Asst. Professor Nilmanee Sriboon

Ph.D. in Sport Administration

Rajabhat Chandrakasem University, Bangkok, Thailand

Many things can be learned from history through different perspectives, times, and situations. All these have changed society. Eventually, insights can be drawn from these consequences of these changes. This article discusses economic and societal changes and their impacts on human behavior, particularly in terms of sport and recreation.

Thailand is supposedly seen as one big organization, consisting of 65 million people. This organization has many subsystems-- human-social-cultural subsystem, technological and economic subsystem, organizational and managerial subsystem, and goals. All of these subsystems are related and equally important, especially the goals of the organization. The goals of Thai society, indeed, should include happiness, prosperity, well being of the citizen, and good citizenship. Societal goals are expected to be achieved only by the people in the organization pursuing and striving in accordance with climate and situational changes.

Looking back in 1997, most countries perhaps must have considered Thailand to be the origin of the economic turmoil. Eventually, many countries in the same region had been victimized by the surges of the economic crisis. The collapse of the economies caused a rapid change of money exchange rate, bankruptcy of many financial institutes, and business decline throughout Thailand. More importantly, the consequences of economic disaster have affected the society in many different ways. Millions of people were laid off and became jobless. Money was only spent for the basic physical needs of people. Sport and recreational activities had been ignored and forgotten. People had nothing to do during their spare time according to being unskillful in sport and recreation participation. It caused an increase in drug trafficking and crimes. However, though the lives of Thai people were in danger, they still struggled and managed to recover their normal lives.(Download)