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Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:18:35 +0700
From: Antony Joseph <antonyj@tm.net.my>
Subject: Indians unable to work in teams

Charu:

It maybe difficult to find supportive evidence for or against this issue ( I
may be wrong). However having studied and worked in India, Singapore and the
Americas, I feel I may have a viewpoint to make here.

In Singapore, the team orientation is very strong - while working in teams
there, I could feel the superiority of the team over the Individual.   (It
may even be that  dominating governments in Singapore/ China have tuned
people towards a consensus oriented approach to  decision making as against
confrontational -Individualistic, approach). It seems to work quite well in
Singapore. In  the Americas I could feel the healthy (not all the time)
conflict between  Individualism and Collectivism(team-orientation).  This
works well for them, dosen't it?

The question for us is whether teamwork  has any role in future economic
success of Indians. If it does, then we should probably consider putting it
into our education policies.

When I look back at the education system that I went through in India - the
ranking system in schools, the intense competition for University
admissions, emphasis on games like cricket (definitely not the best of team
games), strong emphasis on melody rather than harmony in music ... did we
ever get any training in team work?

You wrote:

>I propose we shut this debate down until the motivation or validity of
>the premise [see below] is properly established
>
>As I recall, this point evolved as follows:
>
>Someone proposed [I'm paraphrasing]:
>"Indians are unable to work well in groups. This is because the Indian
>is too arrogant and individualistic to do so. The Singaporeans and
>Chinese can, why can't we?".
>
>Someone proposed a solution to this supposed "problem" of Indian
>arrogance to be 2 years of compulsory military service.
>