Practicing Anthropology in Business Organizations

Abstract

Today more than half of new Ph.D.s in anthropology in the United States find nonacademic jobs outside of universities. An increasing number of anthropologists are working in the private business sector. Many wellestablished programs are training students for nonacademic careers in applied anthropology. A newly-minted Ph.D. in anthropology should be able to present his or her competence in a language that is comprehensible to nonanthropologist-business people and the general public. And yet, anthropology is hardly a household term, nor is it included in the lexicon of everyday business. While most people can tell something about what an accountant could do for a business firm, few nonanthropologists can articulate the expertise that an anthropologist may bring to the world of business. The value of business anthropology has been grossly underrecognized and underpublicized, in spite of the fact that industrial anthropologists have been studying business for more than sixty years, since its beginning in the 1930s. This issue of Practicing Anthropology addresses these concerns held by a group of business anthropologists. We believe that we can make significant contributions in this area, if more applied anthropologists can translate the language of ideational and academic anthropology into the language of everyday business practice. The language of industry and trade emphasizes practical application, effective time-management, task-accomplishment, and result-orientation. In short, business people are interested in empirical and specific problem solving, because they do have problems to solve, rather quickly.