The Team-Building Process - Essay Example

Running head: TEAM-BUILDING COMPARISON Team-Building Practices: Comparing the American and Asian Methods [Insert here] [Type your school’sname here] Team-Building Practices: Comparing the American and Asian Methods The inherent nature for human beings to form and work in teams has been evidenced even before recorded history. It then follows that team-building and the skills, methods, techniques, policies (and politics) and procedures that relate to it have been present for at least as long. Even the most casual viewing of history by a layperson will show that this is not a static facet of human culture. It changes and evolves for much the same reasons that other aspects of human culture are also dynamic in nature. This means that while the inborn psychological, or what we may call “the genetically dictated” motivation for team-building has not changed significantly since Homo sapiens first evolved, (Edey, 1968)1 the impressionable psychological motivation (from nurturing, upbringing, and the social environment)—that is, culture, has varied dramatically among world population groups. This shows that there is a basis and tendency for some similarity in separately evolved cultures’ team-building processes; yet, at the same time, a propensity towards socially effected change in the same process. Leading us to the question: What are the similarities and differences in the team-building process of two very different cultures? We will compare Eastern and Western cultures, namely Asian and American (specifically the United States). Definition of Terms and Limitations of the Study To avoid confusion and following convention, even though The United States lies east and the Asian Continent, west of the Pacific Ocean, The United States will always, where appropriate or necessary, be referred to as the West and Asia as the East. The terms Communist, Communism, and Collectivism will be used.2 However, due to the unreliable definitiveness of these terms in two of the Asian nations to be discussed, these definitions will be used loosely. Since their inception, the true meanings of these words have had numerous interpretations and have evolved different meanings. In Vietnam, although officially still a Communist State, there has been a trend noticeable since the early 1990’s towards a Free Market Economy, even in rural areas. This is even more noticeable in China, where though the rural areas remain traditionally Communist, the coastal cities, most notably Shanghai and Hong Kong, can only be described as full-blown bastions of Capitalism. Predictably, Vietnam will become what dual-economy China can be tacitly called now: A Capitalist-Communist Socio-Political Hybrid. It must be mentioned that, in a paper of this length, certainly no attempt will be made to compare practices in every Asian country to those in the United States. In fact, due to Globalization and the recent heavy influx of Western business, and therefore their business practices, into established and emerging Eastern markets, a vast grey area appears concerning practices such as team-building. This merging of “business cultures”, if you like, will be discussed; however, more attention will be given to the economies in Asia that have not been influenced as much by the West. This will provide a much more significant comparison between trans-Pacific practices. Vietnamese practices, in particular, will be dealt with due to paradoxes in the comparative analysis of the practices (Tuan & Napier, 2000). The middle ground, as stated, will also be discussed—the aforementioned grey area, but to a lesser extent since, westernized, it has a specific but lower merit. Discussion In Asia, the value of the “group” is of high importance. In the studies conducted by Hofstede in various countries in the 1980’s, one dimension of which was how collectivist or individualistic a particular culture was (Tuan & Napier, 2000), Asians were found to tend towards collectivism. This holds true even for Asians from non-Communist nations. Generally, they gather and work in groups and even live in groups, as in the case of the extended family. The town square is rarely empty; houses are built, even without necessity, very close together and usually open directly onto the street (Tuan & Napier, 2000). This all looks straightforward enough when taken at face-value, but beware, to Asians, “group” does not necessarily mean “team”. Here, we begin to see the paradox. In a country such as Vietnam where the Communist structure makes the collective very important it has been observed that although people work in groups they do not work as groups. They work side by side yet do not function as a team. In the United States, where the general population tends to be more individualistic rather than collectivist like their Asian counterparts, there is more evidence of individual independence. Children leave home, or often booted out at age eighteen, many are expected to pay for their own higher education should they choose to pursue it, and there are very few instances of true extended families. They tend to see themselves more as individuals than as a member of a group. Here lies the other half of our paradox: Although individualistic, Americans are more easily brought in initially as individuals but very quickly form a team (Tuan & Napier, 2000). In rural China, where there is certainly a group effort in farming, the focus, as in Vietnam, is not towards a better outcome than the last or to an especially productive outcome but, rather, towards the survival and perpetuation of the commune. Furthermore this comes about because it is in each individual’s best interest that they have food to eat every day; and this makes any work done as a group that is in everybody’s best interest appear highly collectivist (De Raedt, 2006). In urban, industrialized China the opposite face of the dual-economy coin comes face-up. Here is a fast-growing suburb of the grey area. The iron curtain fell and steadily the paper curtain is having holes and tears called globalization made in it that will inevitably render it completely vestigial as well. As an example of a Capitalist country in Asia that happens to have a unique type of team-building practices let us look at Japan.3 In the 1950’s the term “made in Japan” meant what “made in Taiwan” denoted in the 1980’s—that is, bad quality. However, due to the fecundity (Orwell, 1949) and industriousness of its citizens, Japan is, and not just very recently, a leading first-world county. Their team-building strategies are bipolar. They have aspects of highly collective, almost Totalitarian methods of team-building such as the mandatory, daily, morning exercises performed by all workers of all levels. Yet they maintain a strict hierarchy at all levels of the company ladder, where what the boss above you says, you do, this being highly individualistic when compared to the team approach of the United States. Other countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia have had a large amount of western influence. Countries such as these are what were referred to earlier as “the grey area”. A multitude of American companies and multinational corporations with major or majority American shareholders have been operating and doing business in these countries for a long time, in some countries as far back as a hundred years ago. Of course, their operating methods, including, of course, their team-building process has infiltrated, taken root, and even evolved so as to be difficult to extricate from the original, pure, indigenous process of team-building endemic to the particular culture. Conclusions and Recommendations One must remember that the Industrial Revolution began, and was almost exclusively confined to the West until, variant upon country, the early to middle years of the Twentieth Century; it is, in fact, still spreading today. With industry and the consumer economy came businesses that required team-building skills from their operators and employees. The term ”team player” is an American one and the only true team-builders in the East, have come from or were influenced by the West (Tuan & Napier, 2000). While it is true that: “No man is an island”; and “there is safety in numbers”, in the East, herds of islands form; in the West, individual islands are brought together and perform as a team of islands, a single archipelago with a Capital Island but with a great degree of autonomy for each island. If any one single piece of research should be done that would further this study, this author would recommend an investigation into the Japanese-Korean system to determine what are its indigenous methods and which ones came from Western influence. Notes Read More