Organizational anthropology as a field of study

As with any substantial discipline, the reasons for legitimating organizational anthropology as a field of study are manifold. One of the primary characteristics of contemporary societies of the late modern age is the thriving development and excess multiplication of organizations. Likewise, today's world is characterized by the processes of globalization that so far have produced global economic systems and cultural exchanges on a global scale. All the while politics still are acted out on largely national and regional arenas, transnational companies pose an immense power container and source of global forms of authority. With anthropology's human centered focus on communicative interaction, symbols, meaning and knowledge processes, this arena offers vast possibilities in a range of anthropology's classic topics, as well as in new ones. Such important and societal forming processes as those driven by companies and other organizations should not be left untouched by the anthropological gaze.

The origins of organization studies

The role of anthropologists in organizational studies needs to be conceptualized as a rebirth because anthropology was one of the prominent disciplinary founding fathers of organization studies at large, and was especially significant in forming the human relations school. This line of study got a jump-start in Chicago from the time of World War I and into the 1930s, spurred among others by the famous Hawthorne studies (see Baba 1986; Schwartzman 1993; Jordan 2003). It was anthropologists who established the first academic journal in organizational behavior (Human Organization) and the social anthropologist W. F. Whyte who wrote the first textbook from the same field (1969).

Themes and foci in organizational anthropology

However, the fields of anthropology and organization studies drifted apart and have until recently had very little mutual contact (see Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). As noted by several authors, during the last decade or two we have witnessed a renaissance in the fields of industrial, organizational and business anthropology (e. g. Bate 1997; Linstead 1997).

Since the 1980s a variety of themes and focus areas have been investigated within organizational anthropology. The field provided background and interpretation of the premises behind the economic "miracle" in south-east Asia; it has offered understandings of non-verbal communication as related to for example negotiations and strategy in developing countries; it provided models for conceptualizing the spread of technology and adoption of innovation across cultures, with a lot of early and original work in Asia, Africa and Latin-America; studies of marketing and consumer behavior; studies of actors interacting with technology for enabling better designs; ethnographic studies of a multitude of subcultures and epistemic cultures within the work life of market based industrial societies has been conducted, for example in the police, among teachers, office-workers, engineers, miners, fishermen, oil workers and truck drivers. In line with a widespread shift of focus following the "crisis" in the conceptualization of culture in anthropology more in general, researchers devoted to the study of organizations have been more attentive to processes revolving around knowledge exchange, practices of knowing and narratives of knowledge construction.

The contributions of COA

The research and education programs conducted at COA is continuing and developing this trend further. Our work is based in the idiosyncratic Norwegian tradition of work life relationships. The tradition has fostered a particular climate for collaboration at the macro level between labour unions and representative bodies for Norwegian employers, between management and employees in organizations, and enabled ample research opportunities (Emery and Thorsrud 1967). This situation has provided a strong foundation upon which we build viable research projects and education programs with contributions both to the academic community, to organizations and society at large.