Humanising Bureaucracy: Clan-Oriented Culture in the Thai Civil Service

Abstract

This Chapter traces the effects of New Public Management (NPM) reform in various public organisations introduced in Thailand in the early 2000s. It portrays the realities of several bureaucratic organisations in the Thai civil service by investigating how far the concept of the impersonal, inflexible and rule-bound institution is a characteristic of the settings studied, and by clarifying the extent to which cultural values in various public organisations have been (or have not been) altered because of the market-driven type of reform developed in Anglo-Saxon countries. The research highlights the persistence of the clan-oriented culture and its deep-seated roots, which humanise bureaucratic structures, on the one hand, and the perseverance of seniority, and dependent relationship-based local norms, which represent potential explanations for the limited outcomes of the reform, on the other hand.