Human Capital Development of Thai Expatriates in Japan and Its Influence on Technological Development in Thailand

This paper aims to determine the human capital Thai returnees gained from Japan and how the returnees contributed to technology development in Thailand. To achieve the objective, 60 Thai entrepreneurs and managers who went to Japan during 1984 to 2020 were surveyed using a questionnaire supported with 26 in-depth interviews. The survey results indicated that Thai returnees from Japan improved technical skills, managerial skills (mainly teamwork, 5S, Kaizen, Quality Circles, Ho-ren-son), Japanese language, and work ethics (mainly responsibility, punctuality, hard work, eagerness to learn, discipline and obeying rules). The human capital helped the firms to reach ‘transformation’ and ‘exploitation’, stages of the absorptive capacity indicating their capability to adapt and utilize Japanese advanced technology. As a result, their firms have reached the “creative imitation” stage of technological development implying that they managed to add new features to the imitated technologies/products from Japan. In conclusion, while supporting human capital development by dispatching more students and workforce to Japan, new policy directions will be necessary to promote returnee innovations in Thai firms.