Savvy Business, Life Unscripted

Savvy Business, Life Unscripted


The Shift of the American Work Culture with Grant McCracken

September 15, 2020

Cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken conducted an extensive survey to determine how Americans were impacted by quarantine. The surprising result: an overwhelming pushback against returning to the office.

Grant McCracken is trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago). Grant has studied American culture for 25 years.He has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and worked for many organizations including Timberland, New York Historical Society, Diageo, IKEA, Sesame Street, Nike, the Ford Foundation and the White House.

He has also looked at how Americans invent and reinvent themselves.  He had explored this theme in two more books: Big Hair and Transformations: identity construction in a contemporary culture. He is the student of American culture. Plenitude published in 1997 looked at the new explosive growth of contemporary culture. In Flock and Flow, he shows how contemporary culture and commerce change.

He published a book called Chief Culture Officer with Basic Books that argues that culture now creates so much opportunity and danger for the organization that need senior managers who focus on it full time.  He is hoping this will create a new occupational destination for graduates in the arts and humanities. The latest book is called Culturematic, published by the Harvard Business Review Press in 2012. This year Grant is affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. CultureBy.com