A Companion to Organizational Anthropology (Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology)
Language: English
Pages: 572
ISBN: 1405199822
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The first comprehensive guide to anthropological studies of complex organizations
- Offers the first comprehensive reference to the anthropological study of complex organizations
- Details how organizational theory and research in business has adopted anthropology’s key concept of culture, inspiring new insights into organizational dynamics and development
- Highlights pioneering theoretical perspectives ranging from symbolic and semiotic approaches to neuroscientific frameworks for studying contemporary organizations
- Addresses the comparative and cross-cultural dimensions of multinational corporations and of non-governmental organizations working in the globalizing economy
- Topics covered include organizational dynamics, entrepreneurship, innovation, social networks, cognitive models and team building, organizational dysfunctions, global networked organizations, NGOs, unions, virtual communities, corporate culture and social responsibility
- Presents a body of work that reflects the breadth and depth of the field of organizational anthropology and makes the case for the importance of the field in the anthropology of the twenty-first century
The Lost World of the Kalahari: With 'The Great and the Little Memory'
Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy
Empires of Vision: A Reader (Objects/Histories)
organizations and adding depth and breath to the published anthropological work on organizations (Cefkin 2009 is an example). We turn now to explain how globalization has resulted in an increase in organizational anthropology literature. The Significance of Globalization in Anthropological Research. The second reason for the explosion of anthropological work on complex organizations is globalization. Today, anthropological analysis of the local almost always requires an understanding of the global
processes taking place in the discipline and its main professional association combined with what came to historical inattention to industrialized societies. This provoked a set of internal contradictions between anthropology’s stated holistic intellectual agenda and our professional/ organizational practices. These contradictions have truncated US anthropology’s theoretical and methodological development and, among other effects, have contributed to anthropology’s unreflective and marginal role
Tax et al. 1991 and Alan Holmberg’s Vicos project; Holmberg [1964a, b] 1971a, b). Yet this organizational feature of academic anthropology is clear throughout our post – World War II history. That perhaps as many anthropologists are employed outside of academia as inside has little visible effect on national ranking or the self-image of academic anthropology departments or on the American Anthropological Association’s self-presentation. The imagined model for a prestigious anthropology department
Honorary Professor of Applied Anthropology at University College London, and Visiting Professor at UCS, Ipswich. Most of his work has been spent applying Cultural Theory to modern western society and using anthropological theory and methods alongside traditional disciplines – criminology, economics, sociology, and industrial relations. He is in demand as a consultant to industry and government, has held eight Visiting Professorships and published 11 books and over 60 articles. In 2003, The Royal
years, especially as formal organizations and other actors have displayed behavior that does not conform to rational or efficient expectations, and as dominant organizational and economic models have failed (Barley and Tolbert 1997; Downey and Fisher 2006; Menard and Shirley 2005; Tett 2009). Understanding organizational change is particularly important to the development of new institutional approaches to understanding formal organizations.1 Institutional theorists (and anthropologists) generally
