Researching Organisations: The Practice of Organizational Fieldwork

Citation

Shumba, R. (2017), "Researching Organisations: The Practice of Organizational Fieldwork", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 337-338. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-03-2017-1505

The author states that the book is about the “practical issues that may arise when carrying out research fieldwork in organizational settings and what can be done to try and address them”. Going through the book and carefully examining its contents, I found that the book indeed addresses practical issues related to doing organisational research and gives practical advice to novice researchers from gaining access to reporting on the research.

The first part of the book focusses on the basics of research such as the research process. A whole chapter is dedicated to ethics in organisational research. This is very useful. Although similar to ethics in any other type of research, what is beneficial about the ethics chapter is the discussion on the historical roots of ethics in research. The author presents a balanced debate on the importance of ethics and takes cognisance of the constraints that ethical regulations can place on the researcher. A section of the book is dedicated to issues of getting in: seeking and negotiating access. During my own organisational research, seeking and negotiating access was the most difficult part of the research project. It often determines whether the research will proceed as planned or whether a change of course will need to be initiated. The book offers invaluable advice to researchers on how to negotiate access. After getting access, the researcher then wants to know how to conduct the research in the organisation. Issues of relationship building, trust, organisational politics and ethics are discussed in the section on getting on in the organisation. The final section discusses issues of getting out of the organisation and reporting on the research. In the last section, the last chapter, “Emerging issues in research in organisations” considers how recent developments in data gathering techniques and the character of organisations are posing new challenges for organisational fieldwork. Four recent developments are focussed on: technology and organisational change, technology and new modes of data collection; globalisation; and new organisational forms.

The book is specific about its area of focus and clearly delineates it from other texts on research. By distinguishing organisational research from other forms of research, the book points to its audience right from the start. A researcher studying other social groups such as families, street corner gangs or residents of a neighbourhood would therefore not find it useful and this is clearly stated right from the beginning of the book.

The book closes the gap in literature on research by focussing on “what is actually involved in doing field work in organisations”. Research texts often focus on techniques of data gathering and data analysis but this book focusses on the practicalities of doing fieldwork research in organisations. The author makes it clear that by focussing on practical issues, the intention is not to suggest that researchers do not need to know about “philosophical, theoretical or more traditional methodological issues such as survey or experimental design or statistical analysis”. Although these issues are equally important, that is not the focus of the book.

Given that the majority of post-graduate students who embark on research directly from undergraduate studies have not spent much time working in organisations and have little understanding of organisations but desire to conduct research in organisations, this book is very useful for such students and has the potential to hold their hand throughout the process as it covers issues from getting into the organisation, getting on in the organisation and getting out of the organisation after collecting data. It therefore provides some useful “information on what organisational fieldwork involves, which offers guidance and reassurance to those undertaking research in organisations for the first time”.

The author concedes that the topic of researching in organisations has not been fully neglected in research texts. Bryman (1988) has done extensive work on researching organisations and a 2005 collection by however, he suggests that “the literature appeared to be quite fragmented and had for whatever reason, rather fallen out of favor in recent years […] a synthesis and updating of this literature seemed, therefore, like it might be a worthwhile contribution”. And indeed it is a worthwhile contribution. Reading through the text, I was able to glean some nuggets on how to negotiate access, how to deal with ethical issues while in the organisation, how to conduct research in the organisation and how to withdraw from the organisation after the data had been collected.

From my own doctoral research, there was a lot of groping in the dark, making it up as I go along and learning the hard way while doing organisational research. With a book such as Researching Organisations such groping in the dark can be avoided. Reading the book before embarking on the research can certainly be helpful in terms of offering practical advice on, for example, negotiating access to an organisation.

The author provides useful information and references for further study at the end of each topic – this is helpful for someone looking to advance their knowledge on the topic.

The book is particularly significant because the “expanding role of organisations in contemporary society, the changing nature of employment relationships and the growth in the global workforce mean that organisations are becoming increasingly important as research sites and that the issues raised in this book are therefore likely to be of continuing significance for researchers across a range of disciplines, not just management”.

Some of the guidance in the book may appear to be obvious to seasoned researchers and they may therefore find the book tedious and unnecessary but for a beginner, the book offers some useful insights.