Dear Asians4me,
There's another angle which is part of this scenario, always has been and is specific to the Thai way of life / Thai hierachical social structure / expectations in relation to the Thai version of master / servant relationships / the 'Power gap' and how that relates to levels of 'fear / support of the boss'.
I'm talking about the concept of accountability. In fact I have a small team of Masters degree students researching it right now (it has already been researched many times before specific to Thailand, the students know that, and their task is to gather the data again, anlayse it and see if they can find further insights, or a trend change).
To cut the story short, it's well proven that in general (in Thai, and in other cultures too of course) employees under a managerial level see that they are not responsible for anything. When questioned they will typically say 'I am just an employee here, I just do as I'm told, the boss is the person who is responsible / accountable, not me'.
And further, but connected, is the expectation from employees that 'the boss will protect me' and this also connects to 'power manipulation by the boss', and 'employee protection of the boss', e.g. employees telling lies about the circumstances of a car accident(1)to 'support' the boss. And in the old ways of thinking, this is not seen as wrong (by employees).
(1) But of course not only in Thailand.
In reality there is some evidence that Thai employees in more professional / contracted employment are gradually realizing that they are also accountable and hence the slow but sure acceptance of 'reward for different levels of performance' (and this is related to the developing desire for a career path, which in older times was almost unknown, and would be seen as arrogant (and in worst case, 'employees should just do as they are told and accept whatever comes or doesn't come their way').
However the typical employee in a bar e.g. mamsans, captains, etc., are still very much locked into the historical (unconscious) ways of thinking about this and will tell as many lies as the boss indicates (and of course their are other reasons - commissions - which snuggly fit into this overall package of behaviors), plus working boys (in a bar scenario) show the same deference to the mamasan and the captain.
Also related is the lack of information sharing with employees often at even high levels of management. e.g. Talk to employees in many Thai businesses and ask them about customer satisfaction etc., and they will very often genuinly be totally lacking in knowledge of 'customer satisfaction indicators'. And this connects back to deferance for the boss. e.g suddenly the employee deserts the customer to make sure the boss is comfortable, has a glass of water etc.
You can find places of employement where the boss still deliberately generates putting himself/herself up on a pedestal (because they enjoy the attention / because it's 'normal', but you can also now find more and more places of employment (more likely of course in mainstream business) where employees have been educated to see 'customer satisfaction' as their first priority (but in many cases, new employees in this picture initially have great pain to reduce their total deference to the boss).
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