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Born in 1914, Edward T. Hall is professor emeritus at Northwestern University, where he held a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the College of Business. He also taught at the Harvard Business School as a Leatherbee lecturer. One of this century's most perspicacious observers of human behavior and a pioneer in bringing anthropology to applied use in business and government, he has written more than 20 books. Perhaps the best known of his books are The Silent Language (1959), The Hidden Dimension (1966), Beyond Culture (1976), and The Dance of Life (1983), which all are available from Anchor Press/Doubleday. Details about his life permeate his writing, but they are most concentrated in his autobiography, An Anthropology of Everyday Life (1992, published by Doubleday).'
In many ways, Edward Hall has spent his entire career building on Kurt Lewin's famous dictumnothing is so practical as a good theory-by making his theories practical. For example, he conducted an 8-year research project on intercultural communication focused on international business dealings among the Americans, French, Germans, and Japanese. After securing funding from the Bertelsmann publishing house (one of the world's largest publishers that provided the funding as a public service) to conduct the study, he developed a methodology based on studying business people who had been successful in these international domains. This work led to the publication of a series of books, several of which he coauthored with his wife, Mildred, in French, German, and Japanese. He also served for 16 years on the Ansul Corporation's board of directors. Professor Hall currently lives and writes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This interview was conducted by telephone on February 19, 1997, and July 29, 1997. A shorter version of this interview was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston, Massachusetts, August 8 to 13,1997. During my discussions with Professor Hall, I learned that not only was he extraordinarily insightful, but that he was also a very kind man, the type of person most of us would like to have as a colleague and neighbor. I hope you find some impression of this exceptional combination of competence and kindness embedded in this interview Bluedorn: As we begin, I would like to ask you...