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The purpose of this paper is to describe the advantages, challenges and uncertainties of collecting and analyzing data using participant observation in logistics research.

Experiences from a participant observation study of an interorganizational radio frequency identification (RFID) implementation in an international environment are presented and reflected on. The RFID implementation included complex interactions between three leading companies.

The results appear to support an increased use of participant observation in qualitative logistics research, particularly when investigating interorganizational aspects. The analysis highlights values, general limitations and challenges of using participant observation in logistics. The paper illustrates that using participant observation results in significant and detailed findings, which would be difficult to achieve with other methods. Suggestions on how to take advantage of the method's benefits and overcome methodological challenges are provided.

Future research may address experiences from other studies regarding how to analyze and report data from a participant observation study. It may also clarify the role the method is given in case studies and extend the analysis of epistemological aspects conducted in this paper.

This paper may inspire logistics researchers to consider participant observation, either as sole method or as part of a multi‐methodical case study, in order to make use of its benefits and thus broaden the dimensions of logistics research.

A broad literature review indicates that participant observation studies are rather uncommon in logistics research. This paper thus highlights the potential of using this method in logistics research, particularly when investigating the overlooked, but essential, interorganizational aspects of logistics and SCM.

The purpose of this paper is to review the techniques involved in participant observation and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the method as related to event research.

A review of the literature examines applications of the research method and discusses the steps of the research cycle. Using the example of the Swell Sculpture Festival, participant observation is demonstrated to be a highly appropriate method to gather data on interactions and relationships through the recording of behaviour, conversation and experience in situ.

Participant observation has been used to inform the development of management strategies, including management of crowd behavior, public risk and safety.

The paper suggests that methods of participant observation can be used to gain a deeper understanding of social dynamics of audiences and the affective dimensions of their behaviour. It is suggested that the method is highly appropriate to the context of event environments, where the use of surveys can interrupt the flow of the event experience for audiences, or be made impossible by the structure of the event.

The case study demonstrates the application of the methodology by event managers to gaining a better understanding of audience behaviour and expectations.

The methods of participant observation, as part of the broader qualitative research paradigm, are somewhat neglected by event researchers, despite their utility in other disciplines such as retail, education and tourism. This paper highlights the potential of the method for use in future studies of events and their audiences.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the methodological importance of how researchers exit fieldwork to draw attention to implications for participant and researcher well-being.

Reflecting in detail on one researcher’s final six-months exiting fieldwork at a retirement village, this paper critically examines the unintended consequences of participant observation and researcher-participant relationships.

The paper illustrates that difficulties to exit fieldwork can be unintended consequences of participant observation activities and developing researcher-participant relationships. The findings also discuss how fieldwork exit can impose upon participant and researcher well-being.

The findings are built upon fieldwork at a retirement village where the researcher served as a volunteer. Thus, the discussion focusses on participant observation activities that are likely to lead to close researcher-participant relationships. However, this paper aims to serve as a useful resource for researchers when considering how to exit their unique fieldwork contexts “with grace”.

The paper provides practical suggestions to help marketing researchers such as ethnographers, manage fieldwork exits with participant and researcher well-being concerns in mind.

The practical suggestions provided by this paper aim to enable marketing researchers to exit fieldwork contexts “with grace” through reflection and proactive management of the social impacts of their research activities.

Even though researchers acknowledge fieldwork is social and personal by nature, little research attention has been paid to the management of researcher-participant relationships and the exit stage of fieldwork. This paper discusses and addresses this blind-spot in marketing research.

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence that focuses on the use of covert participant observation as a method of data collection and consider the ethical nature of this method as a means to create knowledge that leads to direct management action. This ethical debate centres on issues such as informed consent, rights and consequences. This paper develops the consequentialist argument by reflecting on experiences of using covert participant observation and the consequences of using such a method in empirical management research.

Conducted independently of one another, two empirical case studies highlight the choices made and the justification for using covert participant observation as a means to investigate organisational issues.

The paper concludes that this research method can be used effectively within an ethical framework and suggests that researchers need to be more aware of the potential consequences on themselves in terms of the personal, emotional and trust issues that centre around deception when using covert participant observation.

Researchers are now asked to consider the consequences on themselves of conducting covert participant observation and, in particular, to assess the potential problems arising in the form of emotional or personal implications when being deceptive.

The ethical debate concerning the rights and consequences of conducting covert participant observation is extended to include a consideration of the consequences for the researcher pertaining to the collection and use of data using this research method. The paper goes beyond the traditional aspects of the debate by extending it to consider the consequences on the researcher of using what is essentially a research method based on deception.

In this chapter, I focus on two methodological issues involved with conducting ethnographies of very young children; establishing a researcher role in preschool classrooms while simultaneously gaining access into children’s culture and the trust of adult gatekeepers involved (i.e., teachers). Drawing on my participant observation experiences in 10 preschool classrooms (over 470 hours and 19 months of observations), I challenge the use of the friend role (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988) and least-adult role (Mandell, 1988) in research with young children. I examine how teachers mediate the researcher’s role in participant observation of children in preschool classrooms demonstrating the importance of establishing a middle manager role between teachers and children when conducting participant observations. I also discuss strategies used to overcome adult’s mediation of the researcher’s role, and strategies for simultaneously gaining teachers and children’s rapport in participant observation research in ways that formulate positive relationships with adults and children. I demonstrate the importance of researcher reflexivity of children’s and adults’ assessments of researchers’ roles in the field, highlighting how researchers’ impacts on children are not dependent on the times they are present in the field. Instead, I show that children continue to critically assess researchers’ positionality and roles in the field, often times seeking the help of adults (i.e., parents and teachers), further stressing the need for researchers to negotiate an understanding of their roles with both adults and children prior to and while in the field.

Participant observation, in which research is carried out through the direct participation of the researcher in the situation of interest, is a method of considerable interest to managerial psychologists, and others such as staff officers and other employees who carry out a similar role. Unfortunately it, and qualitative methodology as a whole, of which participant observation is a sub‐species, are approaches which are widely denigrated in the literature. This is unjust, since the method is not without its rigours, and the alternative, complementary and more highly regarded quantitative approach is not without its flaws, some of them fatal. Gives examples where participant observation is likely to be the only viable method of eliciting information, and there may be a significant public interest in such cases. There are ethical objections to covert participant observation, but even this has its valid applications. Participant observation should achieve its rightful place as a major research method with diverse application and usefulness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues surrounding the use of ethnography and participant observation in event studies. It considers the role and benefits of participant observation in terms of understanding event audiences and provides examples of the range of participant motivations and preferences such approaches can reveal and explore. As a methodological paper it focuses on the processes, challenges and benefits surrounding the utilisation of ethnographic methods within events research, with specific examples taken from an ethnographic study into contemporary dance music culture to contextualise the discussion.

Ethnography and participant observation are flexible research approaches characterised by varying levels of participation in and observation of different cultural groups and activities. This paper focuses specifically on participant observation revolving around field trips, focus groups, internet research and key informant interviews.

The challenges facing ethnographic researchers studying event audiences include identifying opportunities for observation and participation, identity negotiation for different research settings, their positioning on the participant observer spectrum, recruiting participants, recording data and the extent to which research takes an overt or covert approach, bearing in mind ethics and participant reactivity. It concludes that once these challenges are addressed, this multifaceted approach provides a valuable avenue for researchers exploring the range of socio-cultural forces at play surrounding event audiences and their experiences.

It advocates a shift from attempts to quantify audience motivations and experiences, to methods which seek to understand them more fully through focusing on the entirety of the event experience and the influence of surrounding cultural networks and discourses.

As already indicated, I first became aware of the power of the myth of participant observation during my doctoral research, conducted in a government high school in Perth, Western Australia in 1998–1999. I remember well the day when, while writing one of the chapters of my thesis, it suddenly occurred to me that much of what I was recording as data, in what I was blithely calling a participant observer study, were the “droppings of talk” from informal conversations and formal interviews that had taken place with the teachers, students, and parents associated with the school (Moerman, 1988, p. 8). There was little in the final product and in the published version by way of direct observational data (see Forsey, 2007).

This chapter examines the practical and conceptual limitations and possibilities of using ethnographic methods in the college writing classroom for the purpose of instructors’ professional development. The study is based on ethnographic research with a second-year course in Stanford University’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric. The study’s dual foci included the teacher–researcher’s pedagogical practices and students’ learning, and entailed participant-observation and the recording of ethnographic fieldnotes. It builds on the anthropology of literacy, a tradition of action research among educational ethnographers, and scholarship on composition pedagogy. Participant-observation could be helpful to other college instructors interested in improving their teaching. However, combining participant-observation with direct student feedback through interviews or surveys will be most effective in shaping educators’ professional development. Using participant-observation for professional development in the college writing classroom did not only situate me, the ethnographer, as both subject and object of research. Unexpectedly, my research also placed ethnographic methods as objects of research. By examining student learning and teaching practices ethnographically, researchers create opportunities to illuminate assumptions related to research as well as broader lessons about the study of teaching and learning.

This paper examines the value of mobile phones in ethnographic research, and seeks to demonstrate how this particular technology can support and enhance participant observation.

Reflecting in detail on one researcher's experience of incorporating this technological device into an ethnographic study, the paper considers how new observational tools can contribute to research beyond data generation.

The study suggests that the mobile phone can be an extension of the ethnographer and act as a powerful prosthetic, allowing the researcher to translate ethnographic principles into practice.

This paper reflects on the uses of a mobile phone in an ethnographic study of young men's consumer experiences. Thus, the discussion focuses on a research site where the mobile phone holds a ubiquitous position. However, there are now more than four billion mobile phones in circulation worldwide, so whilst acknowledging important differences in research sites, this research can be seen to have wide implications beyond the study of young consumers.

The paper argues that mobile phones allow researchers to record their observations, co‐create data and share experiences with their participants in ways that enhance the quality of ethnographic interpretations and understanding.

Little research attention has been paid to how emerging technologies support the more traditional participant observer, or how researchers actually embed them within their fieldwork. This paper addresses this gap and considers the wide‐ranging role that technology can have throughout this research process.