Anthropological thinking: Opening new vistas in and for organizations

Anthropological thinking is a powerful means to answer the “why question” transcending any organization. This approach combines immersive ethnographic fieldwork techniques with the analytical power of anthropological theory. For decades, some of the world’s leading corporations, including Dell, Intel, and Ford in the United States and BNP Paribas, Volvo, and IKEA in Europe, have recognized the value of anthropological thinking. They have enlisted anthropologists to enhance their understanding of their work culture, explain how technologies become valuable to people, and manage strategic changes effectively. Anthropological thinking articulates several dimensions of business anthropology, which I borrow from Timothy de Waal Malefyt and further develop using stories from my recent book, “Impact Work“, a two-year ethnography of a business accelerator for social impact start-ups named Seal.

Holistic thinking

Organizational thinking is traditionally organized around silos, treating business units as isolated entities disconnected from broader systems. This fragmented approach results in a lack of cohesion and a limited understanding of how different components of the organization interact and influence one another. Holistic thinking, by contrast, offers a more integrated perspective, emphasizing that an organization is more than just the sum of its parts and striving to explain how these parts relate to one another. Holistic thinking is deeply rooted in anthropology’s early days, where anthropologists immersed themselves in remote villages to capture the local culture. They examined norms, customs, rules, religious practices, myths, and the division of roles among subgroups, enabling the village to function as a cohesive whole of interconnected parts. Myths and rituals, for instance, are connected to roles, social status, and gender division, as well as to task allocation and resource management. Holistic thinking, thus, calls for acknowledging and analyzing relationally organizations to explain internal processes contextually.

At Seal, holistic thinking was rare. For instance, while the organization focused on social impact start-ups, there was not one but many understandings of impact. These understandings were developed independently by staff members in their respective business units based on their professional background (e.g., financial advisor, entrepreneur, strategy consultant, business analyst) and the mission of their unit. During meetings involving members from different units, for example, program managers, social impact managers, and investment analysts, these understandings clashed, highlighting two crucial challenges. Without a holistic impact strategy acknowledging and integrating these varied understandings of impact into one, Seal constantly struggled to identify the qualities that truly define a successful impact start-up. These conflicts also fueled skepticism and frustration among staff members, eventually undermining commitment. Implementing a coherent and transversal impact strategy would have been impossible without taking these different understandings seriously and holistically.

Reflexive thinking

“Getting things done”, “Think fast, act fast”, and “The fast forward mindset” are typically portrayed as crucial to efficiency. These mantras emphasize the need for constant adaptation and rapid implementation as the only way to address competition. Yet, fast decision-making and high-speed implementation leave little space for truly recognizing and acknowledging the deep underpinnings of any decision and anticipating its consequences. They prioritize quick response over thoughtful analysis, and the rush for efficiency can lead to decisions that lack depth and fail to consider the broader implications. Anthropology, by contrast, is highly attentive and reflexive. Anthropological thinking affords reflexive insights through a long-term commitment, minute observations, and an iterative process that builds upon past experiences to inform future strategies. Such a reflexive stance on decision-making and the resulting action affords a nuanced understanding of organizational strengths and weaknesses. This understanding enables informed and impactful decisions, taking into account the implications that strategy implementation will have for people beyond decision-makers.

For example, Jorge, one of Seal’s co-founders, always praised the organization for being guided by the “learning by doing” philosophy of the entrepreneurs. In fact, during my fieldwork, they redesigned the acceleration program at least four times to adapt, almost in real-time, to the changing demands of the entrepreneurs. One of the downsides of this relentless pursuit of innovation was the failure to recognize the needs and demands of Seal’s primary clients. The dissatisfaction of the corporations providing funding to the program increased steadily but had yet to be addressed. Likewise, the whirlwind of constant change raised confusion and exhaustion among staff members. While they punctually experienced the exhilarating effect of surfing the wave of impact entrepreneurship, they struggled to understand where they were heading clearly. They were also overloaded with the work required to cope with an ever-changing program. Only by recognizing and reflecting on the consequences of this philosophy could Seal adapt effectively, stabilizing the design of the acceleration program and creating a stand-alone corporate venturing program.

Emic thinking

Organizations typically operate through the “etic thinking of business“, namely the rational, logical, and formal mindset, manifesting through data charts, PowerPoint presentations, graphs, numbers, and figures that dominate decision-making processes. While such thinking promotes efficiency, it misses two crucial points. First, etic thinking is more concerned with process efficiency than with the lived experience of employees. Consequently, it fails to grasp the diversity of individual experiences within the workplace. Second, etic thinking approaches culture as a fixed and homogenous entity. However, organizations gather workers from different occupational cultures, and the emic thinking of anthropology encourages organizations to engage with people’s points of view to interpret what they value in their lives and, relatedly, how they make sense of their work. In an era where employee engagement is vital, shifting from etic to emic thinking enables us to identify and explain practices and behaviors that etic thinking would qualify as irrational and, therefore, irrelevant.

Consider the following example: At the end of each edition of the acceleration program, entrepreneurs pitched their venture to impact investors. Investors, however, have always doubted entrepreneurs’ genuine intentions to have an impact. They would spend considerable time probing entrepreneurs on the origin of their motivation, their vision of the future impact of the venture, and the presence of responsible considerations in their management decisions. They would also delve deeply into their backgrounds, gathering information and assessing behaviors they viewed as signaling their commitment to impact, such as volunteering for NGOs. But why? After all, impact entrepreneurship emerges from entrepreneurs’ prosocial intentions, and achieving impact is at the very core of impact investing. A close examination of investors’ practices over committees revealed their awareness of entrepreneurs’ pervasive discursive strategies to adopt the mantle of heroic changemakers, crafting narratives that did not fully align with their actions. They also showed awareness of a more profound transformation of the field at a time when having a social impact was becoming a competitive advantage. In short, their doubts were not simply a matter of irrationality but a rational effort to make sense of the future of their investments.

Afterthoughts

Anthropological thinking promotes an approach that is holistic, reflexive, and emic. It merges the development of deep ethnographic understandings of the workplace’s inhabitants with powerful anthropological theories toward intervention. Traditional business thinking focuses primarily on tweaking processes to change behavior based on an etic understanding. However, anthropological thinking dives deeper, guided by a concern for how processes are valuable for people when they connect with activities, feelings, and meanings that matter to them. For this reason, it offers a powerful way to open up new vistas in and for organizations by revisiting existing frameworks and developing new ones in accountable, ethical, and responsible ways.