In contrast to the undesirable Kiasu-negative to teamwork attitude influences,
the relationship from the Kiasu-positive to teamwork attitudinal improvements
should be a positive one. This is because the Kiasu-positive attitude revolved
around improvements in personal performance instead of preventing others
from outperforming oneself. To some extent, this attitude has some resemblance
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to the “individualistic” competitive facet that was uncovered in the study of Van
Lange et al. (1997), where self is the focus and others are irrelevant. However, the
difference in the Kiasu-positive attitude is an additional facet of willingness to
work with others in order to get what one wanted (Hwang et al., 2002).
Therefore, from the perspective of other members in a team, the Kiasu-positive
individual, while being very diligent to complete his/her task, is also a
cooperative person who interacts with others in the team. These desirable
competitive interactions ultimately flow over into cooperation and support of
other team members in team processes. Consequently, the Kiasu-positive
individual is cooperative rather than uncooperative in a team environment.
Therefore, Kiasu-positive should be positively related to improvements in the
two teamwork attitudes of task-participation and social-support.