Managing Diversity: Translating Anthropological Insight for Organization Studies

Abstract

Anthropologists working in the field of organization studies experience difficulty explaining their unique perspective to managers, organization studies specialists, and consultants. The two fields of organization studies and anthropology view organizations from two different paradigms, and this paradigm difference leads to the misunderstanding when similar terminology is used. The purpose of this article is to translate between the field of anthropology and organization studies using an anthropological approach to translation. This translation will prove useful in exploring anthropological and organization studies approaches to managing diversity. Several salient differences are discussed in this article including definitions of "organization" and "culture," management centric versus culturally relative research emphases, the anthropological distinction between "ideal" and "real" cultures, and methodological distinctions between "emic and "etic" and between quantitative and qualitative approaches.