Individualism has been the center of debates among researchers and literature analysts. The world is mainly divided into individualists and collectivists.
Some of the countries that promote collectivistic cultures include Korea, Taiwan and Egypt, among others. On the other hand, those that promote individualistic cultures include most western cultures such as Italy, France and England, among others. The latter groups of countries (western) usually attribute individualism to reasoning. They claim that it is an individual that reasons. However, the other groups that promote collectivism credit it with collective responsibility.
Individualism refers to one’s emphasis on self or individual person. It is quite important to note that a group of people can rarely reason as required. In fact, this is what has encouraged individualism in western cultures. This paper will explore Ralph Waldo’s essay on self reliance. It will also endeavor to establish the characteristics of individualism in the essays as well as its significance (Western Culture Global 1).
Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo
Waldo’s essay on Self reliance was written in the early 1830s and published first in 1841. The main theme in self reliance was on “trust thyself” as he tried to encourage people to believe in themselves without fear of societal disapproval. He starts his essay with emphasis on defining “Genius”. He claims that intelligent people usually realize how envy is ignorance and professes self trust. He goes on to say that to heed to Gods call is to put one’s thought into use, since God has made each and everyone unique.
He discusses societal disapproval as well as foolish consistency as the main obstacles to self reliance and trust in one’s self. He believes that society’s emphasis on conformity destroys people’s ability to be innovative and genius. The other factor he emphasizes is self-worth, in which he encourages individuals’ responsibility and right to think for themselves (Buell 64).
Characteristics of Individualism
There are several characteristics of individualists as conveyed by Waldo in his essay “self reliance”. These include the “I” identity, which according to him helps one to believe in his unique gifts from God. He also encourages people to think for themselves and trust in their deeds without considering societal disapproval.
In this regards, he tries to define genius as a characteristic of individualism and believing in one’s thoughts. Waldo goes on to encourage self-worth as it gives people the confidence, responsibility and right to think for themselves without regard to societal disapprovals and conformity, among others. Other characteristics emphasized by Waldo include shunning societal disapprovals as well as foolish consistency (Western Culture Global 1).
Significance of individualism
Individualism as portrayed by Waldo in his essay on self reliance seeks to make geniuses and individualists who can think for themselves without involving influence from the society. Societies seek to ensure people conform to similar values and actions. In addition they emphasize the need to be consistent with these values. This is foolish consistency, according to Waldo, and he therefore encourages individuals to trust in themselves as they are uniquely created (eNotes.com, Inc. 1).
Conclusion
Ralph Waldo’s essay on self reliance was written as early as 1930s but was first published in 1941. He encourages people to think for themselves and trust in their deeds without considering societal disapproval or other obstacles such as foolish consistency which the society emphasizes.
The author advocates for self reliance as an initial stage of development and not the goal. He also states that self reliance is not anti-community. In essence, he encourages individuals to believe in their potentials and put efforts to achieve them without distractions (Richardson 99).
Works Cited
Buell, Lawrence. “Emerson”. Cambridge. Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2003: 64.
The primary difference between individualist and collectivist cultures is that within the former, the concern for an individual and immediate family is prioritized. At the same time, within the latter, people focus on the well-being of the entire group (Stewart-Reiner, 2021). Collectivist parents would focus on their child’s dependence on the group, while individualists would prioritize self-sufficiency (Stewart-Reiner, 2021). Collectivists would expect the child’s role in a household to be contributory to the other members of the group. For example, teenagers would be expected to help grandparents or look after younger children. Individualists would expect teenagers to be self-sufficient and be able to take care of themselves, for example, prepare food for themselves.
Considering these issues, when the two families would swap households, the caregivers would face difficulties when interacting with children. During an infant age, the toddlers form a style of attachment, and with collectivist parents, one would expect children to create a strong emotional connection to their parents, as opposed to an individualist family. At the age of 8, children typically develop a sense of autonomy, trust, and shame in accordance with Erikson’s development stages (Panna, 2020). Hence, individualist parents would expect an eight-year-old to perform some tasks on their own, for example, prepare for school or clean their room, while a collectivist child would need support and guidance from their caregivers. Finally, teenagers develop a sense of intimacy as opposed to isolation during this age, and a person from individualized culture would learn to be self-sufficient and self-reliant during this age, while a collectivist would develop a closer bond with their parents (Panna, 2020).
The grandparent’s role in a collectivist family would be similar to that of parents, and they would be expected to help with the upbringing, and children would need to bey them. Grandparents in individualist cultures, on the other hand, are not an integral part of the upbringing, and parents do not view them as a source of wisdom and support. The apparent conflict between grandparents and parents would face when swapping households is the miscommunication about the input of the former into the upbringing because collectivist grandparents would expect caregivers to listen to their advice. Individualist grandparents, on the other hand, may choose to refuse to help with the upbringings, which may confuse the collectivist parents.
In terms of response to parenting, individualists would need to build a relationship where they can communicate with their child as an equal, meaning that they would explain certain decisions and ask for a child’s opinion, especially if the child is a teenager capable of making decisions on their own. Collectivists, on the other hand, would expect their child to obey their worlds and would not feel the need to explain the particular decision or discuss them.
I think that the outcome of the show will depend on the parent’s open-mindedness and their openness to a new experience. If both parties choose to ignore the specifics of the other family, the show will result in conflicts and misunderstandings between parents, children, and grandparents because the roles and expectations from each group differ in the two cultures. It is possible to change the cultural values of an individual since researchers in the field of human development have created several theories where cognitive or moral advancement occurs in stages, including Piaget and Kohlberg. Hence, at each stage, a child acquires new knowledge and behavior patterns, which means that their cultural values can change if they are exposed to a new environment.
Australia, in common with many other industrialized countries in the 1990s, has experienced a shift towards individualism in labor law and labor market regulation. This has been part of a wider change as governments have opened up domestic markets to international competition, while rethinking the protections provided by the welfare state. Business has demanded deregulation of all kinds but particularly in the labor market, with the aim of achieving greater flexibility and efficiency in the utilization of labor.
The original aims of the Federal arbitration legislation were to prevent strikes and lockouts, to provide for conciliation ‘with a view to amicable agreement between the parties’ or, in default of that, to settle disputes by an ‘equitable award’ after compulsory arbitration. 2 The original framers of compulsory arbitration believed that collective groups of employers and employees would naturally tend to settle their differences by conciliation and agreement, and most likely on an industry- wide basis. The very existence of formal and compulsory mechanisms for conciliation and arbitration would induce parties ‘to make as between themselves agreements in regard to the conduct of the particular trade or business in which they are engaged. Then this Act will bind them.
The adoption of this system meant that unions did not need to gain recognition from employers. Under compulsory arbitration, unions were recognized by the state. As long as they were registered under the arbitration system they could notify a dispute with an employer (or employer association) and thereby invoke the compulsory processes of conciliation and arbitration. Ultimately a union could seek to have the tribunal impose an award on the employer which gave the union and its members both substantive and procedural rights. Registered unions were also able to make enforceable collective agreements with employers.
The method chosen for making agreements legally enforceable was different from that used in many other systems. Rather than treating collective agreements as contracts, the arbitration system gave unions a special though limited legal status, enabling them to enter into particular kinds of agreements regulated by statute and supervised by tribunals separate from the ordinary courts. Thus awards and agreements were not fully integrated into the legal system as occurred in many European countries.
Breach of an industrial agreement was not a breach of contract entitling the innocent party to compensatory damages but, like breach of an award, a contravention of a statutory obligation resulting in a penalty similar in nature to a fine. In practice, though, it has also been common for parties to obtain an injunctive order compelling the other party to observe the award or agreement
The upshot of the particular historical circumstances in which the compulsory arbitration system was developed, which determined the particular legal form for bargaining and regulation, is that individual and collective labor agreements have been quite different in their juridical nature and form. Collective agreements registered under the arbitration system are part of the public law since they are regulated by statute and (especially in recent times) their contents subject to approval by a tribunal with responsibility to act in the public interest. Those collective agreements not registered under this system remain unrecognized by the legal system and are only enforceable by industrial action.
Different forms of regulation have accommodated periods of decentralized collective bargaining across the twentieth century. Enterprise specific awards and registered industrial agreements have been common means of recognizing bargaining within a centralized system controlled to varying degrees by the Federal arbitration tribunal (now known as the Australian Industrial Relations Commission). After the abandonment of the universal needs-based ‘basic wage’ concept in 1967 the Federal industrial relations system has in practice operated a three-tier structure for wage fixation, involving national wage cases, industry
Although industrial relations legislation in Australia allows for legal recognition of collective agreements through certification or registration under the arbitration system, unregistered greements remain common in practice. A survey in 1995 reported that unregistered agreements occurred in 40 percent of workplaces which had a written collective agreement. Subsequent studies indicate that unregistered agreements are more likely to exist at either small or very large.
While there has been frequent debate concerning the need for a bill of rights in Australia, the written constitutions of the Commonwealth of Australia and of the constituent States are machinery documents which contain few recognized individual rights. The Industrial Relations Reform Act of 1993 increased the impact of international standards on Australian labor law in the Federal jurisdiction. One of the Act’s specific objects was ‘ensuring that labor standards meet Australia’s international obligations.’ 12 Although international labor norms were not directly enacted by the legislation, notions of collective bargaining (including a limited right to strike) were introduced.
Many of these reforms were dismantled with the introduction of the Workplace Relations Act in 1996, which does not rely on international labor standards. This Act is designed to give equal weight to individual and collective bargaining, and to reduce the rights of unions in negotiation and agreement-making. Since then several attempts have been made by the current Federal government to pass.
Under the traditional compulsory arbitration system, collective agreements were formalized in a number of ways. An agreement could be submitted to the industrial tribunal for certification, in which case it became binding on the parties to it by statutory force. Until recently, certified agreements had the same legal status as awards. Alternatively, an agreement could be presented to the tribunal for adoption as a consent award. In both cases, the agreement or award had to be approved by the tribunal, which was required to act in the public interest.
There is no mandatory process for bargaining under the Federal system. A certified agreement must be approved by a valid majority of employees subject to it (ie a simple majority of those actually voting). While the legislation contemplates that approval may be by ballot, this is not mandatory. There are several provisions designed to achieve informed consent in the approval process. The employees must be given access to a copy of the agreement, and it must be explained to the employees who will be subject to it.
This must be done in a way which takes account of their particular circumstances and needs. The legislation specifically mentions women, persons from a non-English speaking background, and young people as having special needs. Ultimately, the employees must have ‘genuinely approved’ the agreement. This requirement has been interpreted as requiring genuine consent which was ‘informed and un-coerced.’ The agreement cannot be certified unless the Commission is satisfied that it was genuinely approved.
Australian Workplace Agreements are subject to few legislative restrictions concerning their contents. Before coming into effect, they must be approved by an independent official, rather than by the industrial relations tribunal, as is the case with collective agreements. Similar individual agreements exist under the Queensland and Western Australian State systems. In both States, however, recent amendments now require individual statutory agreements to be approved by the industrial relations tribunal, and only after it has satisfied a series of statutory safeguards to protect freedom of choice.
The establishment of compulsory arbitration was closely associated with protection of domestic industries from international competition by the use of tariffs and bounties. The Federal Labor government (1983-96) dramatically reversed this situation by opening up the Australian economy to greater international competition in the mid-1980s, floating the Australian dollar, deregulating the financial sector, winding back industry protection, restructuring (and subsequently privatizing) government monopolies and relaxing many government controls. These changes were made in response to a perceived economic crisis.
By the mid-1980s Australia was facing a host of economic problems: a declining balance of payments, depreciating currency, low productive investment, persistently high inflation, and a worsening public deficit. An unemployment rate of around 10 percent seemed to have become entrenched. International market forces were seen to be demanding major structural reforms to the economy, not least of which were fundamental changes to the labor market and the regulation of industrial relations.
The demand for labor market reform was championed by proponents of individualist neo-liberalism (in Australia described, often disparagingly, as economic rationalists). They advanced a deregulations approach as a means of solving Australia’s economic problems by abolishing the ‘rigidities’ which were thought to be impeding greater efficiency. The term ‘enterprise bargaining’ was Industrial Relations.
The notions of freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively have been present implicitly in the compulsory arbitration system’s prohibition of victimization against union members and the recognition of the right of unions to participate in the making of agreements and awards. Yet the explicit recognition of the principle of the right to bargain has only occurred with the adoption of enterprise bargaining in the last decade.
The introduction of individual statutory agreements, such as Australian Workplace Agreements, has complicated the picture. While such agreements are statutory in their origin and effect, they differ from the hitherto existing forms of industrial instrument, awards and certified agreements, which are collective in nature. As agreements between determinate individuals, AWAs are like contracts. A number of legal questions about such agreements are likely to arise in future, questions which are not resolved by the legislation creating them and which are difficult to answer by resort to traditional contract principles.
When making a union-based agreement, the employer is not bound to include all relevant unions as parties. The Federal Workplace Relations Act 1996 says that when negotiating an agreement, employers must not discriminate between employees because some of them are members of a particular union, or are members of a different union than other employees. It has been thought that an employer’s refusal to negotiate with a particular union does not contravene either this requirement or the freedom of association provisions. One judge, while not precluding the possibility that the Act could be contravened by selective negotiation, said that ‘it is the rights of employees rather than unions themselves that the Act principally sets out in the relevant provisions to protect.
In common with other industrialized countries, Australia has shown a shift in the centre of gravity of collective bargaining, away from a national and industry basis towards the company level, and a growth in the flexibility of bargaining processes. Associated with this has been a reduced acceptance of collective bargaining among many employers. The existing systems of industrial relations legislation in Australia display a strong trend towards individualism in agreement-making, while facilitating the means for employers to exclude unions from bargaining. In several disputes in the mining sector, employers have been able to forestall union attempts to obtain a certified agreement while pursuing a policy of individualization by placing as many employees on either individual workplace agreements or on ‘staff’ employment contracts.
References
See Stellar Call Centres Pty Ltd v Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union of Australia [2001] FCA 106; 103 IR 220.
Richard Mitchell, Richard Naughton and Rolf Sorensen, ‘The Law and Employee Participation – Evidence from the Federal Enterprise Agreements Process’, Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 39, 1997, pp. 196-217;
Raymond Markey and Rosemary Reglar, ‘Consultative Commitees in the Australian Steel Balnav, Brown, Machonachie, Stone (2007). Employment Relations In Australia, W. John & Sons Australia Ltd.
Morgan, D., Zeffane, R., (2003) “Employment Relations.” Individualism in organisation: Does Employment Contract innovation make a difference 25(6): 536-557.
Nils, T. (1997). “Employment Relations.” The Management of individualism in an Australia Mining Company 19(4): 337
Ramamoorthy, A., Carroll, S., (1998). “Human Relations.”Individualism/collectivism orientation and reactions towards alternative human resources management practices 51(5): 571-589.
Individualism culture focuses on goals of individuals and not social goals. Western countries have individualistic cultures while Arabic countries have collectivist cultures. Arab culture is a collectivist culture. Here, individuals’ commitments focus on their nuclear and extended families and close friends rather than on themselves.
Loyalty is the pillar of collectivist culture in Arab nations. Hofstede’s studies on national cultures provide the best point of views in understanding behaviours and cultures of people across the globe. According to Hofstede’s previous studies, he argued that all Arab countries had similar cultural characteristics.
Hofstede gave the Arab world a score of 38 percent on individualism because he viewed the Arab world culture as collective. This score reflects generalisation of the Arab culture. This might be true based Hofstede’s studies. However, we have to note that different nations operate in diverse realities.
In addition, these states have different communities and cultures. Hofstede’s view on the Arab culture of individualism provides a valuable tool for people who are new in the Arab world and need quick judgements and decisions. This knowledge can help us respond to situations appropriately.
Alkailani, Azzam, and Athamneh claim that generalisation of Hofstede’s study in Jordan is not scientifically valid (Alkailani, Azzam and Athamneh, 2012). These scholars note that generalisation of findings from one culture to another culture leads to misleading results. This is because of variations among cultures.
We have to recognise similarities, such as language and religion among Egypt, Iraq, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. However, these countries have differences in relation to social, economic, and political statuses. We must also understand that Arab countries lack stable conditions, which may create cultural dynamism.
Based on such results, it is fundamental for Hofstede’s dimensions to focus on every country of the Arab world. Further, cultures are dynamic based on prevailing circumstances in the society. Therefore, such studies need constant revisions and updates.
In this context, Hofstede should review his work and treat every country within its context. At the same time, Hofstede should consider proximity of various Arab countries rather than a broad generalisation.
Honour is a crucial part of Arab culture. Arabs, especially men must strive to guard their honour at all costs. Some scholars have noted that Arabs must “fight, lie, or kill to protect their honour and that of their family” (Berman, 2008). On the other hand, the failure to protect one’s honour results to shame.
Regaining a lost honour may involve revenge with severe consequences. In the business environment, visitors must be careful about the importance of honour in Arab world. Public criticism among Arabs can lead to a loss of honour. This can lead to serious consequences.
According Arab Cultural Awareness guide, there are several cultures and societies in the Arab world. It has rich and diverse groups, cultures, and communities. Therefore, differences exist in cultural practices. This implies that the culture of honour varies from one Arab country to another. What leads to generalisation of honour culture is the broad consideration of the Arab world.
This is because it is difficult to consider a culture of a nation or nations without generalisation. Therefore, accuracy of honour culture in the Arab world depends on a given context and circumstance. In all, generalisation of honour culture in Arab world provides us with an insight of what to expect.
Reference List
Alkailani, M, Azzam, I, and Athamneh, A 2012, ‘Replicating Hofstede in Jordan: Ungeneralized, Reevaluating the Jordanian Culture’, International Business Research, vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 71-80.
Berman, L 2008, ‘Understanding Arab Culture’, Small Wars Journal, pp. 1-10.