THE IMPACT OF CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING PROVISION FOR OVERSEAS WORKERS ON JOB PERFORMANCE- A case study of Chinese teachers from Hanban (The Confucius Institute Headquarter) in Thailand

Abstract

With the globalization of economy, there is an increasing number of expatriate employees. How to improve this group of employee’s job performance become more important. Some companies or organizations start to provide the cross-cultural training, but some not. The objective of this study was to use the case of Chinese teachers from Hanban to study and find out whether the cross-cultural training has an impact on Chinese teacher's job performance in Thailand and which factors affect most on job performance. The scope of this study covered the Chinese teachers both from Hanban & Non-Hanban who worked together in a public or private secondary school during the 2015-2016 assignment year in Thailand. This is the first research that covered in such a wide scope in this area. The research used a quantitative method by sending out total 349 questionnaires to Chinese teachers and 104 questionnaires to Thai co-workers, collected data from the replies of 204 Chinese teachers and 52 Thai co-workers from 52 schools in 27 provinces in Thailand and did the in-depth interview with project officer of Thailand Education Ministry. The results of the descriptive analysis showed that all the factors average score of Hanban teachers are higher than total average score, Non-Hanban teachers are the lowest except the Thai language level. At high performance level, Hanban teachers have a higher rate than Non-Hanban teachers. And the regression analysis results showed that there were 6 factors that can significantly impact the job performance. So the results of the analysis proved that the cross-cultural training can impact on Chinese teacher’s job performance, and provide a systematic cross-cultural training can bring the performance to a higher level.