The Development of Cross-Cultural Negotiation and Communication of the Manpower in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC)

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: 1) to study the issues in cross-cultural negotiation and communication among the personnel who work for organizations in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). 2) To develop a training curriculum and activities that are tailored to the EEC personnel's needs in cross-cultural negotiation and communication. The survey data were quantitatively analysed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, and chi-square after collecting complete questionnaire responses from 75 respondents who are personnel in the EEC chosen using a purposive sampling technique. The qualitative responses were analysed in the light of conceptual frameworks proposed by Meyer (2014) and Steers & Osland. (2019). It was found that 1) the personnel were unable to express fluently in English due to a lack of English proficiency coupled with limited understanding of cross-cultural knowledge and awareness; they had difficulty communicating with the majority of foreigners, even though the majority of the personnel had the most experience of Thai-English cross-communication. The working lingua franca was mostly English. The nature of the everyday work responsibilities provided an opportunity to communicate with foreigners who served as co-workers, leaders, customers, or superiors to the personnel. The characteristic style of dealing with cross-cultural negotiations was the accommodating style, i.e. unassertiveness and cooperativeness, to maintain rapport with them. Low-context communication was their preferred cross-cultural communication approach. 2) In relation to the training course content, it was found that they intended to learn and explore the issues of negotiation types and its nature, followed by planning negotiating strategies and processes, problems and obstacles in verbal and non-verbal negotiation and communication in cross-cultural contexts respectively.