A good starting place to try to shed some light on the puzzling findings from
the King et al. (1995) and Tang (1999) studies would be to take a “grounded
approach” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) by examining “locals” interpretation of
competitiveness in the culture of interest rather than assuming the Western
(US) notion of competitiveness. One specific example of how competitiveness
may have a different meaning from that in the USA, was seen in a recent study
on an emerging competitive attitude, known as Kiasu (Ho et al., 1998) in
Singapore. The term Kiasu originated in Singapore and reflected an obsessive
concern with getting the most out of every transaction and a desire to be ahead
of others. Kiasu means “afraid to lose” in the Chinese Hokkien dialect that is
popular in Singapore. The Australian Macquarie Dictionary has defined
Kiasuism (a concocted noun of the adjective Kiasu by adding “ism”) as an
obsessive desire for value for money, hailed as a national fixation in Singapore.
The extensiveness of this attitude among students was evidenced by the