This presentation is based on the history of Business Anthropology after 1980s' till modern time

1. ANTHROPOLOGY AND BUSINESS
THE CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE
Presenter
Md. Tahmid Hasan
Department of Anthropology
University of Rajshahi

2. KEY CONCEPTS
• Market, Consumer, Producer
• Goods and Services
• Tangible and Knowledge based assets
• Post-Fordist economy
• Deregulation of Market
• Globalization
• Organizational Culture and Behavior
• Consumer Behavior
• Consumer Culture

3. GLOBALIZATION: 1980 TO PRESENT
• The fall of Post-Fordist Economy and end of Producer Domination
• Consumers became more important than the producers
• Services and Knowledge content became more valuable than physical, tangible
assets
• Globalized market needed more in-depth understanding of target community
• Shortage of Vacancies in Academia, research funding and revised rules of AAA
• Rise of Business related research

4. • Organizational Behavior and Management
• Ethnographically-Informed design of Products, Services and Systems
• Consumer Behavior and Marketing
Types of Business Research

5.  ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND MANAGEMENT
• Fathered by W. L. Warner
• Focuses on the Interior of the firm
• Try to modify the behaviors of people to increase production
• Considers organizations as small society
• Originated based on Functionalist theory
• Currently interested in three key areas-
a. Organizational Cultures in Tech Based Farms
b. Boundary Crossing in a Global Context
c. Regional Perspectives on Work and Corporations

6.  ETHNOGRAPHICALLY-INFORMED DESIGN OF
PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND SYSTEMS
• Brainchild of L. Suchman and R. Robinson
• Often called as “Design Ethnography”
• A multidisciplinary subfield which include anthropology and designing
• Root can be traced back to Mayo’s “Hawthrone project”
• “Human Factor”
• Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
• Susan Squires’s “Go-Gurt”
• Two type of focus-
a. Individual level analysis
b. Group level analysis

7.  CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND MARKETING
• Consumers become more important than the producers
• Changed perspectives about decision making by including “other” factors
• Shift to quantitative analysis to qualitative analysis
• Steve Barnett’s invention of “unfocus group”
• Anthropology and Consumer Culture
• G. McCracken’s “Manufacture and Movement”

8. SUMMERY
 Globalization has changed the concepts of market and business
 The focus and nature of business has changed from producer to consumer
 Corporations has become one of the most important workplace for
anthropologists
 Anthropologists are contributing in product design, organizational and
production improvements and consumer culture
 The focus of anthropology and the definition of field has changed

9. Thank You