Abstract: 0 this study examines how, to what extent, and with what effect the indigenous cultural con

Methodology
empirical setting
The Cesaritt corporation provides integrated facilities services (including cleaning, secu
-
rity, pest-control and catering) across four continents with a total employee headcount of 
some 30,000. The Thai subsidiary, initiated in 2003, began as agency but was upgraded to 
a joint venture as sales and market share expanded. The company—with whom the first 
author had access in the wake of prior consultancy projects—was approached because of 
its extensive and ongoing program of strategic practice transfer, as well as its reliance on 
its people to deliver services consistently across every stakeholder interface. In this study 
we focus on Cesaritt’s largest business division in Thailand, that of 
security
.
Process, Practices and sampling
We made four interventions into Cesaritt’s Thai subsidiary between November 2010 and 
March 2011. Sampling was pursued on the basis of a mix of theoretical and practical con
-
siderations. Concerning the corporate email system we conducted all interviews within the 
human Resources department and focused on usage among a hierarchical cross-section 
of three senior managers, six middle managers and five staff. For performance appraisal 
there was a partial overlap—being drawn from the same HR department—though here 

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T. G. Andrews and N. Chompusri
we interviewed two senior managers, two staff and eight middle managers. Regarding 
employee empowerment, initial discussions identified the empowerment of employees 
to be a challenge of increasing magnitude as one progressed down the organization’s 
hierarchical structure. We therefore focused initially on a number of management-level 
key account holders, site managers (foremen) and the security guards themselves. In 
the wake of our first round of interviews, however, we narrowed our focus to the final 
two levels, deemed as the most important given the latter’s direct delivery of the service 
and—consequently—the overall Cesaritt brand promise. We conducted interviews with 
three site managers and seven guards, all based in the provision of security services for 
two premium-grade international hotels.
Data collection
Data was collected on the selected issues sequentially and comprised semi-structured 
interviews, company documentation and direct observation. Interviews were our major 
source of information, designed and conducted to understand organization members’ 
experiences, behaviors and attitudes in a non-threatening, confidential and non-evaluative 
situation (Miller and Glassner 
2005
). Interview context—e.g., physical location—was 
standardized so far as was possible. For both corporate email usage and performance 
appraisal all interviews were conducted at the Cesaritt Thailand’s head office. Most 
empowerment interviews were conducted at client premises.
Interviews lasted between 45–90 minutes, though were typically shorter in duration 
among informants of lower rank (e.g., guards, foremen and staff). Several interviews 
lasted up to almost two hours, the mean length being 60 minutes. In all cases we allowed 
the session to continue, finishing either due to employee time restrictions or simply 
because we had reached a point of saturation. A total of 58 interviews were administered 
among 43 personnel.
In order to facilitate dependability an interview protocol was followed. We began with 
general questions concerning informant role and work tasks before we outlined the nature 
of the topic under consideration (Silverman 
2006
). We did not specify our interest in 
kreng jai
to our indigenous respondents beforehand, nor did we seek to ‘direct’ them to 
this construct. Rather we described the practices of interest and explained that our aim 
was in uncovering why they acted and felt the way they did.
Given the need to collect interview data in both Thai and English we were careful to 
ensure linguistic equivalence through the use of back translation techniques executed by 
a certified bilingual expert. The fact that our sample consisted of informants differing in 
literacy and educational competence, as well as function/department and seniority, meant 
that we were also careful to ensure conceptual and item equivalence. For the term