai culture on knowledge management. Only the Buddhism aspect was seen to offer a positive impact on knowledge management.
The author realized it was necessary to establish a more concrete explanation of the pessimism emerging from this research through further research works focusing on each different cultural aspect that had been preliminary identified. The author recommended that it would be very beneficial for knowledge management practitioners if further research could start with the ‘working style’ aspect. Regarding this aspect, it was found in the same work (Wiriyapinit, 2007) that Thais likes to work in a team (or group) more cooperatively rather than collaboratively.

However, there exist a number of literatures (Marquardt, 1996; O'Dell et al., 1998) that suggest team-working to be supportive to learning at work, and thereby allowing knowledge to be constantly managed. However, there has not been any concrete and detailed explanation on the sort of teamwork that would be supportive to knowledge management. In the case of Thailand, this should therefore be further investigated. At least, such an investigation should give a clearer description of the Thai working style and whether it is supportive to knowledge management (e.g. if cooperative teamwork is identified as a Thai working style, there is a need to explain whether the way Thais work as a cooperative team is supportive to knowledge management).
In addition to the author’s previous research work, this study was inspired by the author’s willingness to make a contribution to the knowledge base in the field of knowledge management, especially for knowledge management practitioners in Thailand. The author has learned from a number of literatures (Ford & Chan, 2003; Zhu, 2004.) that knowledge management may not be an absolutely universal concept. Of course, knowledge management does not only involve technologies, it also involves people and work processes or the way people work in their organizations (Awad & Ghaziri, 2004). Moreover, it has become more common for knowledge management to be explained alongside the concept of the learning organization. In general, this concept clearly reminds people that they should not stop learning after graduating from their educational institutions, but must keep learning while they work (Marquardt & Reynolds, 1994; Pedler et al., 1991). In a later work, Garvin (2000) made a clear and dependent connection between knowledge management and the development of a learning organization. Discussion of the learning organization is to reiterate the assertion that people play an important role in knowledge management in that knowledge can not be effectively managed if there is no willingness to learn. It is generally known that people have different norms, beliefs, ways of thinking and ways of working if they are from different cultural backgrounds. This supports the aforementioned argument in that knowledge management may not be universal because it may not be easily applicable to every cultural environment. Thus, there is the need for much more detailed explanations entailing how each culture (through each of its different aspects) impacts on knowledge management in the organizations. In order to satisfy this need, this research work focuses particularly on Thai culture beginning with an exploration of the aspect of working style. Therefore, the objectives of this research are as follows:
1) to learn what exactly Thai working style is, and
2) to learn how the described Thai working style impacts on knowledge management in organizations.
In order to meet both of the above-mentioned objectives, the author needs to clarify the scope of the knowledge management concept being applied in this research in the following section of this paper.

2. Knowledge Management
Great attention has been paid to knowledge management by top executives in organizations with its benefits having been widely discussed. Two examples of frequently discussed benefits follow. Firstly, knowledge management should allow the managers of an organization to deal with the high turnover of employees. This is in the sense that knowledge management allows the knowledge of those good and experiential employees to be stored systematically within the organization before they leave the organizations (Awad & Ghaziri, 2004; Prusak, 1997). Secondly, knowledge management allows organizations to cope with radical changes both internally and externally. This is in the sense that knowledge management enables people in organizations to be knowledgeable enough to deal with any problems that could arise at any given time. Also, this allows organizations to survive in the competitive environment (Bennet & Bennet, 2004; Spender, 2004).
In order to manage knowledge effectively, it is said that the following three factors should be involved: people, work process, and technology (Awad & Ghasiri, 2004; Gorelick et al., 2004). However, it is now commonly understood that knowledge management is not at all a technical subject of study as the ‘people’ and ‘work process’ factors have been recently highlighted to a greater degree.
Technology in fact is only a platform for people in the organization to manage their knowledge. By mentioning managing knowledge here, the author would like to refer to the common knowledge management process as stipulated in many works (Becerra-Fernandez et al., 2004; Sydanmaanlakka, 2002), which is to say that to manage knowledge is: 1) to create new knowledge, 2) to store knowledge, 3) to distribute knowledge and 4) to re-use knowledge. If knowledge is managed effectively, these four key activities seem to occur in a repetitive process. Thus this process allows new knowledge to be constantly created (Marsh & Satyadas, 2003; Maybusy, 2003). This leads to the reason why many works see a strong linkage between the ability of an organization to innovate and how well the organizations manage their knowledge (McCabe, 2003; Mehta & Mehta, 2005).
By referring back to the technology factor, there are many types of technology that are supportive to knowledge management. However, web-based technology is nowadays highlighted to a greater degree and used widely in knowledge management. The term Web 2.0 is discussed frequently as a highly valued tool for knowledge management purposes (Davies et al., 2007). Web 2.0 technology largely refers to the ability of the webpage viewers to not only view the page but also create the content appearing on the webpage and being stored virtually. Besides that, webpage viewers can also interactively communicate with fellow webpage viewers (Andolekar et al., 2008). By being able to do all this, technology has become a practical platform for such mentioned knowledge management activities as knowledge creation, knowledge storage, knowledge distribution, and knowledge re-use (Rollett et al., 2007).
Regarding the people and work process factors, these two factors are more related to the focus of the research objectives in this research work. This is explained later in the discussion and implication section of this paper. In fact, these two factors have been given great focus in the field of knowledge management in deriving key success factors (Buckman, 2004; Mathew, 2003). It is commonly understood that the people factor refers to individuals as being the ones who manage knowledge. Likewise, employees in the organization are the ones who create, store, distribute, and re-use knowledge (De & Sathyavgeeswaran, 2003; Hemre, 2005). As previously mentioned, technology only acts as a platform to enable people to conduct these knowledge management activities. The issue discussed widely in the knowledge management field of study is how to ensure that employees in organizations are motivated to ‘learn’ at work so that such mentioned knowledge management activities become part of a repetitive process. If there exists the willingness to learn more, employees will wish to manage their knowledge as well as use the available technology as a platform and tool to manage their knowledge in their organizations (Gorelick et al., 2004; Sydanmaanlakka, 2002).
This leads us back to the statement mentioned earlier in the previous section that the concept of the learning organization sits alongside the effort in managing knowledge in the organization. The concept of the learning organization refers to the sort of organizational culture that is highly supportive to knowledge management to the extent that this actually forms the ‘people’ factor in knowledge management. Apart from with particular reference to the concept of the learning organization, there are a lot of suggestions as to the ‘right’ types of people reflecting the sorts of attitude and behavior of employees in organizations that would be supportive to the efforts in managing knowledge in organizations. These include, for example, people who are willing to collaborate, to share what they know, and to be rewarded (Becerra-Fernandez et al., 2004; O’Dell et al., 1998). These ‘right’ types of people are also suggested based on nationality, for example, Chinese (Elkin et al., 2009), and Irish (Birdthistle, 2008).
As for the work process factor, this factor rather reflects the management paradigm in the organization. There have been efforts to form knowledge management guidance by drawing upon managerial issues. These issues are, for example, the sort of organization structure, the decision-making approach, or leadership style that would be supportive to knowledge management (Awad & Ghaziri, 2004; Nonaka, 1997). The common underlying idea behind the managerial issues is the encouragement of people in organizations to work as a team. Likewise, this is to say that organizational structure as well as work structure should all promote a collaborative working environment (Shukla, 1997) as this will at least enhance the ability for employees in the organization to distribute and share their knowledge among one another. The team-oriented structure is also perceived to support such other knowledge management activities as knowledge creation, and knowledge application (Bayer et al., 2005; Gogus, 2003).

3. Research Method
The research method employed in this research is the focus group interview (Denscombe, 1998; Robson, 1993). The interviewees were students in a course called Learning Organization and Knowledge Management. This course is taught by the author and offered as an elective course in the Master of Business Administration program (MBA program) and Master of Science program in Information Technology in Business (MS program) at the university where the author holds an assistant professor position. There were three groups of students that took part in the focus groups. Two groups were from the MBA Program, and the other from the MS program. The reason for having to include students from both programs is to enable a triangulation of interview data sources and to ensure that responses made by the interviewees are subsequently more comprehensive. Most of these students have acquired a number of years of work experience. Students in the MS program have some work experience mostly related to the field of information technology whereas students in the MBA program have work experience in various fields and industries. Two sessions of focus groups were conducted with each group of students. The first session involved asking participants to describe the overall picture of working style they have experienced in order to characterize the Thai working style. The second session asked participants to give their impressions in having knowledge managed in the work environment where the Thai working style dominates. The second sessions of focus groups were conducted immediately after students had taken their written final examination. This was to ensure that students had a certain level of understanding on knowledge management before making any responses to the interview questions, provided that all of these students later managed to pass the course. The descriptive content analysis was conducted. There were three emerged categories to be identified as the overarching contexts of Thai working style and in line with the discussed ‘people’ and ‘work process’ factors of knowledge management.
The validity of the research data is therefore based on the fact that the findings were obtained from the opinions given by participants with understanding of the concept of knowledge management and having already acquired full-time work experience (Miles & Huberman, 1994). These student interviewees were able to characterize the working style based on a variety of work experience and reveal their opinions on the possible impact of the Thai working style on knowledge management based on their understanding of the knowledge management concept learned from the course. The reliability of the research findings was ensured by the fact there was largely an agreement between opinions expressed by the interviewees across three different groups of students (Kirk & Miller, 1986). The findings in the part of the description of working style have also been validated by each of the three groups.

4. Research Findings
The focus group interviews revealed what exactly Thai working style is. The findings can be categorized into three overarching contexts of Thai working styles: 1) Pattern of Working, 2) Attitude to Working, and 3) Motivation for Working. These contexts can be described in greater detail in Table 1. The author characterizes the Thai working style as ‘informal cooperation’. This ‘informal cooperation’ working style encompasses all the illustrated overarching contexts of the Thai working style. The mentioned contexts have been described as ‘overarching’ because the descriptions within each context represent the arising inter-associated variables from the focus group interview data. This is further discussed below.
In the context of the pattern of working (reflecting the ‘work process’ factor in knowledge management described earlier), the Thai working style can be described as a work process that highlights structural and supportive team working. This description reflects the use of the term ‘cooperation’ in characterizing the Thai working style in this paper and is in accordance with other works (Dillenbourg & Schneider cited in Curtis & Lawson, 2001; McConnell, 2000). According to these same works, cooperation, as opposed to collaboration, can be depicted as being more structural in that members of the teamwork are told what roles in the team they should play, which task they should be doing, when they should be finished with their own part of a task and when to meet in order to support each other in integrating each part of the task into a completed work. On the other hand, collaboration implies a much greater level of togetherness in working as it has all the team members work on every part of a task together from the beginning until the completion of the task. Team members are supportive to each other throughout every stage of a task. Thus, the pattern of working found here falls into the cooperative type rather than collaborative type and this can be seen from the interviewees’ assertions, for example, clear division of work, focusing on one’s own work, individual work procedure (additional examples of interviewees’ supporting ideas can be seen in Table 1).

In the context of attitude to working (reflecting the ‘people’ factor in knowledge management), the Thai working style can also be described as easygoing and being marked by its seniority system. Likewise, this is to say that Thai workers are easy-going and like to be dominated by their superiors. This also depicts an attitude of ‘just do what you have to do in order to survive in the organization’. Thai workers are driven by their superiors through their compliance with their instructions without any significant amount of resistance. Thus, changes and innovation seem to be initiated by the head of the organizations. This particular type of attitude found in this study can be seen from the interviewees’ assertions, for example, advancement, work plan and changes initiated by superiors, centralized decision making, dislike of taking risks by one’s self (additional examples of interviewees’ supporting ideas can be seen in Table 1).
Moreover, the description of the Thai working style within this context arising from the interview data shows an association with the previously-discussed Thai pattern of working in that cooperation though team-working is heavily driven by superiors in the organizations.
In the context of motivation for working (also reflecting the ‘people’ factor in knowledge management), the Thai working style can also be described as being motivated by good relationships with people at work. This is to say that workers go to their workplaces not only to work but also to enjoy socializing with other colleagues at work. This depicts a form of community rather than just a group of people working in the same organization. The particular motivation for working found in this study is reflected in the participants’ assertions, for example, mixture of work and personal feelings towards other people at work, frequent informal gatherings at work, non-confrontational communication (additional examples of interviewees’ supporting ideas can be seen in table 1).
Moreover and as above, the description of the Thai working style within this context arising from the interview data shows an association with both of the previously discussed Thai pattern of working style and attitude to working in that cooperation through teamwork is also driven by a good relationship with people at work. This implies the need to keep good relationships with both superiors and co-workers. Furthermore, such relationships reflect the use of the term ‘informal’ to characterize the type of cooperation as discussed earlier. This is also to say that Thai workers would rather cooperate with other workers within an informal atmosphere and environment rather than a formal one.
Table 1 illustrates the research findings discussed earlier.


Overarching Contexts of Thai Working Style Descriptions Examples of interviewees’ supporting ideas
Pattern of Working Structural and supportive team working • Clear division of work
• Focus on one’s own work
• Assist others to work when available
• Prefer being with a group of co-workers (but not meant to work together)
• Only one outstanding member of the team identified
• Individual work procedure (rather than team work procedure)
• Coordination driven by necessity
Attitude to Working Easy going and dominated by superiors • Problems and prevention of problems at work not critical
• Advancement, work plan and changes driven by superior
• Centralized decision making
• Compliance to superiors
• Quality of work and superior’s feedback not highlighted
• Superior’s experience more highlighted than ones’ own knowledge
• Dislike taking risks on one’s own
Motivation for Working Motivated by relationships with people at work • Mixture of work and personal feeling towards other people at work
• Mixture of work and relationships with other people at work
• Frequent informal gatherings at work
• Non-confrontational communication
• Able to work with sub-groups of close friends at work

In the second session of focus group interviews, the author also asked the participants to express their opinions as to whether the Thai working style identified from their ideas would have a positive or negative impact on knowledge management in organizations based on the three overarching contexts described earlier. This was asked as part of the aim to complete the second objective of this study which is to learn how the identified Thai working style could impact on knowledge management in organizations. It was found that consistent opinions were expressed among the three groups of participants. They expressed that the identified Thai working style both in the contexts of pattern of working and attitude to working would negatively impact on knowledge management whereas the identified Thai working style in the context of motivation for working would positively impact on knowledge management. These results of the study will be further discussed in the next section.

5. Discussion and Implications
This section draws upon the results in the previous research findings section to discuss how the identified Thai working style could impact on knowledge management in organizations as stated as the second objective of this research study. The discussion is aimed at determining the tendency of whether the identified Thai working style in the contexts of pattern of working and attitude to working would negatively impact on knowledge management and whether the identified Thai working style in the context of motivation for working would positively impact on knowledge management.
Regarding the identified Thai pattern of working, it can be agreed here that it poses a negative impact on knowledge management. As the Thai pattern of working is described here as structural and supportive working style, this indicates a great sense of co-operation rather than collaboration. As described earlier, cooperation is to structure the group by dividing tasks into each group member’s individual responsibility and integrating work into a completed group product at the end, whereas collaboration does not structure the group work as much but group members work together through every stage of work. It can be argued that in this context collaboration would be an ideal working style for knowledge management. Collaboration would allow a two-way and more interactive communication allowing workers to be more exposed to knowledge sharing opportunities (Cook & Cook, 2005; Liebowitz & Chen, 2003). Also, collaboration would of course facilitate sharing of tacit knowledge (O’Dell & Grayson, 2003). Tacit knowledge is the type of knowledge that is usually taken as best practice or practical guidelines for improving a variety of generic skills needed for working, for example, leadership skill and consensus building skill (Awad & Ghaziri, 2004). Thus, the less collaborative working style of Thais could greatly shrink the opportunities to share knowledge among fellow workers. The characteristic of less interactive communication among fellow workers could also hinder them from capturing new knowledge as well as discourage them from re-using discovered knowledge because they are too much engaged with their own perspectives of work (Chan & Chau, 2005; Miller, 2005; Yada, 2005). In the cooperative way of working, the only chance for members of the group to be exposed to others’ perspectives would be in the final stage when they have to consolidate all the parts of work (Dillenbourg & Schneider cited in Curtis and Lawson, 2001). By having discussed this matter, the author does not conclude that the Thai pattern of working is not at all supportive to working. Of course, working in a cooperative fashion can be supportive to knowledge management. However, it would not be as supportive as when people work collaboratively mainly because the level of interactivity among workers is a lot higher in a more collaborative working environment. In this regard, Thai workers would be exposed to limited opportunities to share, apply and capture new knowledge. This is also to suggest the need to focus on the ‘work process’ factor of knowledge management. This focus informs the need to develop a more collaborative work process. This is to say that Thai organizations should be structured more collaboratively; likewise, the overall pattern of working in Thai organizations should also be structured more collaboratively.
Concerning the identified Thai working style in the context of attitude to working, it can also be agreed here that it poses a negative impact on knowledge management. As for this context, Thais’ attitude to working is described as easy going and being characterized by the seniority system. The discussion here depicts a similar picture to that previously discussed in the Thai pattern of working in that the ‘easy-going and dominated by superiors’ attitude would gear workers towards a less collaborative working environment. However, the discussion here would throw more light particularly on the collaboration between workers and their superiors. The issue in question arises from the fact that the combination of the superior’s knowledge and the subordinate’s knowledge offers a rich knowledge exchange. The ‘superiors’ would have gained more experience and would normally look at tasks through a more strategic perspective as compared to ‘subordinates’ who normally have less work experience and would normally look at tasks through a more operational perspective (Sydanmaanlakka, 2002). Thus, a rich knowledge exchange can be enabled through the combination of these two different perspectives.
According to Thai superiors, the findings suggest that they are more likely to cooperate rather than collaborate. This is a more structural way of working together in that the superior clearly owns a role of managing which involves planning, making decisions, leading, organizing, and controlling (Griffin, 2004) whereas the subordinates are usually passive and comply with the superior’s requests. This would then again create less interactive communication between the ‘superior’ group and ‘subordinate’ group. Also, as before, this will hinder the knowledge sharing opportunities between both groups. Knowledge creation would not be stimulated here because subordinates are not prone to making efforts in initiating any changes or improvements unless the superiors have instructed them to do so. This is in line with other works (Shukla, 1997) that imply a direct association between the amount of knowledge being created and the changes made in the organization. Knowledge application would not be stimulated here either as subordinates are not usually given the opportunities to experiment nor the opportunities to become one of the main problem solvers. In the Thai way of managing, superiors are the group of people who normally say what and when to experiment on something new or what should be the solution to the problem. This obviously runs counter to other works related to the concept of the learning organization highlighting the positive impact of experimenting opportunities and of collaborative problem solving on learning results and knowledge management (Garvin, 2000; Marquardt, 1996). This is to suggest the ‘people’ factor of knowledge management is relevant in that, for example, Thai leaders should be more open and collaborative with subordinates. Having been given opportunities to perform some managerial or challenging tasks, subordinates would be more motivated to learn. This is to develop an attitude of ‘learning at work’. This assertion is in line with earlier works (Amidon & Macnamara, 2003; Bennet & Neilsen, 2003; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000) which highlight the importance of the leading role on knowledge management.
With regard to the identified Thai working style in the context of motivation for working, it can also be asserted here that the Thai working style in this particular context poses a positive impact on knowledge management. In this particular context, Thais’ motivation for working is through the good relationships with people at work. This shows how important it is for Thai workers to engage with social activities at work in order to develop good relationships. Of course, it indicates a great sense of collaboration for Thai workers when they are involved in social activities with the aim to develop good relationships and trust among workers. This obviously facilitates a great amount of interactive communication (Salmon, 2000). Knowledge sharing could stem from this point when workers feel more comfortable to tell the people they trust and are socializing with what they know (Ford, 2003; Huotari & Livonen, 2004). Useful tacit knowledge (e.g. hands-on work experience) can also be transferred while workers are socializing with each other (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). In addition, knowledge application can be encouraged here when they are being exposed to a variety of perspectives on a single subject. Workers are less reluctant to be engaged with others’ ideas instead of basing their thoughts and initiatives on only their own way of thinking (Leonard & Straus, 1998; Marquardt, 1996). Finally, knowledge creation could also be stimulated when workers communicate interactively while they are socializing. This enables them to perform a rich information and knowledge exchange and as a result allows them to co-construct additional pieces of knowledge (Gunawardena et al., 1997; Salmon, 2000). Again, the ‘people’ factor of knowledge management could be concerned once again with the social relationships among people in the Thai organizations and should remain highlighted. Thai leaders in the organizations should be aware of this so that they will lead the organization in a way that makes it easy for people to maintain good relationships.




The implications of what is discussed above places the highlight on the leading role. This is to suggest that the ‘superior’ group should play more proactive roles in knowledge management in order to successfully manage the knowledge within the organizations. This is again in line with a great number of works, for example, Bartczak (2005); Gorelick et al. (2004); Naismith (2005). It has been found that part of the Thai working style is the workers being influenced by their superiors. So, instead of recommending the transformation of the Thai working style into a less seniority working style (which would consume a long period of time to accomplish), the author would like to suggest that the superior or, in this context, the Thai leaders in organizations could make adjustments and reinforcements to the Thai working style across all of the three identified overarching contexts discussed earlier. Obviously, the pattern of working could be more collaborative and in the form of less-structured group work. That is, for example, the leaders would look into the possibility of streamlining each of the responsibilities within a group or the organization so that the co-workers are granted more opportunities to collaborate with others (Shukla, 1997). Moreover, the attitude to working can be adjusted to be more focused on the tasks being conducted and rely more on workers’ own thoughts and initiation if the ‘superior’ group would decentralize decision making power as well as empower and delegate some of the challenges and problems to be dealt with or solved collaboratively by subordinates. As a result, workers could feel a greater sense of responsibility towards the tasks because they are the ones involved in the challenges and problems and not just the leader of the group. Thus, the framework of learning at work simultaneously will be clearer as workers would feel more willing to listen to their superiors and their fellow workers and to share what they know with them. This leads to the transformation of an organization into a learning organization and is in line with other works, for example Marquardt (1996), Shukla (1997), Wiriyapinit & Decharin (2008). Finally, the superior group can help facilitate the social element within the organization – a less formal working environment allowing workers to feel at ease in socializing with others. Consequently, this would enable knowledge to be constantly created, shared, and applied.

6. Further Research and Limitations
This research work follows on from the suggestion in the author’s own previous research work (Wiriyapinit, 2007), that further research should be conducted focusing on each identified aspect of Thai culture relating to knowledge management in order to derive more substantial detail on Thai culture and how it impacts on knowledge management. This research work first focused on the ‘working style’ aspect of Thai culture. It aimed to describe the Thai working style and to learn how the described Thai working style could impact on knowledge management. Thai working styles have been characterized as “informal cooperation” through the three overarching contexts of pattern of Thai working styles, namely 1) the Pattern of Working, 2) Attitude to Working, and 3) Motivation for Working. The impact of the Thai working style on knowledge management has been discussed with regard to two factors of knowledge management: ‘people’ and ‘work process’ factors and with such key knowledge management activities as creating knowledge, sharing knowledge, distributing knowledge, re-using knowledge or applying knowledge. According to the Thai working style, it has been asserted that such a working style poses both positive and negative impacts on knowledge management. The negative impact could stem from the Thai pattern of working and the Thais’ attitude to working whereas the negative impact on knowledge management could stem from the Thais’ motivation for working.
Further research could be conducted in order to gain greater insight into each of the identified overarching contexts of the Thai working style. This increased knowledge could incorporate a more elaborate explanation on both the positive and negative impacts on knowledge management. Additional research works should also be conducted to explain more about other aspects of Thai culture identified in the above-mentioned work of Wiriyapinit (2007). This is in order to allow the research to develop a more comprehensive and overall picture explaining how Thai culture could impact on knowledge management. Subsequently, more appropriate adjustments to the organizational culture in Thai organizations could also be possibly undertaken in order for knowledge to be managed more effectively.
One limitation of this work concerns the interview data. Although the author has claimed interview data used in this research to be valid, the author realizes that it would be even more rigorous if the interview data could also incorporate the perspectives of top management in the organizations. However, it would be difficult to get access to the group of top management people from different industries who truly understand the concept of knowledge management. This also poses another difficulty in that it would be difficult to find a practical means with which to measure their understanding on the concept of knowledge management given that the time available for interviews by the workers in the executive levels may be limited.

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