While today’s business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, award-winning financial journalist and anthropology PhD Gillian Tett advocates thinking like an anthropologist to better understand consumer behavior, markets, and organizations to address some of society’s most urgent challenges. Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists learn to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision. Today, anthropologists are more likely to study Amazon warehouses than remote Amazon tribes; they have done research into institutions and companies such as General Motors, Nestlé, Intel, and more, shedding light on practical questions such as how internet users really define themselves; why corporate projects fail; why bank traders miscalculate losses; how companies sell products like pet food and pensions; why pandemic policies succeed (or not). Anthropology makes the familiar seem unfamiliar and vice versa, giving us badly needed three-dimensional perspective in a world where many executives are plagued by tunnel vision, especially in fields like finance and technology. “Fascinating and surprising” (Fareed Zararia, CNN), Anthro-Vision offers a revolutionary new way for understanding the behavior of organizations, individuals, and markets in today’s ever-evolving world.

Viewed as a breakthrough in applied anthropology, Business Anthropology was the first concise work to juxtapose, compare, and integrate anthropological methods and theories with those of contemporary business practices and theories. In this latest edition, Jordan retains enduring, illustrative examples and adds fresh insights to familiarize readers with anthropological techniques and show their ever-growing utility in a variety of organizational and consumer settings. Business Anthropology explains how anthropologists distinctive training and skills equip them to address issues ranging from work processes, diversity, and globalization to product design and consumer behavior, in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Anthropologists use a holistic approach to gather and analyze data. They get to know people both inside and outside the organization, understand diverse perspectives from an objective viewpoint, gain in-depth knowledge about local wants and needs, and see old realities in new ways.

Qualitative methods of business research are emerging as vital tools. Business anthropology is at the heart of this movement. Although many recent books provide nuts-and-bolts advice regarding the field, Rethinking Business Anthropology: Cultural Strategies in Marketing and Management discusses the intellectual traditions from which the discipline has emerged and how this heritage opens up new vistas for business research. Gaining these broader perspectives is essential as business anthropologists transcend being mere research technicians and seek to influence organizational policies and strategies. Opening chapters deal with the current status of the field and its relationship to ecological and cultural sustainability. This is followed by discussions of the intellectual foundations of anthropology and their continued importance to business anthropology. An array of chapters provides illustrative applications of business anthropology in order to demonstrate the field's unique and powerful potentials within both scholarly and practitioner research. The book concludes with a discussion of the role of business anthropologists in dealing with indigenous people, rural populations, and cultural enclaves. Increasingly, businesses seek to connect with such communities even though mainstream leaders and negotiators often lack the skills necessary to effectively do so. Business anthropologists, with their dual background in business and cultural diversity are poised to excel in this capacity. An appendix by Robert Tian, editor of the International Journal of Business Anthropology, provides a useful overview of the field as it now exists. As business anthropology comes of age, this timely monograph provides the perspectives needed for the growth and further development of the field and those who work within it. Excellent for the professional bookshelf and as a textbook.

The first comprehensive work on the burgeoning field of business anthropology, this innovative reference book, including more than 60 international scholar-practitioners, provides a foundation for the field for years to come.

Businesses and other organizations are increasingly hiring anthropologists and other ethnographically-oriented social scientists as employees, consultants, and advisors. The nature of such work, as described in this volume, raises crucial questions about potential implications to disciplines of critical inquiry such as anthropology. In addressing these issues, the contributors explore how researchers encounter and engage sites of organizational practice in such roles as suppliers of consumer-insight for product design or marketing, or as advisors on work design or business and organizational strategies. The volume contributes to the emerging canon of corporate ethnography, appealing to practitioners who wish to advance their understanding of the practice of corporate ethnography and providing rich material to those interested in new applications of ethnographic work and the ongoing rethinking of the nature of ethnographic praxis.

Interest in anthropology and ethnography has been an on-going feature of organizational research and pedagogy, this book provides a key reference text that examines these criteria and that pulls together the different ways in which anthropology infuses the study of organizations, both epistemologically and methodologically. The volume hosts key scholars and experts within the fields of Organizational Anthropology, Organizational Ethnography, Organizational Studies and Qualitative Research. The book provides a combination of methodological guidelines, exemplars and epistemological reflection. It includes methodological viewpoints, ethnographic journeys within organizations as well as beyond organizations, and individual reflections on challenges faced by organizational ethnographers. This book is aimed at PhD, master and advanced undergraduate students and researchers across disciplines, especially those who are engaged with general management, organizational behaviour, strategy and anthropological/ethnographic issues.

No challenge is entirely new. In 60,000 years of human existence, nearly every problem we face in modern business has already been seen...and solved. We just have to figure out how to apply that age-old tribal wisdom to our current circumstances. The Corporate Tribe will take you on a journey to discover the essence of culture and the secret to successful change programs. Along the way, it will introduce you to the cultural traditions of different people across the globe and provide you with the practical tools you need to apply what you find to today’s organizations. Through thirty compelling stories, The Corporate Tribe will reveal what, deep down, you already know. At turns unfamiliar and disruptive, illuminating and inspirational, The Corporate Tribe offers a powerful paradigm and skillset for tackling organizational and leadership challenges in the twenty-first century and beyond. It is a book for leaders, consultants and advisors who are looking for a fresh perspective and proven solutions, for those who want to build strong communities that are safe for diversity and ready for change. Danielle Braun and Jitske Kramer are corporate anthropologists. They look at organizations as tribes, organizational charts as kinship systems, leaders as chiefs and mission documents as totem poles. Travel with them to places where spirits linger after death, magic is real and rituals are the key to maintaining order and facilitating transition. You will never look at your organization—or approach its problems—the same way again.