Anthropologists Go Native in the Corporate Village

By: Kate A. KaneTue Dec 18, 2007 at 5:41 PM

Get me Margaret Mead! The biggest names in business -- GM, Intel, Nynex -- enlist anthropologists to decode the rituals of corporate life.

The plant, Briody quickly discovered, had strong cultural rules that the program simply didn't recognize. The most important rule involved the "blame game." Briody's research documented that workers and supervisors were seven times more likely to assign blame for problems than to offer praise for good work. She also analyzed who blamed whom for what, how blame was expressed, and how blaming patterns followed the flow of work inside the plant.

Her conclusion: blame was pervasive but not random. Workers were eager to do a good job, but the structure of work at the plant left them feeling powerless. No quality initiative would succeed, she concluded, until it addressed these cultural realities.

"What I do is make explicit what has been implicit," Briody says. "Sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. But that's the anthropologist's job. We help people see patterns more clearly."

As a senior vice president with Houston-based Texas Commerce Bank (TCB), anthropologist Anita Ward has moved from observer to leader. She was a key player in a widely recognized reengineering initiative that cut costs by more than $50 million, increased revenues by more than $10 million, and improved morale. Ward says three insights derived from anthropology shaped the program.

The first was a respect for cultural differences within and between organizations. "Every culture is different," she explains. "What works in Papua New Guinea is not likely to work in Thailand." The second involved the "ability to quickly identify the core culture of the organization." In the case of TCB, that meant recognizing that teams -- not individuals -- were the basic cultural building block, and that any change effort would have to revolve around teams. The third was an ability to recognize natural leaders. "The anthropologist can identify the true social leaders within an organization," Ward says, and enlist them as the most effective champions of change.

Ward believes the anthropological approach to change -- at TCB and elsewhere -- reflects a general movement to democratize business. "When the anthropologist enters the picture, change becomes a grassroots movement," she says. "Anthropologists understand that work is not just about process, it's about people. If you lose sight of that, you lose."

Sidebar: Elizabeth Briody

Name: Elizabeth Briody
Title: Industrial Anthropology
Company: General Motors
Age: 40
Education: Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology
Fieldwork: Mexican-American farmworkers, Catholic nuns
Corporate Specialty: Understanding "subcultures" at GM
Best Anthropological Find: The quest for autonomy is a key attribute of the GM culture
Last Book Read: "God: A Biography"
Favorite Book: "Heidi" ("It introduced me to a child from a different culture and
lifestyle")
Last Movie Seen: "Pride and Prejudice"

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July 14, 2009 at 7:29am by Jessica Smith

Lithium-based batteries were an improvement over the previous rechargeable battery tech--nickel-cadmium--since they have a longer lifespan and lack the power-sapping "memory effect." But the technology isn't perfect. Charging a Li-ion or Li-polymer battery still takes a hour or more for the size of battery typically found in cellphones, and towards eight hours for the huge batteries that will be built into the upcoming tide of electric cars.
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Anthropologists Go Native in the Corporate Village

Sidebar: Elizabeth Briody

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