Business and corporate

anthropology
History
• Louis Galambos and Jeffrey Sturchio, in the opening piece, begin with an
observation.
• Friedman had become interested in “how well the image of the salesman
depicted in Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt(1922) corresponded to reality.”
• Godelier notes that, in France, anthropology and history have been in dialog since
the 1960s
• Braudel, of course, was known for his work on the history of capitalism,
• Lévi-Strauss as the founder of anthropological structuralism.
Rise of corporate anthropology
• There are many types of anthropologists, but the primary focus of the subject are social anthropologists
that are interested in social relationships in the contemporary workplace through emphasis on
observation.
• Systematic observation:It’s the key to knowing what’s working and what isn’t, how people are using
technology and other tools in the course of the workday, how workers extract meaning (or don’t) from
their work, and so forth.
• Corporate anthropology provides the possibility of actually knowing what’s happening and why in
organizations.
• first firm to hire anthropologists was Xerox,
• Motorola and Intel (have about a 10,000 to 1 ratio of engineers to anthropologist
• Nokia has placed a big bet on them to understand how people live mobile lives.
• Herman Miller uses them to help understand how people work in offices and use their furniture.
• MITRE, a government-funded research lab, is using them to assess how soldiers use technology, among
other things.
• The U.S. Army has discovered that anthropologists can be very helpful in building community and
nation in Iraq
What is Business Anthropology?
• Business anthropology is the discipline that applies the theories and
methodologies of social anthropology in the investigation of (or for) organizations
and their ecosystems.
• application of anthropology to business challenges.
• Business anthropology is not limited exclusively to companies, and its application
can occur in many different organizations, such as museums, schools, or
hospitals.
• business anthropology is imminently holistic and integrates both organizations
and their stakeholders
Main characteristics of business anthropology
• Focused on people and their groups
• Ethnographic research
• Thick Data
• Unlike big data approaches specialized in solving questions of the type What?
How? Where? or When?
• Socio-anthropological Analysis : we use it to understand organizational dynamics,
emerging trends in society, the creation of patterns of behavior, and many more.
• we use it to understand organizational dynamics, emerging trends in society, the
creation of patterns of behavior, and many more.
• Due to high business uncertainty and the increasing need to understand users or
undertake cultural transformations within companies, business anthropology is
experiencing a real BOOM
Cont….
Within companies, anthropology allows:

• Understanding customers and users in-depth

• Exploring new contexts
• Discovering new trends,
• Marketing blue oceans Design products
• Servicing and experiencing putting customers at the center
• Validating proposals with the market
• Transform the business culture of organizations
• Improve user and worker experience
• Optimize internal processes and equipment
• Reduce costs and uncertainty
What is Corporate Anthropology?
• Corporate anthropology is part of cultural anthropology, a social study that is, to
put it simply, studies human culture and behaviour, using systematic methods.
• Corporate anthropology in this definition system is the application of
anthropological theories, methods and tools to businesses and other
organizations, which first were applied by IBM when multinational companies of
colourful cultural backgrounds were on their rise
• Digging deep in different cultures, characterology, attitudes, human behaviour,
cultural anthropology understands the different norm and value system of
different social and cultural groups, therefore providing great added value to the
organizational culture of different multinational companies and understanding of
different markets
Why? Corporate anthropology
• Corporate anthropologists can dig deeper into how your employees connect with
your customers to solve their needs.
• To better realize what your product means to the individual, their social group
and the society of which they are a part.
• For companies, this is invaluable information as they plot a course for future
growth.
• Corporate anthropology can help you innovate and add value to your product
offerings, finding unoccupied market space that you can own before your
competition gets there.
 Anthropologist's Toolkit: Some tools to try
• Spend the day in the life of a customer or prospective one.

• Take a look at Undercover Boss and mimic it — participate and observe, listen to the stories being told from your
employees inside your own firm.

• Lunch and listen — Take a favorite client out to lunch and listen to the stories he or she is telling you about the
trends and challenges they are facing.

• Deep hanging out is simple. Go find a place to sit and observe people...how they buy, what they buy, what they
pass over, what frustrates them.

• Culture assessments are great to get you to step back and look at your company culture. Take the assessment
www.ocai-online.com and see what you find.

• Take a note book and write down everything. Or record your thoughts. Try and say: "that's a good idea." And
never say "no, but that isn't how it is done." This is a time for you to go exploring.
Business Anthropology, Its Methodology and
Perspective Today
• Business anthropologists usually adopt interpretative approaches such as
hermeneutic and/or narrative approaches rather than causal and functional
explanations such as “cause–consequence” relationships or hypothesis testing. We
also employ multidisciplinary approaches including qualitative and quantitative
research techniques to investigate enterprises
• Rosenburger clarifies this point as follows:
Business anthropologists elicit spontaneous thoughts and observe everyday behavior
of people at different points in the organization. Rather than only percentages of work
satisfaction and dissatisfaction, anthropologists ferret out the complex reasons behind
these percentages. Anthropological research goes beyond the official corporate culture
into the experiences and perception that make up the “culture of work.” Aiming at a
compromise between fairness and productivity, anthropologists analyze power relations
and track stimulants and deterrents of worker motivation. (Rosenberger, 1999, p. 29)