Call for Papers

Ethnography, the signature research methodology in anthropology, has risen to great prominence in organisation and management studies. Tracing its roots to the Malinowskian paradigm of fieldwork of the 1930s (Clifford, 1986), ethnography refers to both a way of doing ‘fieldwork’ (i.e. a long-term involvement with the people under study) and the product of such activities, namely ethnographic writing (Hirsch & Gellner, 2001: 1). The complex whole of conceptual approach, methodology and mode of writing may establish ethnography as a ‘paradigm’, as Bate (1997) suggests. Resonating with post-modern critique, organizational ethnography is currently defined as a reflective practice in which ethnographers critically assess their position vis-à-vis the organization studied.
 
Although the ethnography of organizations constitutes a rather young approach in organization studies, it can be traced to the 1920s and 1930s when applied psychologists and industrial-organizational sociologists of the Chicago School initiated in-depth studies in workplaces that drew extensively on ethnographic methods. Intervention being a major motivator, the focus of such studies was on economic and moral issues related to improving working conditions (Zickar & Carter, 2010). Since then, workplace ethnographies have generated deep insights into work-life experiences among which managerial and employee behaviour and fissions between them, workplace conflicts, power struggles, and workplace culture. However, the changing nature of employment, and the demands placed upon employees in a post-bureaucratic and service-focused economy demanded a shift of focus to topics such as workplace identities, and managerial practices of cultural control and its underlying technologies (Brannan, Person & Worthington, 2007).
 
In the era of globalisation, as the interests of ethnographers turn to new forms of organizing (such as social networking, transnational organizations, or entrepreneuring), conventional fieldwork may no longer be adequate. Fieldwork in transnational and virtual settings, or under duress of a global pandemic, may require researchers to exchange their once territorially bounded field-site for a mobile and digital approach (Luff & Heath, 2019). Digital ethnography has long been emerging field in ethnography. Labeled also as ‘virtual ethnography’ or ‘netnography’, the digital ethnography includes a rather wide range of methodological approaches that can be used to tackle complexities of the research object or process, alongside the varying ways in which the object or process has been constructed (Dominguez et at., 2007). While digital ethnography has long been grounded in exploring online forums and virtual communities (Murthy, 2008), it somewhat raised more interest among scholars during the Covid-19, mainly due to temporarily being one of the few exploratory ways to conduct a study around pandemic-driven restrictions (Góralska, 2020).
 
To understand what has been repeatedly addressed as the ‘great work-from-home experiment’, scholars used digital ethnography to explore the shifted gender relations (e.g., Manzo et al., 2020) or mental health-related challenges (e.g., Gera & Hasdell, 2021) to comprehend the sudden shift to remote work and home-bound makeshift workplaces. While some methods utilised throughout these studies included standardized group or individual video calls, chat tools or map drawing techniques (Watson & Lupton, 2022), the prosperity of other tools and technological solutions have not been largely debated. Furthermore, digital ethnography can be used in hybrid settings by combining participant observations in workplace settings where digital platforms can be accessed in parallel (Ritter, 2021). Ethnographic research is well suited for tracing the various digital disruptions occurring within professional groups or even entire systems of profession (e.g., Kiik, 2019; Hull, 2020).
 
With that in mind, we are seeking to expand the debate on the usability of digital ethnography of exploring work and workplaces, and chew over novel methods that can be used to collect relevant data in either fully digitised or hybrid settings. Topics and questions that we look forward to discussing during this sub-theme could include, but are not limited to the following:
 
The promise and pretence of ethnographic methods for organizational studies in general and workplace studies in particular, for example:

• The potential contribution of ethnographic studies to the multidisciplinary field of organizational studies

• The potential of ethnographic methods for promoting reflexivity among managers and for making visible institutional logics, tacit knowledge, and truth claims

• The digital turn and its contribution to interpretative methods in workplace studies

 
The challenges particular to doing (digital) ethnography in workplaces:

• Issues of access

• Fully digital or hybridised settings

• Organizational power relations; studying “up” the organization vs. studying “down”

• The role of experts/specialists and expertise/specialist knowledge

• The ethnographer as employee

 
Issues in ethnographic writing:

• Writing reflexive ethnographies of workplace

• Publication and censorship (by management; self-censorship)

 
Workplace ethnography as intervention practice:

• Ethnography as a tool to underpin corporate strategy and/or policy and planning

• Co-producing knowledge with local stakeholders

• The ethnographer as a consultant

• Translating ethnographic research into management strategy

 
New fields and new forms of workplace ethnography:

• New settings, actors, topics (objects, tools, bodies, texts, etc.)

• Experimental methods

• New design, data collection, analysis, presentations

• Implications and challenges for the research process

• The use of new immersive technology (XR, AR, VR)

References

• Bate, S.P. (1997): “Whatever Happened to Organizational Anthropology? A Review of the Field of Organizational Ethnography and Anthropological Studies.“ Human Relations, 50 (9), 1147–1175.
• Brannan, M., Pearson, G., & Worthington, F. (2007): “Ethnographies of work and the work of ethnography.“ Ethnography, 8 (4), 395–402.
• Clifford, J. (1986): “Introduction: Partial Truths.“ In: J. Clifford & G.E. Marcus (eds.): Writing Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1–26.
• Domínguez, F.D., Beaulieu, A., Estalella, A., Gómez, E., Schnettler, B., & Read, R. (2007): “Virtual ethnography.“ Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 8 (3), 3–7.
• Hirsch, E., & Gellner, D.N. (2001): “Introduction: Ethnography of Organizations and Organizations of Ethnography.“ In: D.N. Gellnerand & E. Hirsch (eds.): Inside Organisations: Anthropologists at Work. Oxford, UK: Berg, 1–18.
• Hull, E. (2020): “Professionals.“ In: F. Stein, S. Lazar, M. Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez, & R. Stasch (eds.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Gera, K., & Hasdell, P. (2021): “Digital Ethnography for Social Design: Challenges and Opportunities in the Pandemic.“ In: C.S. Shin, G. Di Bucchianico, S. Fukuda, Y.-G. Ghim, G. Montagna & C. Carvalho (eds.): Advances in Industrial Design. AHFE 2021. Cham: Springer, 210–217.
• Góralska, M. (2020): “Anthropology from Home: Advice on Digital Ethnography for the Pandemic Times.“ Anthropology in Action, 27 (1), 46–52.
• Kiik, L. (2019): “Conservationland: Toward the anthropology of professionals in global nature conservation.“ Critique of Anthropology, 39 (4), 391–419.
• Luff, P.K., Heath, C. (2019): “Visible objects of concern: Issues and challenges for workplace ethnographies in complex environments.“ Organization, 26 (4), 578–597.
• Manzo, L. K. C., & Minello, A. (2020): “Mothers, childcare duties, and remote working under COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: Cultivating communities of care.“ Dialogues in Human Geography, 10 (2), 120–123.
• Murthy, D. (2008): “Digital Ethnography: An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research.“ Sociology, 42 (5), 837–855.
• Orel, M. (2022): Collaboration Potential in Virtual Reality (VR) Office Space: Transforming the Workplace of Tomorrow. Cham: Springer.
• Ritter, C.S. (2022): “Rethinking digital ethnography: A qualitative approach to understanding interfaces.“ Qualitative Research, 22 (6), 916–932.
• Zickar, M.J., & Carter, N.T. (2010): “Reconnecting With the Spirit of Workplace Ethnography: A Historical Review.“ Organizational Research Methods, 13 (2), 304–319.
• Watson, A., & Lupton, D. (2022): “Remote Fieldwork in Homes During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Video-Call Ethnography and Map Drawing Methods.“ International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21, https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221078376.
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