Corporate Ethnography and Clinical Research: Thinking a Case Study of Software Evaluation

Abstract

Anthropology in business is currently going through a huge expansion in the intersection between thinking and academia. The time is apposite to revisit the relation between theory and practice in anthropology. Drawing from ideas in applied anthropology, design research, and organizational studies, I suggest that the intersection between ethnography and a clinical research approach can help refine the relation between theory and practice in design and business anthropologies. Furthermore, I bring in the idea of formulation as used by clinical psychologists and propose an idea of anthropological formulation, blending ethnography and a clinical research process. A case study on the ethnographic assessment of software is used as an illustration.