Testing relevance and applicability: reflections on organizational anthropology

Purpose Starting from the challenges and implications of doing organizational ethnography within the organization which the researcher is also employed by, the purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the idea of “passing the test” in relation to such ethnographic endeavor. The paper discusses how “collaboration” on projects and in product development processes with colleagues/informants is a precondition for passing “tests,” which unfolded as subtle, verbalized demands made by colleagues/informants during fieldwork. Design/methodology/approach Longitudinal anthropological fieldwork was carried out as part of an industrial PhD project, which investigates digitization as organizational, professional and social practices in the Danish construction industry. The fieldwork lasted on/off from April 2017 to December 2018. Various forms of participant observation and collaborative ethnographic methods were used during fieldwork. Findings The paper investigates how these “tests” focused on two key aspects: the relevance of anthropology in a profit-oriented, technical corporate organization; and the application of anthropological theories and ethnographic methodologies for the benefit of product development, usability studies and organizational change. It is argued that the tests were passed through collaborative engagements, where the author oscillated between positions as collegial insider and outside researcher for the dual benefit of both commercial interests and research interests. Originality/value The paper suggests that daring to collaborate and co-create products (as something different than texts) during organizational fieldwork for the benefit of both corporate and ethnographic interests offers strong possibilities for keeping ethnography relevant and applicable, passing tests in organizational settings and advancing ethnography’s impact in the world.

From bribes to international corruption: the Odebrecht case

Learning outcomes The contribution of the present case lies in the critical view that every business actor should exercise – be it general manager, middle management, supervisor or executive – when building a strong organizational culture in corrupt political environments. Case overview/synopsis The purpose of this case study is to explore the dilemma in which Marcelo Odebrecht, once CEO of Odebrecht, found/determined whether to continue with the business model established by the founders of Odebrecht or take a new path for the organization. After exploring the corrupt acts of Odebrecht and the scope of Operation Lava Jato, the reader can reflect on the importance of organizational culture (according to the three levels proposed by Schein) in the face of the emergence of corruption. By generating discussions about organizational culture, business ethics, political culture and corruption, the organizational culture of Odebrecht is problematized in relation to its real behavior. Complexity academic level Students of administration, business and international business undergraduates and graduates, as well as members of senior management in companies in the infrastructure sector. Also, given the plurality of possible readings, it is recommended that the case also be used in courses or specializations in organizational psychology, organizational sociology or organizational anthropology. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 5: International Business.

Ethical Considerations in Global Multi-Stakeholder Work Contexts

Economic integration and globalization has brought increasing ethical complexity into business anthropology as more anthropologists work in or research multinational enterprises that cross multiple boundaries. Ethical challenges arise from the predominant neoliberal viewpoint in these enterprises, the embeddedness of ethics in culture, and from intercultural nature of multi-stakeholder environments. Using an example of one research project in an MNE, this article illustrates the ethical challenges of the MNE work context and how these challenges can be resolved and discusses current ethical dilemmas and the future implications for the growth and practice of business and organizational anthropology.

Senderos paralelos y atajos oblicuos

Se trata de desandar reflexivamente una trayectoria profesional en el contexto histórico-académico de la Antropología en la Argentina durante cuatro décadas, actualizando, como ejes impulsores, algunos interrogantes: ¿Cómo colaborar con efectividad para producir las rupturas prácticas y simbólicas más necesarias en los modos que tenemos de hacer las cosas dentro de procesos que permitan orientar el mundo en que vivimos hacia sociedades realmente justas e igualitarias, esto es: sin explotación? ¿De qué manera este propósito puede articularse con la producción de conocimiento antropológico propio y de la disciplina en su diversidad de enfoques, sin necesidad de colocar la tarea profesional como algo paralelo a la colaboración con el cambio? ¿Cómo articular dialécticamente este aporte profesional desde la investigación y la facilitación de procesos concretos? Entre preguntas, memorias y olvidos, aquí estoy, rindiendo en forma individual alguna cuenta con mi propia trayectoria, que –como se verá- tiene mucho más de “pendiente” que de resultados y méritos: mucho más en el debe que en el haber. Palavras clave: Antropología argentina. Cultura popular. Antropología urbano-barrial. Antropología organizacional. Parallel paths and oblique shortcuts Abstract It has to do with retracing in a reflexive manner a professional trajectory in the historical-academic context of Anthropology in Argentina during four decades, upgrading, as impeller axes, some queries: How to collaborate with effectiveness to produce the most necessary practical and symbolic ruptures in the ways that we make things inside processes that allow to guide the world in which we live in toward truly fair and equal societies, that is: without exploitation? How can this purpose be articulated with the production of proper anthropological knowledge and of the discipline in its diversity of focuses, without having to place the professional task as something parallel to the collaboration change? How to articulate this professional contribution in a dialectical way from research and the facilitation of concrete processes? Among questions, memoirs and omissions, here I am, individually rendering account of my own trajectory, which - as will be seen - has a lot more "pending" than “done with honors”: there is much more in the debit side than on the credit side. Keywords: Argentinean anthropology. Popular culture. Anthropology urban-neighbourhoodness. Organizational anthropology.

Work, Human Agency and Organizational Forms: An Anatomy of Fragmentation

This article is concerned with the changing premises of human involvement in organizations underlying current employment and labour trends. The appreciation of these trends is placed in the wider historical context signified by the advent of modernity and the diffusion of the bureaucratic form of organization. The article attempts to dissociate bureaucracy from the dominant connotations of centralized and rigid organizational arrangements. It identifies the distinctive mark of the modern workplace with the crucial fact that it admits human involvement in non-inclusive terms. Modern humans are involved in organizations qua roles, rather than qua persons. Innocent as it may seem, the separation of the role from the person has been instrumental to the construction of modern forms of human agency. An organizational anthropology is thereafter outlined based on Gellner's conception of `Modular Man'. Modernity and bureaucracy construe human beings as assemblages of relatively independent behavioural modules that can be invoked individually or in combination to respond to the differentiated character of the contemporary world. While the occupational mobility and organizational flexibility currently under way presuppose a model of human agency that recounts basic attributes of the modular human, they at the same time challenge it in some important respects.