This post was submitted by Robert J. Morais and Elizabeth K. Briody.
In 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott disparaged the return-on-investment (ROI) of an anthropology degree: “We don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state. It’s a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here. I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, and math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on, those types of degrees, so when they get out of school, they can get a job.” Understandably, anthropologists took umbrage and mounted a spirited defense.
Much in the world has changed since 2011, but apparently not some people’s perception of the practical value of anthropology. Consider this recent statement by a community college transfer center coordinator: “When students self-advise themselves, they usually miss the small details and sometimes end up taking the wrong classes. For example, anthropology can be an elective offered, but students who are business majors will need economics, not anthropology.”
As business anthropologists, we want to set the record straight about the value of anthropology – at least for business: Business anthropology is booming! Students who want to work in business are well served by taking anthropology courses and earning anthropology degrees. Their anthropological education can be applied in a broad array of businesses: marketing, advertising, marketing research, design, new product development, organizational culture and change, sustainability, risk management, and more. Anthropologists are on staff and consult with Google, Intel, American Eagle, Nissan, ADP, and IBM; anthropologists have conducted consumer, design, and organizational research for Procter & Gamble, Campbell’s Soup, WD-40, General Motors, Revlon, IDEO, and MARS, among others; many anthropologists work in advertising agencies, design companies, and marketing research firms.
Our careers are two cases in point: Morais began his business career soon after earning his PhD, initially at Grey Advertising in New York. He spent 25 years with advertising agencies, rising to Chief Strategic Officer. In 2006, he became a principal at marketing research firm Weinman Schnee Morais, serving in that position for over 10 years. He has worked with Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, WD-40, Coca-Cola, Post Foods, Danone, Safeway, Dentsply Sirona, and Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissôtel, among many other corporations. Now he teaches MBAs about business anthropology in the context of marketing research at Columbia Business School. Briody, who also has a PhD, worked for 24 years at General Motors Research, most recently as a Technical Fellow. She founded Cultural Keys LLC in 2009, a consultancy that helps organizations understand and transform their culture. Her projects have spanned many industries including health care, consumer products, aerospace, petrochemicals, and aging, among others.
Business anthropology is gaining attention and generating excitement on a number of fronts. At the 2017 AAA Annual Meeting, there were an unprecedented number of sessions and workshops on business anthropology, supported by a series of articles in Anthropology News; Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) could not accommodate all of the people who wanted to attend their 2017 conference; the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) will feature business anthropology workshops this April; and a major summit on business anthropology is being held this spring in Detroit. Moreover, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates growth in business and consulting for anthropologists. These developments demonstrate the vitality and promise of anthropology in business.
Along with the growth of business anthropology practice and association events, business anthropology scholarship has expanded substantially over the past decade. Journals such as the Journal of Business Anthropology and the International Journal of Business Anthropology were launched, and EPIC Perspectives offers articles that merge practice and theory. Business anthropology is also visible in Human Organization, Practicing Anthropology, and American Anthropologist, among other leading journals. Authored and edited books on business anthropology have flowed at an increasing rate, as have web sites dedicated to business anthropology. The web site businessanthro.com contains a list of these and other resources.
Why should students major in anthropology? The answer is that anthropology students learn to explore, understand, and engage in problem solving in and for businesses quite differently than those trained in other disciplines. An anthropological perspective provides a focus, methodological toolkit, guiding principles, and theory for gathering and analyzing “what’s going on” within firms and the marketplaces in which companies compete. More specifically:
- Culture Concept: Students are taught to understand culture as a process tied to everything that people have, think, and do, unlike in some businesses where culture is understood as a variable to be measured and manipulated.
- Holism: Students of anthropology learn to consider consumers’ lives and business organizations holistically through time (i.e., past, present, and future) and space (e.g., corporate headquarters, across geographies), comparing and contrasting the patterns they uncover.
- Ethnographic Methods: Students develop critical ethnographic skills, in which they combine observation and interviewing to assist them in making sense of behavior, decisions, practices, and policies, and proposing solutions.
- Emic View: They understand consumers and employees from the point-of-view of those individuals and their experiences.
- Ethnocentrism: Students are challenged to conceptualize corporate cultures, national cultures, and community cultures as exhibiting different features, such that ethnocentrism (i.e., the belief that my culture is better than yours) has no place in business analysis.
Anthropology courses furnish business majors with a more expansive and empathetic worldview; that in itself has immeasurable value. ROI-minded governors and college advisors – and students – should know that anthropology courses enhance graduates’ workplace value and opportunities. Students who decide to major in anthropology and/or pursue advanced degrees should be aware that the application of anthropology in business offers both intellectual and financial rewards. Is there a need for more anthropologists? There certainly is in business.
Dear Bob Morais, I’ve just received your book Ethics in Anthropology of Business. It looks amazing!
In relation to business anthropology, I would like to share with you Antropología 2.0 project: http://www.antropologia2-0.com. We are working very hard to develop business anthropology in Spanish-speaking contexts. And it’s always inspiring to find items like that. Thanks!
Thanks, Pablo. I’m aware of http://www.antropologia2-0.com. It’s a much needed initiative!
For those who desire an academic career but also have an interestest in “Business Anthropology” one might consider teaching and research through a business school or program. I found that anthropology is especially useful to explaining the principles of management (which is really applied social/behavioal science in the institutional context) and in marketing (consumer behavior, market strategy and planning, and international marketing). The broader perspective of anthropology provides an integration of the applied elements that make up business training especially at the undergraduate and MBA levels.
I was majoring in business and changed my major to Anthropology because I have always been a people watcher in my job(s). Getting to know your customers wants, needs and habits creates a bond between the seller and buyer that becomes a need if you will on behalf of the buyer. When that need is lacking they tend to let seller know they were disappointed with the previous service, I.e. the seller was off that day and someone else was not as observant.
There is a danger in applied anthropology. A danger that many in the early days of the 1930 -1950s were concerned about. This is the coptation of the perspective for politcal or economic gain for the individual practitioner or the institution (employer) she or he serves. The decolonization of anthropology is a case in point and the responses that leads to the adversarial potential that exists in the world between institutions suggest that a certain degree responsiblity for anthropologists to define and enforce the inherant values in out profession and provide the necessary shield for those values. I have written elsewhere about what I see as the ethical conflicts in business anthropology. https://www.academia.edu/2610961/Applied_Ethics_Anthropology_and_Business
For more on ethics in business anthropology, see: https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Anthropology-Business-Explorations-Practice/dp/1629585270
Good to hear! I’ve added this to my previous thoughts on Anthropology: Best Major to Change Your Life. I wrote that back in 2012, as part of the “spirited defense” you cite in this piece. Thanks!
Much appreciated!