BUSINESS ANTHROPOLOGY

OVERVIEW: Business Anthropology explores how cultural insight and ethnographic methods can unlock better ways to lead, manage, and innovate within  organizations. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nissan turn to ethnographers and anthropological insight to navigate complexity, foster innovation, and build more human-centered systems. The relevance of this field is growing due to our increasingly globalized and complex business environment. This course equips students with the skills to apply ethnographic methods, cultural analysis, and anthropological frameworks to uncover hidden dynamics within organizations, enhance knowledge sharing, and lead strategic change. It is particularly valuable for students focused on leading complex, knowledge-driven initiatives that require cultural awareness, strategic empathy, and deeper human insight. 

CONTENT: Through a combination of hands-on fieldwork, case studies, and strategic analysis, students will learn to identify tacit knowledge, navigate organizational cultures, and design more human-centered, resilient knowledge strategies and systems. Topics include: Foundations of anthropology and its relevance to organizational strategy; ethnographic methods for business insight and knowledge discovery; organizational culture, tacit knowledge, and hidden knowledge flows; power, identity, and hierarchy as factors shaping knowledge practices; bridging qualitative and quantitative intelligence for strategic advantage; applied anthropology in business innovation, design thinking, and change management.

LOGISTICS: This course is delivered in a hybrid format, with some sessions delivered on-campus and some as synchronous online sessions. Sessions meet weekly at the regularly scheduled day and time regardless of modality. The modality of each session will be available on the syllabus prior to the start of the semester. No pre-requisites. Open to all graduate students.