European Developments in Business Anthropology

Abstract

American anthropologists and practitioners have dominated the debate on organization culture for a long time. European business anthropologists have not been very visible to American scholars because they publish irregularly in American academic journals and generally use their national languages; French, German, Swedish, Dutch and Danish. Business anthropologists in the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy and other European countries have dedicated their time and energy to study corporations but not to organize themselves in a network. This paper explores the European development of dissident business anthropologists criticizing the dominant concept of culture and used methodology in mainstream organization studies. Business anthropology in the different fields of management of diversity, cultural change, cross-cultural cooperation, organization culture, and organizational ethnography is well alive in Europe.