The Use of Anthropology as a Management Framework in a Corporate Context: Review and Prospects

Abstract

Many anthropologists work with corporations to understand and work effectively with communities impacted by their activities. This paper presents a Social Ecology model oriented to citizen empowerment and impact management, identifying concepts that shape ethnography into a management framework: informal networks and routines, human geography, and citizen issue management. Affecting corporate behavior can be accomplished in phases, from community assessment, to issue management, to ethnographic training programs. Their applications are described in a subdivision development, an electric utility project, and a program of paradigm change in the right-of-way, infrastructure and energy industries.