Doing Organizational Ethnography

A Focus on Polyphonic Ways of Organizing

Anne Reff Pedersen, Didde Humle, Anne Reff Pedersen, Didde Maria Humle, Didde Humle, Anne Reff Pedersen, Didde Maria Humle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138935594
• eBook ISBN: 9781317387671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book presents a new way of understanding organizational ethnography due to its strong emphasis on what the word organizational means in organizational ethnography. In the past five years, a new organizational studies research field has developed involving organizational ethnographies, which is when organizations are studied using ethnographical methods. This development has shed light on the methods and difficulties of organizational ethnography, and yet we argue that confusion still remains as to what organizational ethnographical approaches are.

This edited volume offers students and scholars a profound understanding of organizational ethnography by presenting concrete examples, reflections and discussions of how to understand and adequately conceptualize the word organizational in organizational ethnography. All the chapters illustrate the work of analytically combining different organizational phenomena (e.g. strategy making, policymaking), analytical perspectives (e.g. sensemaking, narratives) and ethnographical methods (e.g. texts, observations, shadowing, interviews) and demonstrate different ways of doing organizational ethnography. At the end of each chapter, an experienced researcher in the field offers comments and discussion on the contributions of the chapter, providing reflections on the implications for research in the field to which they ascribe.

In Doing Organizational Ethnography, organizational is defined as polyphonic ways of organizing based on the interactions of the many voices, discourses, practices and narratives in and around organizations and the book provides readers with in-depth reflections on what organizing and organizations become when doing organizational ethnography.

1 Doing Organizational Ethnography

Anne Reff Pedersen and Didde Maria Humle

This book presents a new way of understanding organizational ethnography due to its strong emphasis on what the word organizational means in organizational ethnography. The concept of organizational ethnography can be defined in many ways, all dependent upon whether it is presented from the perspective of organizational studies or anthropology. From an anthropological perspective, the word organization means the empirical or organizational setting: the factory, the school, or the company where qualitative and descriptive ethnographic studies are conducted. From the perspective of organizational studies, the word ethnography is often translated into time-consuming field studies, where mixed techniques such as shadowing, writing, and interviewing are used to produce thick descriptions of organizational life and practices.

The purpose of this book is to draw attention to the meaning of the word organization, in organizational ethnography. Contemporary scholarly work in the field of ethnographic organizational studies has combined various theoretical perspectives with ethnographic methods and has demonstrated new insights into what organizations and organizing then becomes. These studies bring a renewed understanding of many organizational phenomena. Examples of such studies will be presented in this book.

In Search of the Meaning of Organizations and Organizing

In the past five years, a new enthusiasm has come to an old concept: organizational ethnography. Novel insights and reflections based on interesting methods and analysis-based field studies of organizations have been presented (Allbon, 2012; Brannan, Rowe, & Worthington, 2012; Herrmann, Barnhill, & Poole, 2013; Murthy, 2013). This contemporary development sheds light on some of the opportunities and challenges organizational ethnography offers. One of these challenges is the confusion that still remains as to the meaning of the word organization in organizational ethnography. This book describes the need for a stronger theoretical understanding of the concept of organization, presenting different possibilities of what organizing means in organizational ethnographic work.

We argue that the understanding and definition of organizing is influenced by the methods and analytical approaches used. In many ethnographic studies of organizations, there is a distance between the methods used and the understanding of organization. In some organizational ethnographic studies, descriptions of the organizational contexts, events and phenomena are placed in the methodological descriptions, and presented as the scene of the study rather than being related to the contribution. In this way the organizations are degenerated to the place or the space in which researchers explore new methods, tell exciting and exotic stories, and reflect on the value or difficulties of the new methods. We argue for the fruitfulness of including reflections on the effect of the methods on the understanding of organizing in doing organizational ethnographic studies. And for reflexive discussions on how the methods used and the theories adopted affects our analytical work and understanding of organizations and the phenomena studied.

In this book, we define organizing as an overall polyphonic, emerging, and processual concept (Kornberger, Clegg, & Carter, 2006; Humle & Pedersen, 2015) based on the multiple voices, discourses, frames, tensions, practices, interactions, and narratives of organizational life. Operating within the tradition of interpretative organizational research (Kostera, 2007; Ybema et al., 2009; Yanow, 2012), the book underpins the social constructivist assumption that organizational life emerges from places and temporal situations through the fragmented interaction of different voices and meanings between people, materials, and events. This shared definition of organizing provides the overall coherence necessary for systematic and profound theoretical and methodological reflections across the chapters.

Analytical Ambitions

First, we find that classical organizational ethnographic studies (Kostera, 2007; Neyland, 2007; Kunda, 2013) often favour specific methodological and ethnographic considerations and define organizations as empirical sites or contextual settings. We endeavor to add to these studies by expanding on them to encompass reflections on the effect of using specific theoretical perspectives and various ethnographic methods when analyzing certain organizational phenomena.

Our book links theoretically different social science perspectives to the analyses of organizations and organizational phenomenon to demonstrate how different theoretical perspectives imply or assume different modes of organizing. The main objective of the book is to offer students and scholars a profound understanding of organizational ethnography by presenting concrete examples, reflections, and discussions of how to conduct organizational ethnography and adequately conceptualize the meaning of the word organizing. This is done by analytically combining organizational phenomena (e.g., strategy making, policymaking) with theoretical perspectives (e.g., sensemaking, narratives), and ethnographic methods (e.g., observations, shadowing, interviews). Our ambition is that students and young researchers will use this knowledge as inspiration in their study of organizations.

All of the chapters in this book define organizational ethnography by combining theory, method, and organizational phenomenon. Some chapters emphasize method more strongly than theoretical perspective; other chapters place more emphasis on theoretical perspective compared to method. The book provides examples of the ways in which the combination and use of theory, method, and phenomenon are negotiated in each study. No standards of best practice can be recommended; instead, the book demonstrates a range of organizational ethnographic studies from more theoretical inspired studies to more method-driven studies, all with an emphasis on how researchers are crafting and applying organizational ethnography in research practice and how they are contributing to new understandings of organizing, and organizational phenomena.

In one example of how theory, method, and phenomenon are combined and intertwined, Chapter 3 describes strategy as the organizational phenomenon, using a performative theoretical perspective and interactive ethnographic methods. This enables a discussion of how to understand strategy as ongoing strategy talks and strategy work instead of understanding it as application, results, or effects of strategy.

Combining theoretical perspectives with descriptive and field-oriented points of departure can be viewed as an oxymoron. It can also be seen as a constructive obstruction that enhances a dialogical way of thinking, which makes it possible to revise and remake theoretical assumptions as well as methodological reflections. All of the chapters in this book present examples of how empirical work has led to adjustments and rephrasing of theoretical assumptions, as the empirical world is taken into consideration while doing research. One counterargument is that many organizational concepts, such as organizational context, are already included in theoretical assumptions regarding sensitivity towards empirical explanations. The studies in this book demonstrate how researchers’ struggle to braid empirical findings into theoretical frameworks can create inspiring openings from which both theoretical assumptions and empirical observations are challenged.

The rationale behind the book is that our understanding of organization in organizational ethnography should include a stronger, more thorough, exploration of the meaning of organization for the benefit of research within both organizational studies and ethnographic studies. While there is a mounting literature on organizational theory and an abundance of literature on ethnographic methodology, few studies bring together both areas.

The Organizational Phenomena

This book demonstrates many different organizational phenomena and how organizing can be defined in many different ways when doing organizational ethnography. As Kärreman notes in his comment to Frandsen’s chapter, we need concepts that are attached to findings and methods that provide findings. Findings that only reflect a straight story, hyper-specialized journal debates, or a theoretical concept often reveal very little. They only show the results and not the analytical work behind the results.

Chapter 4 is about internal branding in a call centre of a telecommunication organization. It takes its departure from the employee voice position and explores organizational branding with the use of critical organizational ethnography as a site of struggle over meaning, identity, values, and culture instead of an organization shaped and controlled by its overall corporate brand or strategy.

All the chapters refer to organizing through specific organizational phenomena, not organizations as static, closed entities, but as fragmented networks or clusters of social interaction that occurs in specific times and spaces.

Theoretical Perspectives

Culture and identity are some of the theoretical and historical lenses that have defined the concept of organization in earlier organizational ethnography (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Van Maanen, 1988; Deetz, 1994). Cunliffe (2009) divided organizational ethnographers into three research traditions: realist oriented studies, interpretative studies, and critical studies. Gray’s comments to Mikkelsen’s chapter call for a critical approach to gain richer understandings of the dynamics of everyday work and the combination of different theoretical approaches, such as sensemaking theory with discourse analysis, to enable a deeper exploration of the factors that shape organizational members’ sensemaking. Common for the studies in this book is an understanding of organizing as based on social interaction, how people, together with artefacts, live their lives and make meanings through interaction, talk, and interpretation.

Chapter 5 is about consulting work and combines an antenarrative vocabulary with longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork to study the everyday work stories of consultants as a web of story performances, whereby meanings of work are negotiated.

In their book on organizational ethnography, Ybema, Yannow, Wels, and Kamsteeg described how interpretivist organizational ethnography relates to meaning making, multivocality, and reflexivity (2009, 9). Nobody working within organizational ethnography can argue against this reasoning, or against a research aim of challenging taken-for-granted beliefs. But how are meanings, multiple voices, and reflexivity captured in concrete research processes, and how do theoretical definitions of e.g. practices, discourses, narratives, and sensemaking influence the findings. Nicolini argues in the chapter of Ernst that theory should work in a dynamic tension with the empirical material throughout the research process. He writes further that researchers have to remember the generative and constraining nature of theory in ethnographic research and of the necessity to establish a playful relationship between the two to remind us that concepts should always be used as sensitizing tools.

Chapter 2 explores everyday conflicts in a volunteer humanitarian aid organization. Instead of investing universal conflicts typologies, the use of a sensemaking perspective allows the study to situate conflicts as embedded in social relationships and different frames of sensemaking from management and employee perspectives.

All the chapters relate contributions and findings to the use of theories, methods, and encounters with the field. Using different social science theories enables the investigation of how processes, social dynamics, interactions, and meaning making become central findings. In other words, working with organizational ethnography and different theories creates new ways for understanding organizational phenomena (e.g., strategy or conflict). This adds to and challenges the understandings of these phenomena that have been derived from traditional organizational theory (typology, structure, and internal thinking).

Ethnographic Methods and the Role of the Researcher

The ethnographic methods of organizational ethnography are historically derived from anthropology and have made their landmark in organizational studies. There are many methodological and reflective contributions in the studies of ethnography (Denzin, 2003; Angrosino, 2007; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Davies, 2008) that focus on the methods used and the role of the researcher. The anthropologist has traditionally been the privileged pioneer in developing ethnographic methods, while organizational scholars have combined longer or shorter fieldwork with different theoretical social science perspectives. Today’s scholars of organizational ethnography come from anthropology, psychology, business schools, public administration, political science, historical studies, and many other disciplines. The sharp distinction between organizational and anthropological studies can be considered outdated. Instead, organizational ethnography is a multidisciplinary field of research mixing multiple disciplines in different ways and providing new insights into the field of organizational studies.

Understanding organization from an anthropological perspective has, in classical terms, meant that organizing emerge after staying for a long time at the same place and observing and talking to people at that place (Bate, 1997). Czarniawska described how management and organizing occurs in a net of multiple, fragmented contexts and through a kaleidoscopic multitude of movements (2008, p. 6) that cannot always be captured by long observations of hours or even years in the same place. This is a new condition for scholars of organizational ethnography, who must decide what to follow, where to be, and when to follow.

In Chapter 7, the organizational phenomenon described is patient involvement in quality development. The chapter illustrates how this kind of work is organized in different meetings and occurs in many places and processes. This condition demands of the researcher to understand organizing as complex and multi-sited.

Another strong trend in understanding ethnography from an anthropological tradition is the confessional description of “me as becoming an ethnographer” by taking a journey to explore and interpret organizational life. Gideon Kunda (2013) and John Van Maanen (1988) are two of the contemporary founders of this perspective. Part of the tradition is to define the organization by the stories, dramas, and interpretations of what is going on via different modes of writing—through dairies, autoethnography, and confessional stories. The aim of this approach is to avoid misguided equation with an institutionally enforced commitment to hegemonic theoretical discourses and authoritative answers, while continuing exploration and debate of data, interpretations, and reports (Kunda, 2013, pp. 21–22). In this book, the role of the researcher is discussed by all of the authors, with reflection on the problems and dilemmas of conducting fieldwork. The aim is to present reflections on interactions with the field. In this way, ethnographic work is not presented as a chronological description of the research process, or as continual ‘travel’ experiences, but instead researchers demonstrate all the unseen events in retrospective reflections.

Zandee writes in her commentary to Plotnikov, “Organizational ethnography is well positioned to also engage in research with rather than on actors involved in everyday meaning making actions”. This position accentuates processes of co-creation of kn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• 1 Doing Organizational Ethnography
• Part I Studies of Strategy, Conflict, and Branding in Nonprofit and Private Organizations
• Part II Knowledge Organizations and Studies of Everyday Work
• Part III Public Organization Studies of Management and Collaborative Innovation
• Index