Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between Indonesian and Thai work-related values. The study utilized Hofstede's five cultural dimensions typology as the study's crucial element. Those five dimensions of national cultures, which differentiate one culture from another, are Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism, Masculinity, and Long-Term Orientation. This study attempted to answer two main questions: (1) "What are the comparative differences among the five cultural dimension indices of work-related values of Indonesian and Thai graduate students?" and, (2) "Are those work-related values of Indonesian and Thai graduate students different from those work-related values of the Indonesians and Thais reported in Hofstede's 1980 and 1988 studies?" Open-ended study questions were "What statistical differences exist between the Thai and Indonesian subsamples according to: gender, age, length of residing in the United States, length of formal education received in their home countries, and length of their work experience?" and, "What will emerge from the respondents as important influences on work-related values?" Hofstede recommended a strict adherence to following his approach of comparing "matched" sample groups within a single environment being studied. Consequently, the 1994 version of the Value Survey Module (VSM 94) was administered to randomly selected "matched" Indonesian and Thai graduate students enrolled in three types of educational institutes located throughout Southern California. The qualified samples met the following criteria: (1) being natives of their respective national cultures determined by the number of years that they spent to complete formal education within their home countries, (2) possessing at least one year of adult formal organizational work experience. The Indonesian culture was low in uncertainty avoidance, while the Thai culture, on the other hand, had characteristics of high uncertainty avoidance. Indonesians also possessed a long-term orientation, while the Thai culture fell into the short-term orientation. The results of the present research were also compared to those of Hofstede's study. The data revealed that the two sets of scores differed substantially on the Hofstede index on all except the uncertainty avoidance dimension.