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Thailand
Discussions of a Thai Patriot.
Permalink : http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/Patriot
Thursday , March 5 , 2009
Discussion: Developing a new standard of business in Thailand.
Posted by Patriot , Reader : 2040 , 14:25:31  
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The challenges we face as a nation today are vast and encompasses a broad range of issues that in my opinion requires us to take a  preemptive approach towards resolution.

 

I feel that there is a key issue that is eroding equitable faith in Thailand as well as most of the free world economies today, and that issue is corruption.

 

Corruption is a monstrosity that drains economies and the hopes of the people, especially our poor, it is a cancer that eats away at the very core of ethics and progressive business practices.  How do we address such a difficult and encompassing topic?

 

To begin with, I believe there has to be legitimate attempt to commit resources towards developing a framework that sets and enforces a legislated standard of business ethics and business practices in Thailand.

 

Through the application of a framework similar to the  International Organization for Standardization ( ISO), Thailand can develop a business ethics and practices standard that would provide oversight through NGOs and Government bodies that audit, regulate and issue certification to corruption free participanting enterprises.

 

The businesses that particapte in this certification program would receive a Ethical Business Practices rating that could provide vendors and consumers with confidence that their enterprise has been examined and it has met the necessary requirements to be an ethical enterprise.

 

To my knowledge, there are no such programs that address the specific issue of corruption in this manor.  Please share your thoughts.

 

 

  

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comment 16
netnapit date : 15/03/2009 time : 03.33
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/netnapit

Not being in business, but as an outsider I have observed over the years several and frequent ads in Thai newspapers and public announcements on the roads for standards training that have evolved from QC, to ISO 9000, to ISO 14000 and now we have governance standards.

Chit chat with my Thai friends who are in business have indicated to me that any business hoping to compete globally take these training and upgrading of their businesses very seriously. In the government sector, some friends have confided how stressed out they were with learning and adjusting to new standards constantly being incorporated in the system. I believe that both environment have adapted these new standards voluntarily for the sake of being up to date, so I do think Thailand is not doing so bad in this aspect.

I agree that corruption is starting to bleed the life blood out of both private and public enterprise in Thailand. The company my brother worked for was recently closed down because of a group of corrupt thinking sales people. I think that such deterioration of ethics was allowed to spread because of a public leader who didn't care a cent about paying the right taxes (among other things) thought that he could get away with it and mind-gamed half of the population to believe that it was okay to do so.

I'm not so sure that standards is the best way for dealing with corruption. I don't think corruption can be trained out of existence. It is about a change in values, that only happens when they there is a change of hearts, and a change of hearts only happens when there's been a lot of damage done and ADMITTED. As long as that public figure fails to admit his mistake, the public wound will not heal and we get a divided society that refuses to see how they have allowed corruption to deepen.

Having said that, I can accept the thought that perhaps an international code of conduct adapted by many and pressuring the few to adopt may save resources rather than a national code built from scratch.

Corruption is not uniquely Thai. It seems that in other places it is masked under other guises and names. Examples, the recent Madoff and Stanford cases. We can learn a lot from how the American society deals with these cases. When the Enron scandal hit them, they did come up with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. You could say that Thailand through the Stock Exchange benefited from a "trickle down effect" in new standards.

Having been part in the early stages of APEC, it was sad for me to see how 9/11 and security issues pushed out that forum's aspirations for customs harmonization, a form of standards that would have greatly facilitated a freer exchange of goods. I see that period as a mark of when values in general started a downward trend.

As a fallout of the crisis, free trade and competition are receiving a pretty tough scrutiny even by those officials that hated the protesters that tried to disrupt every WTO meeting in the last decade. There is a fear being expressed that this financial crisis could move nations backwards into protectionism (which would horrify even those protesters against free trade). Creating a national standard could be seen as a move towards that dangerous trend, which is why I think working with international standards would be more efficient since we would have to meet those standards any way in staying competitive. But then again, the model for certifying organic products locally seems to have worked well in helping Thai products enter the EU market. So maybe, local standards can be accepted internationally through subcontracting or franchising.

A few nights ago, at a friend's dinner party, a charming Mexican businesswoman told me that in response to the crisis, she had recently enrolled in a course about incorporating social entrepreneurship into business. When business people respond to change that way, it gives me hope that our society as a whole is moving the right direction. I could not help but be optimistic that there exists as well business people in Thailand who think similarly. I do recall some exceptional stories from the 97 crisis. I suppose that is the purpose of crisises, it forces us to review and set right our values.
comment 15
MaxHeadroom date : 11/03/2009 time : 10.21
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/maxheadroom

I think I am not promoting any stereotypes. Rather I base my judgement on facts and proof.

I like the 'we are all Thai' idea. You don't have to convince me, you don't have to convince most of the disenfranchised, you have to convince the people that seize airports, the military that makers coups, the politicians that stop at nothing to keep their chairs and the CEO's for whom business is war.

Saying that - you are trying to run in open doors as substitute to prove your concept on where the real challenges lie.
comment 14
Patriot date : 10/03/2009 time : 23.57
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/Patriot

Max: I do not view our society in terms of poor, elite, military, intellectual, or any other stereotype. I simply view us all as Thai people with different views and social status's. If we are to thrive as a nation, we must be open, and tolerant to all people without bias.

In leadership there is no place for hard-line positions to manage a country, this will only lead to further division and hidden animosity. My aspiration is to see a unified nation that lives up to its potential. By living up to its potential I mean a functioning democracy, a stable rule of law, and a promise of opportunity for all its citizens and visitors. Without compromise, our generation will be no different than those before us. This would be a travesty, a waste of time and opportunity.

I still believe that we can overcome any adversity if we work together putting aside our differences for the sake of the larger objective of surviving as a country.

Niave: There is such a word, it is called Excellence.
comment 13
naive date : 10/03/2009 time : 21.11
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/naive
Narrow and wide by "Naive" point of view. ...................................*v*....................................................................For Thai reader visit http://www.oknation.net/blog/wickedgirl

Oh..is there such word exist in Thailand business?
"Standard"

People here rarely can think about it.
comment 12
MaxHeadroom date : 10/03/2009 time : 09.12
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/maxheadroom

I think failure is a part of evolution. The engineer and scientist inside me tells me that we Thais have become cronically afraid of failing and thus try only approaches that supposedly cannot fail and are sure to succeed. This is why some things have not been tried at all. The part that some things are marketed as 'sure to fail', 'impossible', can never work is also the indoctrination and marketing done by people that simple repeat it long enough to make it into the public libraries.

One part of Dhamma teaching tells you not to believe things just because the have been repeated very often. So reforming the military and reducing their often detrimental influence on democracy of course will be said to be impossible - clearly, any military will tell you that - right?


As an engineer I see failure as part of the development process. And with every failure we learn something unless we throw out the result out of the window and think it's rubbish and fail to analyze the knownledge gained by having failed.

As a scientist I like the thought that we should look at the vast pools of existing knowledge and the state-of-the-art in order not to repeat concepts known to have failed wretchedly unless we are absolutely sure that the people who carried out the later were not doing it correctly. (I am sure you will find tons of the later among our country men though). So, no communism, no right-wing Nazi-style dictatorships, no half-baked democracies, no Thaksin-style populism, no council of elderly shadow leaders etc. I think all of the later have been sufficiently falsified.

As a Buddhist I prefer the middle way at all times. But I have come to realize that a good part of the society has strayed well of a consensus based society and living together as a maxime. Actually, most sides - right wing military and their supporters as well as Thaksinites and corrupt piliticians of all factions - have managed to polarize Thai society throwing it out of balance.

So to put this in other words - to create a balance between these forces that have now pulled far to the right you have to create more of a counterweight to the left.

But if we want to accomplish a lasting and sustainable moderate environment again we will have to solidify the foundations of our democracy which just wouldn't work without a military reform, an independent judiciary, a reform of election laws, constitutional reforms and pro-active measures to protect the institutions of the state.

I think in doing our many thousands of individual reform tasks we can work with some level of compromise as long as it doesn't mean consensus based truths. I also think that there is a broad consensus in this country for reform but that this consensus if often subdued by the elite be it with tanks and guns or other unconstitutional means.

It is hear where I would go into a strong and relatively uncompromising mode: people that are a in obvious violation of the law and in an obvious anti-position to democracy and are causing damage to the economy at large and livelihood of millions for pursuing their vested interests have to be brought to justice and have to be opposed - with force if necessary - or anarchy and chaos will break apart the social fabric as we see it now.
comment 11
Patriot date : 10/03/2009 time : 05.07
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/Patriot

Max: I am not disagreeing with you. You should know me better than to suggest that I accept the status quo. I am not afraid of change at all.

I want change, however, I am also realistic to the fact that change for us will not come with one big stroke of a magic wand. Our generation is different but it is also part of an intricate and complicated structure of culture and hierarchy that cannot simply be put aside because it is romantic to do so.

I respect your position that compromise is not something you feel comfortable with. I on the other hand feel that we can change if we build on small successes first, albeit would require compromising to find a middle path to achieve this. We must teach our people what it feels like to win and build upon that confidence.

What I think you are saying is you want to knock the whole building down when I think we can modernize the building inside and out and have a new building standing on a stronger foundation.

Here is the bottom line, we can try and develop a progressive vision that offers hope or we can sit on our laurels and accept our past situations and fail. I hate failing because I believe that every time we fail a small piece of us dies, when we begin to accept it, there is no further reason to fight, we are as good as dead.
comment 10
MaxHeadroom date : 09/03/2009 time : 23.55
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/maxheadroom

C9: I think a lot of people live in the past in this country and are scared to wake up to an inconvenient present.

This is a good description of a society that still celebrates taboos everywhere as part of its culture.

Also people who live in the past is just another words for elderly statesmen and senile military taht have made living in the past a doctrine they would like to see the masses subjected to.

Truly, Danuj - when did you see our society or our country make a major step forward - into the future if you like - in th past years?

See what I mean... If you close your eyes to the root causes of our societal chaos you can as well philosphize until the end of days dreaming about a better society and maybe one day you too will romanticize the good old times.

My father's generation probably was the one that talked the most about revolution and then about changing the system. As these hippies got older they changed that to 'changing the system from within' and then to 'encouraging change in that system' and so on and so forth. All of that is just a miserable way to talk around about failure to perceive reality and stay with both feet on the ground.

I am NOT from that generation.

And I do not quite share that we have to work with what mess we have all the time. But having said that - a large part of Thailand thinks just that out of fear of change. So - while having an amnesia when it comes to its own history - they always will carry on a legacy that will later own haunt them.

That is to say that the evils you are not willing to see today will return to you later on anyway - so you better face the problems at hand than to look for foul compromises.

You have asked how to develop a new standard and I just told you what's necessary. Or should we all better start with lowered expectations right from the start? What standard is that gonna be?

You see here the problem lies on display - wide open - our 'compromises' are really false tolerance of and incapability to stand up to fight against injustice. It's a sign of immaturity, of talking around inconvenient topics, of weka minds and double standards.

The later are a main deconstructor and antagonist to your new standard and the main promotors of double standard are right at the top. Yes, the very top of the elite ruling this, our and your country.

So we are back again at square one where we started. So working with what we have means modding our country into some kind of moderate dictatorship and doctering around with lots of symptomatic relief.

I really don't go along well with this kind of solution. It's the usual Tylenol-against-brain-cancer strategy. And all the benevolent great leaders and wanna-be father figures - well we have had that plentiful in the 20th century and you just have to open history books or look to Africa to see where that is going - even more corruption, human rights violations and war and hyper inflation. So give all the chances over and over to 'what we have we have to work with' and you would think that the mob is a better way of running a country.

Lastly, I am not so worried about the global meltdown - yep Max doesn't believe in doomsday anymore - been there done that.

If you ask me I am more worried about the Thai meltdown that already has destroyed most of our wealth without the help of a global recession. Surely, the later will not make it any easier for us but then again it's not a root cause of why our country today has turned into a Banana Republic right?

If you want to have a future you have to start shaping it, not repeat the same mistakes over and over again - that's a lesson learned from the past.

I am sure somewhere in very high places in this country people have already wondered how their decision in 1992 can haunt them 14 years later.

Well, enough said...
comment 9
Patriot date : 09/03/2009 time : 21.29
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/Patriot

Max: Good to hear from you. I agree that corruption is a system and I also feel that it is a habit. Habits can be broken.

I totally understand the frustration that people are feeling but we cannot continue to live in the past, we must move forward if we are to survive this impending global meltdown.

"So before anything can change: the military must be disempowered, the independence of the judiciary restored, the coup makers and terrorists tried and the current government removed to make way for free and fair elections." Max, in short, if you are expecting the military to be disempowered in order for reform to occur, I think you will have a long wait. We have to work with what we have in order to survive. Just my opinion.

Mr. Ford: Thank you for your comment, well said. Assuming you do business in Thailand, would a public / private program such as the one we are discussing add value to your business?
comment 8
anthonyford date : 09/03/2009 time : 16.01
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/anthonyford
The Truth is Freedom

What is considered corruption in Thailand is called sales commission and consulting fees in the West. Thailand like many other Asian places have a system that is hell bent on screwing down the prices on projects and services so much so that very few projects or services have enough money to be provided properly.

In Thailand often Sales commissions and consulting fees are eliminated as a waste of money and in the end projects are sold on the basis of poor decisions and with these fees been taken at the expense of a complete project or proper service.

Corruption in business can also be reduced if Thai business men and women become familiar with the concept of “under committing and over delivering”. Not just saying yes on a project to win it and trying to get the numbers to work later. When selling to a price without proper costing and your guess is too low only corruption or bankruptcy is the way out. I have seen this happen time and time again in this country.


As a resident in Thailand I don’t feel comfortable saying this, but Thailand needs more taxes to eliminate much of the corruption that is rooted in its system and more transparency in the operation of Government departments.
comment 7
MaxHeadroom date : 09/03/2009 time : 13.16
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/maxheadroom

Recently, I have been by the Chamber of Commerce and other commercial organizations to join in on many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. As you might imagine they mainly focus on workers rights, social welfare & donations - maybe just maybe - the environment.

Corruption is - if at all - discussed on the dinner table - after the official part of the conferences / seminars. And most business people give it a smile and and many annecdotes of how corruption has given them an expensive lesson in the past.

Here it has to be said that corruption is a system that is first and above all a system that is mirroring the above - the higher parts of any hierachy. So you could say that the widespread tolerance of corruption is seeping in from top to bottom and the omnipresent holding the hands out wide open on the lower bureaucratic level is just a sign of how bad it is up there really.

There can be no improvement in ethics and moral if the top of Thai politics looks like what it looks today as it is the very top that sees the nation as an open wallet.

Business people are really frustrated as to what levels of nepotism has reached in our economy. Very often people will tell you - it's not know-how but know-who and know-how-much.

With the destruction of the judiciary and most credible legal framworks intended to counter corruption - all effects Thaksin, the military, the Dems and the PAD are equally to be blamed for - there is little hope that Thailand can improve the current crisis. The reason is simple: democracy is at an all time low in our country and the current administration as the coup makers all came into power by nothing else but corruption in the form of military backing, power mongering, political intimidation and a horrible abuse of the judiciary and the institution of the state.

So before anything can change: the military must be disempowered, the independence of the judiciary restored, the coup makers and terrorists tried and the current government removed to make way for free and fair elections.
comment 6
Tawan date : 06/03/2009 time : 15.59
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/tawan3

Yes, a framework for public private partnership is the direction that the world economy is taking now I think.
comment 5
Patriot date : 06/03/2009 time : 14.04
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/Patriot

Ian: There is a possibility that what you state could occur. I am however still optimistic and feel that we should take this opportunity to reform business practices in Thailand, it surely would not hurt.

Khun Tawan: Hope all is well. I do not believe that ethic courses would be an effective approach towards developing a new business standard. The idea we are discussing is geared more towards developing a framework whereby the pubic and private sector can come together as a board and work with willing participants to constitute ethical business practices and processes.

Happy Jack: Thanks for your comment.

Alien: I am not so sure that if a program like this were ever implemented that it would so easily derailed. The primary intention of this type of program is to bridge the gap of fiduciary erosion between the government and the private sector.
comment 4
Alien date : 05/03/2009 time : 21.54

I think that once the program passes, Thai officials will make even more money selling the "Ethical Business Practices" ratings. They'll probably also develope the two-tier pricing for them as is usual, one price for Thais and one for foreigners. Of course, the foreigners can only buy 49.9% of one of these certificates, they will need a Thai "partner" to sing for the rest.
comment 3
happyjack date : 05/03/2009 time : 21.11

Thats a nice way Ian of saying.If its not run by a Brit, sod off.And take yer posh suit with yer.All my outlets are owned by me,i use Thais as Token Reps.I could have had Thaksin as a director,but im verry solvent and legal.
comment 2
Tawan date : 05/03/2009 time : 15.42
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/tawan3

A similiar practice has been introduced at Universities by requiring ethics courses. You would have to start at the top though I doubt if our CEOs would have more than a few days to devote to it.
comment 1
Ian date : 05/03/2009 time : 15.19
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/anterian36

The problem when corruption is endemic is that those who judge these standards would either be corrupt or become corrupted.
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