Tom Davenport (Babson College) has written a Harvard Business column entitled “The Rise of Corporate Anthropology” where he lauds the contribution of anthropology because of its emphasis on observation:
“What’s so good about systematic observation? It’s the key to knowing what’s working and what isn’t, how people are using technology and other tools in the course of the workday, how workers extract meaning (or don’t) from their work, and so forth. We all make sweeping generalizations about these and many other topics, but we don’t really know. Corporate anthropology provides the possibility of actually knowing what’s happening and why in organizations.”