Exclusively for Madam-Professor

Not everyone is enchanted by ideas of empowerment and teamwork. For example, Richard Sennett, a sociologist at New York University, argues in The Corrosion of Character, that because teamwork relies on “the fiction of harmony,” it stresses mutual responsiveness at the expense of original thinking. Unity, he argues, requires that a team confine its members to specific tasks and superficial processes, without much reference to either the experience or “leader.” This obscures ordinary power relationships, a condition Sennett call “power without authority.” Above all, he says, the team prohibits conflict; thus, turning itself into a new form of domination. Do you agree or disagree? Why?