Organizational Ethnography

Citation

Bell, E. (2010), "Organizational Ethnography", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 216-219. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465641011068875

Ethnography could be seen as enjoying something of a revival in certain qualitative organizational research methods circles. The publication of a recent issue of the journal Organizational Research Methods, arising from a conference that celebrated the 20th anniversary of Jon Van Maanen's Tales of the Field (1988) is an illustrative of this trend (Cunliffe, 2010), as is the publication of books such as those reviewed here. However, these developments could also be interpreted as a reaction to ethnography's threatened status within the organizational research field. Ethnography is thus suggested to be the niche territory of a relatively few followers and ignored by the majority (Zickar and Carter, 2010) who perceive it as a risky methodology that can hinder the development of a successful career as a twenty first century management researcher (Bell, forthcoming). This raises some perennial questions, such as whether the doing of organizational ethnography is less frequent than talking about it (Bate, 1997) and if conventional modes of social scientific writing are adequate to represent the messy and complex reality of ethnographic fieldwork (Kenny, 2008).

The collection edited by Yberma et al. (2009) includes chapters authored by long‐time devotees of organizational ethnography, such as Gary Alan Fine, Tony Watson and Mats Alvesson. These sit alongside contributions from new recruits like Paul Hibbert and Simon Down. However, the emphasis is weighted in favour of old hands rather than new blood, perhaps reflecting a tendency for organizational researchers to focus on the ethnographic past rather than to look towards the ethnographic future. The introduction to this volume effectively sets out a definition of organizational ethnography comprising seven elements: combined fieldwork methods, being at the scene, context‐sensitive and actor‐centred analysis, meaning making, multivocality and reflexivity and positionality. The ethnographic project is set out in Part 1 of the book through discussion of the methodological issues and challenges in writing ethnography. Part 2 of the book is organized around a series of dichotomous pairings, such as immersion and distance, which encapsulate the tensions and contradictions that are entailed in experience‐near participant observation. Finally, Part 3 focuses on researcher‐researched relationships and the ethical challenges this raises; this is extremely relevant given the heightened ethical scrutiny that surrounds contemporary management research (Association of Business Schools, 2009) and the difficulties that can be associated with gaining approval from Institutional Review Boards or Ethics Committees for Qualitative Research (Bell and Wray Bliss, 2009).

Having set out the overall structure of the book, I will now focus on four chapters that stood out for me. The chapter by Humphreys and Watson places a strong emphasis on ethnographic writing and the identification of four ideal types of ethnographic writing: plain, enhanced, semi‐fictionalized and fictionalized. This continuum provides the structure which the authors use to locate their own work as a means of illustrating the possibilities for “writing differently” (Grey and Sinclair, 2006) in management research. Whilst this creative and interesting chapter raises provides valuable insights, it tends to overlook the issues of social scientific credibility which surround this type of work; as Hatch (1996) suggests, experiments with narrative position are more safely conducted only after having gained a PhD and a tenured position. I also enjoyed the chapter by Down and Hughes, partly because it provided a rare example of the co‐production of ethnographic writing based on collaboration between the researcher and one of his research participants that raised important issues concerning authenticity and morality. Nicolini's chapter focuses on the analysis of organizational practice, drawing on his four‐year ethnographic study of medical innovation. The metaphor of “zooming in” and “zooming out” focuses attention on the growing complexity of time and space considerations in conducting organizational ethnography, where globalization and technology means that fieldwork sites are increasingly deterritorialised. Finally, Beech together with three colleagues from other Scottish universities provides an analysis of the temporal unfolding of friendship relations between ethnographic researchers and practitioners which I found myself well able to relate. A series of engagingly written friendship tales from the field are told as a means of illustrating the four phases through which relationships pass: invitation, momentary auditions, engagement and separation. In place of a conclusion by the editors, the book ends with a well thought out and clearly justified annotated bibliography of organizational ethnographies written by Yanow and Geuijen. In each case a summary of themes and methods is given. This useful resource is one that I am sure I will return to more than once.

The primary strength of this book lies in the depth of experience that each of the chapter authors brings through their confessional tales and the (sometimes contradictory) viewpoints they provide. However, the myth of the lone ethnographer (Rosaldo, 1993) is broadly sustained in this book. I would instead have liked more on the development of alternative fieldwork strategies through which an ethnographic sensibility can be maintained, in the face of the mounting time and resource pressures faced by management academics, such as team (1998) or micro‐ethnography (Wolcott, 1995a, b).

Neyland's (2008) book strikes an authoritative tone by comparison, stating in the first sentence that this “is a guide to becoming an organizational ethnographer” (p. 1). The chapters of the book are logically organized according to ten “sensibilities” with which the organizational ethnographer can engage: from ethnographic strategy and field relations to writing and ethics. Chapter 7 deals with “supplementing” and discusses a range of data collection strategies that go beyond the classic emphasis on participant observation, incorporating video and still camera images and computerised data sources. Each chapter contains one or two “exemplars” of “esteemed, illuminative and notorious ethnographic studies” (p. 1). However, the emphasis is very much on classic anthropological or sociological sources, such as Whyte's (1955) description of urban underclass in Boston in 1930s and Geertz's (1973) account of a Balinese cockfight. I would thus like to have seen more management research examples used. Interestingly, several of Neyland's examples of organizational ethnographies such as Harper (1988) and Graham (1995) are not listed in Yanow and Geuijen's annotated bibliography of organizational ethnographies, perhaps because these examples do not fulfil Yanow and Geuijen's criteria for inclusion. Neyland is clearly knowledgeable and he does a good job of historically locating the development of organizational ethnography through tracing its roots to anthropology and sociology. However, this has a tendency to come across as rather dry, losing some of the passion that ethnographers bring to their work, in a painstaking effort to acknowledge the illustrious past. I also wonder if bracketed references such as the one on page 2 for example, which reads – (for an augmentation of the “exotic” through thick description, see Geertz, 1973) – might put some budding ethnographers off, particularly if they have not been socialised into these social science disciplines.

Neyland raises the interesting question of “why now?” to explain the publication of his book – a question that can usefully be extended to the revival of interest in organizational ethnography more generally. His answer focuses on the growth of organizational ethnography in research, teaching and management practice, citing the example of ethnographers being hired by firms such as Microsoft on a consultancy basis. Like Yberma et al. (2009), Neyland thus tends to chart the “rise and rise” of organizational ethnography. However, cracks can be detected in this narrative. For example, Schwartz‐Shea and Yanow writing in the edited collection are disheartened by the trend towards positivist‐informed quantitative research and the threat that this poses to interpretive researchers and ethnographers in particular recommending that:

[…] “rather than conforming to outside pressures to adopt positivist criteria or disguising what they do, interpretive researchers should join in a proactive effort to educate members of other epistemic communities – journal editors and reviewers, as well as colleagues – in the methodological requirements, including evaluative criteria, of qualitative‐interpretive research” (Schwartz‐Shea and Yanow, 2009, p. 75).

I could not agree more with them.

It could be concluded from both of these texts that little changes within organizational ethnography. Hence, it is clear that ethnographers continue to face perennial challenges associated with their methodology such as the negotiation of access and research relationships and getting their work published. However, each book presents some novel and interesting “ways of seeing” (Wolcott, 1999) organizational ethnography, thereby keeping organizational ethnography alive and reinventing it for future generations. At a time when organizational ethnography could be seen as under threat (Bell, forthcoming), this should be commended.