Continues from Part 3
Kallen: I’m very curious. So, let’s shift gears. I noticed that you have a PhD in cultural anthropology and then you’re a lecturer at the Wharton School of Business.
How did you become a business anthropologist? Is business and cultural anthropology related? How did you enter into that field?
Derek: Yeah. That’s a really good question because it’s not always a relationship that people put together. It’s a little bit different.
I know being a business anthropologist isn’t the norm in a business school or a business environment in general.
Cultural anthropology is all about understanding culture. Understanding human relationships, how we interact, how we get things done, how we decide how we’re going to work. And that’s exactly the application to the business school for a long time.
Most of the disciplined anthropologists really focused on studying. For example, the small tribes and exotic locations to understand the essence of what humanity is all about.
But recently, more anthropologists have gotten in the business world because they realize that business and organizational life is also very tribal.
You know we form our own cultures. Sometimes, we have a hard time understanding each other when businesses merge.
You know, when there are mergers and acquisitions, there are all kinds of cultural barriers where you’re putting two groups of people together who have very different ways of behaving and very different perspectives.
And so what business anthropology is all about is studying organizations the way you might study a tribe to understand their behaviors, understand their worldviews, and understand the barriers to them interacting productively and empathetically.
So, that’s the kind of role of anthropology in a business sense, understanding people’s stories, perspectives and helping them build connections.
This is a snippet transcription of Reaching The Finish Line episode 94.
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