Ethical and Methodological Muddles of Doing Ethnography on Corporations and Their Managers

Abstract

Anthropology has traditionally been a discipline that studies small-scale societies in far-flung places or subaltern groups in large, complex societies. On the margins, some anthropologists have been studying business organizations and their managers. In recent years, an increasing number of practicing and academic anthropologists have entered the fields of business anthropology and anthropology of corporations, expanding the broader trend of “studying up” in anthropology. Compared to “traditional” anthropology. Business anthropology and anthropology of corporations involve not only a different research setting, but also a different positionality of the researcher in relation to their research subjects, which results in unique ethical and methodological challenges for the anthropologist. Drawing on years of fieldwork experience of researching family businesses in Zhejiang, China, this article examines the ethical and methodological “muddles” associated with doing ethnographic research on corporations and their managers. The goal of this article is to offer some suggestions to address these methodological and ethical challenges and to call for more scholarly attention to this much-needed area.