Sufficiency Economy Philosophy
Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy Philosophy stems from remarks made by His
Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej throughout his 58 years of the throne (NESDB,
2004a). It stresses the ‘middle’ path as the overriding principle for Thai people’s conduct
and way of life at the individual, family, and community levels. Within the philosophical
framework, choice of balanced development strategies for the nation in line with the
forces of globalization is allowed, with the need for adequate protection from internal and
external shocks. In particular, after the Asian economic crisis in 1997 in which numerous
business organizations in Thailand went bankrupt, His Majesty reiterated the philosophy
as the way to recovery that would lead to a more resilient and sustainable economy
(NESDB, 2004b).
The Sufficiency Economy Philosophy framework (see Figure 1) comprises three
components and two underlying conditions (Piboolsravut, 2004). First, Sufficiency
entails three components: Moderation, Reasonableness, and requirement for a Selfimmunity
system, i.e. the ability to cope with shocks from internal and external changes.
Second, two underlying conditions necessary to achieve Sufficiency are Knowledge and
Morality. ‘Sufficiency Economy’ requires breadth and thoroughness in planning,
carefulness in applying knowledge, and the implementation of those plans. As for the
Moral/Ethical condition, ‘Sufficiency Economy’ enforces the conditions that people are
to possess -- honesty and integrity -- while conducting their lives with perseverance,
harmlessness and generosity. The Sufficiency Economy Philosophy serves as a guide forthe way of living/behaving for people of all levels, and is scalable with universal domain
applicability, including business organizations (Piboolsravut, 2004). In business organizations, Puntasen et al. (2003) reviewed royal speeches and
business examples His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej initiated to derive seven
business practices that are consistent with the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy. These
Sufficiency Economy business practices are as follow: (1) appropriate use of technology
(i.e. use of inexpensive, but technically sound technology); (2) appropriate manufacturing
capacity consistent with business’ ability to manage; (3) no greed and focus on short term
profits; (4) emphasis on honesty in entire business operation. (i.e. fair to consumers,
workers, customers and suppliers); (5) emphasis on risk diversification (i.e. various
products and/or ability to adjust products); (6) focus on “down side risk management”
(i.e. do not create unmanageable debts); and (7) focus on responding to local, regional,
domestic and international markets respectively. More specifically, a theoretical model (see Figure 2) has been developed for
business organizations (Kantabutra, 2006). This model, derived from the empirical and
theoretical literature, suggested that corporate leaders wishing to sustain their business
success espouse a vision characterized by clarity, brevity, stability, challenge,
abstractness, future orientation, and desirability or ability to inspire. Moreover, content
of the vision should contain reference to Moderation, Reasonableness, the need for Selfimmunity
mechanism, Knowledge and Morality. A corporate leader espousing such a
vision should then develop a business strategy and plan to achieve the vision,
communicate the vision to organizational members, realign organizational processes to
suit the vision, empower and motivate organizational members. The leader should also
be passionate about the vision, emotionally committed to the vision, and behave
consistently with the vision. As for organizational members, they should share the
leader’s vision, emotionally committed to the vision and use the vision to guide their
daily business activities. A leader who does so can expect to be able to sustain his/her
business performance in the long run. It must be noted that the definition of corporate
sustainability here is rather narrow. It should have included social and environmental
outcomes as their performance indicators.