("Inspiration" by Pond5)
- [J. A. English-Lueck, Narrator] This video is
a composite of interviews
with workplace anthropologists,
many of whom are in
companies and organizations,
others work as consultants
with those organizations.
All of them have in common
the mandate to effect change
in the organizations, and
help the organizations
effect change in the world.
All of these organizations in that work
pose some ethical and practical dilemmas,
which these interviewees discuss.
- [Timothy McKeown] Generally, people take
positions in leadership
of a union, when they
have earned their rage,
when something has happened to them that
they can no longer play in the system,
and they need to, or want
to, use the other path.
And that is the case with me,
it's the case with most of
the people I worked with.
Let me take a step back and talk about
applied anthropology
and ethics in a broader sense
on many of the jobs that I have had.
When I started working for
the Park Service in 1991,
I took an oath
to protect and defend the Constitution
against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
When I served on the
Grand Jury, I took an oath
to fairly and impartially
evaluate the evidence
provided to me, and to keep
the proceedings of those,
or, to keep the content of
those proceedings secret.
When I
became the union president,
I took an oath to
defend bargaining unit members
up to the full extent of the law.
And in my current job, I often
take an oath when we're involved in
settlement discussions,
that anything that goes
on in the room is secret,
and cannot be divulged to any party.
So, within that context,
I sort of view anthropological ethics,
as defined by the AAA, or
the SfAA, as interesting,
but of secondary importance to the oath
that I have personally have taken.
There's no oath when you
join the AAA, or the SfAA,
but there is when you take these jobs,
and if you do not fulfill your oath,
you can be
terminated,
fined, or thrown in jail,
which are pretty severe penalties.
So when I look at ethics,
my primary focus is on
government ethics, which
could sound like an oxymoron,
but actually is a pretty elaborate
body of federal law and regulation,
that's where I go to first.
And
we often talk in anthropology
about doing no harm,
kinds of model.
Part of what these jobs is is doing harm,
is defending your person to
the full extent possible,
up to and including getting
the other side fired.
I do not view that as
unethical, personally.
It might be considered so within the
anthropological discipline,
but that's just too bad.
The ethics guidelines, I think
more applied people need
to weigh in on this one,
because
many of the arguments that
go on about the ethics code
just make me laugh.
One of the things you talked about
is working with management
in the context of being a union official.
There's a tension, in some federal unions,
the union president or
some of the senior people,
are on a hundred-percent
union time position,
which is really unusual.
Typically in the way I worked is that
you essentially keep your current job,
and the union stuff is on top, and
you can charge some of
your time to union time,
but you've still got to
meet the demands of your
regular job as well,
and that can create a natural tension,
and it sure did with me.
And I think the point of the story is that
serving in a union capacity,
and having to also maintain
a cordial relationship with your immediate
day job supervisor, can be
a stressful situation,
and is fraught with potential dangers.
- [Kyle Jones] Some of the practical problems 
have been
actually being able to
spend time with people
'cause this was this,
our process,
understanding our internal processes,
and how we worked on projects was
something we had to do on the side.
We couldn't stop the other work
that we were doing to do this.
So carving out the time was difficult.
And then
the perception that, when
you went to go talk to people
or had to ask these kinds of questions,
that you were seen as this auditor.
So you're there to get people in trouble,
or expose how ineffective
or inefficient they are,
which is not, wasn't the point.
But oftentimes, that's
how it can be perceived.
And then the other ethical issues of,
there's this information, who
we're sharing the information
that we're gathering with, or
who we're not sharing it with,
and those things like that.
Addressing those issues
was important as well.
Since I was new in the company, it was,
I was still able to ask some
of those kinds of really basic,
hey, I'm new around here,
0:06:34.033,0:06:34.000
outsider kind of questions.
But it seems like, in addition to
having the time to carve
out, it's being able to
learn how to actually do this job
that you're supposed to be doing.
At the same time, you're
trying to question,
well, should we be doing
this a different way?
And so there is this tension
about needing to do things,
the day-to-day, but then trying to
both understand how all this stuff works
at the same time you're trying to say,
why are we doing it
this way to begin with?
And how could we be doing this better?
So I think that's an
unresolved tension, but
it still was
something that I had to work through.
-[Stephanie Krawinkler]  Another thing that, well,
it's partly related with
ethic question maybe is that
after first couple of weeks
that I was working there,
I was mainly, I was
asked,
I got to hear a rumor, which was (laughs)
addressing the issue,
which is not so uncommon
in this type of research, as you probably,
certainly know,
that I would be a spy
because I might be
rather,
further,
far
in relationship to the owner.
I might be their niece, or whatever.
So this was a rumor that grew,
and
once I got told of it, I
used the next possibility to
talk to the guy who told
me about that, and I said,
that's an interesting one, and
I understand your point, and
I would be cautious about that as well.
But as I mentioned before,
I was not acquainted
to the whole company
before that at all, and so
I had a couple of
interactions with the owner
and the top management,
and the other guys
could actually see that,
and they realized very
quickly that this was not
a family relationship at all,
because it was way too
formal for that. (laughs)
And so very soon, this whole
issue was gone. (laughs)
-[Amy Goldmacher] I think a common ethical 
issue is
saying you're going to keep
someone's confidentiality,
and yet still having to use
the information to illustrate
what a problem is and why it's important.
And here's an example
from this HR project about
attracting and retaining talent.
An employee told us a story
about how he felt that
his boss didn't have his back.
His wife gave birth to a
child, the child had to go
to the intensive care unit,
and even though his boss said,
you could have a couple of days off,
he was still getting work
requests, and while he was in the
intensive care unit trying
to be with his family,
he's getting these work
requests, he has to ask a nurse
to let him out of the
room and onto the roof
where he can get a Wi-Fi
signal, and it just,
the experience traumatized
him and made him feel that
even though his boss said,
you could have some time off,
it really wasn't covered.
So
the story was so poignant, and
we really needed to tell it
to the client, but yet we had to strip out
some of the identifying details
because people in this
organization would recognize
who this was.
So trying to collect
these meaningful stories
that have a huge impact,
and yet protect confidentiality
is always an issue.
And trying to figure out ways to do that
takes a little bit of
time and effort as well,
but you absolutely have
to guarantee someone
confidentiality if you promise it to them.
- [Kerry  Fosher] You asked about ethical issues.
I had a good fortune to
have an academic advisor,
Robert Rubinstein, at Syracuse University
in my graduate program,
who had thought a lot about
the ethical issues in applied anthropology
and passed some of that
knowledge and questions along.
Then, because I was involved
in the AAA Commission
looking into the ethics of
working with national security,
I was exposed to a lot
of different perspectives
and arguments on all sides.
So I came in with maybe a
little bit more facility
with ethical decision-making
and maybe a little bit
more vigilance than a
lot of anthropologists
hitting this situation would have.
But there are a couple
of things that I did
and others could do.
The first one was that I made
a decision right up front
that I would not involve
myself in culture-specific
or regional analysis.
I felt my role needed to
be either providing general
concepts and skills to help
Marines make better decisions
or working on the organization itself.
I felt like helping them
understand a particular
group of people was
ethically more problematic
than doing what you would
do in any intro class,
which is to help people learn
how to figure those
things out for themselves.
I don't think that anybody is
necessarily going to have to
make that same decision, but
the important thing is that
you think through the work
context as you learn about it,
and you set lines that
you're not going to cross,
and you prepare yourself
for what you will do
if somebody tries to
push you over that line,
even if that means that
you have to leave the job.
Certainly, over the last several years,
most of the ethical
issues that we've faced
have been less somebody
trying to tell us what to do,
and more about the broader
implications of taking on
a particular research project,
or the particular approach
that we might choose to
execute a research project.
Also, there is some choosing
that I have to do in terms of,
we are a limited group
of people with limited
number of hours in the day,
and so we sometimes have to
choose whether to do
project X or project Y,
and in this context,
sometimes both projects
have equal merits and will
have equal impact on the lives
of Marines and others, and
we just have to make a choice
about how we're going to
prioritize one over the other.
On a broader ethical
note, one of the things
that was unusual that
came up very shortly after
I started working with the Marine Corps
was an effort for the
Marine Corps to stand up
its own Institutional Review Board
so that it wasn't having to
deal with the Navy's IRB,
which is primarily biomedical.
We were able to
successfully work with them
to understand the special
ethical challenges related to
ethnographic research, and
the kind of mixed-method,
semi-structured,
multi-context research we do.
So it's much more possible
to do that kind of work now
within the Marine Corps
because of that up-front work
we were able to do with the IRB.
That's not so much a dilemma,
but it was an ethical issue
I certainly hadn't
expected when I showed up.
I had assumed there would
already be a fully functional
IRB in place, I didn't
expect to be involved
in helping stand it up.
- [Eric Gauldin] Fortunately, my government
boss, like I said,
Dr. Kerry Fosher, she is
excellent at providing us
top cover on that.
Like I said, she's an anthropologist
involved with the AAA, all that.
She will not let us get involved
in something that could be
ethically sticky.
Also, we have individual
researcher agreements that say
that we can recuse ourselves
of anything that could violate
our professional code of ethics.
And so she's done a whole
lot in making sure that
we don't get stuck with
that sort of thing.
Otherwise, I really
can't think of anything
that has been troublesome in that way.
The thing that we do is
we have a very, very,
we hug our IRB as close as we can.
The Marine Corps University IRB,
we work very closely with them.
We make sure to follow every
little bit of the protocol, and
we're very stringent about that.
And that helps us get around a bunch of
potential ethical bumps.
Sometimes, if we have
research coming down,
like a request for research
coming down from higher up,
which doesn't happen all
that often, but sometimes
some General realizes
that, "Oh, we have the
social science research
capability, let's try this toy out."
We're able, if they want us to
investigate specific things, but,
say, if somebody reveals
potentially illegal activity,
we have to report that, we're
like no, no, no, no, no,
that is not something we do,
and we're able to stand behind
the IRB bit there, talking about,
this is human subjects research,
we protect our sources,
you cannot do that.
And once again, that's where
she and a couple of other
social scientists that we work with,
PhDs in other Marine Corps organizations,
they're pretty good at
navigating those and convincing
people why we can't do those
things that might be considered
ethically sticky.
- [Elizabeth Briody] I believe ethics are very 
important,
and I believe it's extremely
helpful to have guidelines
and to know what you should do
or what you might consider doing
under certain circumstances.
Guidelines and discussions
with colleagues at that moment,
there's a number of ways
that you might proceed.
But I also think that
the amount of attention
that anthropologists give
to ethics is overblown.
I
wrote a paper with
Tracy Meerwarth
that first came out in the
Journal of Business Anthropology
and now
has been updated in a book chapter
in a book that just came out this year (2017)
by Tim Malefyt and Bob Morais. [Ethics in the 
Anthropology of Business: Explorations in 
Theory, Practice and Pedagogy]
And in that, we argued that
there were huge problems
with the AAA ethics statement
because it was so, because it emphasized
the importance of adhering
to these principles
that they set forth without regard to
any other sets of principles.
So for example, if you
work for an organization,
there was no recognition,
or there is no recognition
in the current AAA
ethics statement that
there is,
there's value in
having to turn to multiple
ethical guidelines in the
course of trying to figure out
what to do in an ethical situation.
And so, in our case, we went
and walked the reader through
four different cases where we
had to bounce back and forth
between the GM code of ethics
and the AAA ethics statement.
And we were able to show, I think,
that you have to consider both.
And then you also have
your own personal ethics.
What would you do under
certain circumstances?
And does this sound like
it's the appropriate action to take?
So that was one big
problem we had with it.
And another problem
that we outlined is that
there was this excessive
emphasis on research
in the AAA ethics statement,
well, it turns out that
a lot of practitioners don't do research.
I happen to be one of the ones who do,
but there are many others who don't.
They're project managers,
they're analysts,
they're intercultural trainers,
they're administrators,
I mean, they do things
that don't necessarily
involve research, and so
there's no recognition
that those kinds of
people actually fit under
the AAA ethics statement.
And then the third big problem with it
is that there's this
extraordinary amount of
emphasis on doing no harm.
But nowhere in that
ethics statement does it
talk about the value of
helping organizations
or communities change the way
they would like to change.
- [Kerry Fosher] I know that people
probably want to hear about
successes where we did a piece of research
and the institution changed as a result.
And we have had some of those,
but I want to really focus
on the macro-level goal of
helping the organization
better integrate scientists
and scientific knowledge.
And two of the successes
that we've had there
have to do with making
things public, and endurance.
On the making things public
front, that has meant
writing protocols, contracts,
and creating policy documents
to support us in
making as much of the group's work public
as is humanly possible.
And that helps us transfer
knowledge out to the discipline
that would be otherwise very difficult for
anthropologists and other
social scientists to access.
And hopefully broadens the ability of the
scientific community to
do work on the military,
as well as increasing the level
of nuance that people have
when they think about the military,
rather than just thinking
about it as the Pentagon,
as though that was
an actual agency-bearing
entity rather than a building.
The other aspect of success has to do with
endurance, and I think
this is really important
for young anthropologists to know
when they're going into a workplace.
If you're planning to be there for a while
and you really are
invested in trying to help
one organization or a
cluster of organizations
over a period of years,
never throw anything away.
Never.
This week, I was able to
answer a question for a very
senior leader within five
minutes because of something I
had done five years ago,
and that had been dismissed
at the time by somebody else.
I was able to go into my
hard drive, pull it out,
send it along, and it
helped answer the question
in a way that would
have otherwise taken us
several weeks or several months to get to.
Likewise, we had a resilience project
that went on for several years, and
the lead researcher for it
did get very frustrated that
the ideas were not being
adopted right away.
But today, I got a call from
one of the major components
of the Marine Corps who
had looked at his work,
and they're trying to figure
out how to incorporate it.
You have to be willing to
have some staying power
in order to see those kinds of successes,
because the bureaucracy moves so slowly,
but you also have to be
organized and keep records
and be able to jump on
opportunities as soon as [they appear]--
The value of bringing people along
and having a sense of
ownership in the research and
really getting to the human
side of things is tremendous.
I've had clients who were in tears when
we presented research findings to them.
We often find that more when we're doing
government work or
non-profit work, but I think
when you can really
create that empathy,
create that connection,
I think that's where
the biggest success is.
And then for me, also
success is opening up
new opportunities for other researchers.
Particularly ethnographic
research or
sometimes we call it
contextual inquiry, so
it's still sort of a structured interview,
but taking people into the
field, into people's homes,
or into people's workplace.
A lot of junior researchers
haven't really had
that kind of an experience,
and I think
everyone walks away from it transformed
in some way.
("Inspiration" by Pond5)
