workplace strategy
ABOUT
when people see a role for themselves in the future they tend to stop defending the status quo
White Owl is me, Fiona Tribe. I am an award-winning cultural anthropologist, workplace strategist, and ethnographer with over 20 years’ experience working with and within businesses of varying size, shape and complexity. My work focuses on understanding the culture of your organisation, industry and markets at depth. I notice stuff.
To truly understand culture we must immerse ourselves in it, to make sense of the mundane and the extraordinary, the boring and the fascinating, the everyday and the ceremonial.
WORK
I pull threads in organisational jumpers
What does a cultural anthropologist do? To borrow from anthropologist, Clifford Geertz: “… man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”
I blend the theories, methods, and tools of business strategy and cultural anthropology to generate ethnographic insights on culture. From the large global entity to the teeny start-up, my clients are typically either starting something new or seeking to scale while remaining creative and curious. Some are in crisis; others are overwhelmed with opportunities. If you want to learn more, let’s chat — I have many stories.
RESEARCH
corporate temples: the material culture of contemporary workplaces
Set within the context of a shift to remote work that some have heralded as a switching moment, my thesis explored how humans relate to one another with and through the objects that surround them. It did so with a detailed ethnographic description of the material culture of the Melbourne studio of a global architecture and design practice. The intimate relationship between the material and non-material elements of culture were explored as a means of better understanding the role “stuff” plays in our working worlds today. My findings asserted that contemporary workplaces are not only sites rich in material culture, but that the material culture of the contemporary workplace remains a largely overlooked phenomenon ripe for exploration in an increasingly virtual world of work.
CONNECT
If you’re curious about how we could work together, then say hello. I love a natter.
fiona@whiteowl.net.au
mobile: +61 401 502 789
© White Owl Consulting 2024