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The purpose of this paper is to offer an accessible and interdisciplinary research strategy in organisational ethnography, called action ethnography, that acknowledges key concepts from action research and engaged and immersive ethnography. It aims to encourage methodological innovation and an impact turn in ethnographic practice.

A working definition of “action ethnography” is provided first. Then, to illustrate how an action ethnography can be designed by considering impact from the outset, the author draws on a study she is undertaking with a grassroots human rights monitoring group, based in England, and then discusses advantages and limitations to the approach.

The author suggests three main tenets to action ethnography that embrace synergies between action research and ethnography: researcher immersion, intervention leading to change and knowledge contributions that are useful to both practitioners and researchers.

This paper provides researchers who align with aspects of both action research and ethnography with an accessible research strategy to employ, and a better understanding of the interplay between the two approaches when justifying their research designs. It also offers an example of designing an action ethnography in practice.

Whereas “traditional” ethnography has emphasised a contribution to theoretical knowledge, less attention has been on a contribution to practice and to those who ethnographers engage with in the field. Action ethnography challenges researchers to consider the impact of their research from the outset during the research design, rather upon reflection after a study is completed.

This paper revolves around the central question: is it possible to do “proper ethnography” without complete participant observation? The authors draw upon a student's experiences of negotiating National Health Service (NHS) ethical approval requirements and access into the student's research field, a British NHS hospital and having to adapt data collection methods for the student's doctoral research. The authors examine some of the positional (insider/outsider, native gone academic), methodological (long-term/interrupted, overt/covert) and contextual challenges that threatened the student's ethnographic study.

The paper draws on reflexive vignettes written during the student's doctorate, capturing significant moments and issues within the student's research.

The authors highlight the temporal, practical, ethical and emotional challenges faced in attempting an ethnography of nursing culture within a highly regulated research environment. Having revealed the student's experience of researching this specific culture and finding ways to overcome these challenges, the authors conclude that the contemporary ethnographer needs to be increasingly flexible, opportunistic and somewhat covert.

The authors argue that it is possible to do “proper” and “good” ethnography without complete participant observation – it is not the method, the observation, that is the essence of ethnography, but whether the researcher achieves real understanding through thick descriptions of the culture that explain “what is really going on here”.

The authors hope to assist doctoral students engage in “good” ethnographic research within (potentially) risk-averse host organisations, such as the NHS, whilst being located in neo-liberal performative academic organisations (Foster, 2017; McCann et al., 2020). The authors wish to contribute to the journal to ensure good ethnography is accessible and achievable to (particularly) doctoral researchers who have to navigate complex challenges exacerbated by pressures in both the host and home cultures. The authors wish to see doctoral researchers survive and thrive in producing good organisational ethnographies to ensure such research is published (Watson 2012), cognisant of the pressures and targets to publish in top-ranked journals (Jones et al. 2020).

Having identified key challenges, the authors demonstrate how these can be addressed to ensure ethnography remains accessible to and achievable for, doctoral researchers, particularly in healthcare organisations. The authors conclude that understanding can be attained in what they propose as a hybrid form of “propportune” ethnography that blends the aim of the essence of “proper” anthropological approaches with the “opportunism” of contemporary data collection solutions.

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussions surrounding the adoption of ethnographic approaches in accounting by undertaking a comparative analysis of ethnography in anthropology and ethnography in qualitative accounting research. By doing so, it abductively speculates on the factors influencing the distinct characteristics of ethnography in accounting and explores their implications.

This paper uses a comparative approach, organizing the comparison using Van Maanen’s (2011a, 2011b) framework of field-, head- and text-work phases in ethnography. Furthermore, it draws on the author’s experience as a qualitative researcher who has conducted ethnographic research for more than a decade across the disciplines of anthropology and accounting, as well as for non-academic organizations, to provide illustrative examples for the comparison.

This paper finds that ethnography in accounting, when compared to its counterpart in anthropology, demonstrates a stronger inclination towards scientific aspirations. This is evidenced by its prevalence of realist tales, a high emphasis on “methodological rigour”, a focus on high-level theorization and other similar characteristics. Furthermore, the scientific aspiration and hegemony of the positivist paradigm in accounting research, when leading to a change of the evaluation criteria of non-positivist research, generate an impoverishment of interpretive and ethnographic research in accounting.

This paper provides critical insights from a comparative perspective, highlighting the marginalized position of ethnography in accounting research. By understanding the mechanisms of marginalization, the paper commits to reflexivity and advocates for meaningful changes within the field.

Ethnography produces accounts; the critical reflection of accounts produces accountability. Ethnography requires accountability if meaningful conclusions and/or observations are to be made. Accountability requires ethnography if is to address lived experiences. Virno argues that the principles of “languaging” make ethnographies and accountability possible. This papers aims to describe an instance of the circularity of accountability and use this to explore Virno’s insights. Doing this helps us to see the connections between accountability and ethnography, and reflect on the nature of these interconnections.

Inspired by Paulo Virno’s philosophy, the authors assert that an ethnographer typically produces an account of a chosen “Other” in which this “Other” is held to account. But at the same time, the ethnographer needs to be held to account by the very same “Other” and by the “Other” of the (research) community. Furthermore, ethnographers are accountable to themselves. All these moments of accountability can endlessly circle, as responsibilization of the researchers by their Other(s) continues. For ethnography to function, this must be tamed as a (research) account ultimately has to be produced for an academic project to be considered complete. Drawing on Virno’s principle of the “negation of the negation” by the “katechon,” by the “katechon,” the authors propose a potentially valuable intervention that would enable ethnography – and by extension, ethnographers – to prosper.

The authors apply Virno’s philosophical reflections to propose a positive feedback cycle between ethnography and accountability. Virno’s ideation centers on two key concepts: (i) the multitude of social relatedness and (ii) the ontology of the languaging of individuation. Hereby, a positive circle of causality between ethnography and accountability can be realized, whereby the authors can respect but also break the causal circle(s) of ethnography and accountability. This might be achieved via a reflection on Virno’s concept of the “katechon.”

The authors illuminate the accountability–ethnography dynamic, providing an illustration of the circularity of ethnography and accountability and showing how Virno provides us with tools to help us deal with it. Hence, ultimately, the paper focuses on the accountability as ethnographers.

Disasters can affect the important sector of tourism across the world. This study aims to combine qualitative findings from 13 publications to enhance disaster management plans for the security and resilience of the tourist industry.

The authors used Noblit and Hare’s seven-step meta-ethnography method, identifying 13 qualitative studies on tourism disaster management through extensive searches in key databases (WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar), meeting inclusion criteria. NVivo 12 aided in coding, translation and comprehension of related ideas.

Five interrelated and third-ordered conceptual categories were identified: extreme natural and malevolent events, lack of risk management and emerg+ency response, sustainable tourism, tourism resilience factors, disaster awareness and preparedness. Effective strategies demand collaboration, resource allocation and local engagement.

This study offers a novel synthesis of qualitative research in tourism disaster management, enhancing understanding of resilience in the industry. It provides unique insights on cross-cultural dynamics, stakeholder engagement and integrated strategies while showcasing the utility of meta-ethnography in business and management research.

Exposing the hidden lives of female public relations (PR) practitioners requires deep connection with those lives. Stories need to be uncovered, interrogated, and ultimately told, to shine a light on the lived experiences of those working in PR. The methods used to collect these stories require deep immersion in the field and the ethnographic method is ideal for this. Ethnographic research methods have long been utilised to gain insights into the lived experiences of individuals and communities. This chapter provides an understanding of the strengths and limitations of ethnographic research methods in capturing the nuances of women's experiences of working in PR.

Organisational ethnography is an established field in business studies and has been used to investigate disciplines cognate to PR, including advertising and media, but, to date, has failed to be fully explored in PR research. This chapter examines the potential for ethnography to open new areas of PR theory and considers its potential as a means of bridging the gap between PR theory and practice.

Ethnography is not without its limitations; key concerns surround objectivity, the role of the researcher, and that of the participant, and ethics. Nonetheless, this method would appear to offer huge potential for the study of PR practices; the diverse nature of the sector makes it a rich area to study.

This chapter explores the potential of this method to offer an opportunity to investigate areas such as working practices, ethics in practice, power, gender, diversity, and culture.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the use of ethnography to advance research on team science by revealing the barriers to teamwork as manifesting at institutional, cultural, and interpersonal contextual scales. The analysis suggests strategies to enhance team science's collaborative potential.

This paper considers some of the practical and analytical challenges of team science through the use of ethnographic methods. The authors formed a three-person subteam within a larger multisited, federally-funded, interdisciplinary scientific team. The authors conducted six months of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group, using iterative deductive and inductive analyses to investigate the larger team's roles, relationships, dynamics, and tensions.

Integrating ethnography into the study of team science can uncover and mitigate barriers faced by teams at three primary levels: (1) academic culture, (2) institutional structures, and (3) interpersonal dynamics. The authors found that these three contextual factors are often taken for granted and hidden in the team science process as well as that they are interactive and influence teams at multiple scales of analysis. These outcomes are closely related to how team science is funded and implemented in academic and institutional settings.

As US federal funding initiatives continue to require scientific collaboration via inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary research, there is little work done on how teams grapple with the practical tensions of scientific teamwork. This paper identifies and addresses many practical tensions and contextual factors across institutional and organizational structures that affect and challenge the conduct of collaborative scientific teamwork. The authors also argue that ethnography can be a method to challenge myths, understand contextual factors, and improve the goals of team science.

This study aims to better understand the emotional challenges that inexperienced accounting researchers may face in conducting ethnographies. To do so, the authors use Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) notions of “feeling rules” and “emotion work” to shed light on the possible nature and impact of these challenges, and how her ideas may also become fruitful for academic purposes.

The authors take a reflective approach in sharing the raw observation notes and research diaries as first-time ethnographers in the area of management accounting. The authors use these to analyze “unprocessed” experiences of emotional challenges from the fieldwork and how the authors learned to cope with them.

The authors illustrate how emotional challenges in conducting ethnographies can be rooted in a clash with prevalent feeling rules of certain study situations. The authors explore the conditions under which these clashes occur and how they may prompt researchers to respond through means of emotion work to (re-)stabilize those situations. Based on these insights, the authors also discuss how wider conventions of the accounting academy may contribute to emotional challenges as they stand in contrast to principles of ethnographic research.

There remains a tendency in the accounting domain to largely omit emotional challenges in the making of ethnographies, especially in writing up studies. In this paper, the authors are motivated to break this silence and openly embrace such challenges as an asset when the authors talk about the process of creating knowledge.

Working with organizations is central to organizational ethnography. However, while research ethics relating to individual participants is widely discussed, research ethics relating to the organizations has been neglected. The purpose of this article is to address this shortcoming and introduce the concept and domain of “meso-ethics” in research ethics. Meso-ethics pertains to organizations as research participants and thus allows for the explicit inclusion of organizations in ethical considerations and practice. Meso-ethics complements the known domains of micro-ethics and macro-ethics in research ethics.

The concept of meso-ethics takes point of departure in the micro-ethical principles of “respect, and avoiding harm” and adjusts these to apply to organizations. The organizations are first defined as a distinct type of research participants, which differs from individual participants. The organizations are formally organized units that possess resources to assert power and stakeholders with a vested interest in the research. Second, the relationship between researchers and organizations is related to issues of power, allowing for a view of the power relations as flexible and relational. Moreover, this includes a potential vulnerability to harm on both sides.

The new concept and domain meso-ethics allows for explicit reflections and practice of research ethics in relations to organizations, a central participant in organizational ethnography. There is a discussion that meso-ethics should be combined with micro-ethics and macro-ethics in future practice to allow for comprehensive reflections and practice of research ethics.

The article contributes a new concept and domain of research ethics, meso-ethics, in organizational ethnography and related research to explore and practice research ethics in relation to organizations participating in our research. Meso-ethics complements the known domains of micro-ethics and macro-ethics in research ethics.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a shift from the ideal of immersion to a practice of “committed localism” in the ethnographic study of relational work in the post-bureaucratic and service-based economy.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork following management consultancy projects in a hospital and a manufacturing company in Denmark. The approach was predicated on committed attention to the everyday of consultancy work activities and associated relational dynamics. This involved being present at the client sites, observing and listening in concrete situations of interaction and engaging in conversations with the multiple actors involved, both external consultants and members of client organisations.

The paper shows how “committed localism” was practiced in the ethnographic study of management consultancy as it is relationally accomplished in and through concrete situations of interaction between consultants and different actors in client organizations and the associated meaning production of the involved actors.

The paper develops the notion of “committed localism”, originally introduced by George Marcus, into a methodological concept to challenge the conventional ideal of immersion as the hallmark of “proper” ethnography. Such a shift is particularly pertinent for the ethnographic study of relational processes involving multiple actors occupying different positions in the temporary social spaces of contemporary workplaces.