ZHAO Liang Rick, DBA

Dual Bachelor degrees in Mechanical Eng. & IT since 2003, Master degree in Program Management since 2010. He started his career in engineering and project management with the international firm TRW Automotive since 2003 (acquired by ZF Group in 2015). He is currently heading the portfolio management of restraint system division of Asia Pacific region. He was an expat from China, working in Rayong / Thailand since 2018 until end of 2021, taking charge of a local manufacturing plant to grow the business in the ASEAN region. Prior to that, he has professional management background in Purchasing, Operations, Program Management, and Engineering within the company.

He will defend his Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA) in September 2022, on the theme “The impact of country culture on organizational commitment, job- and firm performance” under the supervision of Professor Dr. Lars MEYER-WAARDEN at the University Toulouse – Toulouse School of Management (TSM). The thesis is an empirical study investigating the impact of culture in the automotive industry in Thailand and China. An online survey was distributed within 4 manufacturing plants, 881 respondents were included in the quantitative analysis, which followed by an in-depth case study. The study contributed to the knowledge in the Asian context with managerial implications and recommendations to the managers in the field.

Pr Lars Meyer-Waarden

The impact of culture on organizational commitment as well as job and organizational performance – An empirical investigation in Thai and Chinese automotive manufacturing firms

This is an empirical study investigating the impact of culture in the automotive industry in Thailand and China. Nowadays, multi-national corporations (MNC) are setting their footprint worldwide to capture the market and growth in different regions to achieve their organizational goals. Benefiting from a stable economic environment and growing market forecast, Thailand has become the biggest manufacturing base in the emerging region of Southeast Asia. As the biggest regional base of multi-national corporations in Southeast Asia, Thailand is not only serving the local market, but also working as a manufacturing base and transportation hub for the global markets into different regions across the world. Japanese firms, US firms, and European firms are all located in this industrial region. The research undertaken in this thesis asks the following questions: How well does MNC corporate culture actually cope with local national cultures? What is the impact when global corporate culture collides with national culture? Are the MNC’s performing effectively in the region or not? From the above questions, we generate our leading research question, namely: what is the impact of culture on organizational commitment, job performance, and organizational performance? This is a highly relevant question, because there is no recent study on organizational culture, employee commitment, job performance, and organizational performance related to the Thai or Chinese automotive industry, and none exploring the comparison between Thai and Chinese cultures.
We contribute to knowledge by filling the gap in the existing literature on this topic and within the specific context. We establish a conceptual model in which we analyze the impact of country culture on organizational commitment, as well as job and organizational performance in 4 automotive manufacturing plants in Thailand and China. We carry out an online survey to collect information from 881 respondents from 3 plants in China and 1 plant in Thailand, and then analyze the data with structural equation modeling (SEM). From the research, we assert that the organizational culture does indeed impact organizational commitment, employee job performance, and organizational performance, and that the national culture does influence these relations. Finally, we provide managerial and societal recommendations to practitioners in order to support their work.