Neglecting the anthropological origins of organizing : causes and consequences

Hugo Gaggiotti, Monika Kostera and Pawel Krzyworzeka revisit the role of anthropology in the genesis and development of academic organization studies. Rather than approaching anthropology as a methodological tool for the qualitative study of organizing and culture, they advocate a considerably broader theoretical relevance for anthropological and ethnographic inquiry in the midst of the ongoing discussions about the status and future of organizational analysis. As the authors contend, the full potential of anthropology as a comprehensive paradigm of understanding organizing has not been embraced in the ensuing development of organization studies. Echoing the call of C. Wright Mills to practise sociological imagination in enlightened inquiry, Gaggiotti et al. provide a vision for future scholarship which fully embraces interpretative ethnographic enquiry in the spirit of Warner and Whyte.