76 FACTORS THAT AFFECTS COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION LEVELS IN EMPLOYEES OF MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN BANGKOK Bhumiphat Gilitwala, Dr. Rawin Vongurai and Dr. Ruangyout Sanposh Graduate School of Business, Assumption University of Thailand Abstract: Due to globalization, communicating with people from different background has become very common. As communication is vital to an organization’s success, this study finds what causes communication apprehension in employees of multinational organizations in Bangkok. The study was conducted through questionnaire survey and analyzed using SPSS. Perfectionism level in an individual was found to be the factor that affected communication apprehension level the most followed by fear of negative evaluation. Face protection orientation, social desirability and prior success had low effects on communication apprehension levels. Keywords: Communication apprehension, multi-national organizations Research Background Due to globalization, and government policy that would like to draw multinational firms to add to the country’s R&D capacity, there has been a significant increase in multinational organizations in Thailand in the last two decades. (Worasinchai, 2010) With this comes the issue of people from different background working together. This includes communicating with people who have different personalities, beliefs and have been raised differently. Sometimes an individual has fear and/or anxiety when anticipating a communication or when communicating (McCroskey, 1977). This fear or anxiety is referred to as “communication apprehension”. Statement of the problem There are many negative effects of having a high CA level founded in previous studies. For instance, individuals that had higher CA were not as satisfied in their workplace as the ones with a lower CA. (Falcione, Mc Croskey, & Daly, 1977) Individuals with higher levels of CA did not like to prepare for any interviews and avoided communication whenever they could. (Ayres, Keerataweep, Chen, & Edwards, 1998) Individuals who interacted with people having high levels of CA rated them with low attractiveness, low trustworthiness and was not very satisfied when communicating with them as compared to the ones having lower levels of CA. (McCroskey, Daly & Richmond, 1975; Colby, Hopf, & Acres, 1993) and viewed them in negative ways (McCroskey, 1976) The professional tenure for people with high levels of CA is 50% shorter than those with a lower level of CA. (Scott, McCroskey, & Sheahan,, 1978) Those individuals with high CA were also consistently found to be less willing to communicate. Willingness to communicate is the probability than an individual will choose to communicate, especially to talk when they have a chance. (McCroskey & Baer, 1985) Willingness to communicate is a communication personality construct which contributes significantly to an individual’s social, education and organization achievement (Richmond & Roach, 1992) Communication is the process whereby information is shared among individuals and/or groups of people for some purpose. (Baguley, 1994)