Sub-theme 15: (SWG) Organizational Ethnography: Behind and Beyond the Field
Call for Papers
This new SWG aims at exploring and advancing Organizational Ethnography (OE) as a paradigm for organizational sciences.
While conventional thinking views OE basically as a method, OE is and fieldwork and headwork and
textwork (Van Maanen, 2011: 218).
Ethnography implies conceptual work that gives direction to fieldwork and its
various representational practices. The ethnographic approach enables us understand that these practices and processes do
not materialize in a vacuum but in space and time, and is thus constituent for theorizing on organizational life. Ethnographic
fieldwork implies rather unorthodox ways of getting as close as possible to the informant's life world: "Ethnographers listen,
observe, participate, converse, lurk, collaborate, count, classify, learn, help, read, reflect, and – with luck – appreciate
and understand what goes on – and maybe why" (Van Maanen, 2001: 240).
As much as theorizing is part and parcel
of ethnographic fieldwork, ethnographic descriptions are mediated through genres of writing. Ethnographic researchers attempt
to obtain and communicate through their writings an insider's view and so to understand other people's worldview. However,
the very act of interpreting necessitates an inquiry into the researcher's role in establishing ethnographic text. Writing
ethnography turns into a reflexive process, which requires alternative styles of writing: ethnographies become "multivocal
accounts that capture the multiple, conflicting views of multiple authors and various disagreeing cultural members" (Martin,
2002: 293).
We invite papers that explore the concerns particular to OE research. Papers should engage with issues
of 'doing ethnography'. Topics may include:
Diverging practices of 'doing ethnography':
- Different modes of data gathering (e.g. multi-sited fieldwork, visual ethnography, etc.) in organizational studies
- Different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives in doing ethnography: how does anthropological doxa relate to other varieties of ethnographic work?
- Debates on what organizational research 'deserves’ to be labelled as ‘ethnographic'
- The nature and the form of the 'ethnographic data'
- Writing ethnographies: different genres and practices
The challenges of doing organizational fieldwork and textwork:
- Issues of getting access; issues of leaving the field; involvement and detachment
- Organizational power relations; studying "up" the organization vs. studying "down"
- Culture shock and its consequences for doing fieldwork and 'text work' in diverging forms of organization
- The role of experts/specialists and expertise/specialist knowledge
- The multiple identities of the ethnographer, as interpretive researcher, consultant or employee
The contributions of ethnography to the theoretical advancement of the organizational studies:
- The contribution of ethnography in studying specific topics, such as organizational identity, organizational learning, etc.
- The added or peculiar value of ethnography's empirical focus on the specific and particular in an organizational context
- The significance of OE for understanding social processes in and between organizations
- The debate around which unique contribution OE makes that cannot be achieved by means of other methods and approaches
- The debate around how convincing are the claims made by organizational ethnographers that they offer a genuine 'insider's point of view'
References
Martin, Joanne (2002): Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain. Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage Publications.
Van Maanen, John (2001): 'Afterword: natives 'R' us: some notes on the ethnography of organizations.' In: David N. Gellner & Eric Hirsch (eds.): Inside Organizations. Anthropologists at Work. Oxford (UK): Berg, 233–261.
Van Maanen, John (2011): 'Ethnography as work: some rules of engagement.' Journal of Management Studies, 48 (1), 218–234.