week 5 dq 1
Individualism and Collectivism
(Hwang, A., Francesco, A. M., & Kessler, E. (2003).
Individualism; a string of
behavior patterns that places all the decisions and actions a person does upon
themselves. They process the information, decide what the best actions are, and
perform those actions close to entirely themselves (Smith,
P. B. (2015).
Collectivism; a group of
people perform actions in a group. A group of people will review data, both
individually and in the group discuss the data, and come up with a group
decision as to how to respond to the data collected. Decision by majority rule,
actions are done based on the collectiveness of the groups decision making.
Although the more charismatic some of the stronger personalities are, the more
what they want to do the more the group itself will respond and allow the
stronger members to make decisions. No matter if those decisions benefit or are
hard the group itself. Or hard on individual members of the group.
I am a graduate of University
of Phoenix with my bachelors. My Bachelors degree states I went through dozens
of team projects. I was in really bad teams and really good teams.
Three possible solutions
for how to work together.
The first one is divide
the work up into sections. Have each member choose what they want to work on. This
usually works the best. Each person is individually motivated to perform, each
person leans on their strengths. The work is done, and everyone contributed.
Second most groups require
a team lead, for those who either do not want to work, or have no idea how to
do what is needed, the team lead usually does their work,
Third solution is to try
working from a collectiveness but in the teams, I have been associated with
both at UOP and in life, humans almost need a leader to tell them what to do.
However for some groups the strongest voices rebel against any collectiveness,
they want to be an impediment. Their individualize is so strong they do not
care what harm they cause as long as they can be a stone in the river. The more
disruption they cause the better. When these things occur, the group usually
has to break into subgroups. Those who just want to sit back and complain
bitterly about everything, but actually do absolutely nothing. Those that want
to do the tasks at hand form into a smaller group, do the work, bypassing those
who refuse. Now there is a problem. Those who refuse to work, usually demand
they were in charge of the project and get top billing and the most credit
despite the only thing they did was to get in the way of progress. In their head
they are the center of the team, their contributions were the center of the
project. A very strong “cognitive dissonance” is part of this person and or
this groups operational structure. They are convinced they did things which the
evidence clearly shows they did absolutely nothing. Sometimes the bosses want
to know who works and who refuses to, other times the bosses could not care
less and just want the work done. For some reason in the non-academic world
some bosses do not mind paying the salary of people who flat out refuse to
work.
Hwang, A., Francesco, A. M., & Kessler, E. (2003). The
relationship between individualism-collectivism, face and feedback and learning
processes in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 72–91.
Smith, P. B. (2015). To lend helping hands: In-group
favoritism, uncertainty avoidance and the national frequency of pro-social
behaviors. Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(6),
759–771. doi: 10.1177/0022022115585141