Organizational Ethnography

Daniel Neyland

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781412923439, 9781412923422
• eBook ISBN: 9781446233658
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

?This is an excellent resource for those interested in studying organizations in both formal and informal contexts? - Choice

Taking readers through the practical history of ethnography from its anthropological origins through to its use in a ever-widening variety of organizational, academic and business contexts, this book covers the whole research project process, starting with research design, and dealing with such practical issues as gaining access, note-taking, project management, analysing one?s data and negotiating an exit strategy. It is highly practical and incorporates a range of case studies, illustrating organisational ethnography at work.

This book is an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to plan and conduct their own ethnographic, observational or participant observational research in an organizational context, whatever their level of experience and regardless of whether they are studying a business organization or other types of organization such as schools and hospitals.

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Sensibility One

Ethnographic Strategy

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Introduction

This first sensibility sets out some of the basics that ethnographers frequently take into account prior to entering the field. Like each of the sensibilities in this book, it does not set out a single set of instructions to follow in doing ethnography (as each ethnographic setting and each experience of doing ethnography is different). Instead, I will set out some questions to address, ideas to consider and possible paths to take in entering into ethnographic research, and ground these in the experiences of other ethnographers. First, I will address what is meant by an ethnographic strategy and why a strategic vocabulary is useful for organizational ethnography. Second, I will look at ways ethnographers have conceived strategies for entering into and staying in research settings. Third, some alternative takes on ethnographic strategic content will be presented. Finally, the discussion will close with a look at ethnographic strategies in action, including questions of adapting, scrapping and stubbornly sticking to an ethnographic strategy.

Prior to this analysis of ethnographic strategy, I should point out that I will not deal in detail in this discussion with the question of whether or not to complete a study ethnographically. I am assuming to some extent that readers choosing a book entitled Organizational Ethnography have already demonstrated some interest in ethnography. Briefly stated, there is no simple, single formula for calculating if ethnography is the most appropriate methodology for addressing a particular research question or whether ethnography is any better or worse than another method for addressing particular research objectives. However, readers contemplating ethnography for the first time should be able to decide by the end of this discussion if ethnography is for them.

What is an ethnographic strategy and why should I have one?

In the Introduction to this book I suggested that ethnographies can be exploratory in nature and can involve long periods of immersion in the field of study. This can involve the development of numerous relations with those who ordinarily go about their business in the field of study. It can also involve the ethnographer in a constant move between being at times more of a participant in the field and at other times being more of an observer. This can generate an amount of ethnographic complexity, centred around the ethnographer themselves, who must manage a set of relationships, a research project, observations, being a participant member, trying to figure out what they want to find out as an ethnographer, while also not limiting the exploratory scope of ethnography, sticking to a budget, a deadline and producing something (hopefully insightful, interesting and/or useful) at the end of the ethnography. This sounds like hard work – and it is. However, the complexity of completing an ethnography can be managed through the development of an initial ethnographic strategy.

Prior to entering into a detailed analysis of the likely contents of an ethnographic strategy, it is important to note the kind of strategy I am recommending. The aim of developing an ethnographic strategy is not to build a step-by-step plan to be followed slavishly in subsequent research. The aim is also not to build a hypothesis to be tested in the field (see sensibility two). Instead, an ethnographic strategy involves collating an initial set of ideas that the ethnographer can carry into the field, use to negotiate access, adapt as the research progresses, scrap if necessary or stubbornly stick to at times when it appears the ethnography might be under threat (see ‘Ethnographic strategy in action’, below). An ethnographic strategy can be developed in line with recent management research on questions of strategy.

Much of the management literature on strategy tends to search for a prescriptive means of establishing the ideal method for carrying out strategy. For example, Goodman and Lawless (1994: 288) look at ways in which to build ‘defensible competitive advantage’ and Thompson (1995: 199) suggests ‘successful change needs planning, champions and persistence’. Corrall (1994: 3) argues in the academic arena that ‘Planning helps us to prepare for a better future; it is good management practice and an organisational requirement’. This kind of prescriptive plan of action remains unavailable for ethnographers. Ethnographic research needs to develop in the field, in connection with the experiences the ethnographer has in the setting they are studying. Also, most ethnography tends to have at least an exploratory aspect which would be undermined by a rigidly prescriptive strategy developed prior to entering into the research (see next section).

However, recent developments in management research on strategy can provide us with some more compelling ways to think about doing ethnography. First, recent research treats strategy as an ongoing, inclusive process. In much of this work, prescriptive approaches to strategy are replaced through considerations of strategy as providing opportunities to draw people together around particular focal points for discussion (see, for example, the work of Ackoff, 1981; Pettigrew, 1987; Morton, 1988; Reponen, 1993; A. Smits et al., 1997; Lee, 1999; Orna, 1999; Fjelstad and Haanaes, 2001). Hence Ackoff (1981: 70) argues that strategic processes should involve ‘continuous monitoring, evaluation and modification’, and Reponen (1993: 102) suggests that ‘strategy development is seen more and more as an interactive organisational process’. According to Reponen (1993: 103), the ‘strategy generation process is thus a kind of research project where multiple participants are involved and multiple methods are used’.

Second, the possible futures that strategy might involve are engaged with as problematic possibilities, rather than things which can be definitively planned. Problematizing the future is treated as a way of thinking about strategy (see, for example, Ackoff, 1981; Arfield, 1995; Smits, van der Poel and Ribbers, 1997; Earl, 1999). Earl (1999: 162) suggests that: ‘The future has to be brought back into strategy-making.’

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Exemplar One

R. Harper (1998) Inside the IMF: An Ethnography of Documents, Technology and Action (Academic Press, London)

Harper’s ethnography stems from a tradition of research known as Computer Supported Collaborative (or Co-operative) Work (CSCW). This tradition is technology focused and uses a form of ethnography to shed light on interactions between people and technologies. Harper’s ethnography looks at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and analyses the features which make and maintain the IMF as an organization. Harper particularly concentrates on the life of documents in the organization and the ways in which documents move between particular groups of people within the IMF to help us to understand something of the way those groups operate. Harper suggests that the documents are used and understood differently by different sections of the IMF and this tells us something of the practices of each aspect of the organization. Harper draws on broader ethnographic experience within other organizational settings (such as air-traffic control centres) to help illuminate the particular organizational issues that arose in his study of the IMF.

This ethnography is not solely a study of the organization. To some degree it is also a study for the organization. Harper suggests, however, that making what might be termed practical recommendations based on ethnography raises a range of questions regarding precisely how an ethnography will be carried out, how it will be written up, how an analysis based on the ethnography will be produced and what kinds of recommendations could be made from the analysis. This summary of Harper’s ethnography will begin by looking at how the ethnographer went about designing a research strategy and the questions involved in producing practical recommendations. It will then go on to investigate what organizational ethnographers can find of use in Harper’s study.

Designing an ethnographic strategy

Harper is clear on the principle behind his ethnographic work: ‘My concern in this book is to report on how ethnographic findings can be used to improve the design of organisational work practice and supporting technologies’ (1998: ix). Initially, however, Harper points to the problems of defining what ethnography might mean and to whom. For some within the IMF ethnography was described as the ‘E word’: a mythical method by which (what appeared to be) just looking at what people did was transformed into ‘a marvellous new technique that will revolutionise computer systems’ (1998: 49).

For Harper, the key to navigating the ethnography of the organization and translating its findings into something useful for the organization lay in establishing a ‘field work programme’ (1998: 50). Such a programme would involve ‘the vexing and obdurate problem of how to make ethnography robust enough as a method to prise open the kinds of issues made salient by design type concerns’ (1998: 9).

Harper suggests that what makes a good ethnography stand out are the ways in which the ethnographer manages to evoke the particular situation that has formed the focus of study and intertwine this evocation with insights from other ethnographies, making available a variety of forms of argumentation and analysis. Although this might appear somewhat unspecific, it is designed as a counter to ethnographic textbooks which sometimes suggest ‘recipe book’ type approaches to ethnography (as if the methodology were entirely unproblematic and easily mobilized from one setting to another). There is a problem of ethnography being indefinable on the one hand and too rigidly defined on the other. In order to avoid such difficulties Harper develops a programme (or what I term a ‘strategy’) which establishes that not just anything gets to count as ethnography. Harper’s programme/strategy has three principle elements.

First, he sets out to follow ‘the career of information’ (1998: 68) through an organization. He focuses on a particular form of information to study and tracks this information through its various moves within an organization, and the various interpretations and uses made of the information. This provides a set of ethnographic material from which to build arguments.

Second, Harper focuses as an ethnographer on going through ritual inductions within the organization. A ritual induction is an ethnographic moment through which the ethnographer is made aware of some features of the organization that are taken as important by members of the organization. Although this varies widely between organizations, a ritual induction is an event noted by members of the organization as a necessary thing to go through to understand something of the organization. The first part of the programme provides material for judging the second part of the programme.

Third, Harper suggests that ethnographers should develop, analyse and further develop reasons for doing observations and interviews in the field. ‘Reasons’ here are taken fairly broadly to cover such matters as what kinds of thing the ethnographer might want to find out about an organization (for example, the ethnographer might develop an interest in how a seemingly diverse organization manages to hold together as a coherent unit). These ‘reasons’ may develop as the research progresses and through consideration of the first two parts of the programme.

What does Harper’s programme tell us about organizational ethnographic strategies? First, it confirms the notion that an ethnographic strategy should not be fixed and rigid. Despite using the title ‘programme’, it is by no means a straightforward ethnographic recipe to apply to all settings. Instead, Harper’s approach provides a fluid way of thinking about the organization, of thinking through what might count as an adequate ethnography and, in Harper’s case, of considering what might count as useful.

Second, the programme provides three areas that ethnographers could take into account in thinking about engaging with an organization. These areas offer a starting point which each ethnographer can consider in terms of its relevance for their own ethnographic research. Considering (1) the career of organizational information, (2) ritual inductions and (3) what the ethnographer wants to find out could all be useful points to orient an ethnographic study. Thus, Harper’s programme provides for three ethnographic starting points which can be utilized and moulded for a particular research project.

Third, Harper’s programme gives us an opportunity to begin thinking about ethnography for, and not just of, an organization. What are the advantages of being able to set out an ethnographic programme or strategy? How might this help us negotiate access to an organization? Would an organization look more favourably on research which appears to have a clear programme of work, a clear rationale, and a reasonably clear set of questions? On the other hand, would this risk limiting the exploratory scope of the research? These are questions which cannot be answered in general, but need consideration in relation to specific research experiences (they will be taken further under sensibilities three and four).

Aside from this focus on ethnographic strategy, Harper’s work provides several stimulating insights for organizational ethnographers to take into consideration.

Why has ethnography risen to prominence in organizational IT settings?

Harper identifies three trends which can help account for the recent rise in interest in ethnographic research in organizational IT settings. The first of these trends has been the development of research into social issues involved with computing from sociology and anthropology, and from those involved with computers themselves. This melding of social science and IT, Harper suggests, has led to an increasing number of researchers and research outputs on social and organizational aspects of computing. The second trend, developing from the first, has involved the production of a ‘set of seminal publications that were a kind of clarion call for a new interpretive, loosely sociological/anthropological approach to requirements capture’ (1998: 52). In place of more rigid requirements capture, which might not look far beyond narrowly construed technical issues, these newly emerging publications opened up the question of requirements more broadly. The third trend involved organizations themselves taking a greater interest in ways of getting more from technology or in ways of losing less between the marketed promise of technologies and their introduction into the organization. Harper suggests that the willingness of the IMF to support his own research is further evidence of this attitudinal shift.

Ethnography doesn’t just have to be about people

Although this may seem an obvious point, given the previous discussion in this exemplar about organizational documents, it is worth drawing out. Ethnographic research can be all too easily restricted by assumptions that it is focused on culture or cultural variables or social issues which can often be taken to mean people not things or technology. Of course an ethnographic study cannot draw such stark boundaries. From the traditions of anthropology we find tribes studied as people, but also through their material artefacts and the ceremonial significance of things. In the same way, most modern organizations would make little sense if they were studied without the range of things, technologies, processes, documents and so on upon which the organization’s day-to-day operation is focused. What Harper’s study does, which is particularly useful for organizational ethnographers, is to centre on the things (in this case, documents) rather than people. It is through the movement and work done to make sense of the documents that we find out something about the people. This shifting of focus opens up a range of options for organizational ethnographers, who could consider centring their ethnographic strategy around, for example, technology, documents or processes; they need not limit their central focus to people.

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Treating strategy as an ongoing process is a useful way of thinking about ethnography as a method of drawing together multiple participants and views and co-ordinating those people and views. Problematizing the future avoids tying the ethnography into a prescriptive process which might carry with it assumptions that the ideas established at the start of research are the ideas which should define the research. Holding on to the possibility that the future is not always clear, that research develops in the field and that outcomes for research cannot be determined prior to doing the research, means the direction of the research is always available for further consideration.

Although I have presented here two aspects of thinking about ethnographic strategy (strategy as an ongoing process and treating the future as problematic), it should not be assumed that these two areas are straightforward. The ongoing process of ethnographic strategy is (I think) most usefully conceptualized as connecting multiple opportunities to dispute, redirect and reconstitute the direction of study. The ‘process’ of ethnographic strategy is not a smooth, linear progress towards a fixed goal, but is the (sometimes multiply sited) location for ongoing disputation, the purpose of which is to allow for multiple reconstructions of the research to exist in a reasonably coherent, connected form (for more on improvisation and ethnography, see Humphreys, Brown and Hatch, 2003).

I have called the ethnographic strategy a sensibility because it provides a basis for ethnographers to think about what it is they are doing while they are doing research, to reflect on the principles they carry into the research and because it gives a basis for ethnographers to move back and forth between the everyday practicalities of their research and the general direction in which they would like the research to move. Such movement also involves constant consideration of the appropriateness of the direction in which the research is going and constant questions regarding the possibility of taking an ethnographic study in a new direction. Just as ethnographers can be thoroughly sceptical about the field of study (holding everything up for ethnographic inspection and a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Sensibility One: Ethnographic Strategy
• 2 Sensibility Two: Questions of Knowledge
• 3 Sensibility Three: Locations and Access
• 4 Sensibility Four: Field Relations
• 5 Sensibility Five: Ethnographic Time
• 6 Sensibility Six: Observing and Participating
• 7 Sensibility Seven: Supplementing
• 8 Sensibility Eight: Writing
• 9 Sensibility Nine: Ethics
• 10 Sensibility Ten: Exits
• Conclusion: The Utility of Organizational Ethnography
• References
• Index