Some of the world's largest manufacturing corporations have headquarters and major operations in the Detroit area. Our faculty works regularly with these and other firms around the globe, and thus have the ability to bring graduate students directly into factories and corporate offices. They become travel agents, venture capitalists, bankers and so forth. Larry Prusak, executive director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, a research organization, in Cambridge, Mass., said he believed that the number of anthropologists in industry would continue to grow. We're in the infancy in this area, and I don't think anyone would tell you differently.
Observation is what anthropologists are trained to do.
Like everyone else, anthropologists and ethnographers increasingly are finding jobs with high-tech companies, using their highly developed skills as observers to study how people live, work and use technology. The study of man is no longer a degree for museum directors. Citicorp created a vice presidency for anthropologist Steve Barnett, who discovered early warning signs to identify people who don't pay credit card bills. Not satisfied with consumer surveys, Hallmark is sending anthropologists into the homes of immigrants, attending holidays and birthday parties to design cards they'll want. Business anthropology seeks to explain the hows and whys of corporate decision-making, along with the historical, sociological and cultural influences acting upon the company.