Businesses rely on experts to intervene in situations in which organisational culture intersects with problems of power and control. While anthropologists are deeply interested in the linkages between culture and power, how does their critical approach align with organisational needs?

1. www.politicalanthropologist.com 37
War Culture
Culture, Power
and Applied
Anthropology
in a Corporate
Setting
Businesses rely on experts to intervene in
situations in which organisational culture
intersects with problems of power and
control. While anthropologists are deeply
interested in the linkages between culture
and power, how does their critical approach
align with organisational needs?
I
n the business world, some leaders invest in
rituals that depoliticise bias, making it difficult
for people to recognise and confront injustice.
They invoke culture and cultural values to divert
attention from unhealthy patterns. And they conjure
the metaphor of the family and idealised personal
dispositions such as individualism and choice to
gloss over fraught labour relations, unequal oppor-
tunity, and systematic discrimination.
Conversely, other leaders encourage managers
and employees to reflect on their own values, and
bring about positive change to the power dynamics
in the organisation. They introduce greater diver-
sity and better interaction with vendors, clients,
customers and other stakeholders.
Since the link between culture and power is a
common theme in the writings of anthropolo-
gists, one would think that anthropologists have
much to contribute to interventions that seek to
develop cultural awareness as part of a process of
BY AMITAI TOUVAL
maintaining or changing the power dynamics in the
organisation (see “for-corporations research” in
Urban and Koh 2013: 146-149).
When analysing the workplace, anthropologists
often ask which positions are associated with the
most power, and who staffs these positions? Looking
back in time, what social, cultural and economic
forces produced the current state of affairs? Which
norms and beliefs justify the current communica-
tion and interaction patterns? Which aspects of the
power structure seem normal and natural and which
aspects are contested, and by whom?
For many anthropologists, research is a vehicle
to awaken and engage the public’s introspective
conscience. Anthropology describes the meanings
that people attribute to their lives across different
circumstances, showing these meanings to be
contingent and malleable, which inspires some
anthropologists to allege that their discipline has a
liberatory potential. As one leading anthropologist
argues, “considering counterhegemonies implies
possibilities for general cultural deprogrammings”
[sic] (Nader 1997: 723). Another leading anthropol-
ogist envisions the discipline “as a field of action”
(Scheper-Hughes 1995: 419) that “colludes with the
powerless” (420).
In contrast to the preferences of anthropolo-
gists, corporate clients have only a limited interest
Image courtesy of
the University of
South Florida

2. 38 The Political Anthropologist March - April 2017
in making the linkages between culture and power
explicit and, often, even less interest in changing
those linkages. Business leaders seek to identify
the cultural values that inform patterns of interac-
tion, but rarely inquire about the broader social or
historical contexts of cultural values. Their goal is
to improve business outcomes, and to this end they
rely on interventions that are designed by organisa-
tional development (OD) professionals.
To explore the potential contribution of anthro-
pologists to business challenges in which culture
and power are key themes, I compare how anthro-
pologists and OD professionals would approach the
needs of a global company that has migrated jobs
overseas and is now seeking to improve collabora-
tion across its low-cost and high-cost locations. This
example purposely mixes the negative and positive
aspects of globalisation: There is job loss and, at
the same time, a search for better cooperation. My
analysis is based on an intervention with a global
corporate entity based in the United States.
Typically, when a multinational corporation moves
jobs overseas, especially professional jobs, managers
and employees in the high-cost location resist this
change, making the migration of resources and
responsibility to low-cost locations that much
more difficult than it would otherwise be. In addi-
tion, globalisation is associated with the need to
improve communication and collaboration across
the barriers of culture, language, business division
and time zone. Global corporations face the chal-
lenge of having disparate parts of the organisation
communicate effectively.
This was the situation in the global corporation
that I describe below. To contend with these chal-
lenges, it hired organisational development (OD)
professionals with insight into conflict and culture.
Although anthropologists have a lot to say about
both topics, they did not reach out to anthropologists.
Indeed, the latter are seldom hired for such projects.
One of the first steps that the OD professionals
took was interviewing people across the organisa-
tion about their work experience. They discovered
that managers in the high-cost locations are frus-
trated by the fact that when someone retires or
leaves, precious business knowledge is lost. They
prefer to grow local talent than shift jobs to
low-cost locations. They want to have more dupli-
cation of knowledge and roles across employees
in their high-cost location to create a modicum of
redundancy. At the same time, they would like to be
involved in the hiring of employees in the low-cost
locations with whom they are expected to forge a
close working relationship.
Research into the hopes and frustrations of
managers and employees in the low-cost locations
revealed a different pattern. In low-cost locations,
managers and employees crave to be included in
strategy and planning. They want to contribute
to assessment and evaluation and to improve the
global firm’s processes. They want to know more
about the impact of their work, find out how they
can improve, and hear about success stories.
Having interviewed managers across the
globe by phone and in person, and analysed the
norms and values that underlie the misunder-
standings and frustrations that the research has
uncovered, the OD professionals designed an
on-site change management programme. The
programme explored the distinct cultural frames
of reference that make collaboration difficult. The
facilitators of the programme asked the partici-
pants to propose interaction and communication
improvements that would increase the accuracy of
deliverables, prevent rework and enable employees
in the low-cost locations to be better analysts and
contribute more insight than is currently the case.
Anthropologists would have been interested in
the OD professionals’ research into cultural patterns,
but critical of their limited immersion in the life of
the corporation (Bate 1997: 1150). Furthermore,
they would have sought to expand the scope of the
research, and, inspired partly by normative concerns,
inquire about the broader circumstances of the
migration of jobs from the high- to the low-cost
location: What policies motivate the multinational
entity to move jobs overseas? What particular
leverage do the divisions of the global corporation
that shed jobs have over their employees? How do
Culture
Anthropologists’ contribution in a corporate
setting is contingent upon their willingness to
follow the template of OD professionals. It also
highlights anthropologists’ strengths: their critical
stance and exploratory and searching disposition.

3. www.politicalanthropologist.com 39
families and communities cope with the fear and insecurity
that such a process introduces into their lives?
Anthropologists would have also been interested in the
facilitated portion of the intervention in which managers
and employees propose new communication and interaction
patterns. But they would have probably not been satisfied
by the task of proposing more effective patterns of behav-
iour and communication. Rather, they would have sought to
develop a deeper awareness within the client organisation of
the power imbalance between high- and low-cost locations.
They would have asked how the new proposed interaction
and communication improvements shift the power dynamics
within the organisation. Would employees across locations
enjoy equitable employment and promotion opportunities?
Would managers in low-cost locations be able to initiate and
lead strategic initiatives that would affect the organisation as
a whole? Would the firm invest more resources in developing
target markets in the low cost locations?
Anthropologists would have also been curious to learn
how managers and employees symbolically communicate their
commitment to the proposed changes. Would the organisation
rename some of its business units? Would the organisational
chart be redrawn? And they would have tried to place the
process that they have witnessed within a comparative frame-
work, citing examples of “control by means of culture” across
the globe (Nader 1997: 719).
Moreover, anthropologists would have asked how their
research findings, when made public, shape the reputation
of the businesses and individuals that they study (Bate 1997:
1162). And following the self-reflexive turn of the last few
decades, they would have inquired into their own motives
for asking the questions that they do. This self-examination
has almost a mystical function among some anthropologists
who assume that a social science that is aware of its own
prejudices and assumptions is of higher quality and therefore
in a good position to elevate public discourse, encouraging
people to examine the principles that guide their thinking,
and affording them the opportunity to act with greater
wisdom and compassion
than is otherwise
possible for them.
In contrast to anthropologists, OD professionals seek to
fulfil their responsibilities to the business, and produce results
that would support the business leaders’ efforts to serve the
company’sshareholders.Inquiryintocultureandpowerhaslittle
purchase in the boardroom, unless it could lead to improved
communications and relationships, and, in turn, increase the
efficiency and profitability of the organisation.
Though rather specific, the example that I provide offers
some general insight into the distinct approaches of anthro-
pologists and OD professionals to interventions in which
culture and power intersect. The example suggests that
anthropologists’ contribution in a corporate setting is contin-
gent upon their willingness to follow the template of OD
professionals. It also highlights anthropologists’ strengths:
their critical stance and exploratory and searching dispo-
sition. These energies are valuable if they can be properly
channelled. Taking a step back, and reflecting on the potential
fit of anthropology in a corporate setting, brings to mind
marketing research.
Indeed, there are a good number of anthropologists who
are helping marketers understand how consumers draw
on different products and services to create, maintain and
enhance particular aspects of their identity across contexts
(Ladner 2014: 17-18).
But here, too, questions about culture and power abound,
as well as ethical dilemmas (see Urban and Koh 2013:
145-146, 152; Ladner 2014: 87-99).
Amitai Touval has a Ph.D in Cultural
Anthropology (Brown University, 2000). He
teaches Marketing at the Zicklin School of
Business, Baruch College / CUNY. He is the
Author of An Anthropological Study of Hospitality:
The Innkeeper and the Guest (Palgrave 2017) and a number of
articles in scholarly journals and trade magazines.
References
1. Bate, S. (1997). Whatever happened to organizational anthropology? A review of the field
of organizational ethnography and anthropological studies. Human Relations, 50(9), 1147-1175.
2. Ladner, Sam (2014). Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the
Private Sector. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Cost Press.
3. Nader, L. (1997). Sidney W. Mintz Lecture for 1995: Controlling Processes Tracing the
DynamicComponentsof Power.CurrentAnthropology,38(5),711-738.doi:10.1086/204663
4. Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant
Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36(3), 409-440. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.
org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/stable/2744051
5. Urban, G., & Koh, K. (2013). Ethnographic Research on Modern Business Corporations.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 139-158.