Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the significance of understanding some specific needs of business when designing a business anthropology course. It notes how anthropology could benefit from knowing (through examples) how ethnography is actually done in, and where traditional fieldwork training is contrary to, business practice.

Paper long abstract:

When footprints keep appearing on women's toilet seats, why did posters with "Please do not step on the toilet seats" go unheeded? Squatting on toilet seats might seem an unhygienic practice to us, but could it be that from the perspective of those who are used to "squat toilets" it is the practice of sitting down on pedestal toilets that is "dirty"? How then do we change this behaviour?

Clearly anthropology has a place outside academia in understanding and changing behaviour. Given that people - and therefore culture - are key to business processes, business/corporate anthropology has made major inroads in north American and some European universities. Ethnography is now an accepted methodology in the research of "company culture" as can be seen in several business (research) textbooks (Bryman and Bell, 2011, Paul, et al 2010, Saunders, et al, 2009).

This paper would

1. explicate through examples research methodologies shared by change management consultants in a business setting and an anthropologist in the field, drawing on the writer's experience at Accenture,

2. discuss why and how anthropology departments in UK could benefit from preparing graduates for the business world to prevent them from being lost in it (eg Mascarenhas-Keyes, 2001), and

3. identify aspects of academic anthropology that are contrary to the requirements of the corporate context (eg language, audit culture, teamwork structure) and propose some solutions.

This paper begins from a retrospective view, but would then draw on existing literature as well as the writer's research on management consultancies.