Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective


Book Description

This book offers keen insight and useful lessons underscoring the value of practice to theory. Conceived by two anthropologists who lead consulting practices, McCabe and Briody selected contributors to explore how cultural change happens in a variety of consumer and organizational contexts. The 12 case studies illustrate the explanatory potential and the problem-solving strengths of assemblage theory, and the role of human agency in provoking cultural change. The case studies are compelling due to connections between the case narratives and graphics, and researcher engagement in the pragmatics of implementation—both of which shape and encourage learning. This volume will be markedly useful to practitioners engaged in research and implementation. It will also appeal to students and faculty in a variety of fields including anthropology, business management, marketing, sociology, cultural studies, and industrial design.




Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective


Book Description

Using a set of case studies conducted in the United States, China, India, Nigeria, and Cambodia, Maryann McCabe and Elizabeth K. Briody examine cultural change in everyday life, or more specifically, the process of human perception and action in the instigation of change.




Rethinking Business Anthropology


Book Description

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.




Business Anthropology


Book Description

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.




The Cultural Dimension of Global Business


Book Description

Now in its ninth edition, The Cultural Dimension of Global Business continues to provide an essential foundation for understanding the impact of culture on global business and global business on culture. The highly experienced authors demonstrate how the theory and insights of cultural anthropology can positively influence the conduct of global business, examining a range of issues that individuals, teams, and organizations face as they work globally and across cultures. The cross-cultural scenarios presented at the end of each chapter allow students of business, management, and anthropology alike to explore cultural differences while gaining valuable practice in thinking through a variety of complex and thorny cultural issues. The fully updated ninth edition offers: • An expanded focus on international perspectives, and greater insight into China and its emergence as a global economic power • Consideration of team interactions in complex global environments, including virtually, while recognizing that individuals have critical influence on business processes and outcomes • New methodological tools with reflections and exercises to inspire readers to begin thinking and acting globally, offering guidance on identifying salient features of an international business or partnership, adjusting to novel or unexpected circumstances, and capturing the perceptions and behaviors of global businesspeople • New chapters on understanding one’s own organizational culture as a precursor to conducting business globally, additional material to enhance business partnership interactions, and strategies for integrating the global into local operations • Discussion of the wide-ranging disruptions facing people and business around the world and the ways in which the global pandemic affected business processes and practices • Further resources via the Instructor & Student Resource, www.routledge.com/cw/ferraro2, including links, blogs, and videos, an instructor’s resource manual, and a section on relevant cultural sources.




Women, Consumption and Paradox


Book Description

Women are the world’s most powerful consumers, yet they are largely marketed to erroneously through misconceptions and patriarchal views that distort the reality of women’s lives, bodies, and work. This book examines the contradictions and mismatches between women’s everyday experiences and market representations. It considers how women themselves exhibit paradoxical behaviour in both resisting and supporting conflicting messages. The volume emphasizes paradox as a form of agency and negotiation through which women develop dialogical meanings. The contributions highlight the ways in which women transform inconsistencies and contradictions in advertising and marketing, global consumption practices, and material consumption into positive practices for living. The rich range of ethnographic accounts, drawn from countries including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark, Japan, and China, provide readers with a valuable perspective on consumer behaviour.




Anthro-Vision


Book Description

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.




Handbook of Anthropology in Business


Book Description

In recent years announcements of the birth of business anthropology have ricocheted around the globe. The first major reference work on this field, the Handbook of Anthropology in Business is a creative production of more than 60 international scholar-practitioners working in universities and corporate settings from high tech to health care. Offering broad coverage of theory and practice around the world, chapters demonstrate the vibrant tensions and innovation that emerge in intersections between anthropology and business and between corporate worlds and the lives of individual scholar-practitioners. Breaking from standard attempts to define scholarly fields as products of fixed consensus, the authors reveal an evolving mosaic of engagement and innovation, offering a paradigm for understanding anthropology in business for years to come.




What Anthropologists Do


Book Description

Why should you study anthropology? How will it enable you to understand human behaviour? And what will you learn that will equip you to enter working life? This book describes what studying anthropology actually means in practice, and explores the many career options available to those trained in anthropology. Anthropology gets under the surface of social and cultural diversity to understand people’s beliefs and values, and how these guide the different lifeways that these create. This accessible book presents a lively introduction to the ways in which anthropology's unique research methods and conceptual frameworks can be employed in a very wide range of fields, from environmental concerns to human rights, through business, social policy, museums and marketing. This updated edition includes an additional chapter on anthropology and interdisciplinarity. This is an essential primer for undergraduates studying introductory courses to anthropology, and any reader who wants to know what anthropology is about.




The Corporate Tribe


Book Description

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.