AANB11042U Organizational Anthropology

In business studies, formal Organisational Studies often have taken functionalist and strictly operationalist approaches to Human Organisation within companies, associations and other institutional structures, with the overall intent of maximizing efficiency and productivity, and meeting the needs of specific stakeholders. However, in recent decennia, certain strands of Organisational Theory have become increasingly interested in anthropology and ethnographic metodology as inspirational sources, and have combined these with theory and methodologies from other arts and social sciences, such as literary theory and philosophy. Organisational Studies have thus grown several crossdisciplinary agendas and new theoretical trends, which also have reflected back into anthropology. 

This course aims to give the student a basic overview of contemporary trends in ethnographically informed Organisational Studies, as well as a glimpse into the inflection of this field back to contemporary anthropological concerns with institutions, business, hierarchy and organisation. We will critically address the operationalised concept of organisational culture in anthropological terms, and draw upon selected, classic anthropological concepts and ethnographic studies of specific organisations to develop an understanding of a professional field under rapid transformation – namely Organisation – which also closely relates to such professional fields as Management, Governance and Decision making, Strategy and Studies in Work Environment as well as a range of other terms, which are all politically tinged.

This course is thus not an instrumental guide to the functional use of ethnography as part of a contemporary Organisation & Management tool box. This is not the course to choose if you are mainly interested in a prescriptive, applied approach to the use of ethnography in modern, Euro-American business management, its essence or its practical functions in business.

Throughout the course, we will work with our own exemplary data, drawn from literature and company visits, to engage with business and corporate organisation in terms of ethnographic field - and as a social and cultural phenomenon, relevant to anthropological reflection.