Applied Ethics: Anthropology and Business

Abstract

Applied Ethics is society’s response to need to resolve social control problems posed by cultural crisis. Applied ethics is a term used to describe attempts by non-philosophers, or ethicists, to use philosophical methods to identify morally correct courses of action in human life. Business anthropology is a relatively new subfield of traditional anthropology. Business anthropologists represent a mix of traditional academic researchers, business teachers, private consultant practitioners, and technical staff members of business enterprises. We define these as “career anthropologist.” As a group they face a wide variety of ethical conflicts based on their status and role in the business context. In this paper we explore these conflicts and how the anthropological institutional establishment has attempted to address the needs of “career anthropologist.” We do this by applying a structural-functional analysis of the role ethics plays in our understanding of socio-cultural institutions. Then we apply this to a review of the evolution and institutional development of ethical thinking in anthropology for the past 75 years as manifested by the AAA, SfAA, and more recently, NAPA. Finally, we propose an applied ethical approach as a solution to the crisis based on a return to core values represented by what we call, The Boasian Code.