Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand June / July 2017: The Business Issue | Page 22

Business
The desire to ensure a positive out-
come for all can take a long time.
This means that small talk in business
meetings can last over an extended
period. It is important therefore to
make an appointment far in advance
with your prospective business part-
ners — one month is generally con-
sidered a good lead time. Punctual
attendance is necessary, and many
times it will be expected that every-
one knows who exactly will be at the
meeting.
7
DRESS
CODE
How you dress for meetings and ne-
gotiations is emphasized in Thailand
as well. Some businesses in the West,
especially start-ups, allow employees
to conduct meetings in casual attire.
This casual dress code would be con-
sidered inappropriate for many for-
mal companies in the East. However,
as the younger Thai generation push-
es into the market, there is increasing
22 WANDERLUST
influence from the shirt-and-sneakers
look of places like Silicon Valley. Dress
codes in Thailand may become more
lax in the near future.
Bearing this in mind, it could be
just as inappropriate to arrive at a
meeting with a 20-something en-
trepreneur in your finest suit, while
he or she is dressed in jeans and a
tee. Whatever the company, do your
research first to avoid a perceived
wardrobe clash.
8
THE LANGUAGE
OF BUSINESS
You should approach language with
the same consideration. In meet-
ings with well-established compa-
nies, it often is very important to
address people by their correct ti-
tles to display consideration of their
statuses. The importance of status
has been built into the Thai culture
by way of Thai language, which in-
cludes 17 forms of the first-person
pronoun and 19 forms of the second
person pronoun. Each pronoun is
used given the context of the situa-
tion, whether two equals are speak-
ing to one another, a boss to an em-
ployee, or an employee to a boss, for
example.
9
FINDING THE
RIGHT FIT
In Thailand, hiring discrimination can
be a problem. Workplaces will often
list as part of the job requirement a
preferred age range, gender and na-
tionality of the person they are hir-
ing. Though this practice still hap-
pens in the West, it is heavily frowned
upon, and a company found to be
hiring on the basis of age, gender,
and or other identity markers could
be slammed with discrimination law-
suits. Businesses in the East don’t
necessarily have the same sort of pro-
tocols, which can make it very diffi-
cult for newcomers to emerge and
keeps the glass ceiling of social mo-
bility in place.
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