Individualism in a Time of Crisis

Stephanie Carbonneau
OLEAD410 Blog Entry #3

For our third blog entry, I will be comparing Mexico and the United States relation to individualism and how these cultural outlooks could impact the global pandemic, Covid-19. Americans in general tend to follow an individualistic culture while Mexico, scoring 30 compared to the world average, tends to follow a collectivist culture. Currently, we are all working our way through the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19. Many people are choosing to, or being required to work from home for the time being. How can different culture types affect this? In my opinion, individualistic countries/ people will not have as much of an issue with self-isolating and working from home, because their work is mostly centered around individual contributor roles. What I mean by this, is that even though they may work collaboratively with their team, they often times are capable of working alone, so being home may not have as big of an impact. Collectivist countries, such as Mexico, may have a more difficult with these types of working restrictions. Mexico currently is on the lower end of Covid-19 cases, 585 total cases as of March 27, but that number is expected to rise. Even with the lower number, many people are staying home and many employers are requiring their staff not go into work if at all possible. We learned in lesson 9 that due to their collectivist cultured “Mexicans tend to prefer to work in groups for the benefit of everyone rather than for each person to make his or her way.” (PSU L9, 2020)

The United States is quickly coming to be the leading country of Covid-19 cases and many Americans are working from home and many have been home for weeks now. Of course each entity in the U.S has their difficulties switching such a large number of employees to remote work, but overall the transition was extremely quick and essentially seamless. Within a week millions of people were at home, working individually. How are they handling this? Some people prefer of course to work in a group setting, but with an overall individualistic culture, I think many Americans are finding it fairly easy to do their role remotely. Not only do Americans tend to prefer to work individually, but our system for praise is centered around individualistic ideas as well. Employees are often praised for good work they have done on their own, and even when the work is completed in a group setting, rewards such as raises or bonuses are all given individually. I think that the fact that we have such a strong individualistic culture is definitely a contributing factor for our Country to operate to the best of its ability in a world where we now are not able to actually go into our workplace.

 

 

Pennsylvania State University. (2020). Leadership in a global context – OLEAD 410. Lesson 9:Central America and Mexico, Penn State World Campus. Retrieved from: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2041071/modules/items/27977868