Research On Self-Construal, Self-Compassion, Long-term Orientation, Life Satisfaction, Communication Context And Time Management In Thai And Chinese

This research is to study in cross-cultural differences in self-construal, self-compassion, long-term orientation, life satisfaction, communication context and timemanagement between Thai and Chinese.The objective in this research is to let both Thai and Chinese understand eachother better in various cultural and psychological dimensions so this can eliminate theconflict, misunderstanding and miscommunication between two countries. Moreover,when companies from Thailand would like to expand business in China, they canwork with Chinese people better. On the contrary, Chinese can also work with Thaipeople effectively.There are6hypothesis in this research, H1: Thai people are moreinterdependent than Chinese people, H2: Thai people have higher self-compassionthan Chinese people, H3: Chinese people are more long-term oriented, they feel thattheir life has a continuous threat so Chinese people are more motivated to workharder than Thai people to reach their goals. H4: Chinese people are unsatisfied withtheir life at this present so they are more motivated to work harder than Thai people,H5: Thai people tend to communicate to each other in high-context communicationstyle much more than Chinese people. H6: Chinese people use time managementapproach more than Thai people.In order to research all above objectives and hypothesis, a questionnaire wasdeveloped by using the previous developed questionnaires.Results show that there are significant differences between Thai and Chinese interms of long-term orientation, communication context and time management. On thecomparison between Thai and Chinese based on long-term orientation, it shows asignificant difference between them, Thai shows higher long-term orientation thanChinese. However, this contradicts with the previous research that Chinese tend tohave high long-term orientation. This is due to a change of Chinese people at this present that they tend to be short-term oriented compare to the past especially inurban city.In terms of communication context, from the result, it shows that there is asignificant difference between Thai and Chinese. Result suggests that Thai peoplehave higher communication context when compare to Chinese. This is possiblemainly based on the different level of sensitivity between Thai and Chinese. And thesensitivity level of Thai people is very high and this can be explained as one of theimportant characteristics of Thai people which is called “Krengjai” or considerate.Now there is a change in Chinese people, with the increase in market orientation, jobmobility make Chinese people to be more open and be more specific and direct in thecommunication when they are working.For the time management part, there is a significant difference between Thai andChinese. Results show that Thai people have better time management in terms ofplanning mechanics, planning behavior, preference of organization and perceivedcontrol of time. This could possibly explained by the uncertainty avoidance ofHofstede,1997. People in high uncertainty avoidance culture tend and try to get rid ofsurprised situation, abnormal situations, unknown situations. And Thai people tend tohave higher uncertainty avoidance than Chinese so this is one possible in explanationof why Thai people try to plan their time carefully. However, for Chinese, they arelower in uncertainty avoidance when compare to Thai, due to their life is full ofsurprising situations so it gets more difficult to plan time carefully since it needs to beadjust or flexible at the end.For the comparison between Thai, Chinese and International students, Bythere is a significant differences in terms,way Anova-testing the hypothesis by OneChinese,management among Thai-life satisfaction and time,term orientation-of longcethe significan,term orientation-For the long.and International Students in Beijingin which Internation students in Beijing shows the highest in0.012value shows atfor the life,Next.term orientation followed by Thai people and Chinese people-longnaland Internatio0.000there is a significant differences at the value of,satisfaction.satisfaction level followed by Thai and then Chinese-students show the highest life there is a significant differences among tha sample at the,For the time management.0.000level ofOther than the questionnaire, there is a further experiment on time management.The hypothesis of this experiment is Thai people tend to work based on preferenceand emotion rather than unwilling task that has advantage to real goals compare toChinese people. And, Chinese people tend to be monochrons, which they tend toenjoy doing one thing during a specific time much more than Thai people. During theexperiment, the participants were first ask to do questionnaire about timemanagement and polychronicity. After that, they are asked to do9tasks each task hasdifference level of importance, they could freely choose to do tasks but there are2tasks that they need to finish by the end of20minutes and30minutes. This is tocheck if they choose to do task based on level of importance or based on their ownpreferences. Moreover, at the end of10minutes, they will be given a special task, thisis to check if they are polychronics or monochronics.The results show that Thai people tend to work based on their preference andemotion much more than Chinese people and Chinese people tend to be monochroniccompare to Thai people which tend to be polychronic.All at all, this research shows that there are several aspects that Chinese peoplehave been changed. They are like this do not mean that they are worse than before butknowing how they are and understand them in advance could make Thai people findthe way to deal with this and try to optimize the possible problems that can arise. Onthe contrary, Chinese could perceive Thai people that they are different from Chinesein the stated aspects, then they both can work together happily.