Anthropological Research for a Computer Manufacturing Company

Abstract

This paper discusses a corporation‐financed anthropological study of office work carried out by a university‐based research team. Two aspects of this project were unusual: carrying out ethnographic studies in the offices of a major American corporation and conducting applied ethnographic research for a profitmaking manufacturer. Adapting anthropological methods for use in a business setting proved not to be overly difficult and researchers were able to collect substantial amounts of useful data. Conducting research for a profit‐making corporation, however, raised a number of issues unlikely to be encountered in other nonacademic anthropological work. These include corporation reluctance to finance research of uncertain potential profitability, concern that participant observation methodology might have negative effects on company sales, and fears that research findings would be reported to outsiders not authorized to hear them. Although anthropological work for corporations can thus involve unfamiliar constraints on how research is carried out, it presents opportunities to gain access to areas of American life seldom examined by ethnographic methods.The decreasing availability of academic jobs (see DfAntrade et al. 1975) has led many anthropologists to seek other types of work. Nonacademic employment has forced researchers to confront practical and ethical problems unfamiliar to people trained to do more traditional ethnographic research. Anthropologists employed by government agencies (Britan 1978; McDowell 1978), nonprofit foundations (Almy 1977), and private consulting firms (Fitzsimmons 1975; Gardner 1978) have reported on difficulties including political pressures on the reporting of research findings, effects of multiple responsibilities to sponsors and subjects, the need to present concrete findings, and the often strict deadlines on the reporting of results.A generally unexplored source of potential employment for nonacademic anthropologists is with large profitmaklng corporations. Although some of the earliest applied anthropological research was carried out for private industry, few recent accounts of anthropological research for large corporations have been published. This paper describes a study of office work conducted by a group of anthropologists for a major American corporation. We consider how anthropological methods and perspectives were used to investigate questions of corporate concern and discuss how the profitmaking nature of the corporation affected our work environment. Ethnographic research in a corporate setting, although quite feasible, raised a number of issues unlikely to be encountered in other nonacademic anthropological work. These Include corporate reluctance to finance research of uncertain potential profitability, concern by corporate sponsors that participant observation methodology might have a negative effect on sales revenue, employee fears that anthropological research could reveal illegitimate procedures they had devised to achieve company determined production goals, and executives' fears that research findings would be reported to outsiders not authorized to hear them.