Romania and team building

In The Economist's print edition of the 6th - 12th of Jan, a very interesting article notices the official entry of Romania and Bulgaria, "the new kids on the block", in the European Union.

The article's one line argument is- rightly- that both countries are "economically and politically backward" and that the "Balkan pair's road to EU prosperity and stability" will be very hard. There are however important differences between the two countries: "although united by weak institutions and their poverty, Bulgaria and Romania differ in size, history, politics and economic structure (a recent BBC article showed that they do not differ massively in media entertainment- the competition there is in the details and both countries are emulating the fashion set years ago by others- I guess there we're both in the 'Balcanic' category here: not that I am very comfortable with it...). Now, The Economist seems to slighly favour, overall, Romania, and to give it relatively more chances of success (all this, unfortunately, seems to be largely proxied by surprisingly too much credit given to Romania's current political class- probably from outside it looks much rosier...), but arriving here was not exactly my purpose. Rather, what I find more interesting in this Economist piece, is one short paragraph that reads as follows:

Managers with experience in both countries say that Romanians are more individualistic than Bulgarians. "In Romania the problem is getting them to work in a team. In Bulgaria the problem is getting them to show any initiative"[...].

Truth be told, nobody can describe better the economic reality and, in particular, the quality of the local workforce, than managers who have de facto experience in those particular places, that is Romania and Bulgaria in our case (and foremost among them, the multinationals present in both countries). Hence I'd label this as the one piece of more 'objective', clear-cut, evidence in the article. For me the Bulgarian 'passivity' sounds new (from the quote above it is also not clear whether they are very good at team building, hence that they would somehow complement us), but I am not surprised at all by the lack of ability (or willingness) assigned to the Romanians inasmuch as working in teams is concerned. Unfortunately this feature permeates every activity, far beyond team building in industry for instance, it actually impedes cooperation in (would-be) most productive and desirable endeavours. It has a particularly negative connotation when it is about collaboration in the highest circles, among the elite. I once wrote a short opinion, in Romanian, that was precisely making this point, how important it is for the Romanian elites to actually get together, to participate in joint projects, for every significant achievement (if one truly wants to rise from mediocrity, that is- if the goals are different, then this post is useless) cannot be but the result of joint effort and cooperation (paraphrasing Graham Bell). It looks like one cannot stress that enough and now the foreigners also draw your (our) attention to it. The advice is still for free at the moment but I have the feeling we will not realize how important this is before we'll end up paying dearly for it...