INDIVIDUALISTIC CULTURE AND COMMUNITARIAN CULTURE

Phuoc D. Nguyen

We always debate about individualistic culture and communitarian culture; these two concepts are always in conflict with each other. However, if we combine them well to apply in servant leadership, this combination will produce a good result.

“In predominantly individualistic cultures, the individual is positioned against the collective. The individual determines the norm. His or her well-being, happiness, and sense of satisfaction are of the utmost importance. It is expected that the individual will act primarily in his or her own interest”. (Trompenaars and Voerman, 2010, p. 82). The cause of this dilemma is capitalism, capitalism creates norms for individuals to compete with each other. The individualistic culture is the form where each person will decide on his or her work with its own rules, ways, and cooperation mechanisms. Everyone has complete autonomy over his/her work; he/she is sharing the impact and power is mainly due to capacity. The individualistic culture appears when a group of people decides to organize themselves into a group that has not worked separately to achieve the highest benefit. The individualistic culture’s basic drawback is a lack of cooperation and loss. The individualistic culture emphasizes ego, the person has only known themselves as above all. In contrast, communitarian culture seems abstract and theorized because the collective serves each individual and vice versa.

It is recommended that team members improve and enhance cooperation, and exploit resources effectively. Spears (2010) identified a set of ten characteristics of the servant leader that he views as being of critical importance—central to the development of servant-leaders, including Building Community – the servant leader seeks to identify some means for building community among those who work within a given institution. Servant leadership suggests that true community can be created among those who work in businesses and other institutions.