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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.

Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations.

This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis.

Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households.

There is a lack of clarity about what constitutes Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education and what the arts contribute. In this paper the authors discuss a distinct model, theorised from a five-year study of a particular, innovative STEAM education project (The Imagineerium), and developed by the researchers through working with primary school teachers in England within a second project (Teach-Make). The paper examines how teachers implemented this model, the Trowsdale art-making model for education (the TAME), and reflected on its value and positive impact on their planning and pedagogy.

The paper draws on two studies: firstly, a five-year, mixed methods, participative study of The Imagineerium and secondly a participative and collaborative qualitative study of Teach-Make.

Study of The Imagineerium showed strong positive educational outcomes for pupils and an appetite from teachers to translate the approach to the classroom. The Teach-Make project showed that with a clear curriculum model (the TAME) and professional development to improve teachers' planning and active pedagogical skills, they could design and deliver “imagineerium-like” schemes of work in their classrooms. Teachers reported a positive impact on both their own approach to supporting learning, as well as pupil progression and enjoyment.

The paper argues that the TAME, a consolidation of research evidence from The Imagineerium and developed through Teach-Make, offers both a distinctive and effective model for STEAM and broader education, one that is accessible to, valued by and manageable for teachers.

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.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain how cluster organisations have been fostering green transformation in Poland.

This paper adopts a multiple case study approach. Data collection methods involved in-depth interviews with cluster organisation managers and researchers to identify support measures for green transformation and to investigate the factors influencing their actions as well as a comprehensive analysis of documents, including cluster organisations‘ strategies.

Cluster organisations manage and participate in actions that create favourable conditions for pursuing low-carbon and circular economy ventures. They not only assist their members in overcoming obstacles related to green transformation but also engage non-members – which can lead to spillovers reaching beyond their borders. Their engagement takes place across all phases of the green transformation process.

For various reasons, the research was designed as qualitative to understand the opinions and experiences of various actors engaged in green transformation within cluster organisations’ ecosystems. The key factor influencing this decision stems from the fact that knowledge of the involvement of cluster organisations in supporting green transformation still needs to be completed and scattered. The limitations of the study include limited access to information and the fact that qualitative research allows for a certain amount of subjectivity, and the results should be generalised carefully. Moreover, the interviews were carried out with a non-random sample of participants. Another limitation of the study is related to biased views, which could have been shared by interviewees acting as representatives of the studied cluster organisations.

Cluster organisations have emerged as drivers of circular transition by promoting sustainable practices such as material recycling, biological recovery and parts harvesting. These initiatives contribute to reducing waste, conserving resources, and minimising the environmental footprint of industries. These organisations can be active agents of transformation, orchestrating collaborative efforts that have a far-reaching impact on industries and economies.

This is one of the first and most comprehensive studies on the role of cluster organisations in Poland in supporting green transformation. This paper identifies and systematises the actions undertaken to provide a clear understanding of the internal processes within cluster organisations.

This paper aims to explore how one elementary school administrative team responded to their changing student populations to include Latin(x) within their black community. The responses included looping practices, relationship building with families and culturally relevant pedagogies. In particular, this paper considers how the three aspects of the change worked together toward the goal of providing its students with quality educational opportunities and enhancements.

The research presented here is part of a longitudinal (four-year) qualitative study where ethnographic approaches to data collection were adopted.

The four-year immersion in the values of culturally relevant pedagogy created a reciprocal growth in understanding among the teachers and the students of the black and Latin(x) populations, sustained the overarching ideas of deep family connections and contributed to asset-driven curriculum.

A national trend shows rapid changing demographics where Latin(x) families are moving into black neighborhoods and schools. This change in schools’ student populations finds educators facing new challenges in addressing the educational and cultural needs of two minoritized populations. This research adds to the existing scholarship by documenting how one school shifts their learning atmosphere to deeply engage students in culturally relevant pedagogies.

The aim of this study is to explore the characteristics of what is experienced in mental health recovery-oriented places and how these characteristics can facilitate social connections and participation.

This qualitative study has an explorative, interpretive and collaborative design. Dyadic interviews and participatory fieldwork observations were used as methods for data generation. Data were analyzed using a collaborative hermeneutic approach.

Characteristics of recovery-nurturing places involved how concrete and tangible features of place may nurture and enable actions and ways of being with oneself and others. Three broad themes explore the characteristics and how they can enable recovery: nurturing senses, nurturing practical skills and nurturing communication.

This study demonstrates how materiality and recovery are interconnected and expands the understanding of recovery as “in-the-mind processes.” It explores how places and material objects have a recovery-nurturing potential through enabling actions and participation and thereby supporting people in living, storying and restorying their lives.

The COVID-19 lockdown severely impacted organizations in the cultural and tourist business as their products all of a sudden “disappeared”. This study aims to explore if and how the unexpected and disruptive nature of the pandemic accelerated the development of new communication strategies on their social media.

The study draws on data from 24 midsize cultural institutions and tourist attractions in Denmark over the first two months of the lockdown in 2020. Approximately 900 posts on Facebook were collected and analyzed through the netnographic method. The analysis followed a two-layered qualitative approach. First, open coding to identify typologies and enable a comparison with established strategies from the literature review. Then, an exploratory examination was conducted across the typologies.

Nine different content categories were identified in the data and subsequently assessed and discussed in relation to the literature on strategies and dialogic intentions. This resulted in the emergence of two new overarching strategies: hope and host.

While hope is particularly relevant in crisis situations, the utilization of employees in the host role presents an opportunity for further development and engagement. Further, the results call for future research that breaks with the traditional quest for ideal strategies for the benefit of exploring the notion of “strategic doers”.

The identification of the hope and host strategies, along with the analysis of content categories and their alignment with various strategic intentions, contributes to the existing knowledge in this field. Further, the classic perception of engagement as driven by explicit interaction and dialogue is also challenged.

The unique dynamics of family firms (FFs) shape the management of financial crises. Religious and secular reasons, as a defining characteristic of this type of firm, provide a reference system for key management decisions. This paper aims to explore the under-researched topic of differences in FFs' crisis management between religious and secular family decision-makers (FDMs), considering secularization in developed countries.

The paper draws on a qualitative-empirical study of 14 large FFs from the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), through both a media analysis and semi-structured interviews with FDMs who have significant influence on key management decisions.

Despite secularization, religion continues to influence managerial decisions such as crisis management in the DACH region. The findings show that crisis management differs across religious and secular FDMs, demonstrating the substantial impact of religious and secular reasons on operational and financial measures. Thus, religious and secular reasons may partially explain the complex and ambivalent crisis management of FFs. This indicates that religion shapes FF's key management decisions in the increasingly secularized DACH region. Religious FDMs are accountable to both the firm and to God, which fosters their own personal and financial resources during crisis management.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by exploring the impact of religion and secularization within developed countries. Further, it offers deeper insights into FF's crisis management and is one of the first studies to assess the impact of religion and secularization on operational and financial measures. This research derives five propositions for further research and discusses a broad range of original implications for theory and practice.

Following the lead of neighboring fields such as strategy and organization studies, entrepreneurship is gradually joining in the adoption of a practice perspective. Entrepreneurship as practice (EaP) is thus a nascent domain of investigation where the methodological debate is still unsettled and very fluid. In this paper, the authors contribute to this debate with a focus on family entrepreneurship.

The authors develop a conceptual paper to discuss what it entails to look at family entrepreneurship through a practice lens and why it is fruitful. Moreover, the authors propose a research strategy novel to the field through which such investigation can be pursued, namely process tracing, and examine its inferential logic.

Process tracing is a strategy of data analysis underpinned by an ontology of causal mechanisms. The authors argue that it complements other practice methods by inferring social mechanisms from empirical evidence and thereby establishing a connection between praxis, practices and practitioners.

Process tracing helps the articulation of an “integrated model” of practice that relates praxis, practices and practitioners to the outcome they jointly produce. By enabling the assessment of impact, process tracing helps providing prima facie evidentiary grounds for policy action and intervention.

Process tracing affinity with the practice perspective has been so far acknowledged only to a limited extent in the social sciences, and it is, in fact, a novel research strategy for the family entrepreneurship field.