Organizational Ethnography 2020950873, 9781786438102, 9781786438096

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Organizational Ethnography

Monika Kostera and Nancy Harding wish to dedicate this book to all the students we have worked with over the years, at undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral level. We have learned an enormous amount from the discussions and explorations we have had with each cohort of students, who come from all over the world to share their knowledge and their curiosity about the world with us. We hope we have given something back in return.

Organizational Ethnography Edited by

Monika Kostera Professor, University of Warsaw, Poland, and Södertörn University, Sweden

Nancy Harding Professor of Human Resource Management, University of Bath School of Management, UK

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Monika Kostera and Nancy Harding 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950873 This book is available electronically in the Business subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781786438102

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ISBN 978 1 78643 809 6 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78643 810 2 (eBook)

Contents List of contributorsvii 1

Doing ethnography: introduction Nancy Harding and Monika Kostera

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Notes and poetry from the field: a fieldwork diary Monika Kostera and Joanna Średnicka

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Observation: on the importance of being there Monika Kostera

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How to shadow organizing Barbara Czarniawska

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5 Autoethnography Mark Learmonth and Mike Humphreys

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To look at the world from the Other’s point of view: interview Monika Kostera and Anna Modzelewska

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Inter-ethnography: from individual beings to collective becoming David Calås, Katarina Ellborg, Daniel Ericsson, Elin Esperi Hallgren and Alina Husung

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Media analysis: on the importance of everyday images Alexia Panayiotou

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Reading and interpreting social media: exploring positive emotional expressions in organizing Noomi Weinryb, Nils Gustafsson and Cecilia Gullberg

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Autoethnography through the folk tale lens Anna Zueva

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Ethnography meets storytelling: a marriage made in heaven Hamid Foroughi

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In search of openness to the ethnographic analysis of work: early organisational anthropology and contemporary organisational theorising Paweł Krzyworzeka and Hugo Gaggiotti

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Learning to see the wood through the trees as a PhD ethnographer 200 Sarah Bloomfield

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Contributors Sarah Bloomfield is an Associate Lecturer at The Open University and a doctoral student at the University of Bath. Before her academic career Sarah worked as a marketer, including in a Marketing Director role for a major FMCG company. Sarah’s ethnographic doctoral study explores the lived experience of organizational paradox. Her writing focuses on organizational level phenomena including leadership and values. David Calås is a doctoral student in Business Administration at Linnaeus University. His research interests are entrepreneurship and practices of organization creation within the field of arts and culture, focusing on the emergence of private art museums. Barbara Czarniawska is a Senior Professor of Management Studies at Gothenburg Research Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She takes a feminist and processual perspective on organizing, recently exploring connections between popular culture and practice of management, and the robotization of work. She is interested in techniques of fieldwork and in the application of narratology to social science studies. Katarina Ellborg is a doctoral student in Business Administration at Linnaeus University. She works in the area of entrepreneurship educational and uses visual material and a phenomenographic didactic approach to explore students’ understanding of entrepreneurship. Daniel Ericsson received his PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics and is currently Professor in Organization and Leadership at Linnaeus University. He is particularly interested in understanding how creativity is constructed and organized in society, as well as the unforeseen consequences of creativity. In his latest project he studies how entrepreneurship is enacted in the cultural sector. Hamid Foroughi is Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Portsmouth. His PhD thesis (Henley Business School) received the best critical dissertation award at the 2015 Academy of Management. He is interested in different ways in which collective memories influence organizational behaviour. His recent publications examining organizational change, memory and identity have featured in Organization Studies. His work has also featured in vii

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The Conversation, where he writes on topical issues such as post-truth politics and leadership of marginalized communities and politics of climate change. He has recently co-edited – with Yiannis Gabriel and Marianna Fotaki – a special issue of the journal Leadership on ‘leadership in a post-truth era’. Hugo Gaggiotti is Associate Professor at the University of the West of England. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Barcelona and a PhD in Management from University Ramon Llull-ESADE. He writes about displacement, transfiguration and liminality in organizations. He is currently leading a Leverhulme-British Academy research project on cultural ‘bubbles’ and ‘ghettos’ of professionals living in Europe. Cecilia Gullberg has a PhD in Business Studies from Uppsala University and is a Senior Lecturer in Business Administration at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research lies at the intersection between accounting, organization and digitization and concerns how roles, relationships and processes of transparency and accountability change as new digital tools enter organizations. Nils Gustafsson has a PhD in Political Science from Lund University, and is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Communication at Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses on political aspects of social media, including political participation, political activism, political communication and democracy. Elin Esperi Hallgren is a doctoral student in Business Administration at Linnaeus University. Working in the area of management accounting and control, her research interests are themed around accountability, collaboration and organization in the public sector. Nancy Harding is Professor of Human Resource Management at the University of Bath School of Management. She despairs at the reduction of people to ‘human resources’, is critical of ‘management’, but quite likes being a professor. She has published papers in many of the expected academic journals, and also two sole-authored and three joint-authored books. She aspires to write many more books. Mike Humphreys is Professor of Organization Studies at Durham University Business School, UK. He spent the first 11 years of his career in further education then 16 years as a teacher trainer working on technical education projects in Egypt, Turkey, El Salvador and Tanzania. Prior to Durham he worked at Nottingham University Business School. Alina Husung is a doctoral student in Business Administration at Linnaeus University, with a focus on social entrepreneurship and social change. Her dissertation concerns entrepreneurial organization and collaboration projects

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between grassroots initiatives and cross-border organizations within the context of sustainable development projects in Africa. Monika Kostera is Professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and at Södertörn University, Sweden. She is the author, co-author and editor of over 40 books in Polish and English; and of numerous articles. Her current research interests include organizational imagination, disalienated work and organizational ethnography. She is member of Erbacce Poets’ Cooperative. Paweł Krzyworzeka is an Associate Professor at the Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS) Department, at Kozminski University in Poland. He writes about management control, emotions in organization, and organizational ethnography. In his free time he is gardening in his permaculture garden. Mark Learmonth is Professor of Organization Studies at Durham University Business School, UK. He spent the first 17 years of his career as a hospital administrator and prior to Durham worked at the Universities of York and Nottingham. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Human Relations. Anna Modzelewska with a PhD in Management Science, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Social Communication of the Jagiellonian University. She is a graduate of journalism and social communication at the Jagiellonian University. Her scientific interests focus on issues of organizational structures and leadership, as well as the functioning and social impact of the media. Alexia Panayiotou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business and Public Administration at the University of Cyprus. Her research interests include critical pedagogy; gender and work; feminist analysis of organizations; the representation of management and organizations in popular culture; organizational space and symbolism; organizational paradoxes; visuality; and organizational narratives. Her work has appeared, amongst others, in the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Management Learning, Strategic Organization, Organization, and the Journal of Management Inquiry. Her article ‘Paradoxes of Change’ (co-authored with G. Kassinis) received the 2016 Best Paper Award in the Academy of Management Organizational Development and Change division and was a finalist for the all-Academy Dexter Award. Dr Panayiotou is currently an Associate Editor of Management Learning. She has also served as Associate Editor of the European Management Review and has been on the Editorial Boards of the British Journal of Management and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

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Joanna Średnicka is a sociologist and co-founder of Pracownia Gier Szkoleniowych (a training games design studio). She studied in Poland and France, and for a while in Switzerland. She specializes in analysis of change and HR processes in organizations. Joanna runs workshops based on games and simulations; with one foot in academia (working on a doctorate in management), occasionally lecturing at the Warsaw School of Economics, University of Warsaw, Collegium Civitas, Technology University Delft. Noomi Weinryb has a PhD in Business Studies from Uppsala University, and is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Public Administration, Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research is centred on issues of organizing and accountability, often in the interface between civil society and public administration. Noomi works mainly with qualitative interviews and textual analysis of social media interactions. Anna Zueva is a Senior Lecturer in Management at the Huddersfield Business School in West Yorkshire, UK. After completing her doctorate at the University of Manchester in 2005, she has held lectureship positions in various UK universities. She has authored publications on ethics, corporate social responsibility, leadership and cultural change in organizations. Her teaching focuses on business ethics, strategy and research methods. She has a life-long love of myths and fairy tales that she brings into her study of organizations and organizing.

1. Doing ethnography: introduction Nancy Harding and Monika Kostera The derivation of the word ‘ethnography’ is from the Greek ‘ethnos’, meaning ‘a people’ and ‘graphy’, meaning writing, so ethnography literally refers to writing about people. This omits ethnography’s most important aspect: it is an active, agentive practice – the ethnographer ‘goes into the field’, spends a more or less extended time living in and studying a community, and returns to their desk to write up their experiences, deriving meaning and insights as they do so. But, curiously, there is no verb ‘to ethnograph’. Many years ago, before Google and the internet, one of us was told that ethnography ‘is what anthropologists do’. That begged such questions as: what is an anthropologist and in what ways are they distinguished from sociologists, what exactly do they do, and if ethnography is what anthropologists do, what do ethnographers do? The answer she was given was, firstly, that anthropologists spend more time in the field than sociologists, leading to the answerless question: where is the dividing line between anthropological time and sociological time? Secondly, she was told that anthropologists just ‘go into the field’, become part of the community they are studying, but remain apart from it in order to study it. That took her round in circles – ethnography is what anthropologists do – but with the added conundrum of how to remain both immersed within and separate from ‘the field’. Management scholars have the additional problem of distinguishing between observation studies (participant and non-participant) and ethnography: the dividing lines between them appear very vague. Small wonder then that what Nigel Barley (1986) calls ‘the innocent anthropologist’ may be wracked with uncertainty when s/he ‘enters the field’. Sarah Gilmore describes how on the first day of her ethnographic studies of a major league football club in the UK, she had no idea of what she was supposed to do, except that she had to look as if she knew what she was doing (in Gilmore and Harding, forthcoming). Another Sarah, Bloomfield (in this volume) had no such qualms: the ethnographic elements of her study were an adventure that gave her a privileged peep behind a façade that few people can cross. The aim of this volume is to prepare you, the reader, to ‘enter the field’ with as much confidence as Sarah Bloomfield (Chapter 13). To do this, we will ask you to treat each chapter as an action-learning project. This Introduction provides the guidelines, roadmap and template for this. It summarizes each 1

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chapter’s insights and asks you to experience them viscerally, in the body, rather than mentally, in the mind and the imagination. It is like learning to swim or ride a bike: reading books on how to develop these skills allows the reader to perform a perfect breaststroke on their bed, or to move their legs in perfect rotation. In reality, nature intervenes in uncomfortable ways: and one finds oneself nearly drowning, or the bicycle falls over and the erstwhile rider finds herself sitting in a bed of stinging nettles.

FIRST STEPS IN ETHNOGRAPHY So the first thing we will ask you to do, before you read any further is: go a place with which you are familiar. Take a notebook with you – a paper notebook will be better than an electronic one, because you will need to do more than write words. It could be useful to invest in a good quality notebook, for reasons that will become clear later. The place you go to could be a café, a gym, a sports ground, a shop, a university building, a lecture theatre, an art gallery or museum, etc. It will be useful to choose somewhere where you can return several times to carry out the exercises that accompany each chapter in this book – over time you can accumulate a lot of data that could build up into an ethnographic study. Perhaps you go there often? But now, rather than carrying out the usual, taken-for-granted activities that require little conscious thought in their achievement, observe every movement and interaction. Imagine you have arrived from another planet and know nothing whatsoever about Planet Earth. Or perhaps imagine you are someone from the sixteenth century who has somehow been plummeted into the twenty-first century. What is the environment in which you find yourself? Look at it with the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about this world. Note every detail in as much depth as possible. You should find you are seeing things you have never consciously seen before. Why do people queue? What distinguishes people in the queue who are obviously known to each other from those who are strangers to each other? What makes this physical space into the café, the recreation area, the lecture theatre, or wherever it is, you have found yourself (why isn’t a lecture theatre with its terraced rows of seats and big screen at the front a cinema)? How do people interact? Do they? (What is a person – how do you distinguish between a person walking with a dog and a dog walking with a person?) What are the rules governing how you behave in this place? You may never have thought about this before, so it may take some thought. What power operates to ensure people follow those rules? Again, this is something you may never have thought about before. From our perspective as lecturers, we are always, at the start of each academic year, amazed at how

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quickly new students grasp the unspoken rules of entering a lecture theatre, finding a seat, and not speaking. Make lots of notes. Record all your impressions. Sketches and drawings can be useful, as can photographs if you are in a place where taking photos is allowed. Sometimes everyday objects, such as receipts or paper cups, can be taken back to your desk as ‘an object from the field’. Before going any further: think about what you observed. Through seeing it as if through the eyes of a total stranger, did you see it in new and strange ways? What particularly impressed you about looking at that piece of the world in this way? Welcome back. In what follows, we assume you will read the relevant chapter before undertaking the suggested exercise.

CHAPTER 2: MONIKA KOSTERA AND JOANNA ŚREDNICKA ON TAKING NOTES We asked you to make lots of notes as you undertook that first exercise. Monika Kostera and Joanna Średnicka’s chapter, on ‘Notes and poetry from the field: a fieldwork diary’, explains why. You were, in fact, making a fieldwork diary. Look at those first notes you made now: do you see them now as something that bridges two worlds – the world you observed, where you were a visitor, and the world you are embedded in as you read this book? Can you see all those various impressions you have brought back, and perhaps odd pieces of things you have gathered, as a ‘collage’ that sketches a complex image of the social reality you were studying? These notes are fundamental to ethnography and will help you make sense of (develop a theory about) the social world you will be studying. Kostera and Średnicka cite James Clifford’s (1990) discussion of note taking. It has three phases: inscription (what is written during the fieldwork), transcription (as soon as possible after the observation describing the experiences of the fieldwork as honestly and faithfully as possible), and description (turning all those scattered notes and observations into a ‘coherent representation’ of what you studied). This next exercise involves the second two of these activities. It builds on that first observation you carried out. Firstly, ‘transcribe’ your field notes, that is, use your notes and observations and write in as much detail as you can an in-depth account of each moment you captured in those brief notes and observations. Write down as much as you can remember, of everything you can remember – actions, participants, experiences, observations, your

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own thoughts and feelings, etc., etc. etc. When you have done this, move to the next stage. You need to organize those chaotic moments into a sensible description that brings the scene alive for a reader. A good ethnographer is an excellent storyteller. Read Kostera and Średnicka’s chapter for lots of hints about how to do this. By doing this exercise you will not only start to develop a fundamental skill of ethnography, you should also reflect upon yourself. Did you notice you have some skills you had not known you possessed? Are there others you need to develop? Were there incidents where you should have been more alert, or some where you needed to register more details in your field diary so that you had a better memory of important details?

CHAPTER 3: MONIKA KOSTERA ON OBSERVATION This chapter emphasizes ‘the importance of being there’. It will take you more deeply into the fundamental skills of ethnography, because it is about ‘observation’, which is perhaps the most ethnographic method within ethnography. Kostera identifies two central kinds: non-participant and participant observation. In the first the ethnographer observes, from the side-lines; in the second the ethnographer takes part in the activities of the organization being observed. Non-participant observation is a conscious attempt to experience the here and now, before the words are allowed to come into the learning process and dominate it. Categorizations and judgements are to be avoided. It requires recording impressions and not imposing meaning on them. This is pure description of a ‘third dimension’, of acts/activities/objects that have not (yet) been interpreted, no labels applied, but are pure ‘being’ – interpretation comes later. Participant observation, on the other hand, involves becoming an ‘insider’ in the place one is studying. When this works well, the ethnographer understands the tacit knowledge that informs how things get done in that place. Direct observation is somewhere between the two, because the ethnographer is both inside and outside the culture being observed. What is fundamental to all three approaches is that the researcher is actively ‘there’, in the midst of the organization being observed. In the first exercise above you were asked, as you will recognize after reading this chapter by Kostera, to practise doing a non-participant observation. We asked you to do things to disrupt the meaning you normally impose on what you observed. For example, if you went to a café you would have been bemused at why some people stand one side of what is called in English a ‘counter’ (although it does not count – what a curious language) while others stood on the other. Those on one side passed things to those on the other

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side, who walked away with them. Now it is time to practise doing a participant observation. Choose an activity in a venue where you can actively participate in something. It could be a workout at your gym, going to a nightclub, having a coffee in a favourite café, taking your dog for a walk, going to a lecture, taking part in a regular meeting, going to the cinema. When you have chosen which activity to study, go along and do whatever other people there are doing. But this time do it with all your senses hyper-aware to what is going on. In particular, focus on the forms of tacit knowledge necessary to manoeuvre one’s way through that place and take part in its activities. These may be things you hardly noticed before: exploring it with every nerve alert to what is going on means you should observe things you hardly noticed previously. For example, if you watch students entering a lecture theatre you will see how order is quickly achieved as people find their seats, usually avoiding the front rows. They sit down and usually do not say very much at all until the lecture has ended when they all stand up and leave the room. What tacit knowledge is operating in such a mundane activity as going to a lecture? How is that knowledge gained, and what sustains the orderly entry into and exit from a lecture theatre (or cinema, or football game)? Observe yourself taking part in the activities. This can be difficult – you almost have to stand outside yourself, but it helps you get better insights into that tacit knowledge. (E.g. what is going through your mind as you find a seat, or buy something?) Remember to take your notebook and to make lots of notes. Afterwards, think about the difference between being a non-participant and a participant observer? Were there any advantages to one or the other? Or do you need to do more practice before you can decide?

CHAPTER 4: BARBARA CZARNIAWSKA ON SHADOWING This chapter, on ‘How to shadow organizing’, concerns the research method that involves following someone or something around (with their permission) and observing everything they or it does, as they do it, over the course of a working day, week, month or longer. One is as close to the shadowee as their shadows. This is an invaluable research method, illuminating what goes on from moment-to-moment in the complex messiness of the everyday organizational quotidian in ways that cannot be grasped in interviews (not least because people are often not aware of what they physically do all day). Czarniawska describes shadowing as a technique (the activity we have just described) but also an attitude. It is an attitude because it requires the ability to

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stand outside one’s self, so to speak, to observe one’s self observing the person one is observing, while at the same time retaining a close connection with the person being shadowed and, at the same time, understanding one’s own self. Shadowing is not separate and distinct from other ethnographic practices: distinctions blur at the edges and the shadower may find themselves sometimes acting as a participant observer. Czarniawska discusses the emotional and physical effects on the researcher of ‘shadowing’. It can be physically exhausting and, because one spends one’s time as an outsider who must blend into the background but at the same time may be an object of other’s curiosity, it can be emotionally demanding. Crucially, emotional costs may be incurred through giving up one’s professional identity as one ‘role-plays’. She does not define what she means by role-playing whilst shadowing someone – that is something we will ask you to do when you have your first attempt at shadowing. It is time for you to experiment with what it is like to use shadowing techniques. The first thing to do is to find someone who will give you permission to shadow them. For this first exercise convenience, comfort and security must be top priorities. Perhaps a fellow student will agree to be shadowed, or a PhD supervisor, or a relative or friend. What activity will you observe them in doing? Czarniawska cites Marianella Sclavi (1989) who shadowed a neighbour’s daughter walking to school every day. It could be that you could shadow a friend or relative as they go shopping, or to a sports event, or to the gym, or spend a day at school or university. When you have identified someone who agrees to be shadowed, you need to make the practical arrangements. You will need your field diary and set of pens or pencils, a way of recording interviews (you will need to find appropriate times to interview the shadowee, to find out their thoughts and feelings perhaps). Perhaps a camera may be useful. You need to agree a place to meet, and a plan of action for the shadowing event. You will need to be able to put yourself in the position of an outsider, able to observe everything (again, as if you had arrived from Mars and knew nothing about Planet Earth so that everything must be regarded as strange and needing explanation). At the same time you need to be able to maintain a rapport with the person you are shadowing. Make lots of field notes, but do this unobtrusively. What do you find works best for you? Can you make a recording on your phone, or is it better to make hand-written notes. Do you need to escape to the bathroom to make notes in your field diary? How do you cope with boredom, or tiredness? In other words, you will be role-playing the role of the researcher. What are the effects on you of carrying out this role-play? How does it influence what you see, how you

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ask questions, what you remember? In what ways does it differ from the time when you just observed, without shadowing? Good luck! Enjoy your period of shadowing someone. Make lots of field notes.

CHAPTER 5: MARK LEARMONTH AND MIKE HUMPHREYS ON AUTOETHNOGRAPHY If ‘graphy’ concerns writing, about ‘ethnos’, people, then ‘auto’ refers to writing about the self as one of the people, or rather the person that is doing the activity that is being studied. Learmonth and Humphreys identify two dominant strands of ethnography in management and organization studies. The first of these, exemplified in the work of Ellis and Bochner, aims to write first-person accounts that eschew social scientific conventions altogether. Their aim is to tell stories that evoke insights, so they avoid analysis or interpretation of the accounts they tell. Learmonth and Humphreys, while valuing some aspects of that approach, reject it, in part because of the political dangers of refusing to abstract and explain. They value an approach they call ‘autoethnographic vignettes’, that include vignettes from the autoethnographer’s own experience. These vignettes, once identified and written, are then analysed in ways similar to ethnographic accounts – in-depth and so as to develop insights about issues relevant to organization studies. These could be particularly relevant in organizational research where many researchers have previous experience of working in non-academic organizations. There are other ways of carrying out autoethnographic studies. In some well-accepted traditions, researchers enter into the area of work they wish to study, become one of the workers, and study themselves as a worker in that domain. The next exercise does not require you to leave your desk. Instead, follow Learmonth and Humphreys in identifying an aspect of your own experience that may give insights into an area that may otherwise be difficult to study. Write a short account – a ‘vignette’ of that experience. When you have written something that satisfies you, it is time to analyse that experience. For now, you may wish to limit your explorations to analysing how power influenced what went on in the episode you are recounting. Or perhaps this was an incident in which you had to control your emotions, or when your emotions influenced how you responded. Analyse your vignette to explore what are the hidden aspects of it that give new insights into that and similar situations. What was the advantage of using your own experiences, analysing them in great depth, rather than using someone else’s account of a similar experience? Answers to this question should illuminate if autoethnography

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could be a useful method to have available in your methodological tool-box.

CHAPTER 6: MONIKA KOSTERA AND ANNA MODZELEWSKA ON INTERVIEWS Ethnography does not involve just observing – it involves a great deal of talk and discussion. Research interviews are a major resource in the ethnographer’s toolkit, as Kostera and Modzelewska discuss. The research interview allows us to develop better understanding of how organizations are perceived from the perspective of their members. They involve the researcher asking respondents or interlocutors a series of questions, or sometimes no more than prompts, to encourage respondents to describe their world to us. A good qualitative interview will not follow any prescribed course: it will not always seem to be answering the researcher’s questions. Rather, as Kostera and Modzelewska emphasize, it is a conversation that goes off in all directions, its direction influenced by what is important to the respondents. It requires careful and attentive listening on the part of the researcher, and a desire to let the participant guide the conversation rather than insist that they answer a set of pre-established questions. The interviewer should be alert to the language used by the interviewee – sometimes (perhaps often) we can impose our own meaning on what we hear, and so miss insights that could be vital to our research. A good interviewer is also alert to the language they use themselves: it is very easy to start using academic jargon that is not understood by the people with whom we are conversing, and that would destroy the trust that Kostera and Modzelewska argue is vital to good interviewing practices. Interviews in an ethnographic study differ from interviews in other forms of qualitative fieldwork in that they may be carried out many times with the same person, both formally (through an arrangement for an interview) and informally (in short conversations as opportunities arise during the fieldwork. Kostera and Modzelewska’s chapter provides lots of advice, hints and tips about carrying out interviews. However, there is only one way of learning how to develop good interview techniques and that is: practise doing interviews. It is time to start learning how to carry out interviews. The first thing you might wish to do is to summarize the advice in Kostera and Modzelewska’s chapter. The next thing to do is ask yourself: who can I interview who will be friendly and supportive, and will give me useful feedback about how to improve my interviewing style? In other words, do not identify potential interviewees for a study you wish to carry out and go and interview them. First you need to develop some skills through interviewing friends and relatives who will be kind and gentle with you. So, start with a vague idea for

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a study so you have a guide of what to do. It could be as simple as: what is it like to work in that job? Then identify a good friend, a relative or a fellow student or researcher and ask them if they will agree to be interviewed. When you have found someone who says ‘yes’, you will need to compile a list of topics to explore in the interview. Perhaps this can take the form of a semi-structured questionnaire, when you have a short list of questions but you add to them as the interview progresses. (E.g. can you tell me more about that? Or: can you give an example of a specific incident when something like that happened?) Arrange a time and place for meeting the interviewee, check that your recording equipment will work, and off you go, to do your first interview. Afterwards, reflect on how it went. What did you learn from this first experiment at carrying out an ethnographic interview?

CHAPTER 7: DAVID CALÅS, KATARINA ELLBORG, DANIEL ERICSSON, ELIN ESPERI HALLGREN AND ALINA HUSUNG ON RECOGNIZING THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVE Calås et al.’s chapter is written by a collective of people who formally could be described as doctoral students and lecturers. When you read this chapter, you will understand why we advocate your carrying out an exercise to accompany your reading of each chapter in this book. They explore a new perspective on ethnography that they call ‘inter-ethnography’. It emerges out of their critique of the dominant perspective of ethnography as a pursuit in which an unchanging individual gazes at a static and unchanging ‘field’. That is, there is a subject, the ethnographer, who studies her object, the ‘field’. Instead they argue in favour of inter-ethnography as collective becoming, and they aim to exemplify this through the five of them writing the text together. If you have been introduced to poststructural theory as a part of your doctoral studies or through participating in a course on research philosophy, you may find these arguments familiar. However, the text is largely written as a series of distinct voices. Although they show that each of us changes over a period of time, such as over a course in which we learn research methods, they do not explore how each person can themselves take up different identities and/or perspectives as they move through the day. Our next exercise therefore will focus on perspective and how the perspective we adopt as ethnographers can (literally) influence what we see, and what we decide is important. We are writing this chapter during the Covid-19 pandemic so we hope that by the time you read this the situation will have moved on sufficiently for

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you to undertake this exercise. It requires you going out ‘into the field’ again. Go to somewhere where you like to ‘people watch’. Ideally it might be a café where you can sit with a coffee to watch the world go by. It may be a park bench, a spot of grass in a city park – anywhere where you can watch the world go by. Take your seat and watch everything you can see. Make notes, perhaps make some drawings, and if you will not be intruding on people’s privacy some photos may be useful. Who can you see, what are they doing? After you have sat and observed for 25 minutes or so write a brief account of what you observed: what struck you as an ethnographer as most interesting? After you have written this brief account CHANGE YOUR POSITION. Move to the chair opposite where you have been sitting, or to a bench facing in the other direction, or shift around on your spot of grass so that you see the other side of the park. Now what do you see? Again, make notes, drawings, or whatever helps you develop a rich picture of the scene you are observing. After 25 minutes or so again make a note about what struck you as you observed the world go by from this alternative perspective. Then compare and contrast what you saw, heard, thought, felt, experienced, etc. when facing one direction when compared with the other. You will probably notice that by simply changing the direction of your gaze you saw two subtly different slices of the world passing by. Now – consider this. If you have seen a different world just by changing the direction of your gaze, what does this tell you about the ways in which you ‘frame’ what you see? (E.g. how do your own world-views or the things that particularly interest you alert you to some things and not others, and to interpret things in one way rather than another way?) And what might you miss, as an ethnographer, in only looking in one (physical or metaphorical) direction?

CHAPTER 8: ALEXIA PANAYIOTOU: MEDIA ANALYSIS So far, we have asked you to go ‘out’ into ‘the field’. There are newer forms of ethnography that have developed to allow studies of the worlds opened up by the internet. Alexia Panayiotou’s chapter on ‘Media analysis: on the importance of everyday images’ shows that sometimes you do not need to go ‘out’ into the field, because the field is there, in our living rooms and bedrooms, at our desks – anywhere where we experience media images. She emphasizes the importance of exploring ‘the ordinary’, because it is in ‘the ordinary’ that we can discover the taken-for-granted ‘extra-ordinary’. More practically, she dis-

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tinguishes between media ‘on’ organizations and media ‘from’ organizations. In the first we can enter into an organization ‘as if’ we were actually physically there. Films, novels, etc., allow us to do that. In contrast, media ‘from’ organizations include corporate websites or annual reports – these should be a vital part of the empirical materials in any study of a specific organization. Panayiotou argues that these various images allow us to discover the hidden stories about organizations, the sides of themselves they do not wish the public to see. They also help reveal the unvoiced theories and rationalities that may influence how we exist in organizations in the contemporary era. Filmmakers and novelists, web-writers and cartoonists, journalists and public relations staff may, wittingly and unwittingly, reveal more about organizations than can be seen when immersed in ‘the field’, or they can help us understand aspects of organizational life, its social norms and rules, that are otherwise just out of sight, hidden, but highly influential. She cites examples of how researchers have used various forms of media to analyse power, gender dynamics, norms and attitudes that may otherwise have been impossible to study. Panayiotou does not provide a ‘how to’ guide to analysis. This is perhaps because we sense our way through media analysis before we can identify what it is we may be seeing, and once we know what we are seeing we can switch to more traditional forms of data analysis. This leads to our next exercise, one we hope you particularly enjoy. Choose a film, television programme, a song or an artist’s repertoire, a painting or a cartoon, a company website or brochure, or a cultural event that is currently gripping your homeland – any media representation that intrigues you. Sit and immerse yourself in that image/artefact – be it a film, a song, a website. You may need to watch and look (and listen) several times before you see beyond the ostensible – very obvious – story that is being told. Once you have reached beyond the obvious, what story are you being told? It may help, if you have never done this before, to choose a topic that is invisible but influential, to help you see beyond the obvious. It can be power, or gender, an ideology, rules of behaviour, a system of behaviour. When you have immersed yourself sufficiently in the media you have chosen to study, what have you ‘seen’ about contemporary organizations that you were not consciously aware of before this exercise? You may have noticed nothing more than what seems to be an ordinary, everyday experience, one so matter-of-fact you hardly noticed it before. You may have been frustrated that this is all you ‘saw’. If so, look for the extraordinary in that ordinary experience. You may have noticed, for example, that some men (but rarely) women, wear ties around their necks in some dramas or news programmes, at a time when in many cultures ‘casual’ dress

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is replacing the formality of the suit. You might ask: what is the significance of the portrayal of men wearing ties?

CHAPTER 9: NOOMI WEINRYB, NILS GUSTAFSSON AND CECILIA GULLBERG: MORE ON SOCIAL MEDIA Noomi Weinryb, Nils Gustafsson and Cecilia Gullberg continue the exploration of ethnography using media. Their chapter is related to netnography, or ethnography on the internet. They argue that digital aspects of organizing influence non-digital spheres of organizing, hence the increasing importance of exploring various forms of media. Further, they argue in favour of a mixed methods approach to capture complex empirical materials that derive from language, images, symbols and emotions and that are not specific to a single organization but to organizational experiences more generally. One useful insight offered by these authors is how to narrow the focus of a study that otherwise may become so large it is impossible to progress. They first limit their focus to one aspect of social media – positive emotional expressions. Second, they narrow the study to 59 civil society organizations in Sweden, and, third, narrow it further to only the Facebook pages of these organizations. Fourth, they restrict their study to a specific, time-limited period. This resulted in 8074 posts on Facebook that could be analysed using quantitative methods, while their qualitative analysis focused on just one Facebook group. They augmented the online accounts with focus group interviews with 26 managers from Swedish civil society organizations. Don’t worry – we are not going to suggest you undertake anything so ambitious as the study described by Weinryb, Gustafsson and Gullberg! Given the increasing influence and importance of social media, developing skills of some form of netnography may prove increasingly useful. At the moment, it will be sufficient to just ‘put a toe in the water’ of social media sites. First, choose one social media platform you feel happy to use. Second, choose one discussion on that platform. There may be an organizational group that you would find it interesting to analyse (e.g. one dedicated to a particular company), or a topic that can encompass many organizations and none (e.g. cooking), or a more general concept (e.g. political discussions, or the value of films of kittens and puppies during uncertain times). Third, when you have identified what you will explore, choose no more than 20 postings on that topic. When you have identified the postings you wish to analyse, download

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them if you can, or save them to an online depository if you can. Now analyse each posting in great depth. Use all the techniques already discussed – make the postings ‘strange’ (imagine you are a time traveller from the past perhaps); immerse yourself in them to find out what jumps out at you; sense-make through immersing yourself in them and exploring how they evoke emotions in you, and what you do with those emotions. (Remember to use your fieldwork diary.) When you have completed all these steps, stop and consider the use of such approaches. Would you expand your knowledge of using social media in your ethnographic studies in the future? If yes, why? If not, why?

CHAPTER 10: ANNA ZUEVA: EXPERIMENTING WITH DATA ANALYSIS What do you do with all this data – field notes, images, interview transcriptions, reflexive notes, artefacts? The next two chapters suggest forms of storytelling as a way of working with your data to tell fascinating ethnographic tales. Anna Zueva writes of ‘Autoethnography through the folk tale lens’. Zueva’s perspective on autoethnography is this: a critical reflexive study of the researcher’s own experiences can provide insights into wider socio-cultural systems. She writes that myths and folk tales contain archetypes that resonate across centuries and cultures. They are not just stories: they instruct and socialize a younger generation’s entrance into a culture. But Zueva sees different advantages for the organizational ethnographer. By drawing on a familiar folk tale and analysing it to discover the timeless insights it gives, she shows, she can then apply those truths to what she is studying. In Zueva’s example, she uses the tale of the Baba Yaga to develop insights into her work as a teacher, as someone who nourishes the minds of the next generation. In so doing she discovers many things about herself, and thus about the higher education system in the country in which she works today. She recalls various aspects from her teaching, writing them up in the third person. The third-person account allows her to follow the norms of the folk tale, but also invites readers to identify themselves in the tale she is telling. The analysis she carries out is ripe for development into a rich paper on learning and teaching in higher education today, and her role within it as an educator. In other words, through drawing analogies between her own experiences and the insights of a folk tale, she pushes through to a new understanding of an everyday experience. You have written an autoethnographic vignette to help develop the skills recommended by Learmonth and Humphreys. We asked you to analyse that vignette, but gave somewhat vague insights into how to do that. This is

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partly because, like most qualitative data analysis, interpretation of ethnographic and autoethnographic field notes emerges in each and every unique research situation, a somewhat magical blend of reading, thinking, discussing, pondering, sweating and labouring. At some point there is a flash of insight and something new emerges to direct our analysis. Zueva provides a way of enabling that flash of insight. It requires much sweating and attempt at innovative thinking, but it offers a pathway of sorts. So your next task is to take the vignette you wrote for the Learmonth and Humphreys chapter. Think now of a favourite folk tale or story from your own country. Do not think too long about which one to choose – just remember a story told to you as a child that has been handed down over generations. Delve beneath the ostensible story of that folk tale – what are the timeless truths it is portraying? Now think of how those truths and the insights from that tale help you see your vignette in a new and different way. You may need to cast around before you can see a connection – note how Zueva does this in her account through recognizing that the leg of her office chair could seem similar to the legs of Baba Yaga’s cottage – after that recognition she is off, taking us with her into new ways of thinking about teaching. Now it is your turn.

CHAPTER 11: HAMID FOROUGHI ON STORYTELLING APPROACHES Foroughi continues the theme of thinking more innovatively about how to write ethnographic accounts. Kostera and Średnicka (Chapter 2) did this also in the chapter on keeping a field diary as they delved into using poetry. Foroughi introduces a way of developing in-depth understanding of the organization or group we are studying through using storytelling approaches within our ethnographic studies. He discusses ethno-narrative and ethno-story – two somewhat different approaches to combining ethnography and storytelling. Storytelling approaches help us understand subjectivities, he writes. This is important because when we observe people we can have very little idea of what is going on ‘inside’ them, in their thoughts, feelings, emotions, bodies, and so on. We can see the ‘outside’ – what they are doing as they move within and through space – but not the ‘inside’. Nor can observation alone tell us how people, in groups, construct meaning. The ethnographer using storytelling approaches can explore archival (pre-existing) stories; or can elicit stories through interviews, or can capture ‘stories in situ’, that is, those that are heard ‘in the field’. These stories will usually not have stories’ familiar structure: a beginning, development up to some sort of climax in the story, a denouement, and then an end. These have to be teased out during the data analysis stage.

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At this stage of learning how to do ethnography it may be difficult to interview people or to stay in a place long enough to overhear how people talk about that organization. However, many organizations use visual graphics to tell us stories about themselves, or often how they wish us to regard them. A part of the skill of storytelling ethnography is the ability to look beyond the surface impression these visual graphics give us, to tease out the story behind the visual images. To start to develop this skill, go to a café or a museum or art gallery, a gym or sports stadium, a shop or shopping centre, or a building or a lecture theatre on a university campus. Ideally chose a venue that you have used in one of the other exercises, so that you can see how combining different approaches within an ethnographic study can help you develop a far more insightful study than can be done using one approach alone. When you have chosen your venue, go to it and aim to spend at least an hour there. What visual images can you see? Some of these will quite obviously have been designed to tell you a story about this place. Chains of coffee shops may want us to feel we are contributing to socially responsible and environmental practices, or that we are having an authentic Italian experience, for example. But look at the furniture and the layout of the place. What images does the furniture aim to invoke in people using the premises? If you are visiting a museum or art gallery, focus on one exhibition. How is it arranged, what visual images have been deliberately selected to encourage you to look, and how do people in that space go about the process of looking? If there are written guides or pieces of information, look at what they say but also behind the words: what story are they trying to tell you? That is, what does that exhibition wish you to understand about its topic, and the world more generally? Look at the furniture and the layout of the space – what is it encouraging you and other users to do? How do the space and the furniture and artefacts organize people so that they follow its rules without hardly noticing that they are following rules? Again, write up notes, add drawings, photos or other visual images you may be able to collect, and sit down to work out how that space ‘worked’ on you and other people there. What stories did it tell you to make you feel part of that space, or perhaps excluded from it? Write up that story, as if the space is the author using your hands as the medium through which to convey its narrative.

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CHAPTER 12: PAWEŁ KRZYWORZEKA AND HUGO GAGGIOTTI: THINKING ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH THEORY Krzyworzeka and Gaggiotti introduce some complex questions concerning theoretical aspects of organizational ethnography of which there is, they argue, a deficit. You may make similar inquiries as you develop your knowledge and practice of ethnography in organization studies. It includes questions about power. Firstly, what is the influence of those who commission ethnographic research? This question specifically concerns issues about where power lies when doing ethnographic research. If commissioned by managers there is a tendency for ethnographers to avoid conclusions that would be difficult for managers (or anyone with power or voice) to accept, whereas research funded by universities or research councils does not suffer from such qualms. This is, however, the overt face of power. The influence of postmodernism and poststructuralism has changed perspectives on power, to something that is not only restrictive (pressing down on us) but is constitutive (it makes existence possible). In this latter perspective power penetrates within and through the very capillaries of organizational life. Krzyworzeka and Gaggiotti also pose questions about organizational ontology. That is, what is ‘an organization’ and how, if at all, can ‘it’ exist? These questions are stimulated by their focus specifically on the anthropologist Lloyd Warner, who was invited to work with Elton Mayo and other researchers in the classical Hawthorne studies. Warner subsequently spent many years studying a small town, arguing that ‘an’ organization cannot be studied separately and distinctly from its context. Warner’s interest was thus in a holistic approach, to understanding not only ‘an’ organization but also the social structures in which it is embedded. His work was part of a wider trend that changed our conception of organizations – they do not begin or end at boundaries. If you have carried out all the exercises accompanying the various chapters in this book you will now have quite a rich body of empirical materials. It is time now to think about how to develop theory from those materials. Lay out the materials you have collected – some of them may be electronic so only available on screen, but if you have collected material artefacts lay them out. The first thing to ask yourself: was what I studied an organization? If yes, what makes it into an organization. If no, why not? This is an ontological question and should not be rushed. You may need to do some reading to help you develop your answers. The second thing is: how did power operate within this ‘organization’?

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What overt examples of power were there (e.g. notices telling people what to do)? What other forms of power influenced how people behaved in this place? (Reading a discussion about Foucault’s theory of power, and the internalization of the gaze, may be useful to help this analysis. The more theoretically minded may find Judith Butler’s development of Foucault’s work through an analysis of how we are governed and constituted by norms very useful.) When you have thought through the answers to these questions (although at the moment this will be only the beginning – a lot more analysis is needed) you will find yourself starting to develop theory. An exciting adventure begins.

CHAPTER 13: SARAH BLOOMFIELD: A FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT OF LEARNING ETHNOGRAPHY Bloomfield was still a doctoral student when she wrote the concluding chapter to this book. It is a lyrical piece of writing in which she describes how she developed the skills we have been exploring in this Introduction, and the chapters aim to help you develop. There is only one exercise left to do. Make yourself a drink, sit in a comfortable chair, and read Sarah’s chapter. Enjoy it. When you have finished reading, stop and think through all the things you learned as you worked your way through the exercises we have suggested. What story would you write about learning the art and the skills of ethnography?

REFERENCES Barley, Nigel (1986) The innocent anthropologist: Notes from a mud hut. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Clifford, James (1990) ‘Notes on (field)notes’, in Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 47–70. Gilmore, Sarah and Harding, Nancy (forthcoming) ‘Organizational socialization as kin-work: A psychoanalytic model of settling into a new job’, Human Relations. Sclavi, Marianella (1989) Ad una spanna da terra. Milan: Feltrinelli.

2. Notes and poetry from the field: a fieldwork diary Monika Kostera and Joanna Średnicka A FIELDWORK DIARY Keeping a diary from the field is a well-known and much celebrated ethnographic tradition. There are many stories but no hard and fast rules as to how this should be done. Almost everyone we know keeps some kind of notebook, but, as far as we know, everyone’s notes are different – and that is the point. Many researchers keep notes for their own personal reference, as well as more formal ones. Classical formal field notes are rather realistic, coded or codeable, and very brief. Such methodical notes can easily be cited and categorized and there are many researchers who much appreciate it. Many ethnographers, however, including the authors of this chapter, prefer more personal and at times apparently chaotic notes. We enjoy doodling in our notebooks, writing, sketching, sometimes pasting in things that we find relevant or interesting at the time. At times we invite our interlocutors to sketch something for us. And there are other styles and strikingly different ethnographic notebooks. We have seen one with a musical notation, taken down by ear by a researcher studying jazz musicians. In short, there is a wide array of possibilities – and notebooks. Ethnographers often regard their field notes as something personal, especially if they include their feelings and private comments. Some ethnographers, and by that we do not mean ‘a few’, have an emotional connection to their notes. They are, after all, a record of their own experiences. Jean Jackson (1995) interviewed ethnographers about their field notes, where her interviewees ‘were expressing powerful and ambiguous feelings towards their notes’ (p. 37). Notes are regarded as being betwixt and between the different worlds and roles played by the researcher in the field and the researcher, at the university and by the desk. The notes can be seen as a kind of a correspondence between those different roles and realities, maybe even between the personal and the professional sphere. In one world the ethnographer is a visitor, and her or his task is to observe and learn, and in another, someone who needs to make sense of what has been learned. The notes can remind us that we are strangers, 18

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even in our own world, maybe even in our swivel chair by the desk. The notes are a kind of bridge between worlds, roles, meanings. They help to make sense of more than just the field: they sometimes help to see one’s own culture. Making notes can be seen as part of the creative process, a phase in the work of ‘writing it down’, or even a poetic process in which you try to express a wealth of words, gestures, sounds in just a few sentences. Personal observations, records about reality, comments or drawings on the pages of research diary are not just doodles but a collage from which a complex image of the studied social reality emerges. You can say that the notebook often attracts contents: random scraps of paper, napkins, train tickets, leaflets, or any kind of materials gathered in the field. These lively collections represent a great value for many ethnographers (Jackson, 1990) who stress their intensely private and confidential nature. Ethnographers are very careful with the notes: revealing or losing unencoded notes from the field could challenge promises made to informants, giving rise to ethical considerations about revealing illegal activities or even give ‘ammunition to groups, who do not have one’s fieldsite community’s best interests at heart’ (Jackson, 1990, p. 10).

HOW TO JOT DOWN? Keeping in mind that in ethnography field notes, as poetry, have a personal character and that there are many ways of taking them, we will nonetheless try to tell about the ones we (and our students) prefer, not intending it as a set of rules, but, rather, as experience we wish to share. We both like to take extensive notes because this gives us a sense of security and companionship in the field, and because we want to make sure that we will remember things that have happened, what people looked like, how they behaved. Also, how we felt about it. We usually take notes directly in the field, sometimes discreetly, sometimes openly. In one of her fields some time ago, one of us was described by a native organizer as ‘the women who sits there and writes a lot’. There are also moments when we abstain from ostentatious note taking and try to remember things happening in order to jot them down when we are able to sneak out to a café, or to the bathroom. Sometimes intense participation is more important than note taking. If you would look into one of our notebooks (which we tend to carry with us wherever we go, because you just don’t know when you might come across something relevant for your study), you would notice many different elements. Apart from images, doodles and models, the text itself differs. Roger Sanjek (1990) speaks of the difference between scratch notes and field notes. The former can be very brief, often slogan-like, short comments that change into more elaborated notes often outside the field, but before they fall away from memory and become ‘cold’ (Sanjek, 1990). Brief, chaotic scratch notes can

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turn out to be quite valuable after the return from the field. Even a few words noted down on site in the field can jog our memory later. We always carry a notebook with us wherever we go, because something relevant might just turn up. The work with notes is not uniform, either. James Clifford (1990) speaks of three phases of note taking: inscription, transcription and description. Inscription means writing down of one’s observations and impressions as well as what the interviewees say. The notes try to capture this in as great detail as possible, with as many examples as possible, and capturing as many pictorial details as possible. It happens ‘in the flow of social discourse, a moment of abstraction (or distraction) when a participant-observer jots down a mnemonic word or phrase to fix an observation or to recall what someone has just said’ (Clifford, 1990, p. 51). Transcription is the attempt of the most faithful translation of the studied reality, which escapes direct observation. These are elements of the context and culture in which the participants of our study are immersed. The image of transcription (of writing over) interrupts the smooth passage from writing down to writing up, from inscription to interpretive description. (Clifford, 1990, pp. 57–8)

Transcription might be seen as a discursive process in which the researcher tries to describe his/her observations as faithfully as possible, in order to make the studied reality understandable for himself and the external reader. It can take place just after a field study, for example on the way home on the train. The third type of field note highlighted by Clifford is the description, ‘the making of a more or less coherent representation of an observed cultural reality’ (Clifford, 1990, p. 51). Description happens when an ethnographer sits down at her or his desk to record and begin to make cultural sense of a busy day’s impressions. Description differs from the transcription maybe not so much in content as in the form of the record. This moment of writing in the field generates what Geertz (1973) calls ‘thick description’, the practice that is providing enough context so that a person outside the field could make meaning of the observed behaviours, scenes or dialogues. Thick description accurately describes observed social actions and assigns purpose and intentionality to these actions, by way of the researcher’s understanding and clear description of the context under which the social actions took place. Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web of relationships among them. (Ponterotto, 2006, p. 543)

The third phase demands some more ordering. In order to systematize the notes it can be a good idea to arrange them according to particular types,

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for example: impressions, descriptions inspired by observations, tentative analyses and conclusions, one’s own reflections, feeling and reactions from the research. Some people like to divide the page into two columns: one with matter of fact information and one for personal impressions (see Owens, 1999, for more about this style of note taking). Some use colour and highlight categories and roles. It can be quite difficult to decipher one’s own notes if observations and one’s own reflections are not somehow kept apart. But there also exist researchers (believe it or not!) who prefer to give up taking any notes at all and rely on their recordings of interviews and recorded own comments. They plunge into the conversation, listen to and follow the interlocutor, and then the voice recorder seems less invasive, and the whole situation more natural. Once activated a recorder remains invisible in the background. The researcher can speak a few words about his or her impressions after the interview. We do not advocate this approach very strongly; it is suitable only for those who have an outstanding aural memory. We believe that it helps to focus if notes are taken; writing helps to collect thoughts. Of course, they can be taken on a smartphone or other electronic device; pen and paper are optional (even if in many circles they have a cult status). Even minimal field notes are better than nothing: for example short ‘stage directions’, accompanying interviews, offering explanations to what was said and how. Notes are usually not published, not even as annexes. They are not intended for publication, as we said – they contain personal information both about the researcher and the informants. However, they should be archived, as they provide a vast amount of information that can be used for future consideration. Having said that, however, entire collections of field notes and other materials collected during field studies by famous anthropologists are available for perusal at, for instance, the American National Anthropological Archives.

TRANSCRIBING INTERVIEWS Another writing process concerns the interviews. Do we really need to transcribe? Yes, because we need the material. Can the recording be handed over to a professional transcriber? Yes, it can. But for many ethnographers the close contact with the interviews that transcription offers provides an outstanding possibility for deeper reflection. If you think of ethnography as a poetic, non-linear, but rather cyclical process of deepening understanding, transcribing allows you to return to the field again, for a moment. It makes it also easier to really recall what happened in the field in vivid detail – while transcribing we often realize how little we remember without such deeper reflection. The best ideas for categorizations and conclusions often come to mind during the transcription phase.

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There are two standards of transcribing the interviews: the exact and the grammatically and linguistically edited. The former entails the literal recording of the interlocutor’s speech, incorrect, rude, repetitive, or smooth, elegant and flowing – as it stands. In the latter the transcriber is also an active language editor and eliminates the mistakes, rudeness and repetitions. Most readers of ethnographic texts assume that the first method is adopted, unless stated otherwise. If the researcher decides to edit the interviews, it may be a good idea to explain this in a footnote. A rich variety of transcription methods are often applied. Some of them may serve as ideas to ethnographers who wish to enrich their realistic transcriptions of the literal content of the interviews with some kind of supplement that also provides an account of gestures, intonation, places taken by people when they speak, or just about the structure of the statement. We find it useful to transcribe symbols for gestures and face expressions. They can be simple icons, such as a ‘smiley’ when the interviewee is smiling, rolling his or her eyes, making an angry face, etc. Gestures and other symbols may be written in square brackets – […]. It is commonly assumed that everything placed within the square bracket is a personal remark of the author, for example, [inaudible] means that the researcher could not hear the utterance of the speaker in a certain fragment of the tape. For the researchers who have a strong visual memory, it can be helpful to attempt some kind of visual representation, a patterning, for example by writing up the interview as a table where each column is assigned for one person. This form may prove especially useful for group interviews. In the final column a note of the time can be made, such as for how long the person was speaking. It becomes visible how the group dynamic unfolds: who is the leader, who dominates the conversation, and who is passive. It also shows moments when all the participants talk simultaneously. Texts can also be illustrated with pictures, photographs or sketches. The authors of this chapter use all these visual forms, as well as colouring the text to mark themes and emergent important ideas.

THE POETIC PROCESS OF NOTE CREATION Fieldwork is rarely a linear process with a clear beginning and end. Most often it has the form of a looped cycle of observation – recording – interpretation and the field notes reflect this discursive character of the ethnographic work. It has a rhythm of its own. The field notes stay the same, written down on paper, but the headnotes continue to evolve and change. (Sanjek, 1990, p. 93)

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Words, sentences, stories and drawings emerge in a researcher notebook as a result of an ongoing processes of inscription, transcription and description. Some researchers believe that field notes can tell a lot about relationships and feelings, or even can reveal what kind of person the ethnographer is. The notes reveal a lot and for that reason they are valuable documents. Does the anthropologist see the culture, or see himself in the culture … see the social context from which he comes as somehow replicated in the culture? (Jackson, 1990, p. 9)

Sometimes notes look like something closer to the world of poetry than naturalistic prose, especially as they develop with time spent in the field. Since processuality is inscribed in qualitative methodologies, along with the development of the study and the frequency of researcher’s visits in the field, the range of notes also changes. Even if initially they tend to be more detailed, naturalistic or restrained, with time they might evolve into more problematic forms, grouped around categories and bold in referring to broader cultural references. Keeping a diary from the field is the art of compression: we try to say as much as we can in as few words as possible. An ethnographer is in this regard not that far from the poet and her ability to encapsulate the world in a few sentences, trying to capture emotions, observations, sounds, everything we see, feel and hear in a brief and unique way. There are researchers who find the language of poetry very useful in decoding cultural themes and references deeply hidden under observable reality. The strict distinction of scientific inquiry and poetic sensitivity that decades ago pushed Ruth Benedict (Schweighauser, 2006) to publish her poetry under a pseudonym is now blurring, allowing ethnographers to cross the border of art with more confidence. With the post-modern critique of ethnography, classic terms such as ‘pattern’ or ‘structure’ have given way to ‘disjunctive’ nouns like pastiche or mélange. (Maynard and Cahnmann, 2010, p. 4)

Poetic naturalism, a philosophical approach to reality, encourages a variety of ways to talk about the world, using language dependent upon the aspect of reality we need to discuss (Carroll, 2016). The language of poetry often turns out to be indispensable to grasp the complexity of social world. Poetry is unrivalled in saying what is difficult to express, in touching the most hidden aspects of cultural reality. Maynard and Cahnmann (2010) use the following

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poem by Philip Levine (1991/2004) to show the ethnographic aspect of poetic language: I was about to say something final that would capture the meaning of autumn’s arrival, something suitable for bronzing something immediately recognizable as so large a truth it’s totally untrue, when one small white cloud—not much more than the merest fragment of mist— passed between me and the pale thin cuticle of the mid-day moon come out to see the traffic and dust of Central California. I kept quiet.

The poem contains a rhythmical thick description of the insightful fusion of human and nature; and just like ethnography, it refuses to give a definitive answer. For some qualitative researchers poetry turns out to be useful already in the process of observation and while taking ethnographic notes. Poetic sensitivity encourages us to use all our senses and rich language to share our experiences with other people, but also to try to understand why people behave as they behave. Active engagement in reading and writing poetry enables ethnographic poets to bring discernment and sensual attention to their observations, it helps them to make surprising analytic leaps. (Maynard and Cahnmann, 2010, p. 13)

Nineteenth-century romantic poetry helped one of the authors to explore identity construction mechanisms (Średnicka, 2020). After few months of intense ethnographic research one of the authors of this chapter noticed that her thoughts and interpretations spontaneously began to revolve around cultural themes from romantic, nineteenth-century poetry. To follow this lead, while conducting interviews and continuing her observations, she delved into reading romantic poetry from this era. Her field notes also evolved and gradually became a collage made of observations, fragments of the interlocutor’s statements and the nineteenth-century poems. Unexpectedly, poetry imposed itself as a useful filter on the phenomena observed in the field. This surprising journey into the world of poetry helped the researcher to grasp the complexity of the studied social reality and even more importantly: to notice a gradual identity change sneaking into organizational life. By reading poetry she was able to detect a sudden shift in cultural themes shaping the organizational life,

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from vital bravery to a sense of hopelessness. Table 2.1 presents a collection of notes from the field (the researcher’s comments, fragments of the interviews, etc.) and corresponding romantic poems. Poetry has the power to evoke unobvious associations, to make us wander between what we see and what can be noticed below the surface. But not only poetry, many other texts and cultural products and practices can be similarly stimulating. It is worth following the unexpected thoughts and associations inspired by art, that occupy our thoughts: a favourite song may influence what we notice while in the field or at our desks, or tragic grand operas, or Hollywood blockbusters. One sentence from a crime story that we are just reading can run associations together, a glance at a movie poster can direct our field related thoughts in a completely new direction.

WHAT TO JOT DOWN? A final question concerns what to write down. For many researchers the problem of having too much material, of feeling dominated or overwhelmed by notes is not hypothetical. Jackson quotes one of the ethnographers she interviewed: They can be a kind of albatross around your neck. They seem like they take up a lot of room. They take up too much room. (1990, p. 10)

But notes are the only way to capture the unrecorded, observed reality, and they remain the ethnographer’s main tool. As such, they can be also put into models and frameworks, useful for our task as long as they are not too limiting and proscriptive. Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie Sunstein (1997) propose that the following information should be included in field notes: • • • • •

Date, time and place Facts, numbers, description of events Sensual impressions: views, sounds, textures, scents, flavours Reaction of people to the presence of the researcher Words, expressions, summaries of conversations and the specific language of the field • Questions and doubts about people in the field to be studied later • Page numbers in texts and books to locate information in the future Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz and Linda Shaw (1995/2011, pp. 29–34) also offer some practical recommendations that may help producing useful field notes. We end our chapter with their advice, as it has proved valuable to us

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as well as to our students, offering a guideline yet not restricting too much or limiting the ethnographic imagination and perception. 1. To jot down what seem to be crucial for later writing: key components of scenes, events, interactions observed. It includes all facts, names, dates and other relevant details that shouldn’t be forgotten. 2. To note concrete sensory details (visual, kinetic, or auditory) that would trigger our memory later on and help reconstruct the feel of what happened. Some researchers would focus on nonverbal elements as gestures, others would jog down almost exclusively dialogues. 3. To avoid quick generalizations as summaries of what people in the field say or do. Too general and evaluative notes become problematic and insufficient to later write a full description of a social scene. 4. To jot as detailed as possible descriptions of observed scenes, and dialogues that rather show than tell about people’s behaviours. 5. To use jottings to record emotions and basic feelings, like anger, fear, happiness, although it is tempting to jump immediately into their interpretations and search for underlying motives. 6. To signal in notes the general impressions and feelings, even if a researcher is yet unsure of their actual value and significance.

Notes and poetry from the field: a fieldwork diary

Table 2.1

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Field notes and poetry: an example of a poetic fieldwork diary

Poem

Notes from the field

Theme: Poland as Winkerlied of nations

We meet in a cafe. Michał talks about his bold

1) Song of the Polish Legions in Italy

idea of changing corporation from inside,

Józef Wybicki (1747–1809)

without looking back, by doing his job the best

Translated by Jones-Debska

he can. He seems desperate and quite optimistic.

Poland has not perished yet

My model is simple: doing everything you

Since we are still alive,

can, without looking at any procedures and

What alien force seized from us

corporate rules.

With sword shall we retrieve.

If the president of the corporation saw what I do

March on, march on, Dabrowski,

every day, he would take an axe to my head.

From Italy to Poland, on,

Michał, Product Manager

For with you as our leader

It is my third visit in the factory. The director is

The nation shall be one

very talkative and direct today. Most of the time we are talking about corporation; again. Just doing things sometimes secretly, or hiding some kind of data, because the corporation shouldn’t know it. This is sometimes the only way to make things you believe are important and necessary. Factory Director

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Poem

Notes from the field

Theme: Messianic Poland

Hope?

Song from the grave

Is there any hope for better times?

Wincenty Pol (1807–72)

During this interview Michał was really moved,

Translated by Jonas-Debska

he often referred to values and principles, he

From free-born tree

raised his voice several times, and he lowered

The leaves are flown;

his voice conspiratorially several times. It was

By the grave a bird

a completely different conversation than we

Sings alone.

had a few months ago when he was still quite

No hope for Poland

optimistic.

To be saved!

* should I talk to more managers. Is it just his

The dream is done,

perspective??

your sons in the grave.

corporation=enemy??

The villages burnt,

I lost hope, it seems to me that all this idea,

The towns laid low,

all this strategy, that we’re going to send

A woman in the field

our people to corporation to change that

Sings of her woe.

corporation, is failing now.

Now all are gone,

It seems to me that corporation can not be

Taken their scythes;

changed; that way at least.

None now to work,

Michał, product Manager

The harvest dies … The battle’s over, But nothing’s done, To the fields the men Do not return. Some lying in earth, Or prisoners made; Some lost their homes, Afar have strayed. No help from heaven Or human hand. Blossoms in vain The wasted land.

Source: Notes from the field, collected during research in 2012–2013 (Średnicka, 2020).

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CODA: TWO POEMS Fieldnotes Guide to the elusive, an atlas of treasure maps, a recipe store for the primordial soup of stories. A little book for bookkeeping love and doubts. Never go out without it. I’d rather get lost in a city of wolves than forget my fieldnotes. Better be clueless than noteless. Fieldnotes His words, her gestures. air smell. I borrow and note their anger and joy. Overwhelmed with facts, terrified of data, with no clue. I am hiding behind a collection of memories, a field diary filled with sketches, notes and drawings. Still full of fears, with a touch of hope that notes one day will connect the dots.

REFERENCES Carroll, Sean (2016) The big picture: On the origins of life, meaning, and the universe itself. New York: Dutton. Chiseri-Strater, Elizabeth and Bonnie Stone Sunstein (1997) Field working: Reading and writing research. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Clifford, James (1990) ‘Notes on (field)notes’, in Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 47–70. Emerson, Robert M., Fretz, Rachel I. and Shaw, Linda L. (1995/2011) Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Geertz, Clifford (1973) The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Jackson, Jean (1990) ‘“I am a fieldnote”: Fieldnotes as a symbol of professional identity’, in Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 3–33.

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Jackson, Jean (1995) ‘“Déjà entendu”: The liminal qualities of anthropological field notes’, in John Van Maanen (ed.), Representation in ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 36–78. Levine, Philip (1991/2004) ‘Snails’, in What work is: Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Maynard, Kent and Cahnmann, Melisa (2010) ‘Anthropology at the edge of words: Where poetry and ethnography meet’, Anthropology and Humanism, 35: 2–19. Owens, Maida (1999) Sample fieldnotes: Teen memories of grade school traditions. https://​www​.crt​.state​.la​.us/​folklife/​main​_prog​_models​.html. Ponterotto, J. G. (2006) ‘Brief note on the origins, evolution and meaning of the qualitative research concept “thick description”’, The Qualitative Report, 11(3): 538–54. Sanjek, Roger (1990) ‘A vocabulary for fieldnotes’, in Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 92–136. Schweighauser, Philipp (2006) ‘An anthropologist at work: Ruth Benedict’s poetry’, in Robert Rehder and Patrick Vincent (eds.), American poetry from Whitman to the present. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 113–25. Średnicka, Joanna (2020) Organizacja, wspólnota, bunt. Jak mity romantyczne kształtują współpracę w przedsiębiorstwie czasów transformacji. Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński.

3. Observation: on the importance of being there Monika Kostera Observation is perhaps the most ethnographic method, quite the recognizable flagship for ethnographic studies. Even those among my colleagues who are not too happy to rely on what they regard as ‘impressions’, often like to get some kind of orientation, a ‘feeling of the place’ before they begin their more structured study. Also, they sometimes wish to spot potentially interesting topics and simply find out about the ‘background’ of the interviews, as if leaving at least some space for the unexpected. For others, including myself, observation is quite the reliable method to explore the social. It enables one to collect first-hand experiential material in the field and it can be applied in different ways and for different purposes. There are many kinds of observation, but two are particularly central. The first is non-participant observation, when the researcher remains an outsider and does not take part in the social situation under study. This method has rich traditions, including Michel de Certeau and Walter Benjamin, walking around in cities and trying to grasp their aura. The second is participant observation, which takes place when a researcher becomes a participant in a community or organization and conducts research from within, living in the field and interacting with it on an everyday basis. This is what anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski and Margaret Mead strived at in order to get an intimate knowledge of the studied cultures. This chapter will address both these classical methods, not from a literature review perspective (if interested in such review, see e.g. Ciuk et al., 2018), but as a reflection on research and teaching using these methods. Both non-participant and participant observation have their advantages and disadvantages, and in many regards they complement each other. Of course, they can be applied in the same field, even if not at the same time. There are also ways of combining some of their strengths in what looks like a hybrid method such as, for example, direct observation, which I shall present towards the end of this chapter, and shadowing, portrayed in Barbara Czarniawska’s chapter of this book. 31

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NON-PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION Anthropologist Richard Rottenburg (2000) tells a fascinating story of an everyday place, a bar located in the borderland between Poland and Germany. The bar is narrated as a strange and incoherent land: in between realities, cultures and known meanings. It is baffling and difficult to make sense of: who are these people? What are they doing? Why? The names and labels appear and then fail; they turn out to be all wrong, the characters seem to shape-shift and transform into each other. Urbane students become sex workers, who become shy schoolgirls from the countryside. Have they really been this all the time, or is it all an illusion? Time passes and makes words blur, and their meanings turn increasingly fluid and vague. Even the timeline itself becomes questionable and unclear. When exactly is this taking place? The observer from Western Germany (with some Eastern roots) cannot work out if it is 1997 or 1987, or perhaps even 1977. The East European reader (with some Western history) also loses track. Maybe it is different for different people. Different year for the Westerner, different for the Easterner. Finally, both text and reader become unsure of the place. Where is this bar? Europe, certainly, but where in Europe, East or West? It feels that the distinction is of utmost importance, yet, pondering it, the narrative loses this last, vital thread of sense: the words do not match the appearance of the people or the interior. And then it finds something beyond them all: the ethnographic experience of liminality itself. There is a kind of understanding that transcends language. Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. (Berger, 1991, p. 7)

Non-participant observation is a conscious attempt to experience the here and now, before the words are allowed to come into the learning process and dominate it. The researcher remains separated from the field; her position is that of an outsider with no social role within the studied setting. She is like a traveller, a stranger who looks at the world from some distance and collects impressions. Categorizations and, in particular, judgements of what is being observed are consciously avoided. The awareness is directed toward perceiving and nothing else. In such focus, the ethnographer strives to avoid interpretations of what she sees and hears. This looks like a Herculean effort, if applied constantly for several hours, but feels like something quite elemental: curiosity. This is the

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powerful force that drives us towards learning and one of the few that can put us on the boundaries of the ‘medium of life’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1991). We all grow up as part of a culture. It is impossible to completely escape it, and, metaphorically speaking, as we continue to develop as humans, members of society, we breathe it: in and out. Culture offers us language which, as Wittgenstein (2001) said, frames and defines human understanding: cognition beyond the limits of language is impossible. The process of perception within the medium of culture consists of typification of the world around us (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). In everyday life humans perceive, and interpret almost immediately by putting everything into types that they acquire when they grow up and learn how to be adult members of culture. Finally, people act on the interpretation and engage with other people and the structures of society. Ethnographic observation means playing it out as if in slow motion, so that it becomes possible to focus on the perception and description of reality. Interpretation and categorization are left until the researcher is back by the desk (Czarniawska, 2014). Ethnographic perception resonates with what Berger described as seeing. It also effectively diverts attention from everyday activities and interactions. Being an adult member of society usually means being expected to utilize attention for other activities than seeing, such as planning, or thinking over what happened in the past. Typification enables such a shift of attention and, of course, it makes life much easier. This means having a pool of ready-to-use types, convenient and making everyday decisions easy or even automatic. However, it is difficult to focus on the unique, the individual – and to hold it long enough to reveal those of its aspects not framed by ordinary types and categories. However, the ethnographer, who, during non-participant observation, tries to stay aware of what is happening in the field, focuses and aims at stepping out of the common categories of typification that she adopted during her socialization. Again, it may look difficult, but it is quite straightforwardly human. Children do that all the time, taking in the world, learning new things. They often ask the grown-ups for interpretation by asking questions such as: what is this? why? what for? Observation means looking at the world like this, childlike, while in the field, and asking the questions later, by the desk, not of the parents, but of literature and one’s own interpretive abilities (see Chapter 7 in this volume). The point is that these categories should be ultimately different from the everyday ones, framed in a novel way, they should unveil something new and enable a process of learning on another level or from another point of view. In order to be able to later re-categorize the field, the ethnographer needs language and words. That is why she holds on to her notebook in the field, to record impressions. These should be noted down descriptively, omitting

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the broader categories (see Chapter 2 on notes and note taking). What do the actors in the field do? What do they say? What happens in the background? No speculation is allowed, no inferences, no second guessing or ‘detective work’. It does not mean that the everyday names and types are incorrect or should not be trusted – in fact, ethnographers use categories from the field themselves when carrying out interviews, but that is not the point during non-participant observation. The point is to attempt to catch some of the complexity of the social world before it gets simplified or framed again. Harold Garfinkel was a sociologist famous for teaching careful observation of social life by assigning his students seemingly easy homework that consisted of radical non-participation in everyday social situations (Garfinkel, 1967). For example, when the students were eating breakfast with their family, they were to behave as if they were visitors from a faraway land, utter strangers, not to take anything for granted or participate in social situations but observe them from a distance and question the meaning of everything they were expected to do and say.1 Some students gain striking insights and impressions from such exercises, which are still used in many ethnography courses, but some also find it very stressful. This is so because the ‘estranged’ approach is, indeed, alienating. One tends to react negatively towards persons without a social role (perhaps especially so if they are sitting at their breakfast table), because they are quite disruptive in social situations, their behaviour does not make sense – it falls between categories. Ordinary non-participant observation, not quite as radical as that proposed by Garfinkel, may create similar problems: the researcher rids herself of meaningful social roles inside of the situation in order to observe it. And yet usually some sort of participation is expected by members of society. Some students find it helpful to invent a role which would not interfere with the research, such as pilgrim from another time or visitor from outer space. Even if it does not help the other people in the field, it helps themselves to root their own (non-)participation in some context they can imagine. Whenever a temptation to categorize materializes – and it often happens, especially, if not exclusively, to the beginner – one can keep in mind this imagined role. The best way of assessing whether this works or not is to check if it feels interesting. If it does, it is very likely that the observation is proceeding correctly. It is the curiosity, the ‘anthropological frame of mind’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992, p. 29), that is the main precondition for, but also the tool of, research of this kind. It is not unlike looking at a stereogram. The person looks at the picture on the surface and it is often quite boring, consisting of numerous rows of identical patterns, such as geometric figures. But once the observer is able to look at it in a certain way, and fans of stereograms know tricks that help to focus their sight, a new dimension starts to emerge. Something new, interesting and three-dimensional emerges from a seemingly boring picture and lends itself

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to closer examination. In non-participant observation the experience of the observer is similar: what is needed is the ability to change the way of looking and suddenly a new picture of the field emerges. Everyday scenes become new and interesting and may be looked at for as long as we remain truly focused. Discovering new fascinating aspects of an ostensibly ‘boring’ reality is both informative and enlightening. The insights are particularly inspiring for the researcher contemplating how to enter a new field, because it enables shedding of presuppositions and preconceptions. Sometimes students, learning non-participant observation, observe popular, generally accessible places that are organized but not clearly separated, such as shopping malls, railway stations, concert halls, schools, buses, etc. These seemingly well-known places reveal sides not usually perceived in everyday life and, as one my students put it, provide an opportunity to get away from the rush and take a long slow look at the world and become interested in it again. For example, one popular site for such study, revealing quite a few things about contemporary culture, is the shopping mall or supermarket. Some students find it difficult, at the beginning, to switch from the well-known role of a participant (customer) to that of an observer. Among other things non-participation means refraining from shopping, because this turns the observer into a participant and absorbs the attention that is needed for observation. It might be a good idea, however, to toss a can of tomato soup into a shopping basket at the very beginning, rather than walking around empty-handed, as two of my students learned. A security guard approached them and asked them in not too polite terms to leave the premises, calling them ‘spies’. They tried to protest and claimed that they were engaged in scientific observation, but this did not improve their situation. So it might be a good idea to give what is Caesar’s to Caesar, and then just concentrate on watching: the people, their expressions, what they do and how they walk, the paths around the shelves, the physical space, its characteristic constructions, shelves themselves, the colours of packages and colour impressions as a whole. Ceilings are quite interesting, as they are often strikingly different from the shopping area. A glance up at the ceiling can be a good way of acquiring the anthropologic frame of mind, instead of slipping into the role of a customer – somewhat like the tricks used by stereogram fans, adopted in order to see the third dimension. This ‘third dimension’ of meanings, underpinning cultural patterns, is the topic of social scientist Michel de Certeau’s (1988) reflections on space, based on his walks through the city: admiration of the (now non-existent) World Trade Center, a railway trip that combines being trapped in the motionlessness with observing through the window how static objects are moving. De Certeau wonders about the role of space: what is it? How is it experienced? What can we do with it? He takes in the everyday reality around him, as he moves through the city: the small and common things (such as coffee and sandwiches

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served on the train) and vast and abstract subjects (like time and space) and proposes how space is and can be used as an ally for the person wishing to make a difference and do something differently. De Certeau outlines strategies, or the rules created and guarded by institutions and structures of power, and he proposes tactics, used by people moving around the spaces defined by these strategies. The city is composed of strategies and, as an organized system, is actively producing them, arranging a complete, unified map of its reality. But the passer-by uses tactics in his or her everyday movement, such as shortcuts, trespasses, squatting, redefinitions of places. The inhabitants create their own living city within the official one, a city constantly under construction. The observations are first seen and collected and eventually take the shape of words – preferably stories. In anthropologist Kathleen Stewart’s (1996) words, they are productive. They catch up cultural conventions, relations of authority, and fundamental spatio-temporal orientations in the dense sociality of words and images in use and produce a constant mediation of the ‘real’ in a proliferation of signs, creativity […] the sense of a surplus of meaning […]. (Stewart, 1996, p. 30)

They frame social reality but do not ‘complete or “exemplify” a thought, [but rather] produce a further searching’ (Stewart, 1996, p. 32), which, for an ethnographer, is indeed quite desirable. Polish cultural anthropologist Roch Sulima (2000) is a prolific ethnographic storyteller who spins tales of the field in beautiful prose. He depicts mundane settings, such as the countryside, vibrantly alive with cultural subthemes and patterns. Sulima observes and narrates the performativity of recreational allotments in Poland, taking place seemingly out of context, separating it from the much more structured urban life. Yet urban life constantly trickles in, modifies, alters, redefines the spaces which are originally created as an escape from it. The things and the ‘anti’-architectural styles carry over, co-opt, and are co-opted by the Polish transformation and modernity’s fashions and standards of beauty and use. The allotments are changeable and fluid, but at the same time are stable and recognizable, different from the Polish urban landscape which strives at streamlining and erasure of the past. Existing rural landscapes melt into new themes and representations and create a palimpsest of meanings. It is not only inhabited spaces that are a fascinating field for research and for stories. Some time ago, a co-author and I explored empty spaces in public buildings (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 1999), including the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, a government building and several university buildings. We walked together but barely talked, except to exchange short messages. We

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talked about what we saw afterwards. We discovered a reality underpinning the well-known and apparently unoccupied sites: The social space one inhabits is a collection of aims and roads, a map of everyday reality. One’s own everyday life world is always the most boring. Alien worlds that people visit once in a while (foreign countries, unfamiliar organizations, etc.) can be interesting and exotic, but nonetheless for most people they boil down to a tourist collection of aims and roads. Between everyday reality and boredom and tourism and exoticism there is an empty space, not belonging to anyone in particular. It is imperceptible to inhabitants and visitors alike, it lies beyond the sphere of interest of people who do not actively look for the unconventional in ordinary places. Emptiness remains, however, the integral part of every ordered space, the invisible conjunction between its different aspects. It is in these empty spaces that possibilities for change are hidden, beyond the rational designs for development and transformation. (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 1999, p. 47)

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION American sociologist William Foote Whyte’s book Street Corner Society (1993 [1943]) tells a fascinating, empathic and very well informed story of a poor urban community, an Italian district in an American city called Cornerville, told from the inside. Whyte made, at first, direct observations (more about this method in the next section) and later moved into the neighbourhood in order to study it as a participant. He was interested in learning about the district’s formal and informal ways of organizing and community building, as well as its rules and values. His project lasted for four years and was, at times, quite intensive. When Whyte rented a room from an Italian family he became an insider, which made many doors literally and symbolically open for him. He was meeting with people, listening to their stories and actively participating in their lives, while learning Italian in order to communicate more fluently. However, it was only when he actively proved that he accepted the norms of this society – by participating in various more or less official activities and becoming secretary of a local organization – that he gained genuine acceptance and won the true trust of the field. Now he was able to gain access to activities and things that had previously been inaccessible to him such as underground goings-on, documents and information but also people’s dreams, convictions and hopes. He befriended some of his informants, in particular a contact person known in the book as Doc. This friendship continued after the study was finished – which it eventually was, and the ethnographer returned to his home and his university to write his stories up. However, he never ceased to believe in the active role of the researcher, how he or she needs to understand the studied field and act and speak for it so that its conditions may improve.2 Studying a field from the inside is known as participant observation. It is another classical approach at one end of the continuum of which non-participa-

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tion is the other end. An insider learns more, and more intensively: she enjoys access to lots of interesting and perhaps sensitive information, as well as acquiring an understanding of why certain things are done in a particular way. This is typical insider knowledge, but is not the only benefit of participant observation. Its great particular benefit is known as tacit knowledge (or practical knowledge, cumulated experience; Polanyi, 1974). This is knowledge beyond the purely intellectual and contrasts with the theoretical: it is ‘knowing-how knowledge’, the embodied ability to get work done, that is not necessarily verbalized or even easily conceptualized. Theories are good, they may be useful in performing and developing social roles, but become obsolete at the interface between the person and her practice, the job, the task, the activity. Michael Polanyi claims that an expert with certain skills gains an understanding (knowledge) that corresponds to these skills, but which can be difficult to express (Polanyi, 1974). The only effective way to learn how things are done is by doing them. For an ethnographer this means getting her hands dirty through participant observation. Such personal engagement is far from unproblematic. There is a well-known fear among ethnographers of ‘going native’, the danger of becoming too deeply and personally involved with the field and losing distance and ethnographic trustworthiness (O’Reilly, 2009). The researcher acculturated in the field runs the risk of losing an anthropologic frame of mind; she starts to take the surrounding reality for granted, immersing herself so profoundly that she fails to problematize it. A famous Chinese proverb is said to put this state into perspective: ‘the fish is the last to realize that water exists’. Ethnographic elders say it is better not to study one’s own culture. As much as I share this fear and also the conviction, I do not believe that it makes participant observation irrelevant (and neither do the elders).3 It happens when the researcher steps into an existing role in the field just too deeply, or when she is already in it when she begins her research. In contrast, good participant observation requires that the researcher takes upon herself a role only of studying the field, leaving it as soon as the study is complete. It is not a matter of place; rather it is a matter of discipline. One has to work hard not to lose the anthropological frame of mind. This does not mean that the ethnographer should be indifferent or unengaged. One of the most famous participant observation studies is sociologist Michael Burawoy’s study of the everyday work-life of factory workers narrated in the book Manufacturing Consent (1982). The author adopted the role of machine operator in a large American corporation for a period of ten months. In the book Burawoy wonders why people work as well and as effectively as they do, and realizes that they meet the quota thanks to the games they play to avoid monotony and meaninglessness at work. Such games can be, but are not necessarily, played in opposition to the interests of management. While

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managers do not often take part in these games, they, as well as the workers, consent to their rules. Sociologist Robin Leidner’s book (1993) is another example of participant observation of work. She worked in two places as a low level employee: a fast food chain and an insurance company. The study of each is briefer than either Whyte’s or Burawoy’s: her research process took around six months in each location. Her main research topic is how work becomes a routine. She is interested in how people deal with highly repetitive work environments: whether it is easy or hard to work, how people physically and psychologically endure the constant attempts to standardize their actions, appearance and even emotions. The routine of work has far-reaching social consequences that are related to ways of understanding individuality and responsibility, and there is a constant conflict between autonomy and the dominant corporate culture. And yet people find ways of remaining human: through laughter, conversation, sociality. Only when this becomes difficult do they turn inwards and disconnect. That is when stress starts feeling difficult to bear, even when the work as such may seem less hard. Not only workers but also managers have been studied ethnographically. Organization theorist Tony Watson’s (1994) much cited study is based on immersive participation: he worked alongside managers in a company he calls ZTC Ryland in an attempt to make sense of what management was from the inside, what it meant to people who actually made a living as managers. He remains both critical and understanding in the book and he tells a compelling story of culture and everyday theorizing by practitioners from the vantage point of someone in between. This is another example of narrative ethnography, it is written as a quest, a journey of management. The company is trying to survive in a changing environment and the managers are acutely aware of the fashionable responses to these changes, such as empowerment and culture management. They try to make sense of the challenges, as well as of their own role in responding to them. They engage in storytelling and humour, a genre Watson in a way adopts in his ethnographic account of their working lives. All the above books are based on participation where all those involved knew what the researcher was doing. However, sometimes participant ethnography is done covertly. In the book Men Who Manage, sociologist Melville Dalton (1959) reveals some of the moral dilemmas of top-rank managers. He accepted managerial positions in two companies and took notes as he talked to the insiders. Some of his co-workers were aware of his research, but most were not. He also met other managers in a popular club, where he was basically still playing a role of a peer. And so he managed to collect quite unique data, from club chats to rumours of affiliation of top-level managers to Masonic lodges. The book reveals that conformism is vital in managerial work, but conflict

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is typical as well, understood as a competing mind-set, and not as a desire to express one’s own inner idiosyncrasies. Nowadays it could be problematic or impossible to keep one’s identity secret for researchers in some countries, such as the UK and US, due to so called ethical approval procedures, when a committee, usually not consisting of active ethnographers, judges whether a proposed project can be carried out or whether it should be rejected on the grounds of not fulfilling ethical standards. In other contexts, such as many Polish and Scandinavian universities, these issues are decided upon by a collegial committee, consisting of teachers and researchers with ethnographic experience and they usually allow for covert studies, given that anonymity of the field is strictly respected and no identifying material is made public, in any way.

DIRECT OBSERVATION Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (2016) spent five years talking to people and hanging around the communities of the libertarian right-wing political movement within the US conservative party known as Tea Party stronghold in Louisiana. In the book that recounts her experiences, she is both insider and outsider; and neither one nor the other. Her carefully crafted, complex portraits of people from the outside of her own ‘bubble’ show a world that is, at the same time, very different and quite similar to our own, whatever the ‘our’ signifies: impoverished voters for the Democrats in the US, marginalized inhabitants of the English North, or disempowered Polish physicians from the smaller cities. The protagonists may be quite different from the author and readers but we all belong to the shared category: the increasingly powerless many – not the wealthy and powerful few. The interlocutors are portrayed in an exquisitely nuanced way in the book: uncertainty, betrayal, devastation of the natural environment, increasing inequalities and polarization. In the best ethnographic tradition, Hochschild strives to understand and communicate her understanding of the people and their point of view, even when they express convictions that are very alien to her own (and her readers) such as xenophobia and racism. She does not in any way adhere to these notions or condone them, but neither does she condemn the people expressing them. Her aim is definitely to evoke respect and empathy that builds bridges and enlightens. But she keeps a distance throughout the book, as she did throughout the study: she did not become a member of the studied communities and did not aspire to do so. What happens, what kind of observation is it, when the researcher is insider, outsider, and neither? Not immersed but neither alienated, learning the field but not unlearning herself in the process? What if she simply does not have the time or resources to become participant of an organization or community in order to study it? If she has other things to do but still wants to socialize with

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the field? One popular solution is a version of observation particularly popular among organizational ethnographers – direct observation. Organization theorist Gideon Kunda’s Engineering Culture (1992) is based on a direct observation of a company, called Tech. He does not seek employment in the studied field, but neither does he carry out Garfinkel’s estranging approach. Kunda observed middle-level management in a modern American corporation from the perspective of an onlooker, someone close by who is not a peer. He did interviews and studied documents: internal and external. The whole research process took a year. In the book Kunda is fascinated by the strange phenomenon, at the time exceedingly fashionable among managers, known as ‘corporate culture’. How does it influence the everyday work and identity of the employees? What do they say about it? How do they make sense in a managed culture? And, from the managerial point of view, how does the company try to instil normative control over the hearts of its employees? Well, it does so in full managerial pomp and dress, during meetings, in documents, in structures. But the employees react in more complex ways: at face value they accept and even embrace managerial reality. Privately, the most common method for dealing with the control of hearts is irony, sometimes subtle and not easy to grasp by the outsider, and sometimes more blatant and obvious. Engineers, specialists and workers are able to maintain a sense of dignity, and even actually have fun at work, thus doubly defying the imperious control of their inner hearts and the ‘management of culture’. Kunda was able to both be and not be involved with the culture he studied. That is the greatest advantage of direct observation: it provides the researcher with the possibility of keeping a distance while, at the same time, getting closer to the field. The ethnographer can communicate with the field, ask questions and inquire into the reasons why people act as they do and their opinions about it. But he does not assume a social role from within the setting. He may have a life outside of the field: he does not need to be present every day or during the entire working day. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why so many students of organizations choose this method. Usually the researcher is able to take notes on the spot, but sometimes this may be difficult: one would not wish to be regarded with suspicion. Some students complain that while they are observing the social actors in the field, they are just as intensely being observed themselves. This is almost like a double stage, the spotlights both on the actors and on the audience. And who is who in such a setting? Direct observation makes the positions of ethnographer and field much more equal, much more collegial. Both sides keep their professional identity. This is quite prominent in a study of the notion of quality in the Swedish health service system conducted by organization theorist Guðbjörg Erlingsdóttir (1999). She observed three clinics in one of the hospitals in

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the southern part of Sweden and visited several wards in each clinic at least three days a week and also attended meetings on the topic. She was visibly a researcher, a dedicated outsider, a visitor from another world. She took regular notes, as discreetly as she could so as not to interfere with the work going on around her, but not having to hide as people knew she was not one of them and was engaged in a different kind of practice. It was a matter of courtesy rather than of concealment: I recognised my understanding of the health service environment as a strength in the conducted direct observation in that thanks to that I was a bit more comfortable with gaining some kind of orientation in rooms, ‘mingling with the environment’ and understanding communication and actions that were taking place, than would have been the case using any other method. The ability to ‘mingle into the ambience’ might also have contributed to the fact that I was never treated suspiciously, either by staff members or the patients. (Erlingsdóttir, 1999, p. 46)

CODA Ethnography, and especially ethnographic observation, may be many different things and roles, but one feature remains central: presence. American anthropologist Timothy Pachirat argues in his Among Wolves (2018) that ethnography happens when the researcher is able to forge a direct, mutual and profound relationship with the field. His physical presence is the first and the most fundamental condition as well as tool for achieving this goal. Ethnography cannot be carried out by proxy, does not hide human presence and agency behind numbers or other abstractions. Ethnography acquires its reliability and trustworthiness thanks to the researcher’s being there. It is not about the material as such, however abundant or original it may be, not even about the contribution to knowledge. This ‘most human of methods’ (Yanow, 2018, p. xii) does not aspire to neutrality or objectivity, neither in its written effects, nor in the activities undertaken in the field. Also in the phase of interpretation of collected material the ethnographer needs his presence and reflexivity, which he hopes to be able to offer to the reader, another human presence at the other side of the text. Experience is evidence, evidence is experience. Ethnography is research of and by human presence – for human enlightenment, enjoyment and emancipation. It is a journey beyond structures and ‘common knowledge’, into the deeper ocean of our common humanity, in order to see further and, at the same time, not to lose sight of the everyday, of the detail, of the mundane, and reveal the surprises, revelations and sense of wonder that it brings.

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NOTES 1. 2.

3.

Such conduct has even earned the name of garfinkeling. William Foote Whyte is known as the founder of Action Research, a method where the researcher simultaneously is both a student and active supporter of a community: she helps to learn, provides knowledge, and assists the field in solving social problems (Whyte, 1991). And there is a specific kind of observation that is tailored to the constraints and needs of an ethnographer exploring his or her own field; see the chapters on autoethnography in this book.

REFERENCES Berger, John (1991) About looking. New York: Vintage. Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas (1966) The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Burawoy, Michael (1982) Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ciuk, Sylwia, Koning, Juliette and Kostera, Monika (2018) ‘Organizational ethnographies’, in Catherine Cassell, Ann L. Cunliffe and Gina Grandy (eds.), Qualitative business and management research methods. London: Sage, 270–85. Czarniawska, Barbara (2014) Social science research: From field to desk. London: Sage. Czarniawska-Joerges, Barbara (1991) ‘Culture is the medium of life’, in Peter J. Frost, Larry F. Moore, Meryl Reis Louis, Craig C. Lundberg and Joanne Martin (eds.), Reframing organizational culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 285–97. Czarniawska-Joerges, Barbara (1992) Exploring complex organizations: A cultural perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Dalton, Melville (1959) Men who manage: Fusions of feeling and theory in administration. New York: John Wiley. de Certeau, Michel (1988) The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Erlingsdóttir, Guðbjörg (1999) Förförande idéer: Kvalitetssäkring I hälso- och sjukvården. Lund: Lund University. Garfinkel, Harold (1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2016) Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. New York: The New Press. Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy and Kostera, Monika (1999) ‘The anthropology of empty spaces’, Qualitative Sociology, 22(1): 37–50. Kunda, Gideon (1992) Engineering culture: Control and commitment in a high-tech corporation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Leidner, Robin (1993) Fast food, fast talk: Service work and the routinization of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. O’Reilly, Karen (2009) Key concepts in ethnography. London: Sage.

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Pachirat, Timothy (2018) Among wolves: Ethnography and the immersive study of power. New York: Routledge. Polanyi, Michael (1974) Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rottenburg, Richard (2000) ‘Sitting in a bar’, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 6(1): 87–100. Stewart, Kathleen (1996) A space on the side of the road: Cultural poetics in an ‘other’ America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sulima, Roch (2000) Antropologia codzienności. Kraków: WUJ. Watson, Tony (1994) In search of management: Culture, chaos and control in managerial work. London: Routledge. Whyte, William Foote (ed.) (1991) Participatory action research. New York: Sage. Whyte, William Foote (1993) Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001) Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Yanow, Dvora (2018) ‘Series editor foreword’, in Timothy Pachirat, Among wolves: Ethnography and the immersive study of power. New York: Routledge, x–xii.

4. How to shadow organizing Barbara Czarniawska For organization scholars, one of the key events of the 1980s was anthropology’s encounter with management and organization studies. It was most likely due to the fact that anthropologists were forced to come back from exotic countries, and found jobs – in business schools. Whatever the reason, all of a sudden, practically everyone in management and organization studies wanted to become an anthropologist, or at least to write an ethnography. The question was, how much of anthropological methods could be transferred to our field? The classical one, participant observation,1 was possible, but was of necessity limited to simpler jobs. It has been done before – Michael Burawoy (1979) worked as a machine operator, and then produced champagne in Hungary (Burawoy and Lukács, 1992). Yet participant observation of top management was difficult, partly because of the unwillingness of people in power positions to be observed (Prasad and Prasad, 2002), but mostly because the researchers were either not competent to play the role of manager or too busy doing it to observe. Some other approaches were tried, like becoming a participant observer in the role of corporate anthropologist, when such roles have been created (best known is the work of Kunda, 1992/2006). The most obvious possibility was direct observation – which meant sitting in the secretary’s office or in a coffee room and observing. Yet such direct observation soon revealed a peculiar trait of contemporary organizations: instead of sitting, like the observer, people constantly went in and out, seemingly always on their way. They were ‘already elsewhere’, was a major conclusion of a study that Lars Strannegård (Strannegård and Friberg, 2001) drew from his observation of a computer consulting company. They were on the way to the airport or back from a trip, on the way to a meeting or back from another meeting. The researcher-observer was left to himself, watching these comings and goings. The IT company Strannegård studied was not an exception; rather an example of what was becoming a rule in contemporary organizations. Sitting in the secretary’s office was becoming less and less fruitful, as I myself learned sitting in the office of the secretary of the Mayor of Warsaw, who was so busy traveling, poor thing, that he couldn’t even find time for an interview with me 45

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(Czarniawska, 2002). It was then I came to a conclusion that shadowing is the best field method for organization scholars (Czarniawska, 2014b).

HOW SHADOWING ENTERED ORGANIZATION STUDIES I first met the term ‘shadowing’ in the book of Italian sociologist Marianella Sclavi (1989), who followed like a shadow her daughter who went to school in the USA, and then repeated the procedure in an Italian school. Sclavi came up with the idea of shadowing after having read the story by Truman Capote in his collection, Music for Chameleons (1980). Capote told the readers how one day he followed a certain Mary Sanchez, a cleaning woman, who represented everything that Capote himself was not: a woman, a Mexican, tall, working class, heterosexual. Sclavi decided that it was a splendid example of what Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) postulated as the core of good novels and good sociology – exotopia (another place). As Bakhtin said in an interview shortly before his death in 1975: In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding – in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot ever really see one’s own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others. (Kelly, 1993, p. 61)

What is compelling in this approach is the lack of ambition to present the ‘true thoughts and feelings of the natives’ – an ambition that at a first glance appears extremely humanistic, but at second glance is really quite colonialist (for a further critique, see Prasad and Prasad, 2002). The observer will never have better knowledge than the actors, the foreigner will never understand better the indigenous culture, but an observer and a foreigner may have a different and instructive view of how the culture operates than actors and the natives would have. Bakhtin was not a supporter of the behaviorist idea that the actors and the observers must avoid contact, however, because he believed in dialogism – fictive in the text, but reflecting the possibility of an actual dialogue. Locating research reports in exotopia means replacing a sentimental idealization or a colonial contempt for the ‘primitive people’ with mutual respect between strangers. Respect is not necessarily the same as admiration and unconditional acceptance – a dialogical relationship in a study means that the researchers must present their findings to those they observed, but need to consider a possibility that the result will not be straightforward praise. Disagreements and differences in viewpoints are a valuable source of knowledge as such.

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This attitude is not always easy to achieve by management and organization scholars, who, like the colonialists of yesteryear, tend to believe that they ‘come to help’, ‘to explain’, ‘to advise’, to decide what is ‘best practice’ or ‘to emancipate the oppressed’. Shadowing is not only a method, but also an attitude of the investigator. Actually, shadowing had been used in management and organization studies quite often, but under different names. It was used by Giuseppe Bonazzi (1998), who in turn referred to Henry Mintzberg’s (1973) study as an inspiration. Walker, Guest and Turner (1956) used it in their study (described in detail by Guest, 1955). The term was launched by an ethnologist at the University of Oregon, Harry F. Wolcott, who spent his days following a school principal between 1966 and 1968 (Wolcott 1973/2003). At the time of his study, the radio was broadcasting a series called The Shadow, so the teachers began to call Wolcott a ‘shadow’. He adopted it; after that it has been used in studies of consumption (Miller, 1998), and in apprenticeship, especially in medicine and nursing (see e.g. Roan and Rooney, 2006).2 In the following section, I present in more details three examples of the use of the shadowing method, which emphasize specific challenges related to this method.

FEMALE SHADOWS Marianella Sclavi’s study reported in An Italian Lady Goes to the Bronx, 2007, was conducted when she was on another prolonged visit to the USA. This time around she did not want to shadow her daughter, but undertook another project, which she described as follows: The Program: ‘What I want to do is to visit a part of the Bronx where the people have gotten organized and are trying to save their neighborhoods, both morally and physically’. The Method: ‘I need a few names and telephone numbers for people who’re involved in this kind of work, and who might be willing to let me shadow them in the course of their daily lives’. The Approach: ‘All I want to do up there is to look and listen. I want to take a good look at my difficulties in communicating with the people who live there, and at theirs in communicating with me. At the things that get on our nerves, at my own discomfort’. The General Goal: ‘I want to find out what they do and how they live, what they believe in, what kind of hopes they have and what kind of difficulties they have to meet as people who have refused to resign themselves to catastrophe’. The Specific Goal: ‘I hope to collect a lot of little clues that will fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. And at the end of it all, I might just come away with a better idea of the intellectual and moral climate of certain areas of the Bronx today’. (Sclavi, 2007, p. 231)

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At that time, she taught sociology in a college at the border between the Bronx and Westchester in New York City. When she explained her project to her colleagues and friends, their comments were far from encouraging. In the first place, they found her methodological approach faulty: a proper approach would require a thorough review of all the literature dedicated to the Bronx, which would be crowned by one or several hypotheses, to be tested in a carefully designed study. Second, and this was the main objection, they considered the Bronx to be dangerous to a middle-aged Italian woman, a ‘lady’ from the title of the book. Third, and this comment represented the only real problem in Sclavi’s eyes, nobody knew how to make contact with somebody from the ‘real’ Bronx. Sclavi suggested that she might shadow some of the high school teachers who actually taught in the Bronx, but the answer was negative. It seemed to her that those teachers went to the Bronx as if they were going on a dangerous but necessary excursion to be made as quickly as possible, without stopping. Sclavi’s project was saved by the two factors that stand behind every brilliant field study: chance and persistence. At a Christmas party organized by the company where her husband worked, Sclavi was sitting next to a lawyer who, awaiting the main dish, told her with pride that his son, also a lawyer, specialized in legal services to the poor, and worked ‘in the heart of the Bronx’. Asking for the son’s telephone number was an obvious move. Two years later, when Marianella Sclavi was ready to begin her fieldwork, the young lawyer had already moved to Florida, but he knew immediately what she was after. The Banana Kelly Community (BKC) was a committee formed at the end of the 1970s – after the dramatic events that made up the notoriety of the Bronx – by some people living on Kelly Street. It originated with a black workers’ family and a social worker of Italian origin, who together launched a slogan ‘Don’t move, improve’. The first appointment Sclavi made was with the woman who was at that time the director of BKC. The first trip to the Bronx was perhaps the most trying, so that Sclavi set a task for herself: ‘A white, affluent, middle-class Italian woman is alone on a subway on her first trip to the South Bronx. Let’s try to take a look at the way she’s looking at things!’ (2007: 12). This task immediately helped her to discover three of her own implicit assumptions: that men are more dangerous than women, that those who look unemployed and/or homeless are dangerous, and that young people are dangerous. ‘You deserve to be mugged by a calm, middle-aged woman who looks like a secretary’ (2007: 12), she told herself. Her first visit to BKC initiated a series of snowballing contacts, and she kept asking people she met for permission to shadow them for one day. The first was one of BKC’s pioneers, Pearl White, a black mother of eight, hairdresser

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and beautician, a Baptist. Here is the first encounter between Pearl and Maria (Sclavi simplified her first name): During the first ten minutes of their conversation, Pearl and Maria had continued to study one another. They found each other disconcerting; they were also drawn to one another and aroused each other’s curiosity. Both of them were tall and solid, with a touch of irony in their eyes, a mouth that could broaden into a wide, winning smile, lively faces and a carriage like the Queen of England. ‘A bit stiff and withdrawn, too much composure. Who knows what she’s like when she lets herself go?’ they each thought of the other. They were both forty-eight years old. (2007, p. 49)

Sclavi followed Pearl White many times; and on many occasions, including a visit to the church, she also stayed at her house for a couple of days.3 While she interviewed Pearl about the history of BKC, the shadowing enabled her to experience life in the Bronx first-hand. On her way through the Bronx, she formulated another instruction for researchers attempting shadowing: Never eat too much or too fast, or you will risk falling asleep afterwards. The result was a story comprising the history of BKC (drawn from document analysis and interviews), the report of the present actions within the project (interviews and shadowing), and impressions of life in the Bronx (shadowing and all other types of direct observation). As a final touch, she added some further ‘maxims’ for the adepts of shadowing: 1. Never be in a hurry to reach conclusions. Conclusions are the most ephemeral part of your research. 2. What you are seeing depends on your point of view. In order to see your point of view, you have to change it. 3. […] 4. Emotions are basic tools of cognition, if you learn how to decipher their language, which is relational and built on metaphors. They don’t tell you what you are looking at, but how you are looking at it. (Sclavi, 2007, pp. 264–5)

Sclavi emphasized the fact that, when shadowing, the researcher does not try to avoid problems caused by the unexpected or discomforts related to the strangeness of the Other. On the contrary, shadowing puts those factors in the center of the researcher’s attention. Psychic discomfort and communication problems are turned into resources permitting us to understand ourselves and other selves in interaction.

SHADOWING SOFTWARE Attila Bruni (2005) studied the introduction of an electronic patient records system in an Italian hospital. The Electronic Patient Record (EPR) had been introduced there after a year-long participatory design process, where informa-

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tion engineers collaborated with doctors. Bruni’s aim was to conduct a structured observation of certain organizational events, but he became interested in the fact of the EPR’s presence in some times and places but not in others. This trait, in my opinion, is typical for just quasi-objects. Like calories in Coca-Cola Light, now you see them, now you don’t. Ann-Christine Frandsen (2009) followed a quasi-object in the sense of a bill, an economic report. But literally speaking, it was an actual object: a piece of paper, and it was relatively easy to trace back its origin. Attila Bruni’s quasi-object may be more precisely called a virtual object, in the sense of two of three meanings of the word ‘virtual’ listed by Marie-Laure Ryan (2001): virtual in the sense of containing a potential of many different actualizations, and virtual in the sense of being computer-mediated. Bruni had become fascinated with this vanishing object and decided to follow the software for a month. Immediately he discovered the first actualization of the EPR. The computer that contained the EPR used by nurses was located in the patient reception area. At the time of the study, an electronic document of virtual existence only did not have a legal validity. Thus, each EPR document was printed out in order to be signed by the doctor and the chief consultant, and then included into the folder containing all the documents concerning the specific patient. A typical EPR-mediated interaction between a patient and a nurse developed as follows: the patients presented themselves at the reception, told their names so that the nurse could check (on a computer or on a print-out) the appointment, and either delivered their latest test results to the nurse, or the nurse retrieved them from the computer if they were already there. Then the EPR provided the basis for an important decision concerning the color of the slip of paper that the patients received together with their queue numbers. The EPR showed whether the results of the tests differed from the previous treatment: if no, the patients were given a green slip, if yes, a yellow one. The color indicated the kind of treatment the patient was to obtain. Bruni’s peculiar situation as an observer of a software is evident here: although, sitting in the reception room, he witnessed many interactions between the patients and the nurses, between the relatives accompanying patients and the nurses and the patients, he could only glimpse an appearance of the EPR now and then, although the software, in a sense, was always there. Once he realized its importance, however, he also started visiting other premises where the EPR could show up: the laboratory, the hospitalization ward, the therapy preparation room, and the infusion zone. The significance of this presence is well illustrated in another vignette, showing the beginning of the day at a Day Hospital. The head nurse opened the door, switched on the lights, and then turned the computer on, waking up the EPR. The nurse then engaged in what could be seen as more proper

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nursing activities (preparing drips, beginning therapies for patients who did not require a check by the doctor, etc.) An hour later another nurse arrived and entered in contact with the EPR: she checked that all the clinical records for the patients expected to arrive during the day were ready; she printed out the list of appointments and piled the patients’ clinical records in the order indicated by the computer. She also printed out the EPR’s records for the new patients to initiate new folders for them. The EPR was also dependent on its host, that is, the computer and its operating system. A doctor who wanted to scan the test results made the operating system jam. A computer technician was asked to help, and he was able to start the system again, but he made it clear that if he started tinkering with the scanner, the nurse would not be able to use the EPR. The EPR won, and the scanner program had to wait till later on. There were also complaints about the EPR’s behavior. One nurse told the other to be careful because the computer had printed out a wrong therapy. The nurse explained to Attila Bruni that the program is a bit rigid in its structure … When the cycle requires a particular order, a particular drug, and then for some reason it has to be reduced … you have to be very careful because he [the software] always sets the same therapy at 100%. So that he [the doctor] often says ‘Reduce the dose’, but he doesn’t reduce it, because you have to go into the first … first memory. (Bruni, 2005, p. 371)

The ‘he’ of the doctor and of the EPR were all of a sudden on the same level, cooperating (or, as the case may be, not cooperating). The EPR actually had some stable character defects; it consistently made mistakes concerning one type of therapy. The computer technicians had been told that, but did not do anything. As it happened, the doctors made also mistakes concerning the same type of therapy, partly because they relied on computers to run it properly, and did not realize that the changes in the original inscriptions had to be made to secure this. So it was the nurses (and the technicians, when in the mood) who had to correct the mistakes of software – and of the doctors. One could ask, in what sense was Attila Bruni ‘shadowing’ the software? He was just sitting in one or another room, as every direct observer would, and watched the nurses, the patients, the doctors and the technicians. But a direct observer could have been inclined to notice that nurses ‘do something on the computer’; Bruni, for one month, focused attention precisely on the EPR software. He watched the EPR appearances and disappearances, followed its actions and its interactions. As most people now have become ‘information workers’, the ways of observing this work must be improved upon. While ‘life in the cyberspace’ and ‘virtual reality’ attract much attention (for a well-balanced review, see Ryan,

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2001), more attention should be placed on the connections between the activities inside and outside the cyberspace (see Kociatkiewicz, 2004). Researchers’ interest in work in finance directed attention to the central role of computer screens (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger, 2002) and mobile telephones in their work. All this can be, and is studied, by shadowing people and observing work settings; why not add shadowing objects to complete the picture, especially as organizing consists of actions of people and objects, many of which are in the virtual world.

SHADOWING PEOPLE AND SCREENS I have studied news production in three news agencies: a national Swedish agency, TT; an Italian international agency, ANSA; and a global agency, Thompson Reuters (Czarniawska, 2012). My first study was that of the Swedish agency, and my plan was to shadow people in key production roles. I was denied this opportunity, and had to rely on a diary-interview technique, in which the journalists told me what they did the day before, or, if the interview was conducted at the end of their shift, what they had done that day (not bad at all as a secondary technique). Somewhat to my surprise, and in contrast to my previous fieldwork in Italy (Czarniawska, 2002), I had no problem achieving permission to shadow journalists at three ANSA units. At the outset I was not quite sure how to shadow people who work primarily at, and through, their computers. In the past, I was mostly shadowing managers who used the computers sporadically. Even if Barley and Kunda (2001) had appealed to researchers to look for new ways of doing fieldwork, ways of studying people working with computers were not yet well developed a decade ago, apart from IT studies, which usually have a different purpose. Much to my relief, it was my hosts at ANSA who solved my problems. First of all, they gave me a place at a computer with two screens, like the ones they were using. And although I could not do anything myself, I could see ‘the desk’ (their work platform) and ‘the wire’ (the products), and follow the news through the production process. When a discussion started in the newsroom concerning any specific piece of news, I could trace it in the database and learn what they were talking about. Not even my shadowing seemed to be a problem. In studying people who work with computers, shadowing consists mostly of watching over their shoulders as they work and receiving explanations. It turned out that the journalists in the newsroom were used to that activity. It was common for colleagues – invited or uninvited – to watch over each other’s shoulders as they worked. It was also common for the person doing the work to explain what was being done and to invite comments and questions. Thus the journalists saw nothing peculiar about my wanting to observe their work at the computer. I also greatly

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appreciated the possibility of following both virtual and physical interactions, much as Kociatkiewicz (2004) did in his work. The main difficulty was keeping up with the speed at which things were happening. (As a matter of fact, speed became one of my main analytical categories later on; Czarniawska, 2014a.) Here are fragments of conversations that I recorded during breaks in an interview: The telephone rings: ‘Yes, … A? … Ah yes, I do know. C is working on it and sent me a message saying that she’s preparing a piece. Talk to her for a while … Yes, talk to her … talk to her for a second at any rate. OK? Ciao’. ‘As you’re here, you can tell me if the piece by X should be send to somebody else or straight to the wire?’ ‘I’d put it on the Internet, and send it to Newsroom Y’. ‘Gotcha’. ‘Put it … put it on the net, give it give it’. ‘Hello, M? Hi beautiful.4 Certainly, certainly, whenever you want … even in ten minutes … Listen M, how many non-journalists work in ANSA? …Then I got it right’. (lifts another receiver) ‘S! Is the boss there?’ … (returns to the previous call) ‘Ah, M, there’s the executive committee. When will it end? …Ah, at three o’clock? But we start now, no? At quarter to three … only recently?’ (takes the other receiver) ‘Ciao S. Thanks’. ‘M, we talk later then. Learn how it looks. See when it ends … hem … cock your ears no? Eh, because now I’m … I’m running the risk of distraction because actually I’m in the middle of a long conversation … OK. Ciao’.

My fieldwork at Reuters was similar to my work at ANSA: attending meetings, shadowing people at work, shadowing the news on the screen, and completing it with interviews. The journalists in all places were generous with their time (especially considering speed pressure) and seemed sympathetic to my purposes (though, as often happens, their interest in the results was limited).

SHADOWING COMPARED TO OTHER FIELD METHODS At the end of this chapter, I wish to emphasize that it is practically impossible to separate one technique of fieldwork from another – either in the field or at the desk. This is especially true of shadowing that uses a variety of field techniques; after all, a conversation is also an interview, and during shadowing one observes continuously – no matter if walking or if sitting. Textbooks of methods often introduce such differentiation for pedagogical purposes; in practice, however, the differences are relatively vague. An observer may be invited to accompany someone on a trip, and a shadow may be asked to remain in the office. All types of direct observation involve some kind of ‘participation’. Each method is good if it matches the study purpose. Thus, contrasting shadowing with other methods is only meant to help the researcher choose – and the choice is not merely a technical matter, but an ethical one as well.

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Seonaidh McDonald and Barbara Simpson (2014) have done a detailed comparison of the material collected from the same site using interviews, direct observation, participant observation and shadowing. In an interview, the team leader described his personal ideas of how the meetings of his team should look like. He did not depict any actual meeting, but rather an ideal meeting, emphasizing how, in his opinion, it differed from the ideas typical for the others in his company. McDonald and Simpson noticed that the interview answers seemed to be rehearsed, and were without doubt selected according to what the interviewee believed was of interest to the interviewer. The selection was also obviously meant to present him in a positive light. … the problem here is not so much that the interviewees are maliciously misleading the researcher, but that the framing of an interview situation means these discrepancies are a feature of: first, the limits of the manager to remember and express the totality of their practices: ‘to ask the manager what he does is to make him the researcher; he is expected to translate complex reality into meaningful abstraction. There is no evidence to suggest that managers can do this effectively’ (Mintzberg, 1973, p. 222); and second, the (often unremarked) distance they place between the researcher and the management practices they discuss. (McDonald and Simpson, 2014, p. 9)

McDonald and Simpson believe Mintzberg a bit too much: as Rosalie Wax (1971/1985) convincingly showed, oftentimes ‘the natives’ are much better observers (and translators!) than doctoral students. Yet the main point is valid: It is the interviewee who chooses the frame of her or his utterance – which may be of significance as such, but not a direct way of grasping the nature of practices under study. To put it succinctly: traditional interviews answer the question ‘What do people say when they are interviewed?’ – which is important as it reveals the dominant discourse, but nothing else. Direct observation (video-recording included, see e.g. Jönsson, 2005) permits the researcher to see for example a meeting first-hand, but does not give insight about what it means for the actors involved. Also, pointed out McDonald and Simpson, the framing is once again made by one person – in this case, the observer. This framing privileges some things and silences others, reflecting the pre-understanding of the teller and the view of that teller about what the ‘reader’ wishes to know. So, in terms of how these data are treated when written up and reported, the benefit of the ‘first-hand’ relationship with the organizational action remains with the researcher. It is not passed on to the reader of the research account who cannot ‘see’ the organization as the researcher does; rather the reader benefits from the different kinds of insights the researcher can glean from this experience. (McDonald and Simpson, 2014, p. 9)

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While shadowing, the observers can check the correctness of their framing by asking direct questions, and even if they do not agree with the answers, they are obliged to report the discrepancy. Compared to participant observation, shadowing is much easier, because it does not require simultaneous action and observation or skills that the researcher may not have. It also helps in maintaining a distance and a sense of estrangement, whereas participant observers may be tempted to ‘go native’. Shadowing and estrangement do not require that researchers disavow their feelings or negate them; on the contrary, as emphasized by Marianella Sclavi (2007), emotions become a critical research instrument. Researchers must act as responsible adults who offer respect and sympathy. Perhaps the most obvious difference between participant observation and shadowing, pointed out McDonald and Simpson, is that ‘the shadow’ does not participate in organizing (she or he may help to carry something or make coffee). Instead, the researcher concentrates on the activities and views of one person at a time (though observing his or her surroundings), but maintaining the exotopic perspective all the time. In my opinion, the main strength of shadowing is its mobility. This kind of mobility is not simply the fact of moving from place to place – even stationary observers need to move from one chair to another sometime. The advantage of shadowing is that the moves are double – the world and its events become available to the eyes and ears of both the person that is being shadowed and the shadow. The observation is four-sided: The observer and the observed observe one another, and they both observe what is happening around them – as with a four-lens reflex camera (Czarniawska, 2018). As for the disadvantages, it must be pointed out that shadowing involves many practical problems. Access is not guaranteed once and for all. In every new situation, someone may protest the presence of the researcher and people being shadowed can suddenly change their minds. This can happen with other types of observations, but less frequently, because people who do not want to be seen can hide from the eyes of a stationary observer. Another difficulty is the need to merge into the background. Relations between the shadow and the person shadowed may differ, but a shadow must not attract attention. This requirement is somewhat in contrast to the requirement of maintaining the distance, but can be resolved in various manners. Male organization researchers usually ‘blend into the background’ more easily, because men’s dress code is simpler (McDowell, 1998). Women must guess and improvise. I have already written a great deal about the psychological discomfort caused by these necessities – and the helpful role it plays in gaining insights (Czarniawska, 2007, 2014c). Of course, giving up one’s professional and personal identity and the role-playing required are sometimes costly, but it is

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a price worth paying. In the end, one can learn more, not only about what do the others do, but also about oneself. The last but not the least important thing to consider in connection with shadowing is the impact on the person shadowed. Truman Capote ended his shadowing by smoking hash with Mary Sanchez at her workplace (definitely not recommended!), after which she was fired. The best I achieved was that my shadowing helped to maintain the reputation of a (highly competent) person whose position was threatened by a reform. But, if Latour (2005) is right, the results of our study should have made what we studied familiar not to those who we studied, but to everybody else.

NOTES 1. 2.

More on various kinds of observation in Monika Kostera’s chapter in this book. A detailed description of the various uses of shadowing can be found in McDonald (2005). 3. My shadowing of the Accounting Director at the municipality of Warsaw, who was also similar to me in both age and education, did not proceed so smoothly: perhaps we were too similar to one another (Czarniawska, 2007). 4. M was a man, as was the speaker. This was not a homosexual allusion, but the usual way of addressing people one likes in Italian.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981) ‘Discourse in the novel’, in Mikhail Bakhtin, The dialogical imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 259–422. Barley, Stephen R. and Kunda, Gideon (2001) ‘Bringing work back in’, Organization Science, 12(1): 76–95. Bonazzi, Giuseppe (1998) ‘Between shock absorption and continuous improvement: Supervisors and technicians in Fiat’s “Integrated Factory”’, Work, Employment & Society, 12(2): 219–43. Bruni, Attila (2005) ‘Shadowing software and clinical records: On the ethnography of non-humans and heterogeneous contexts’, Organization, 12(3): 357–78. Burawoy, Michael (1979) Manufacturing consent. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Burawoy, Michael and Lukács, János (1992) The radiant past: Ideology and reality in Hungary’s road to capitalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Capote, Truman (1980) ‘A day’s work’, in Music for chameleons. London: Abacus. Czarniawska, Barbara (2002) A tale of three cities, or the glocalization of city management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Czarniawska, Barbara (2007) Shadowing and other techniques for doing fieldwork in modern societies. Malmö: Liber. Czarniawska, Barbara (2012) Cyberfactories: How news agencies produce news. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Czarniawska, Barbara (2014a) A theory of organizing (2nd edition). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar.

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Czarniawska, Barbara (2014b) ‘Why I think shadowing is the best field technique in management and organization studies’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 9(1): 90–3. Czarniawska, Barbara (2014c) Social science research from field to desk. London: Sage. Czarniawska, Barbara (2018) ‘Fieldwork techniques for our times: Shadowing’, in Małgorzata Ciesielska and Dariusz Jemielniak (eds.), Qualitative methodologies in organization studies. Vol. II: Methods and possibilities. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 53–74. Frandsen, Ann-Christine (2009) ‘From psoriasis to a number and back’, Information and Organization, 19(2): 103–28. Guest, Robert H. (1955) ‘Foremen at work: An interim report on method’, Human Organization, 14(2): 21–4. Jönsson, Sten (2005) ‘Seeing is believing: On the use of video recording in research’, in Stefan Tengblad, Rolf Solli and Barbara Czarniawska (eds.), The art of science. Malmö: Liber, 236–61. Kelly, Aileen (1993) ‘Revealing Bakhtin’, The New York Review of Books, June 10. Knorr Cetina, Karin and Bruegger, Urs (2002) ‘Global microstructures: The virtual societies of financial markets’, American Journal of Sociology, 107(4): 905–50. Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy (2004) Social construction of space in a computerized environment. Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk. Kunda, Gideon (1992/2006) Engineering culture: Control and commitment in a high-tech organization. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McDonald, Seonaidh (2005) ‘Studying actions in context: A qualitative shadowing method for organizational research’, Qualitative Research, 5(4): 455–73. McDonald, Seonaidh and Simpson, Barbara (2014) ‘Shadowing research in organizations: The methodological debates’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 9(1): 3–20. McDowell, Linda (1998) Capital culture: Gender at work in the city. Oxford: Blackwell. Miller, Daniel (1998) A theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mintzberg, Henry (1973) The nature of managerial work. New York: Harper & Row. Prasad, Pushkala and Prasad, Anshu (2002) ‘Casting the native subject: Ethnographic practice and the (re)production of difference’, in Barbara Czarniawska and Heather Höpfl (eds.), Casting the other: The production and maintenance of inequalities in work organizations. London: Routledge, 185–204. Roan, Amanda and Rooney, David (2006) ‘Experiences and the extension of communities of practice: A case study of women education managers’, Management Learning, 37(4): 433–54. Ryan, Marie-Laure (2001) Narrative as virtual reality. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sclavi, Marianella (1989) Ad una spanna da terra. Milan: Feltrinelli. Sclavi, Marianella (2007) An Italian lady goes to the Bronx. Milan: Italian Paths of Culture. Strannegård, Lars and Friberg, Maria (2001) Already elsewhere. Stockholm: Raster. Walker, Charles R., Guest, Robert H. and Turner, Arthur N. (1956) The foreman on assembly lines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Wax, Rosalie H. (1971/1985) Doing fieldwork: Warnings and advice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wolcott, Harry F. (1973/2003) The man in the Principal’s office: An ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

5. Autoethnography Mark Learmonth and Mike Humphreys WHAT IS AUTOETHNOGRAPHY? In recent years, certain leading ethnographic researchers have placed an increasingly strong emphasis on highly personal, experiential and often emotionally evocative narratives. Typically using short stories, drama, poetry and other evocative modes of literary and artistic expression (Denzin, 2003; Humphreys, 2005; Learmonth and Humphreys, 2012; Spry, 2001), the narratives produced seek to encourage empathy and identification in readers (Adams and Holman Jones, 2011; Bochner, 2001). By seeking to ‘change the world by writing from the heart’ (Denzin, 2006, p. 422), this mode of inquiry sets aside conventional social scientific preoccupations (with validity, reliability, generalizability and so on) in favour of factors like personal meaning and empathetic connection. Indeed, to conduct such autoethnography, in the words of Denzin (2010, p. 38), is to ‘focus on epiphanies, on the intersection of biography, history, culture and politics, turning point moments in people’s lives’. What is perhaps especially distinctive about this relatively new genre is its autobiographical nature. Researchers typically make their own life and experience the ‘focus of the [ethnographic] story, [it is, therefore, the author who is both] the one who tells and the one who experiences, the observer and the observed’ (Ellis, 2009, p. 13). For its proponents, then, the principal contribution of such writing is that it offers: methodological alternatives to what one typically finds in academic scholarship … to put on display a researcher who, instead of hiding behind the illusion of objectivity, brings himself forward in the belief that an emotionally vulnerable, linguistically evocative, and sensuously poetic voice can place us closer to the subjects we wish to study … [an important consideration because] too often … claims of truth try to triumph over compassion, try to crush alternative possibilities, and try to silence minority voices. (Pelias, 2004, p. 1)

We think that the following narrative, drawn from a widely cited journal article, gives a flavour both of the literary style and the evocative, highly personal accounts that many in this mode of ethnography are attempting. The 59

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paper’s narrator, Jim, ‘presents a story about the embodied struggles’ (Sparkes, 2007, p. 521) he believes his job as a university academic involves. And in this excerpt, we join him by the copying machine in the midst of a chance encounter with Louise, a PhD student: Look Jim, I know you are busy. I know how stressed you are. You’re always busy and stressed. But I’m also busy and stressed. And you are my supervisor and I have got to get my PhD on time. That’s not going to happen if I can’t get to you when I need to. And I need to right now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today! I shouldn’t have to feel guilty about asking for your time should I? Jim simply nodded in agreement. She was right on all counts. Bright, intelligent, dynamic and passionate about her research, she also worked four nights a week and some weekends in a restaurant to help fund her studies. Louise had every right to expect Jim to be readily available as her supervisor and guide her along the way. She should not have to feel guilty about asking for his time. But guilt was the feeling that washed over Jim as the photocopier continued to churn out the multiple copies of student notes for his lecture in 10 minutes’ time. He felt guilty about the lack of concentrated time he could give any of his PhD students. He felt guilty about hastily skim reading their drafts of chapters and embryonic analyses. He felt guilty that he could not keep up with the reading he needed to do to push their ideas forward and support their thinking. He felt guilty because he was selling them short. He hated this feeling being associated with an aspect of the job he loved. But, even in this domain, the manic pressures of saturated time, the sheer busy-ness at UWA thwarted his desire to be the kind of supervisor he wanted to be and the kind of supervisor his doctoral students had the right to expect him to be. Standing there, Jim felt slightly disorientated. His emotions had swung from intense hostility to intense guilt in the space of a few moments. And now raw anger was seeping into the corporeal mix. Anger with a system that made him feel these emotions so often in his daily life. Each in their own way drained him, diminished him, eroded him, dehumanized him (Sparkes, 2007, p. 533).

This is a highly evocative vignette of academic life. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, critics of this kind of writing have been far from slow to point to its apparent avant-garde distance from – perhaps even outright diametric opposition to – the received aims and norms of social science. After all, as Behar puts it: No-one objects to autobiography, as such, as a genre in its own right. What bothers critics is the insertion of personal stories into what we have been taught to think of as the analysis of impersonal social facts. Throughout most of the twentieth century, in scholarly fields ranging from literary criticism to anthropology to law, the reigning paradigms have traditionally called for distance, objectivity and abstraction. The worst sin was to be too personal. (1996, pp. 12–13)

But one measure of how influential this intellectual current is becoming, nevertheless, is that it has acquired an increasingly widely recognized label: autoethnography. The term was appropriated from a somewhat older anthro-

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pological tradition with which it shares little, at least in terms of method; even so, in the early years of the twenty-first century, the popularity and influence of this newer version of autoethnography has started to take off. The aim of our chapter is to set out some of the background to the debates about autoethnography before sharing examples of our own preferred approach to it – vignettes of some of our own experiences of organizational life. We feel that although autoethnography is far from a panacea for researchers in organization studies who want to take a more radical approach to ethnography than has been traditionally the case, it nevertheless has plenty of potential. In order to do this, we’ll need to deal with some of the key conceptual debates – and our own personal takes on them. But before proceeding we want to share with you the reasons that we have used autoethnography ourselves.

MIKE’S STORY: WHY I USE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY I finished my PhD aged 52 in 1999 with a background of 27 years as a science teacher. At that stage, I was uncomfortable with the notion of an authorial presence in any academic text and my thesis was largely written in a detached third person voice. However as I wrote I gradually realized that during the PhD and perhaps because of it, my life had changed. Reflecting on this and the difficulties I faced over the four years of the study I realized that I needed to insert myself somewhere into this rather dry detached academic text. The way I did it was to invent (or so I thought!) the idea of autoethnographic vignettes. I wrote four of these in the thesis separating them from the main text in shaded boxes along with a set of what I called at the time ‘jazz notes’ where I used my lifelong interest in jazz as an interpretive tool in theorizing some of my experience. It wasn’t until sometime later when writing an article for Qualitative Inquiry that I found out that there was a literature on autoethnography and many authors had used vignettes as a useful device. I’d re-invented the wheel yet again. Nevertheless, ever since, I have been drawn towards autoethnography as an interesting way of presenting research narratives.

MARK’S STORY: WHY I USE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY In the early years of this century, I found myself in a business school after doing a PhD in health care management. I’d ended up in a business school simply because business schools were (and still are) where most of the jobs were; at least for people with my kind of background. Like Mike, I’d also had quite a long career beforehand – as an administrator in the UK’s National Health Service. Especially when I first started working in a business school, I felt like a bit of a misfit. While the mantra was clear – ‘as long as you publish (in the right journals) we don’t really care what you publish’ – I wasn’t particu-

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larly comfortable with the kinds of research most people seemed to be doing. I certainly wasn’t going to do the supposedly disinterested ‘scientific’ analyses, ostensibly of use to top executives that many of my colleagues attempted. Looking back, I wonder whether I was attracted to autoethnography, in part, as a kind of antidote to the dominant research traditions that so many others were using. That said, I’ve always been interested in the humanities – I like reading novels and watching film and so on; so autoethnography also gave me the opportunity to read the kinds of stuff I read as a hobby – as part of my job.

WHAT ABOUT THE CONCEPTUAL SIDE? The currency and intensity of the conceptual debates about autoethnography are well illustrated by a 2006 special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography – a debate that has continued until today (Fernando et al., 2020). This special issue is devoted entirely to discussing the proposals of the first essay: Anderson’s (2006, p. 392) elaboration of what he calls analytic autoethnography, which he offered out of a concern for ‘reclaiming and refining autoethnography as part of the analytic ethnographic tradition’. Indeed, because of autoethnography’s concern with the self, one of the central debates is around the possible relationship(s) between theories of self and identity, and methods for representing the self. For Anderson, the dominant mode of autoethnography (which he refers to as evocative autoethnography) is problematic, in that it typically refrains from – indeed, refuses engagement with – conventional sociological analysis (even though it is often associated with scholars who are institutionally located within sociology departments). He cites the well-known work of Ellis and Bochner, who assert that ‘the mode of story-telling [in autoethnography] is akin to the novel or biography and thus fractures the boundaries that normally separate social science from literature … the narrative text [of autoethnography] refuses to abstract and explain’ (Ellis and Bochner, 2000; in Anderson, 2006, p. 377). In part, Anderson objects to evocative autoethnography on grounds that it is modelled more upon novelistic lines than upon the received conventions of social science writing. It seems to us, then, that evocative autoethnographers typically reject the inclusion of formal analysis, because they believe that to do so would compromise their autoethnographic stories’ power to evoke – evocation being their key contribution. Of course, there is an aesthetic element to this debate: which style of writing is most compelling? But Anderson’s objections also have epistemological and political implications. We ourselves would temper Anderson’s (2006, p. 378) exhortation to be ‘consistent within traditional symbolic interactionist epistemological assumptions and goals’, but we feel it is important, nevertheless, to retain his ‘commitment to theoretical analysis’. For us, one of the

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major reasons to be committed to analysis is that an insistence on stories being allowed to speak for themselves can dim the ethnographer’s appreciation of the multiple ways in which their stories might ‘speak’. We think that the following story, which comes right at the end of The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, is a good illustration of such dangers. It concerns the author, Ellis, talking with her partner, Art, about celebrating the near-completion of her book: ‘I think I’m ready to buy that new car now,’ I say, referring to the silver SLK-320 Mercedes sports car we’ve looked at and test driven several times. ‘That would be wonderful,’ Art says. ‘What made you decide?’ ‘Mom’s dying,’ I respond. ‘… Mom loved new cars. It would be a tribute to her.’ Art nods. ‘Why do you think she loved new cars so much?’ ‘They symbolized freedom and independence, adventure and escape, frivolity and treating oneself …’ ‘Okay, tomorrow let’s go get it,’ I say. We toast the decision with our champagne … The talk finished for now, feelings and bodies take over. We bask in the warmth of our love for each other, and finally, the immediacy of the relational moment. (Ellis, 2004, p. 349)

For some, this story may well evoke the emotions surrounding the events of that occasion. However, in its (apparently unexamined) celebration of conspicuous wealth, personal freedom and traditional family values, the story also seems to us to naturalize some of the ideologies associated with the American political Right. And though attempts at formal analysis do not guarantee that stories will lose their capacity to be read in divergent ways, we submit that had there been a concern to link this text with social theory, the author may have become more aware of its possible ideological dimensions. After all, if her story is open to the kind of political reading we have offered, the Left-leaning objectives often claimed for evocative autoethnography – which Denzin and Giardina (2005, p. xv) see as an important challenge to what they call ‘Bush science’ – risk being damaged. On the other hand, however, an over-riding concern with analysis might risk the opposite problem – losing the evocative power of autoethnography. Denzin (2006, p. 419) illustrates how this could occur, with a juxtaposition of Anderson’s ambitions for analytic autoethnography against a statement from Neumann, a leading proponent of the evocative tradition: Autoethnographic texts … democratize the representational sphere of culture by locating the particular experiences of individuals in tension with dominant expressions of discursive power. (Neumann, 1996, p. 189, quoted by Denzin, 2006, p. 419)

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compared with Anderson’s: Analytic autoethnography has five key features. It is ethnographic work in which the researcher (a) is a full member in a research group or setting; (b) uses analytic reflexivity; (c) has a visible narrative presence in the written text; (c) [sic] engages in dialogue with informants beyond the self; (d) is committed to an analytical research agenda focused on improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena. (Anderson, 2006, p. 375, quoted by Denzin, 2006, p. 419)

Thus, while a refusal to abstract and explain may be politically dangerous, we ourselves would still seek to retain those aspects of evocative autoethnography which represent a powerful means (albeit among other means) to ‘move ethnography away from the gaze of the distanced and detached observer and toward the embrace of intimate involvement, engagement, and embodied participation’ (Ellis and Bochner, 2006, pp. 433–4). Perhaps this stance is better explained by looking relatively briefly at the historical dimensions of the debate.

THE RISE (AND RISE) OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY The more one looks for the origins of autoethnography, the more they recede into the misty beginnings of the discipline now routinely censured for denying the possibility of autoethnography by silencing the native voice. One may even find oneself slipping far back beyond that, all the way back to the Socratic injunction ‘know thyself’ which Malinowski was fond of quoting in his seminars. (Buzard, 2003, p. 66)

In order to contextualize the debate, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the classic fieldwork studies of twentieth-century anthropologists and sociologists (and, of course, organizational ethnographers) typically constructed narratives in which the participant-observer enters into an alien culture, gets a view of that culture from within and then, as it were, escapes from that culture to present a vision of it unavailable to those inside. Early versions of autoethnography seem almost exactly to reverse this process: they concern looking at one’s own culture from without, writing about it, then returning to that culture. Indeed, the earliest published work to use the term ‘auto-ethnography’ for an approach to qualitative research discusses it as the anthropological analysis of one’s ‘own people’ (Hayano, 1979, p. 99). Instead of studying ‘a distinctly different group than their own’ (Hayano, 1979, p. 100) – the standard practice in anthropology – Hayano’s version of auto-ethnography envisages ethnographers who ‘possess the qualities of often permanent self-identification with a group and full internal membership, as recognized both by themselves and the people of whom they are a part’ (1979, p. 100). In a subsequently published monograph, Hayano provides an extended example of this version of auto-ethnography,

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analysing a group to which he himself had long belonged: Poker’s (that is, the card game) loose network of nocturnal devotees (Hayano, 1982; see Van Maanen, 1988, pp. 106–7 for a contemporaneous commentary). It is clear, therefore, that the way Hayano originally envisaged auto-ethnography differs significantly from today’s dominant ‘evocative’ version. The latter after all seeks to fuse intimate and embodied autobiography with ethnography. Indeed, Hayano proposes what now seem fairly conventional methods and foci. In particular, Hayano’s version of auto-ethnography remains intent upon the observation and analysis of others (albeit others who share membership of the same group as the ethnographer). Unlike evocative autoethnography, Hayano is relatively uninterested in the details of the researcher’s own autobiography, and does not trouble the conventional ethnographic distinction between the observer and the observed – a distinction that evocative autoethnography seeks at least to deconstruct; perhaps to dissolve entirely. Nevertheless, there are still elements of Hayano’s work that are shared with today’s evocative autoethnography. Hayano questions the taken for granted benefits of an ethnographer’s status as an objective outsider; he also makes pertinent his own biography, at least in the sense that explicit analytical use is made of his (previous and ongoing) personal relations with the group studied. So, while injecting into his own definition a stress on autobiographical detail not found in Hayano’s work, Norman Denzin, a leading proponent of today’s evocative autoethnography, seems to have been influenced by Hayano’s arguments in this, his own early formulation of auto-ethnography (note, for instance, their shared hyphen that Denzin is soon to drop): An auto-ethnography is an ethnographic statement which writes the ethnographer into the text in an autobiographical manner … This is an important variant in the traditional ethnographic account which positions the writer as an objective outsider in the texts that are written about the culture, group or person in question … A fully grounded biographical study would be auto-ethnographic and contain elements of the writer’s own biography and personal history. (1989, p. 34)

Another early definition of autoethnography as ‘insider account’, which, like Hayano’s comes from a cultural anthropological tradition, is rather more self-conscious than Hayano about the power relations inherent in representing ‘the other’: ‘autoethnography’ or ‘autoethnographic expression’ … refers to instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s terms. If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are texts the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations. … Autoethnographic texts differ [therefore] from what are thought

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of as ‘authentic’ or autochthonous forms of self-representation … [because autoethnography] involves partly collaborating with and appropriating the idioms of the conqueror … [and] are usually addressed both to metropolitan readers and to literate sectors of the speaker’s own social group. (Pratt, 1992, p. 9)

Pratt’s version of autoethnography shares Hayano’s focus on insiders’ accounts of themselves (rather than outsider-ethnographers’ accounts of the other), but it is much more explicit about the power asymmetries involved in rendering to the other an account of one’s own self or group. For Pratt, autoethnography always emerges from the receiving (or resisting) end of ethnographic work. She argues that subjugated groups, should they wish to speak of themselves in ways intelligible to their oppressors (and thereby producing her version of an autoethnographic account), are obliged to appropriate certain of their oppressors’ intellectual resources. Indeed, her main example is a 1200-page account of the history and culture of the Inca. Dated 1613, and addressed to King Philip III of Spain, the account was written in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala as a response to Spanish misrepresentations of the conquered people’s way of life. Thus, while Pratt’s version of autoethnography is again rather different from evocative autoethnography, it seems to us that Pratt shares with evocative autoethnographers important debts to similar intellectual traditions. For instance both versions were born, at least in part, out of a concern to be responsive to the problematic nature of ethnographic authority. Both are sensitive, in other words, to the question: How can one speak about or on behalf of the other? Indeed, Ellis and Bochner (2000, p. 735) chart the development ‘of reflexive, evocative, autobiographical and vulnerable texts’ within an intellectual framework indebted to major poststructuralist and feminist thinkers, one that encourages the uncovering of: multiple perspectives, unsettled meanings, plural voices, and local and illegitimate meanings that transgress against the claims of a unitary body of theory … [as well as] exposing how the complex contingencies of race, class, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity are woven into the fabric of concrete personal lived experiences. (2000, p. 735)

There is a sense then in which today’s evocative autoethnography can be seen as one of a number of the more radical ethnographic responses to emerge for ethnographers from the crisis of representation in the 1980s and 1990s. It might be useful, therefore, to move next to a potential strategy for autoethnography that we have used. One which tries to respect some of the major insights of evocative autoethnography and which shares some of its methods, while at the same time leaving room for traditional theorisation. We have called our approach autoethnographic vignettes.

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AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC VIGNETTES IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH Vignettes have been variously defined as: ‘short scenarios in written or pictorial form, intended to elicit responses’ (Hill, 1997, p. 177); ‘concrete examples of people and their behaviours on which participants can offer comment or opinion (Hazel, 1995, p. 2); ‘stories about individuals, situations and structures which can make reference to important points in the study of perceptions, beliefs and attitudes (Hughes, 1998, p. 381). Such vignettes have been used in the study of attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and norms across a wide and diverse range of social research topics including, for example, violence between children in residential care homes (Barter and Renold, 2000), drug injectors’ perceptions of HIV risk and safer behaviour (Hughes, 1998) and social work ethics (Wilks, 2004). These vignettes, often generated from ethnographic research, are constructed as plausible, vivid examples of situations with which the different groups can identify and are intended to be effective in generating conversations, ideas, and group discussion. Thus, as a qualitative research tool vignettes appear accepted, quite commonly used and effective not only as a vehicle for empirical social science research but also a training resource. However, we would like to examine and, indeed advocate, a more controversial use of vignettes in research, specifically their use in autoethnographic texts where they may be used as an evocative ‘representational strategy of authorial voice and narrative form’ (Jeffcutt, 1994, p. 242). Sparkes’s tale of academic life previously cited is a good example of such a vignette, which in Spry’s terms ‘reveal[s] the fractures, sutures and seams of self-interacting with others in the context of researching lived experience’ (2001, p. 712). We suggest that the combination of vignettes and autoethnography presents an opportunity for synergy especially between academics and management practitioners by giving voice to both the researcher and the researched. As Jarzabkowski et al. (2014, p. 280) put it, ‘The evidentiary power of such vignettes lies in their plausible, vivid, and authentic insights into the life-world of the participants, which enables readers to experience the field, at least partially.’ Many members of faculty in business schools have had relatively lengthy industrial experience prior to joining academia. Mark, for instance, the first author of this chapter, worked for 17 years in the UK National Health Service (NHS) before his PhD. Similarly, Mike worked in technical and further education colleges for 25 years before his PhD. Indeed, according to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data (employee statistics for UK universities), the average business PhD student graduates at 31 years of age – implying that many business PhDs have had careers prior to academia – while there is also a large cohort of DBA and executive MBA students who

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continue working as managers in the course of pursuing practice-orientated degrees. Indeed, a potentially rich well of data exists among business academics and students concerning their own personal, insider accounts – vignettes of working life. However, this well of experience remains relatively untapped, in part because there are few outlets to publish work based on one’s own personal accounts. One particular contribution of scholars’ own personal vignettes is potentially to create new windows on ‘difficult-to-research’ areas. Indeed, there are signs of an emergent interest within social sciences to make such writing more acceptable (see, for example, Doloriert and Sambrook, 2012). However, for us, the value of using vignettes is not just to analyse (though analysis is important); it is also to evoke as powerfully as possible some of the personal consequences of being at work. We see potential for this sort of research within a range of current organizational issues including, for example, workplace bullying, work/life balance, home working and coping with the challenges of redundancy or unemployment. Vignettes about such issues, written by people who have directly experienced such things themselves, should appeal to non-academic audiences – particularly if the evocative element is done well. For academics too, these evocative autobiographical stories can provide a fine grain of detail, enabling analyses to reveal in new ways some of the contradictions inherent in working life, as well as the connections between one’s personal dilemmas and wider social structures. In sum, they have potential to inform policy debates and management action. Here are two examples of these kinds of vignettes we ourselves have written, taken from our own previously published work: Mike in a Turkish Technical College: The taxi turns right out of the honking traffic through the main gate set within a forbidding, three metre high, spiked wrought iron fence. The taxi driver asks us, in English, whether the fence is there to keep students in, or others out. Students mill about in the yard, between the fence and the dull grey concrete buildings. They are nearly all female, and there seem to be two styles of dress. Some wear short skirts or jeans, sweaters, shirts, boots and long hair. In contrast to this there are some in Islamic dress, their hair and head fully covered by the hijab or scarf and only the skin of the face and hands visible. We enter the main door, and are greeted by the caretakers, all brown-suited middle aged men with moustaches, leaning against, grey unadorned walls. We pass the student common room and tobacco smoke billows from the door. We walk along a tile-floored corridor past a large black bust of Atatürk, a Turkish National flag, tall glass cabinets with examples of costume and embroidery, and continue onto a grimy stone floor, passing hundreds of students along the way. (Humphreys and Watson, 2009, p. 43) Mark Working in Health Care: As a health care manager I had been tasked with implementing a new ward-based MIS [management information] system. What I had assumed would be minor changes in nurses’ work in exchange for substantial gains in terms of the management systems was seen very differently by the nurses

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themselves. They argued that looking after patients would be seriously compromised, to an extent that far outweighed what they thought were the cosmetic gains in having a slicker administrative system. Whatever the rights and wrongs, it was clear that the political benefits to the top managers in being seen as leaders in MIS meant that there was no question of not implementing the new system. During the implementation, I happened to overhear two nurses expressing to one another their strong personal animosity against me because of my involvement. The realization of their hostility left me quite shocked and hurt. I had not anticipated it, and at the time, could not work out why it should have been so vociferous. (Griffin et al., 2015, p. 29)

Mike’s vignette is a contextual scene-setting story in the style of Van Maanen (1988, p. 136) who described such vignettes as ‘personalised accounts of fleeting moments of fieldwork in dramatic form’, adding flavour to an account of a difficult consultancy visit and subsequent discussion of culture difference. Mark’s vignette is more organizationally focused and formed the basis of an exploration of alternative approaches to organizing practices. We consider that using vignettes of work experience in this way can enhance the theory and practices of both academics and practitioners. This has particular application in published research papers by addressing things like intimacy, insider knowledge and difficult research subjects where ethics might make access difficult. Thus, ‘vignettes can illustrate the nexus of concepts and relationships, often within a richly conveyed context, which the surrounding text can then tease out’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2014, p. 281). However, while authors’ personal involvement in both telling stories and analysing them arguably means that they may be able to bring a greater understanding of the personal issues at stake, there is also a range of problems inherent in providing one’s own personal accounts.

PITFALLS AND IDEAS FOR CONSTRUCTING AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC VIGNETTES Problems with the use of autoethnographic vignettes include, for example: (1) memory and forgetting (that is, as opposed to standard ethnography, most autobiographical accounts are necessarily written without diaries or other records); (2) narcissism and methods for the re-presentation of self (that is, self-stories attract the criticism that they are really just about satisfying researchers’ self-regard); (3) the creation of critical distance (that is, the extent to which it is possible, or desirable, to detach oneself from the emotions

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involved in one’s own stories). We have explicitly acknowledged the problems with autoethnographic vignettes in a previously published piece: From a methods point of view, it is worth making explicit that these texts of our stories were not derived from any kind of ethnographic field notes – none were taken because the significance of the events only became evident to us later. Thus the tales were constructed, initially from memory, and subsequently evolved through discussions with one another, and also from presentations of proto-versions at various conferences. (Learmonth and Humphreys, 2012, p. 115)

Crucially, autoethnographic scholarship requires a literary kind of writing skill, in order to avoid being boring, unimaginative and unreadable. But, practically speaking, how do you start? As autoethnography is about your own lived experience, you do need to have lived and had some experiences and, of course, you also have to recall your lived experiences. In this regard, diaries and other forms of records (email threads, files on previous papers, old CVs, as well as more personal stuff – letters, photographs, scrapbooks and so on) are all invaluable sources for your stories – as is your own imagination and your ability to make sense through theoretical lenses. There is no ‘blueprint’ for autoethnography (fortunately). But it does mean that to write a tale that other people will find interesting you need to have a wide awareness of the almost infinite variety of ways in which stories can be told successfully.

IF YOU OVERCOME THE PITFALLS In organization and management studies autoethnography remains on the margins of scholarly endeavour; a marginality that in our view represents a loss, overall, to the discipline. Indeed, while we would hardly wish it to displace the primacy of more conventional forms of organizational ethnography (Watson, 2011) we nevertheless find much to commend in the best autoethnographies. The emphasis on the personal and evocative, along with autoethnography’s often literary and storied nature, seems to us to open up new opportunities for a range of novel contributions to be made – including, importantly, contributions by practitioners. These characteristics of autoethnography can, we believe, also provide illuminating parallels with more established modes of representation within management studies and management practices. Autoethnographic accounts are also enhanced and made more vivid by ‘vignettes [which] are a particularly useful way to illustrate the messy and entangled interrelationships between concepts as they actually occur within the field’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2014, p. 280). Management practitioners can use their experiences to construct such evocative vignettes that in turn can form the basis for analytical autoethnographic research papers. This could not only improve working relationships between practising managers and academics

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(thereby enhancing MBA Executive education!) but also, potentially, provide synergistic insights into topical and perhaps difficult organizational issues.

FINALLY: SOME PRACTICAL TIPS Not that long ago, it was hard, if not impossible, to get published in a mainstream management journal using autoethnography – especially if that’s the label you used. For example, the first draft of a paper by Mark that was eventually published in Academy of Management Learning & Education (Learmonth, 2007) had the term ‘autoethnography’ in the title and he’d used the term a number of times in the text. However, the editor instructed that the term had to be removed before it could be published. That was in 2005; we suspect that this sort of thing would be much less likely to happen today. Many of the journals of the Academy of Management have now published articles that use autoethnography. The same is true for many European journals – at least those that regularly publish qualitative work. While it’s still on the margins of our discipline, at least the term is no longer taboo within management and organization studies generally. Unfortunately, we regularly talk to people who clearly think that autoethnography is a soft option. They seem to believe that it’s easier to do than say a regular ethnography basically because you don’t have to carry out any fieldwork – you just have to tell a few stories about your experiences. If that is your view, then you’re very likely to be rejected by journals – rightly so – and please don’t blame bias against autoethnography! In our view, if you just want to get published as quickly and as often as possible in order to further your career, autoethnography is probably the worst choice you can make. A few years ago, we wrote that potentially ‘anything goes’ in terms of how to do autoethnography successfully (Humphreys and Learmonth, 2012, p. 344). We still believe that there is no formula for success – almost any approach to representing and storying the self thing could work. If you believe that your work communicates something of you in the way that you think it should then you need to find the best way to do it. This process will probably take a long time. It will involve lots of redrafting, lots of presenting to friendly (and not so friendly) audiences in conferences and seminars, and doubtless a string of rejections from journals. For example, we started writing what was to become our best known paper using autoethnography (Learmonth and Humphreys, 2012) in 2005. We presented proto-versions of it at countless conferences and seminars and earlier versions were rejected from two other journals before Organization eventually accepted it. Even then it was accepted only after several complex rounds of reviews and almost getting rejected. Mind you, it’s perhaps the paper that both of us are most proud of; we’d certainly encourage anyone who’s interested in the approach to give it a go.

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REFERENCES Adams, T. E. and Holman Jones, S. (2011) ‘Telling stories: Reflexivity, queer theory and autoethnography’, Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 11(2): 108–16. Anderson, L. (2006) ‘Analytic autoethnography’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35: 373–9. Barter, C. and Renold, E. (2000) ‘I wanna tell you a story: The use of vignettes in qualitative research’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 3(4): 307–23. Behar, R. (1996) The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston, MA: Beacon. Bochner, A. P. (2001) ‘Narrative’s virtues’, Qualitative Inquiry, 7: 131–57. Buzard, J. (2003) ‘On auto-ethnographic authority’, The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16: 61–91. Denzin, N. K. (1989) Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Denzin, N. K. (2003) Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, N. K. (2006) ‘Analytic autoethnography, or déjà vu all over again’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35: 419–28. Denzin, N. K. (2010) The qualitative manifesto: A call to arms. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Denzin, N. K. and Giardina, M. D. (2005) ‘Introduction: Qualitative inquiry and the conservative challenge’, in N. K. Denzin and M. D. Giardina (eds.), Qualitative inquiry and the conservative challenge. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, ix–xxxi. Doloriert, C. and Sambrook, S. (2012) ‘Organisational autoethnography’, Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 1(1): 83–95. Ellis, C. (2004) The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Ellis, C. (2009) Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. P. (2000) ‘Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 733–68. Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. P. (2006) ‘Analyzing analytic autoethnography: An autopsy’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4): 429–49. Fernando, M., Reveley, J. and Learmonth, M. (2020) ‘Identity work by a non-white immigrant business scholar: Autoethnographic vignettes of covering and accenting’, Human Relations, 73(6): 765–88. Griffin, M., Humphreys, M. and Learmonth, M. (2015) ‘Doing free jazz and free organizations, “A certain experience of the impossible”? Ornette Coleman encounters Jacques Derrida’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(1): 25–35. Hayano, D. M. (1979) ‘Auto-ethnography’, Human Organization, 38: 99–104. Hayano, D. M. (1982) Poker faces. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hazel, N. (1995) ‘Elicitation techniques with young people’, Social Research Update, No. 12, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. http://​www​.soc​.surrey​.ac​ .uk/​sru/​SRU12​.html (accessed 24 October 2011). Hill, M. (1997) ‘Research review: Participatory research with children’, Child and Family Social Work, 2: 171–83.

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Hughes, R. (1998) ‘Considering the vignette techniques and its application to a study of drug injecting and HIV risk and safer behaviour’, Sociology of Health & Illness, 20(3): 381–400. Humphreys, M. (2005) ‘Getting personal: Reflexivity in autoethnographic vignettes’, Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6): 840–60. Humphreys, M. and Learmonth, M. (2012) ‘Autoethnography in organizational research: Two tales of two cities’, in G. Symon and C. Cassell (eds.), The practice of qualitative organizational research: Core methods and current challenges. London: Sage, 314–30. Humphreys, M. and Watson, T. J. (2009) ‘Ethnographic practices: From “writing-up ethnographic research” to “writing ethnography”’, in S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels and F. Kamsteeg (eds.), Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday organizational life. London: Sage, 40–55. Jarzabkowski, P., Bednarek, R. and Le, J. K. (2014) ‘Producing persuasive findings: Demystifying ethnographic textwork in strategy and organization research’, Strategic Organization, 12(4): 274–87. Jeffcutt, P. (1994) ‘From interpretation to representation in organizational analysis: Postmodernism, ethnography and organisational symbolism’, Organization Studies, 15(2): 241–74. Learmonth, M. (2007) ‘Critical management education in action: Personal tales of management unlearning’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 6(1): 109–13. Learmonth, M. and Humphreys, M. (2012) ‘Autoethnography and academic identity: Glimpsing business school doppelgängers’, Organization, 19: 99–117. Neumann, M. (1996). ‘Collecting ourselves at the end of the century’, in C. Ellis and A. Bochner (eds.), Composing ethnography: Alternative forms of qualitative writing. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 172–198. Pelias, R. J. (2004) A methodology of the heart: Evoking academic and daily life. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd edition). London: Routledge. Sparkes, A. C. (2007) ‘Embodiment, academics, and the audit culture: A story seeking consideration’, Qualitative Research, 7: 521–50. Spry, T. (2001) ‘Performing autoethnography: An embodied methodological praxis’, Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6): 706–32. Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Watson, T. J. (2011) ‘Ethnography, reality and truth: The vital need for studies of “how things work” in organisations and management’, Journal of Management Studies, 48(1): 202–17. Wilks, T. (2004) ‘The use of vignettes in qualitative research into social work values’, Qualitative Social Work, 3: 78–87.

6. To look at the world from the Other’s point of view: interview Monika Kostera and Anna Modzelewska Interview is a kind of conversation aiming at gathering material for research. As Barbara Czarniawska (1999, p. 5) put it, interview is a controlled conversation, where both parties acknowledge and accept how and why the control is done. Interviews are used in many fields of science and practice, can take quite different shapes and have various goals and applications. In ethnography, interview is one of the most important tools to gather empirical material. Through conversations with people the researcher tries to learn about the intersubjective perception of social reality that helps to see the world from more than one perspective. The focus is, in an anthropological tradition, on the lived experience of people in their social context (Gaggiotti et al., 2018; Van Maanen, 1988; Williamson, 2006; Yanow, 2009). The idea is to understand social life and organizing processes from the perspective of its members, i.e. capturing the perspective ‘from within’ (Hammersley, 2006, p. 11). And so it is very important with personal involvement (Atkinson, 2012), in order to learn the subjective points of view of social actors. After having gathered interview material it is the researcher who interprets, however, so one can say that after throwing the nets into the ocean to come up with as many voices as possible, the ethnographer then uses her own voice to express them: albeit she strives to do so in a way that does justice and makes space for diversity. Monika Kostera (2010) and Paweł Krzyworzeka (2015) emphasize that the researcher should be devoted to transcribing and in his or her work provide generous quotes from interviews, thus reflecting the complexity and dynamics of the social realities under study. Interviews are also a testimony to the context: the time and space of the life in communities, societies and organizations. Such testimonies can record events, customs and social reality that can be an inspiration for future generations of researchers, from the point of view of the participants. Zbigniew Ferczyk, a 95-year-old interlocutor (former soldier of the Home Army and

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Solidarity trade union activist), expressed the following reflection during an interview conducted by one of us: It is very good that you are studying such a topic. We leave, many things are lost, and now it will be a document. One day someone will look in on him and maybe he will analyse after some years a detail that now does not seem so important.

In this chapter, we present the types of interviews used in ethnographic research along with practical tips on how to conduct qualitative research using this research tool. Our considerations focus on three main variants of conducting interviews in organization ethnography (open and semi-structured interviews as well as conversation analysis), sharing our own experiences and presenting problems and dilemmas that may appear in the field during research. Also we intend to introduce readers to some useful guidance concerning such areas as preparing and conducting interviews, building relationships with the field, ethics, commitment, and keeping an open attitude.

TYPES OF INTERVIEW Most generally, interviews may be either structured or unstructured, as well as standardized or non-standardized. Structuring involves both the formulation of individual questions and the construction of the interview scenario. Structured interviews are about asking questions in such a way as to make the respondents give specific answers. And the interview questions are asked in a pre-planned shape. For example, a structured question would be: ‘How many hours a day do you watch television?’ A less structured question could take the following form: ‘Do you watch television? When?’, or in an even more open version: ‘How do you spend your free time?’ The latter question does not even suggest that the interviewee watches television. It is up to them to take up the theme – or not. The degree of structuring of the interview determines its form (open, semi-structured, structured) which translates into the way questions are structured, topics planned and the form of questions asked. Standardization implies asking questions in the same order and form, which enables the collection and comparison of large amounts of data (Gudkova, 2012, pp. 113–15). The goal of the structured interview is to conduct quantitative research in order to prove (or disprove) a hypothesis. The sample of respondents should then be representative, and the research tool is known as a questionnaire. The answer might be pre-coded in order to make the data processing process easier. Qualitative research usually does not use such forms. In ethnographic research it is most common to use as unstructured an interview scenario as possible (also known as open interviews). An intermediate form is sometimes used – the semi-structured interview – which ranges from

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interviews made with an auxiliary list of questions to what we call the collection of performative definitions, or asking the same questions (usually short and quite simple) of all the interviewees. The difference between the structured and unstructured interview is that: the former aims at capturing precise data of a codable nature in order to explain behaviour within pre-established categories, whereas the latter is used in an attempt to understand the complex behaviour of members of society without imposing any a priori categorisation that may limit the field of inquiry. (Fontana and Frey, 1994, p. 52)

UNSTRUCTURED (OPEN) INTERVIEW The most frequently used type of interview in ethnographic research is the non-standardized and non-structured interview, i.e. the open interview. An open interview means that the researcher listens: without suggesting, talking too much, giving advice, or acting like an examiner. Sometimes interlocutors, at the beginning of the relationship with the field, may feel stressed and try to give the ‘correct’ answers, i.e. they attempt to guess what the interviewer wants to hear. But in open interviews there are no ‘right’ answers! On the contrary, hearing what is already on their mind is exactly what most interviewers want to avoid. What is the point of going out into the field if one only hears what one already knows? It is far better to appear ignorant than try to be an expert and intimidate people into giving an answer they believe is ‘correct’. One of us usually explains, at the beginning of her relationships with the field, that she indeed is ignorant and asks for explanations of what they may perceive as mundane or obvious. Ethnographic interview is a conversation, but the conversants are not equal or identical. The interviewee has much more power in such interviews than in most quantitative data collection and so we prefer to call them interlocutors or interviewees rather than respondents. They do so much more than ‘respond’. An ethnographer should follow the interviewees’ train of talk and take up the topics touched upon by him or her, even if (especially if!) it was not planned by the researcher. In this way of conducting research, it is important to have an anthropological frame of mind and focus on what is particularly important for the respondents. Regardless of the starting point, the conversation goes off in all directions, recognizing the existing relationships between phenomena and exploring the available landscape (Salzman and Rice, 2009, pp. 23–4). In this way we can see whether the original research problem really is valid for the field and, if necessary, reformulate it. This procedure helps to better understand the area and the phenomena studied. For example, when one of us was examining the organizational structures of the Solidarity trade union in the

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1980s she realized that that in order to understand their project, she must first learn about the history, experience, collective goals and the specific organizational culture of the opposition movement as factors detrimental to the design of the structure. Before the interviewees even started to talk about structures in interviews, they explained the context, motivation and important events in founding the organization. The second co-author had a strikingly similar experience when she was interviewing people who used to be managers before the fall of the state communist system. In the beginning of her relationship with the field, they all wanted to provide her with as much context as they could. The open formula of interviews allows interlocutors to tell stories that they consider important. Often at first these stories may seem less relevant from the point of view of the research problem, but they prove, in fact, to be of fundamental value. Stories are close to the logic that drives the actions of people in the field. Dry and abstract answers do nothing to enhance our knowledge of lived experience, such as when an interviewee becomes theoretical or normative and lectures us about things we could read in management textbooks. Instead, we try to ask, or even press people for stories by way of examples. But it also happens that an interlocutor who begins with very abstract generalizations then starts to tell vivid stories. In the example of the study of Solidarity structures, the interviewees often talked about their childhood, upbringing and patriotic feelings, but it was only after collecting many testimonies and their interpretation that it turned out that the experiences passed between generations and the values instilled during socialization were relevant for the study; indeed they were the profound inspiration for the organization’s project. That is why careful listening to the interlocutors is so important during research, which creates another positive effect: it builds trust between the researcher and the person from the field. Such a relationship based on trust enables a deeper understanding of the feelings, motivations and problems of the subjects and, as a result, a more holistic interpretation of the examined phenomena. In ethnographic research of organizations we often have an idea of what we want to talk about before an interview, but we try to avoid having any hard and fast plans so that we can listen and ask about the things that the interlocutor is telling us. Some typical questions that may be asked during an anthropological interview include the following: • • • •

What does your work consist of? What do you do in the organization? Who do you work with? In what way? What is your usual day (at work) like? Can you describe an extraordinary day, unexpected event: positive or negative?

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• Have you observed any unique phenomena in your organization? And if so, give and describe an example. We ask for a description of events, urge people to give examples and describing them helps to illustrate the norms and values in force in the organization. Similarly, referring to exceptional situations and learning about the organization’s response to this enables exploration of these values: norms and values can be seen most clearly precisely when they are violated and in the reaction of the organization to such an event. It is useful to have some knowledge of the interlocutor’s professional language or jargon, at least to the extent of being able to listen attentively and ask about the things one does not understand. It may also be useful to learn foreign languages, such as when the researcher heads for the field located abroad (outside their own country). For example, Nigel Barley learned the language of the fairly unknown tribe in Cameroon that he wished to study (1986). Krzysztof Konecki (1992) learned Japanese in order to study a company in Japan, and Elizabeth Dunn (1999) learned Polish in order to actively observe a Polish organization. But even in an organization in one’s country or home town it is sometimes possible to encounter professional or organizational dialects that sound quite alien to the researcher. It may turn out that a key word that the researcher takes for granted has a totally different meaning in the field being studied, or is not used at all. The alert researcher Karin Winroth (1999) noticed that the word management1 was used in a specific way in the law firm she was studying and this discovery led to her formulating a research problem relating to this difference. It is important to pay attention to how the respondents understand the words and adapt the language of the conversation to the specifics of the interlocutors. For example, one of us asked how workers from the Krakow steel mill communicated with each other during the strike. In the question she meant the transmission of information and contact channels in the organization. The interlocutor replied: ‘very simply – we communicated by bicycle’. The researcher realized that the people in the field were using the word ‘communication’ differently from what she was used to, as in the Polish expression ‘city communication’ about public transport. If we want to learn about things important to the field, we have to learn to talk their way. Probably everyone at some point makes a slip and starts using an alien expression although it is a good thing to honestly account for it, like Urlike Schultze did (2000). She confessed that she accidentally ‘infected’ her field with words that the field did not use, such as ‘gap’, meaning the effect of comparison between a desired and actual state. Schultze speaks about how such disruptions in language come from the way of asking questions; when the researcher uses her or his own words rather than the words in use in the field. Another source of interference may be body language. With facial expressions,

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such as too vigorous nodding or making disapproving faces, the interviewer may suggest directions in which the conversation should progress. However, an interviewer who does not give any cues, such as never nodding or saying ‘mhm’, is unlikely to collect very much material because the interviewees will probably feel embarrassed or rejected and at best they will keep their answers very brief. One of us once had a student who reported repeated failures with his interviews. At some point another student pointed out to him that he tended to listen with a blank expression on his face and that this might make people feel uncomfortable. He changed his conversational style (Tannen, 1986) and his results improved immediately. It may also happen that the interviewee tests whether they want to spend time with the researcher. For example, during an interview with Lech Wałęsa (former Polish president, Nobel Peace Prize winner) after hearing the first question that one of us asked him, said that he did not remember the events that the researcher asked about in this way, opening the field of the conversation and testing the researcher to see whether she indeed wanted to talk with him on his terms. It was helpful to know the biography and autobiographical books of the subject, thanks to which the researcher managed to keep up with her famous interlocutor and show him that she wished to follow his line of conversation. The former President sometimes asked her questions about facts and names, as if testing whether she was listening and if she had read his books. Wałęsa was satisfied with the answers, gradually building a thread of trust and opening himself to the researcher. The longer the conversation lasted, the more valuable his answers became. It is also important to ask unconventional questions, which the respondents have not had to answer many times before, in order to avoid boring the interlocutor. In this regard, it is important to know, read and prepare for an interview to be able to ask for details, but also to plainly make the interlocutor interested in a conversation from which he or she also may gain some insight. The opposition activists of local structures emphasized to one of us that thanks to their participation in the study, they themselves became aware of the patterns of their own actions, and had a space to reflect on them for the first time.

ETHICS AND TRUST Interview is a conversation based on trust and so it is very important not to abuse the trust of the field. There are some ethical issues that need to be very seriously taken care over. Firstly, we should always ask for permission to do the interview – and to record it. Secondly, we have to protect the interviewees’ identity and we need to tell them this at the very beginning. More often than not, and especially when their anonymity is secured, interlocutors do not mind the recording, even though it may take time to get used to its presence.

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Sometimes, however, the interviewees wish to have their names revealed, as was the case in the study of the Solidarność movement in Poland carried out by one of us. In the case of Wałęsa – the name Wałęsa was what he explicitly wished to be called in the final reports. However, even when that is the case, we should omit more personal material from the report in order to protect the privacy of our interviewees. Thirdly, trust takes time to grow and develop. Ethnographic research is not about one-off interviews but often involves relationships that last years, and recurring conversations with the same persons. Time is also needed to get the conversation going, especially the initial ones. It has happened to both of us that people have taken more than half an hour to get over the initial phase when they say quite superficial and uninformative things, but once the interviewee has settled down a truly interesting conversation often begins. Short interviews never get to that point. But how long is long enough? This naturally varies and depends on the researcher and the interviewee. In our experience it has been everything between an incredibly fast 15 minutes (recurring interview) to 3 hours. We usually say 1.5–2 hours when asked by students. While this is not a rigid rule, it tends to work in most cases. Our longest interview lasted 8 hours and the interlocutor was so engaged in the topic that the researcher did not want to interrupt his interesting argument. However, you should always keep in mind the comfort of the interlocutor and how he or she feels during the interview. The recorder is an extremely helpful device to use during interviews because it allows the researcher to focus exclusively on the interlocutor, maintain eye-contact and listen attentively to what they are saying without the need to take copious notes. Recording an interview allows you to focus better on the conversation itself than on recording it. However, keeping notes on important details of the conversation is also important. When taking notes we should still focus on the interlocutor as much as possible; building trust and relationships is more important even than keeping accurate annotations. We also recommend transcribing the conversation as soon as possible after the interview, when we still remember the most details of the conversation and it is also linked to the lived, trust-based character of ethnographic interviews: it sometimes happens that the interviewee asks to switch off the recorder and we should do so when asked. However, we should be able to make sense of the conversation in its entirety, while omitting material sensitive to the interlocutor. It can be difficult to remember such nuances after some time has passed. For example, one of us, during interviews with pre-1989 managers, was often asked to switch off her tape recorder. The study was carried out in the early 1990s and under state communism it had been commonplace in Eastern Europe with various informers and spies recording and collecting information on managers. One of the directors the researcher was talking to even said directly, and with a self-ironic

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laugh: ‘You know, communism made me paranoid, so you’d better turn that thing off, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. Usually one person is interviewed by a single interviewer. However, sometimes it can be useful to conduct a group interview, particularly when the group dynamics are of interest – or when additional aspects might emerge (Fontana and Frey, 1994). This method is most often associated with the technique of collecting data in marketing research, when focus groups are regularly used to gather information about a product. But that is not the only example of a group of people being interviewed together – group interviews were also conducted by Bronisław Malinowski (1922/1992), and are certainly used by contemporary researchers (such as Johansson, 2006). Group interview has its strengths such as supplementing and ongoing verification of the facts by the group. However, it also has disadvantages, such as some people trying to dominate the discussion, or some participants being reluctant to disclose too much about themselves to the group. If the interlocutors insist on group interviews, it is a good idea to agree, and then, perhaps, try to talk in private with some of the participants. One of our students conducted research on a cultural institution managed by women and tried to arrange individual interviews with each director. The directors did not agree to a separate interview, arguing that they formed a structure together, managed together, shared one room and so also wanted to answer questions together. The interview lasted 3 hours, and the student was satisfied with the material he had received. Such interviews can be quite informative, not just with regard to facts and stories, but also the values of the organization. On the part of the researcher, group interview requires a slightly different technique than a regular face-to-face interview in that it is sometimes necessary to intervene and act as something of a moderator, rather than just be a listening partner as in a person-to-person interview. One of us discovered this when she was invited to a religious pilgrimage of Solidarity activists, during which she was to conduct observations and interviews. Former oppositionists from various parts of Poland came to the event, so it was a chance to attract new interlocutors. On the spot, the interviewees argued about which of them contributed the most to the fight for valour and political transformation in Poland. The researcher became a moderator and, by calmly asking questions, eased the conflict, smiling and asking everyone to speak calmly. Conflict is a possible drawback of group interview, but there is an more even serious problem – when everyone agrees with each other. Groupthink may seriously affect individuals’ responses, which can in turn lead to the whole interview becoming more superficial. Now, to some practical tips on how to conduct in-depth free interviews. First of all, we recommend listening more than talking. Do not judge, interrupt or instruct the interlocutor during an interview. The interviewer’s attention

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should be focused entirely on the person talking and what he or she wants to convey to us. Questions should be open and focused on what the interlocutor considers important. We cannot make decisions and use a very complicated language. The language of the questions must be adapted to the studied group, and we need to check how interlocutors understand given terms and words. Remember to ask for details and examples. If the interlocutor wants to tell us about things that are completely off topic, such as their childhood, that’s great despite the fact that the research concerns something else entirely. This is how trust is built, and the story may, after all, turn out to be important when we get to interpret the results of the research. Good knowledge takes time to build, so remember the importance of a comfortable meeting place and ensure a good mood is maintained during the conversation. Ethical issues and protection of the interlocutor against possible negative consequences of sharing information are also important.

SEMI-STANDARDIZED INTERVIEW According to Michael Angrosino (2010, p. 97), semi-structured interview means that the researcher adheres to a predetermined research problem and questions are aimed at obtaining information on a specific topic. Quite often the actors in the field demand that the researcher gives them a list of questions before the interview. Also, it does happen that the researchers themselves want to have such a list. Interviewing with the aid of a list of questions is known as semi-structured: there is an agenda to follow that is the researcher’s and not the interviewee’s, and certain topics are addressed that the interviewer has prepared in advance. In all other respects the semi-structured interview situation is similar to an open-ended interview. It can, but does not need to be, shorter than the latter, as there is no need for an ‘ice-breaking’ phase. There is in particular a useful type of semi-structured interview, known as the collection of performative definitions,2 where the researcher wants to learn more about the language of the field and the dominant metaphors by asking questions starting with ‘What is a …?’ For example, our students wanted to find out what other students think about the role of a manager in modern organizations. They asked questions such as: Who is the manager? What role does the manager play? The students collected answers and on this basis they separated the metaphors associated with managers.

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Here are some examples: The manager acts as a guardian overseeing harmony in the ecosystem. For me, the manager is a captain. Navigates, keeps order, leads to the goal, manages the ship, allocates tasks and resources. Just like a doctor, a manager should, when a problem arises, make a diagnosis that will later allow him to ‘cure’ the organization and get rid of the problem. I associate a manager with a spider. Why? He is sitting inside, because from there it’s best to control the network.

It is also possible to ask people to provide definitions in writing. The researcher asks a group of people to answer several questions such as: ‘What is …? ‘What does … mean?’ etc. In the following passage you will find several answers that one of us collected from her students at the Faculty of Management and Social Communication at Jagiellonian University. They were asked the following question: What is an organization? • An organization is a theatre in which everyone has a specific role to play, which is imposed from above and assigned to individuals. Employees are actors who act according to a strictly defined scenario, work according to specific rules imposed from above. When they work, they adapt and lose their self, which ‘returns’ and becomes active only after the work is finished. • Organization is a type of game. Just like in a board game, so also in the organization we set the goal of winning the game. To get to the finish line, however, we have to overcome various obstacles, sometimes we can hit a field that will give us a bonus. The organization works in the same way – it pursues a specific goal, wants to achieve it, but meets various problems along the way, which it must overcome. One can say that organization is a never-ending game, because new goals are constantly appearing. • The organization reminds me of the code / regulations. The organization resembles a set of obligations, rights, rules of conduct, employees adapt to the rules. • Organization is a project – an organization is an undertaking whose success is determined by a team of people and the resources they have, it has a role to fulfil that should be performed at a given time. • The organization is like a family, because it should strive for the common good, focuses on friendly relations and cooperation. • I see the similarity between the organization and the state. A society forming one group, they share a common history, memories, they create an organization, they feel connected with it. • The tree and organization have common features. Tree trunk are employees, and without work there will be no fruit.

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• For me, organization is an idea and belief in a goal. People profess certain values, cultivate it, care for publicity, propagate it, deeply believe in it, are engaged in activities. • Organization is a kind of dish, because each dish consists of ingredients that together form a whole. • An organization is a ship. It is the captain’s responsibility to manage the crew so that they can safely reach their destination, and set the direction so as to gain as much as possible. • The organization resembles a beehive. They all work for a purpose that guides each of them – the production of honey, wax, and bee putty. In the beehive-organization there is the queen – a specific kind of manager. Therefore, the hive has a structured hierarchy. Mother bees have worker bees, utility collectors and nectar collectors. The use of an open question in writing allows to explore the opinions of interviewees on a given topic and the opportunity to speak freely without time pressure. During the COVID-19 pandemic the students of one of us preferred this approach, as other than online forms of personal contact were not possible. However, the students of the other co-author conducted open interviews online. The different was, perhaps, that the latter students were in continuous contact with people they had met before the outbreak of the pandemic and could build on trust already gained and relationships already formed. Semi-structured questions can also be useful if the researcher’s aim is to compare data collected from a large number of interlocutors (Angrosino, 2010, p. 97). The use of this tool can help organize and conceptualize extensive empirical material. In this way, it is possible to create a scenario based on defined questions, create categories and models of culture and social systems. For example, our students carried out semi-structured interviews concerning ecological awareness of Warsaw residents. Each student conversed with Varsovians walking in different forests around the city, using a common tool. The researchers held lists of proposed questions divided into thematic blocks, e.g. the form of spending time, types of activity and their frequency. Such a tool is especially helpful for researchers who are not interested in exploring complex and ambivalent issues but wish for a more structured outcome. Even students who are timid and afraid of meeting an unknown person are able to collect research material to verify the research problem. Many students prepare lists of questions to feel more secure, but, during the interview, they do not stick to the script, and engage in a more open interview. Below we show an example of an interview scenario developed by a student under the guidance of one of us. The topic of the thesis concerned a specific fashion brand and its involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and sustainable

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development. The script was divided into thematic sections, under which the suggestions for questions were based. Part I. Performance Please introduce yourself, tell us what you do and what function you perform in the company. Part II. General theme (brand and market characteristics) 1. What is the history of the brand’s creation? 2. What is the brand’s DNA? (What characterizes it, what is its core?) 3. What is the mission and vision of the brand? 4. What are the values transmitted by the organization? (Does it have such and such? If so, which?) 5. What was the risk of establishing such a brand? (related to transparency, with a higher price than in standard stores, as it developed, how the organization achieved so many customers) 6. What structure does the organization have? (How many employees are there in management levels? Is it structured?) Part III. Customer characteristics 1. What is the target group of the brand? (To whom does the brand address messages? Demographic data) 2. What characterizes the customer? What is his or her taste? Is it possible to describe the client of the ideal brand elements – personal characterization? 3. How does the company communicate with recipients? How does it reach them? (What means does it use, with what language does it communicate, what does it want to achieve through it, apart from sales, and can the organization see the results of this communication?) Part IV. Transparency 1. What does transparency mean in the fashion industry? What is this phenomenon and how does it manifest itself? What problems are associated with it and where does the idea come from? 2. Why did the company decide on such a strategy? 3. How do they implement this idea? What is it about? Only prices or other aspects? 4. What are the risks associated with this? And are there any risks associated with brand transparency? 5. What is the breakdown of the product price? Part V. Ecology 1. What does the process of designing, creating and promoting a new collection look like? (Single copy) 2. Are you an ecological and sustainable brand? Can it be so called and why?

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3. Zero waste – how is this idea implemented in the organization? Is it implemented at all? Why? Part VI. CSR – other issues besides those mentioned 1. Is the brand involved in any projects other than just clothing production? 2. What is the Fashion Revolution and how does the brand get involved in this project? 3. What relations prevail in the organization between employees? 4. How is the money allocated from social initiatives? Part VII. The future of the brand 1. How is the brand developing? How many stationary stores are you planning to have in the future? 2. What are the company’s plans for the coming years? 3. Is it planning expansion into foreign markets? 4. Does it aspire to mainstream? If carrying out a semi-standardized interview, it is of course necessary to know exactly which questions and problems are of interest. We need to know what we want to ask, what answers we are looking for. But there should be space for new issues arising, as ethnography should be an inductive or abductive research methodology and so not limiting too much the list of questions. Just like in an open interview, ethics is of vital importance: protection of personal data of interlocutors and building trust are very important.

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS Conversation analysis (CA) is a method that developed from the ethno-methodological tradition. It was developed by Harvey Sacks (see e.g. Silverman, 1998) and focuses on conversations between social actors in their various roles both in professional and private settings. Conversation analysis is based on similar theoretical grounds as ethnography, but there is an important difference in that ethnography is usually based upon the premise that culture may be described through resorting to individual human behaviour, human feelings and the diverse viewpoints that people hold. Conversation analysis, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that culture can only be roughly described by concentrating on how people negotiate their social competence in terms of not what they say, but how they say it. Conversation analysis regards social knowledge as primary and determining individual attitudes. The content of the interview does not say much about the person (which an ethnographer would often assume), but does say a lot about society, place and time. This difference makes it rather difficult to merge conversation analysis and ethnography, although it is possible to combine them as subsequently used methods.

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CA usually concentrates on the dialogues of social actors in their professional roles, such as a doctor and a patient, recorded by tape recorder or video camera. The researcher schedules an appointment in the field after having secured the consent of all people involved, for example in a clinic, where the conversation between the doctor and the patient is recorded (the researcher might or might not be present in the room). Next, the researcher carefully transcribes the conversations, applying the special ethno-methodological script. The interpretations concern how the social actors tried to legitimize their behaviour in the interaction and how they used the cultural code. Below we present a scene illustrating the course of the presentation of the project developed by one of the directors together with the conversation. The situation was noted by one of us during the research. Employees were invited to the conference room; the topic was the presentation of a completed implementation project. The director opened the presentation using multimedia devices. Director X – Good morning, let’s get started. Employees see a blank card on the screen instead of the project. Employee X – Mr. Director, there is nothing here. I think the presentation did not go well. Director X – All good. Any suggestions? We start work.

Conversation analysis is based upon the following main principles: • Social actors create the social order in their daily conversations. • This order may be discerned and described. • In a certain context it is possible to characterize the social order on the basis of the systematically collected conversations of the actors. • Interactions (conversations) between people constitute a part of the discourse: they both depend on it and are perpetually re-creating it. Dialogue principally means an exchange of utterances. These utterances, or turns, and how they occur, are an important source of information. When does the speaker stop speaking? How does the interlocutor know that it is their turn to take the floor? Which gestures, words, sounds or hues of intonation indicate this? When does the exchange of turns take place? Analyses of sequences include several levels of conversations, beginning from the very basic one: a move, through a turn, and an exchange. A full exchange of utterances makes up a logical conversational whole, or transaction, which means that it is an element of conversation connected by the same theme. The highest level is an interaction, i.e. all transactions between interlocutors taking place during one encounter. Conversations always aim at alignment or a state of concord. This tends to be very important, much more so than, for example, the intention of expressing own viewpoints. On hearing the statement ‘the weather today is

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beautiful’ not many people react by arguing their own position, especially if it happens to be negative. Ethno-methodological inspirations may be helpful to the ethnographer in collecting background data, estimating the level of social knowledge characteristic to the field and determining the manifestations of social competence. They are, however, even more suitable for conducting spontaneous observations of conversations conducted in the field. We recommend to closely watch organizational life and pay attention to what people say in both official and informal communication. Above all, alertness and perceptiveness are important for ethnographers. It is also worth remembering that the longer we observe a given organization, the more people feel at ease in our company. Conversation analysis is a valuable source of information about organizational culture.

THE INTERVIEW AS INFORMATIVE CONVERSATION The open interview is, against appearances, a two-way communication (Czarniawska, 2000). The interlocutor gives the researcher their story, while the researcher in turn offers them a listening ear that is both intensive and reflective. With a good listener one can allow oneself hesitation, experimenting with thoughts, expressing nostalgia or uncertainty: and all that without any practical consequences. The interlocutors, in particular when they are managers, do not often have listeners as they have to stay fixed in their professional role. Even in their free time they are probably not likely to find anyone (even a spouse or partner) willing to listen for hours to them describing their job and ideas in detail. Managers are often reluctant to reveal their doubts or hesitations to their peers. The ethnographer is an unusual listener, or, as one interlocutor expressed it, ‘even better than a priest, because they only want to hear about your sins, and you want it all, sins and successes’. Sometimes the interlocutor cuts the first interview short because of time pressure, but afterwards they may create more time for the next meeting. Each interview is different; a lot depends on the researcher’s person and his or her attitude towards the subjects. In ethnographic interviews, openness to other people and a willingness to understand their perspective are important. The researcher should be a faithful transcriber of the studied world. We recommend some tips for aspiring researchers: • • • • •

listen, do not interrupt focus all attention on the interlocutor try to understand the interlocutor and their perspective remember to build trust have time for meetings and conversations

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• observe and analyse what you hear • ask for details and examples • choose the place and time so that it is comfortable for the interlocutor and you • pay attention to the interlocutor’s well-being during the interview • remember about ethics and data protection • constantly update your knowledge, read books, expand your horizons. Recording ethnographic data obtained from interviews can also be a testimony of historical time about social reality and the people living in it. Conducting interviews will allow us to isolate threads that the respondents themselves considered important. For this reason, there are problems and issues that were not previously foreseen but which turn out to be important for constructing the social reality of the organization’s participants. Philip Carl Salzman and Patricia Rice (2009) suggest that there is no perfect way of presenting ethnography. Regardless of the starting point, the researcher has to be open to going in all directions, wherever the field leads her, recognizing the relationships and exploring the landscape of the Other.

NOTES 1. 2.

In English in the original Swedish book. After Austin (1962/1985). For more about this method, see e.g. Kostera (2006).

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Case (eds.), Origins of organizing. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 48–68. Gudkova, S. (2012) ‘Wywiad w badaniach jakościowych’, in D. Jemielniak (ed.), Badania jakościowe. Metody i narzędzia, Vol. 2. Warsaw: PWN, 111–29. Hammersley, M. (2006) ‘Ethnography: Problems and prospects’, Ethnography and Education, 1(1): 3–14. Johansson, U. (2006) Design som utvecklingskraft: En utvärdering av regeringens designsatsning 2003–2005. Växjö: Växjö University Press. Konecki, K. (1992) ‘W japońskiej fabryce: Społeczne i kulturowe aspekty pracy i organizacji przedsiębiorstwa’, in The Japanese company: Social and cultural aspects of work and organization of an enterprise. Łódź: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Kostera, M. (2006) ‘The narrative collage as research method’, Storytelling, Self, Society, 2(2): 5–27. Kostera, M. (2010) Antropologia organizacji. Metodologia badań terenowych. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Krzyworzeka, P. (2015) ‘Etnografia’, in M. Kostera (ed.), Metody badawcze w zarządzaniu humanistycznym. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademickie Sedno. Malinowski, B. (1922/1992) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge. Salzman, P. C. and Rice, P. C. (2009) Myśleć jak antropolog. Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne. Schultze, U. (2000) ‘A confessional account of an ethnography about knowledge work’, Management of Information Systems Quarterly, 24(1): 3–41. Silverman, D. (1998) Harvey Sacks: Social science and conversation analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Tannen, D. (1986) That’s not what I meant! How conversational style makes or breaks relationships. New York: Ballantine. Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Williamson, K. (2006), ‘Research in constructivist frameworks using ethnographic techniques’, Library Trends, 55(1): 83–101. Winroth, K. (1999) När management kom till advokatbyrån: Om professioner, identitet och organisering. Göteborg: BAS. Yanow, D. (2009) ‘Organizational ethnography and methodological angst: Myths and challenges in the field’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 4(2): 186–99.

7. Inter-ethnography: from individual beings to collective becoming David Calås, Katarina Ellborg, Daniel Ericsson, Elin Esperi Hallgren and Alina Husung Conversations about organizational ethnography largely revolve around two taken-for-granted ideas. First of all, presence in the field is characterized in terms of a position on a continuum between two extreme points. At one end, we find the ‘observer’, as in being a passive ‘fly on the wall’, and at the other end, we find the ‘participant’, as in taking active part in the cultural reproduction (Gold, 1957; Kostera, 2007). Secondly, ethnographic research is perceived as a solo project. Out in the field as well as in front of the computer, the archetype of the ethnographic researcher is the ‘lone ranger’ (Erickson and Stull, 1998). These ideas have of course not stood uncontested or unproblematized. For instance, the role of the observer has been found to be at odds with the very essence of ethnography (Hammersley, 2006); the role of the participant is permeated by issues of boundary constructions and going native (Emerson and Pollner, 2003); and the notion of the ethnographic individual self has been criticized for repressing polyvocality (Erickson and Stull, 1998). Seldom questioned, however, is that the intertwinement of these ideas tends to shape the understanding of organizational ethnography into matters only concerning individual researchers’ subjective positions in both the field and writings, leaving little room for envisioning organizational ethnography as a collective accomplishment in the making. In this chapter, we would like to remedy this situation by exploring an alternative approach to organizational ethnography. We call this approach inter-ethnography to highlight the ‘in-between’ aspects of organizational ethnography. On the one hand, inter-ethnography serves to destabilize the notion of organizational ethnography as an individual and subjectivist project, by drawing attention to the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991). On the other hand, inter-ethnography serves to escape the notion of a static field position from which the researcher – as observer, 91

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participant or a mix thereof – learns about an organization’s culture. Instead inter-ethnography speaks in favour of a dynamic field presence in which the researchers’ cultural positions and understandings alter as they interact with different actors related to the studied organization. Inter-ethnography in this sense denotes a fundamental shift regarding epistemology, i.e. the assumptions made on how knowledge is produced: from individual beings to collective becoming. To illustrate our approach, we report from a doctoral course in qualitative methods that – in retrospect – turned out to be a study of academic culture. We set out to teach and learn about qualitative methods, but ended up finding ourselves becoming (re)socialized into a vocational culture as qualitative researchers and teachers. What follows is a ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973/1993) of our case at hand: First, we present the organizational setting of our experiences. An account of our subjective learning experiences follows, and then presented is our final seminar at which we reflected upon what we experienced and learned as a collective. In the concluding section, we reflect upon how the writing of this text made us query ethnographic practices, and how these inquiries in turn could be conceptualized in terms of inter-ethnography.

THE ORGANIZATIONAL SETTING Our course dates back to the mid-1990s, when our course director Daniel Ericsson attended the course ‘The Interpretative Scientific Research Tradition’ held by Dr Jörgen Sandberg at the Stockholm School of Economics. The course purpose was to develop an understanding of the interpretative tradition’s philosophical assumptions, and to query some of its central approaches such as social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991), anthropology (Geertz, 1973/1993), and ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). Ericsson subsequently inherited the course, and since 2003 the course is given by him at Linnaeus University (former Växjö University) as a mandatory course within the PhD programme in Business Administration. In 2006, the course’s reading list was supplemented by Prasad’s (2005) Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Postpositivist Traditions. This book offers a much-appreciated methodological ‘road map’ to the students, making a distinction between positivist and interpretative research – and it draws upon the notion of research as a craft. Research methods cannot, Prasad argues (2005, p. 10), be learned passively from a neutral position outside the actual doing of research; instead, they must be actively learned from within specific research traditions. Research is about acquiring craftsmanship, i.e. developing skills, expertise and practices that have been handed down through generations; it is about learning and enculturation, to enter a craft tradition as

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a novice, internalizing the tradition’s cultural norms and values about how to conduct quality research, and step by step developing mastery. The potential of this way of learning was, however, not practised to any great extent until 2018, when Ericsson invited doctoral students to partake in an elective course in the form of a practice-oriented continuation of the mandatory course the students had all taken together the year before. The elective course came to include hermeneutics, grounded theory, discourse analysis and ethnography – traditions that the students already had acquired a solid theoretical understanding of. The seminars were to be held over two months with approximately ten days between them.

WORKING IN THE HERMENEUTIC TRADITION Before the first seminar, the four participating students re-established their acquaintance with hermeneutics from the previous course, in which dialogic engagement with text and context had been emphasized (Prasad, 2005). With this in mind, the course director distributed the poem Quartet to the students at the seminar, asking them to interpret it, individually and collectively. What meanings are derived from their readings of the text? What about the context in which the text was written? One of the students started the conversation with a description of what ‘the poem is about’ by reflecting upon how the animals portrayed in the poem were occupied with how to sit in order to play wonderful music. Another student replied that it is rather difficult to say what ‘the poem is about’ in the light of their subjective experiences, which induced a discussion on intersubjectivity. Do we really understand the poem the same way? The next post was about genre. One of the students interpreted the text as a fable, a fairy tale with animals with specific traits, and with a specific moral, hence, hinting that the text was written a long time ago. This led the students to reflect upon the animals’ characteristics in terms of gender and stereotypes. What does it mean that the animals in the Quartet are all male, but the nightingale is female? And why on earth is the bear portrayed as strong, the ape as wild, and the donkey as fat? Are aspects such as these reflections of the poem’s cultural context? Reflecting upon the cultural context in relation to the satiric fable genre, the students endeavoured to decode the intentions of the text, trying to position the author in time and place. They finally agreed that the poem most likely was written some centuries ago in northern Europe – which turned out to be a rather accurate interpretation, since the poem was written by Russian author Ivan Krylov (1769–1844). The poem’s final words, in which the nightingale states that the animals in the Quartet never will be musicians, regardless of how they sit, raised questions about power relations, elites and experts – which

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prompted the course director to reveal that the fable was originally written with the intention to ridicule state councils, at a time when it was not safe to express criticism in public. At the end of the seminar, reflecting upon how the conversation had developed during the seminar, the course director concluded that it largely mirrored the history of hermeneutics. It started with a focus upon meaning in the text, then progressed to focus upon form, context and author intentions, and finally arrived at a critical understanding of society.

WORKING WITH GROUNDED THEORY The course director decided to dedicate the second seminar to work with grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) since this tradition constitutes a point of departure for much interpretative work in post-positivist reflection. Before the seminar, he distributed an empirical material for the students to work with: a stack of 30-something ‘Letters to the Shareholders’ (LtS) taken from Sweden’s largest companies’ annual reports. The students had also, in advance, together formulated a research question to the material: How do CEOs of large Swedish stock market firms establish trust in LtS? The students were asked to individually answer this question by means of the grounded theory method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) without interfering with the prearranged order of the LtS. At the seminar, they presented and discussed their process and findings. It turned out that the students had worked in rather different ways. One student had browsed the pile of letters for one archetypical example on which to code and analyse the remaining letters. Another student had started with an open coding process, highlighting words and phrases while staying attentive to new codes emerging. A third student had, after having read the initial three LtS, browsed through the remaining letters, quickly concluding that the board directors and CEOs in the material were all male, with only one exception. This discovery became essential for this student when defining the codes. The fourth student had broken the prearranged order, which spurred a discussion of the significance of every student staying true to the prearranged order of the letters, and the importance of this in the process of discovering and developing codes gradually throughout a close reading of the material. The students had found repetitive patterns in the material after reading three or four LtS. This turned the discussion towards the content of the letters and their low degree of variation. This resulted in a discussion about Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) idea of theoretical saturation. The students had not only approached the letters in different ways; they had also presented their results differently. For example, one student chose to present an analysis drawing upon the characteristics of the leaders, whereas

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another student, who previously had been working with grounded theory, presented an illustration of the ‘discovered concepts’. After revealing their results and comparing their processes of collecting, coding, and analysing data, the students were found to have reached rather similar discoveries. Nevertheless, the analyses varied in the extent to which they individually had focused on text, photographs, graphs, and/or signatures.

WORKING WITH DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Using the same empirical material (LtS), the students went on to work with discourse analysis in the third seminar. Based on their previous reading of Fairclough (2003), they jointly formulated a research question for the assignment: How are CEOs subjectified in the managerial discourse as externalized in the LtS? At the seminar it turned out that they, once again, had approached the letters rather differently. Some had focused on what was in the texts, whereas some had chosen to focus upon what was not in the texts. One student, trained in linguistics, had prepared an analysis of the pictures in the LtS, challenging the idea of written text as the main material for interpretation. This student claimed that interaction, representation and power relations could be found in the pictures. Another student had focused on modality, claiming that the stories in the LtS were largely homologous and presented an analysis drawing on a metaphor of medieval Knights Templar going on a crusade. A third student focused on missing themes in the material and detected an absence of the Global South in the CEOs’ sermon, concluding that the LtS were written within a Western ideology. The fourth student had read the letters as chronicles and reflected upon the ‘reality’ that the CEOs reproduced in LtS. This led to an ontological discussion on reality vs. representations of reality: Is there really a difference according to the discourse analysis tradition? The conversation further addressed the recipients of the LtS, i.e. the shareholders. Are they part of the managerial discourse? Do they embrace the same reality as the CEOs? The students confronted each other’s conceptions of what to include and not to include in ‘a discourse’, and when to quit the interpretative efforts when working in the discourse analysis tradition. The students had all approached, processed, and interpreted the LtS in different ways. The differences turned out to stimulate an exploration of the boundaries of both discourse analysis and subjectivation.

WORKING IN THE CULTURAL TRADITIONS The fourth seminar dealt with the ethnographic research tradition. The assignment was rather vaguely described, allowing the students certain latitude, but

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the objective was given: The students were to write an ethnographic account portraying the culture they had encountered during a research event at the university, which they had all recently participated in. The seminar began with the course director asking the students about their reactions towards each other’s texts. They all expressed surprise at how differently they had undertaken the exercise in terms of writing styles and attention to details. Some of the texts were more realistic in character, reporting what took place in the form of ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973/1993), whereas two of the texts displaced the reader from the university setting to a floorball practice and a theatre performance, respectively. The author of the latter text had chosen to use theatre metaphors in an ironic manner to overcome the challenge of writing critically. This text had fewer detailed descriptions, but provided a reflexive interpretation of the research event. In the discussion that followed, the students reflected upon the meaning and consequences of different writing styles (Van Maanen, 1988), and their different pros and cons with regard to cultural (re)presentation. Since all of the students had been present at the research event, recognition and representation of each other became a hot topic. In one of the texts, a course participant had been represented as ‘nervous’ and ‘pale’, and portrayed as a ‘victim’ confronted by senior professors – something that the student in question did not recognize at all. A lively discussion ensued about the rights and difficulties of representing others (Van Maanen, 1988), with issues such as power and distance between the researcher and the practitioners. The discussion ended with a critical questioning of conducting ethnographic work within one of the students’ thesis projects: Is working with traditional ethnographic methods simply too challenging, given the difficulties of accurately representing others?

SUBJECTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES Having described how the course and the conversations unfolded, we now turn to our individual reflections on our subjective learning experiences. We simply give each other freedom to reflect upon the question: What have I learned during this course? Elin Esperi Hallgren The doing in academia is habitually centralized around speaking, reading, and writing. We do things with words. When we enter the doctoral education, we are therefore already on our way to becoming sophisticated masters of words. Perhaps this is what to expect, considering that the primary learning idea from early years in school, is that we shall go from ‘learning by doing’ to ‘learning

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by reading’. At an advanced study level, we are consequently so occupied with this process of sophistication of words that we seem to forget the importance of practice. The great ‘how’ and ‘why’ appear subordinated to the choice of writing style. Communicating our main ideas and conclusions is extremely relevant, but as doctoral students we also need to learn ‘the doing’ of research. To give an example of one learning process: learning how to draw is also something we start early on, but with an entirely different approach. When toddlers start to draw, they use their crayons on whatever seems to be at hand. Perhaps a family member interprets the first attempts, and perhaps the child’s attempt can be seen as a way of creating images to describe their reality. If the child becomes a student of more advanced levels of drawing, the focus is on learning essential techniques, like lifting the arm and elbow from the surface and remembering that the motion of the pen should start from the shoulder, not the hand. The important thing in this learning approach is that one will learn by continuing to practise drawing for a long time. The main idea of this course was the doing of methods, and Prasad’s (2005) argumentation resembles the learning process of craftsmanship. So, how does one become a craftsman of a research method? My best guess is: not by reading. By each assignment in this course we reacted and acted in different ways. We had an identical set of data, the same set of literature, and we were presented to the assignments simultaneously. However, during the course, we never entered into a discussion of right and wrong. Since, when do you talk about right and wrong when you try to master craftsmanship? Well, if we can imagine the mastering of pottery, if a bowl is flat and cannot hold water properly, then it is a problem, and we can argue about failing and errors. However, if the bowl at least holds some water, we may hold onto a discussion of the very bowl. So, the lesson learned is that if the idea together with the function at least makes some sense, then the same can be true in understanding of methods. There is not one way to do things. Alina Husung Learning the craft of different research traditions, by putting methods into practice, has been valuable in various ways. Rather than passively learning about research traditions, from a neutral position outside the actual doing of research methods, it allowed me to actively learn about them from within their research tradition and thereby internalize some of the tradition’s cultural norms and values (Prasad, 2005). My main reflection is that researchers do not necessarily arrive at the same conclusion by using identical research methods. Depending on our backgrounds and disciplines, we all approached and processed the various exercises and interpreted the research questions differently. The ‘right’ answer simply

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does not reside in the method – which leads to a critical questioning of the validation of knowledge claims and of processes that certify results as universally true (Knorr Cetina, 2010). It also challenges the idea about the creation of forever-lasting ‘scientific findings’ (Westbrook, 2009). Given that we all came up with different answers to the research questions posed, a further reflection is that research processes do not exist in an ideological vacuum. Research is subordinated to the social, political and economic issues that motivate a researcher on a personal level (Ottenberg, 1990). Research methods are, moreover, not only primarily personal and subjective concerns, but also a collective project. Methods incorporate the research community, and broader concerns, such as cultural frameworks and norms (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011). Research methods are thus in no sense neutral, but help to reproduce a version of the social (Law and Ruppert, 2013). Nothing in this sense speaks for itself (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011). To conclude, my personal reflections about crafting in research traditions are twofold. On one hand, it was valuable to achieve some ‘hands-on’ experiences of the research traditions and become familiar with some of the common qualitative traditions. It was helpful to develop a ‘feeling’ for how research is carried out in the various traditions and thereby achieve an understanding about whether a certain tradition is suitable for my own research. The acquired deeper understanding about the research traditions led, on the other hand, to various questions and illuminated that research method traditions are all in their unique way rather complex and complicated. Hence, from entering into a tradition as a beginner towards becoming a master involves a continuous learning process where new questions constantly emerge. There exists consequently no such thing as to simply follow one ‘recipe’ when crafting in a research tradition. David Calås According to Nietzsche (1895/1977), there is nothing like ‘a view from nowhere’. Thus, he argues, having perspective is a fundamental condition in our lives. While perspectives can mean what we literally see with our eyes (what is visible to us from where we look), perspectives are also what we bring into acts of interpreting the world (Prasad, 2005). Consequently, we experience things in certain ways rather than others. While having different perspectives can be an effect of having particular dispositions based on subjective prejudice (Gadamer, 1989), scholarly perspectives can be adopted knowingly. Working in different research traditions not only required me to become familiar with new ways of conducting qualitative research, but also to consider different philosophical underpinnings embraced by each tradition. My earnest ambition was to undertake both tasks. However, stepping into each tradition’s

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methodological challenges and epistemological issues was a twofold experience. This duality surfaced during the initial seminar, discussing qualitative inquiry as an art of interpretation—not just a method for research. Like any art, mastery of research requires training; and ‘doing research’ is not always that which looks like research (i.e., applying methods). This made me appreciate that behind every interpretation lies another interpretation, that despite whatever conclusions we arrive at, we would never reach anything but an interpretation (of it). In our guessing game on the whereabouts of the poem and its meaning, some interpretations appeared to be more ‘accurate’ than others were – but were they better? During the course, we grew increasingly aware of the fact that any ambition of finding ‘truth’ in qualitative inquiry needs to be approached with caution. Each tradition rather prescribes distinct ways of making knowledgeable claims about the world. To allude to crafting traditions, each tradition invited me to (figuratively) walk beside the masters of the craft (at least studying the master’s handbook) and learn some tricks of the(ir) trade in order to follow their artful ways of interpretative work. I lent my hands to their craft and my mind to their ways of seeing the world, so to speak. Having worked with philosophical ideas in research traditions, my experience is to have had a series of perspectives on the world presented to me, rather than having been taught or shown how to do interpretation. Stepping into some traditions, I have felt more at home than in others. Instead of searching for one possible position that resonated with me and my research, I ended up with a plurality of possible positions. Returning to Nietzsche’s notion, that no singular perspective can be regarded as definitively true because everything is always distorted, the capacity of multiple perspectives is perhaps that the world appears a little more resonant, but at the cost of being endlessly more questionable and interpretable. Katarina Ellborg During the course, we have step by step been invited to craft in different interpretative traditions. In relation to the mandatory course, we have also moved further in Bloom’s Taxonomy (Ramsden, 2003) from understanding, via application, to, in some sense, creating new knowledge in the field of qualitative methods. Through this process, we have expanded the traditional reading and writing with doing, analysing, and reflecting. We have worked with and experienced challenges such as: 1. Truth – Can we ever know what actually is? And how can interpretation be understood and applied?

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2. Saturation – We have practised the art of making scientific decisions and hence handled uncertainty. 3. Information carriers – We have investigated what could and/or should be interpreted in a set of data. 4. Level of analysis and representation – We have gotten a sense of, and a chance to question, what freedom we as researchers can take in relation to the phenomenon being studied. I interpreted our process as a case of experience-based learning (Piaget, 1964), since it became clear that our own experience and knowledge gained importance for our respective approaches, focuses, understandings, and choices of analysis. We also learned from each other and were able to tie new knowledge to what we already knew. This constructivist learning perspective (Biggs and Tang, 2011; Brooks and Brooks, 1999; Hein, 2002) was, in my opinion, also mirrored in the course structure. It allowed for open discussions and contributed to a permissive climate where differences were considered in relation to the readings and our pre-knowledge. I realize, first and foremost, that I have experienced how the choice of method and its applications have consequences for the analysis and the limits of possible interpretations. It surprised me how we sometimes reached rather dissimilar results, although we applied the same method, whereas sometimes we reached very similar results, despite having used different methods. To me, the course has broadened my understanding of what is interpretable and how different points of views can enrich my analyses. Additionally, I reflected on the importance of context in relation to the phenomenon at hand, and that I as a researcher simultaneously need to be aware of both details and the whole. To me, the seminars were ‘safe’ contexts where we were allowed to practice the interpretative methods under guidance of an experienced researcher. The course director provided frames within which we individually applied the traditions and then as a group reflected on what we had done. I am leaving the course with even more (nonetheless, hopefully more profound) questions than I had when we started. How do we understand a method? Is it wise to view it as a recipe to follow, or rather as an idea? Or as an ever-changing and evolving tradition which we now, with our work, will be involved in carrying on into the future, developing and questioning? Daniel Ericsson Being responsible for the new design of the course, it would perhaps be interesting if I reflected upon the extent to which my intentions with the course correlate to the students’ learning outcomes. However, such an interest would not only be intrinsically positivistic, assuming a reductionist cause and effect

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relation between process and outcome. It would also imply an understanding of learning as the fulfilment of objectives, instead of embracing learning in a hermeneutic manner, i.e. in terms of reflective identity work in relation to a professional domain. Such an interest would also imply that I knew what I was doing, which I, to be honest, did not. The only thing I knew was that I was to take a step into the unknown together with the students, and in that, I took faith. I knew I had designed opportunities for the students to reflect upon what it might be to work in different post-positivist traditions, and I felt assured that our conversations would move us all into more or less unknown territories. I did, however, have some hunches about what might happen, some of which proved to be wrong. In retrospect, I see these uninhibited expectations as important occasions for learning. One of the hunches I had was that it would be much easier for the students to grasp a specific tradition’s methods if they got the chance to practise them, rather than merely reading about them. To my surprise, I experienced quite the opposite: The students certainly gained deeper insights into the workings of the different traditions, but at the same time, the exercises prompted them to ask other types of questions. Instead of asking how to construct theoretical categories from empirical materials, they questioned the very idea of saturated categories; instead of asking how to study organizational culture, they questioned issues of cultural representation of the Other. I guess one could say that the students’ reflections upon the tricks of the trade moved them into confronting their taken-for-granted assumptions of things, and more sophisticated understandings of the traditions. Another hunch I had was that the students would approach the assignments in a similar fashion, ‘by the book’, and end up in similar interpretations of the empirical materials. I therefore expected that the discussions would focus upon technical aspects of ‘how to do it’. The students, however, approached the empirical materials very differently, and they came up with rather dissimilar answers to the research questions they had formulated. From a constructionist perspective, this is certainly not a sensational revelation: The students simply acted upon their subjective experiences and definitions of the situations. From a hermeneutic perspective I would have known better: There is no such thing as readings ‘by the book’ – at least not until an intersubjective canon has developed within the tradition. The students’ work thus served as a good reminder of post-positivist doxa.

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FROM SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES TO INTERSUBJECTIVITY Following our subjective experiences, this section represents our final seminar. Here, we attempt to reproduce the conversation that took place as we met to reflect on the course and discuss our learning outcomes. As we move into the conversation, our style of writing is consciously shifted to accommodate the intersubjective process between students and the course director. – I found it interesting that you described the seminars as ‘safe’. How did we manage to create such a working environment? – One answer is course design. It seems to have been constructed to embrace a high level of mutual reliance. Another answer is that we knew each other rather well before the course started. - So, one needs to know each other to be able to work like this? – No, not necessarily, but it is difficult to argue against that our shared experiences influenced our seminar discussions in a positive manner. – We should also consider that we all work in the same academic discipline within the same organization and therefore attend the same events in our everyday work. – In addition, you were all so committed! You all presented something substantial at every seminar. – Being a small and close group of students, I feel that we have all wanted to know more and taken on responsibility for the discussions at our seminars. Sometimes, we even put an extra effort into our presentations for the sake of amusing our colleagues. – I think this attitude was something we held in common. We did not do things just to accumulate credits; we got involved in the course and felt encouraged to be implicated in action. – I agree. And I have not felt any pressure in performing specific results. We did not approach the content of the course instrumentally. The different traditions were not ‘recipes’ to us – we took the liberty to improvise when applying them. – Yes, there is an element of playfulness to this. I suppose the feeling of trust in the group, and us being comfortable with the course arrangement, contributed to an overall confidence in the process and a sense of responsibility for contrib-

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uting to the course. Returning to our seminars after each week’s interpretative task, I would say that we shared an expectation that each of us would have solved the task differently – and that we took interest in this variance. – We certainly did. However, each seminar typically featured one presentation that was slightly more intricate or developed than the others. But that didn’t imply that others had solved the task in an inferior way. Somehow, we seem to have had a mutual understanding that taking part in this course was not about grading our skills in different qualitative research traditions, as if it was some sort of hermeneutical pentathlon. – As I see it, it was not we, the students, who stood trial before the course assessment, it was the methods. We identified and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of separate traditions; we tried them out, rather than us being the tryouts. – Well, to say that there was no interest in student performance could be stretching it too far. But perhaps we could argue that we have evaluated ourselves in relation to each other – both as crafters in the interpretive traditions and as researchers. – Indeed, this became a collective process in what could pass for a constructionist learning style. – Another way of looking at our conversations is to think of the course seminars as breaking from conventional ways of learning about qualitative methods, embracing a Socratic dialogue tradition, i.e. engaging in a cooperative, argumentative dialogue that thrives on enigmatic questions to stimulate critical thought and draw out underlying presuppositions. – In that sense, our achievement might be conceived of as a return to Socratic maieutics, in the sense that we have encouraged each other to reveal unsupported assumptions and misconceptions about different ways of carrying out the art of interpretation. – Exactly. One could say that we have been learning about, trying out, and then reviewing post-positivistic interpretation – both individually and collectively. – Interesting. This means that our conversations break from conventional assumptions about how and why knowledge is created. It is an epistemological break. Let us elaborate on this, by departing from Foucault (1966/1994), who argued that modernism invites us to think of the world as a system, and fosters positivistic measures for evaluating results. In contrast, postmodernist ideals would argue that such conceptions are collectively sustained and continually

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renegotiated. The point here is that we never intended to classify, grade, or rank the results presented at each seminar – as if there was a competition. – I would say that we have used a dialectic approach, acquiring knowledge through dialogue. As in the spirit of a Socratic dialogue tradition, we have encouraged rather than competed against each other. – So, what could we say about the course structure? – Not until I wrote my personal reflections did I realize the clear progression of the course, from the simple, to the more complex. – Speaking as the course director, this was unintended. However, we all took on a shared responsibility that possibly allowed for the process itself to lead us towards this degree of complexity. – Beyond course progression, I also experienced an escalating intensification. We started out with a collective task comparable to brainstorming the possibilities of what a text could mean. The subsequent assignments built on each other, while inviting individual apprenticeship into different traditions of interpretative craft. – Then, what have we learned from this process? – In one sense, this has not been a course in qualitative methods alone, but also a way of being socialized into an academic profession. – Surely. But let’s not forget that this not only means ‘becoming researchers’. As doctoral students, we are also expected to teach and lecture. The seminar discussions have in this sense highlighted how to construct pedagogical conversations. – Here, we should not forget that research and teaching both concern learning. – So, you think we have developed a consensus on pedagogics? – Well, we seem to agree with one another that we have left this course with even more questions than we had entering into it. In other words, we are more confused, but at a higher level. – That’s correct. However, until this point, our reflections have been rather overwhelmingly positively connoted. There must have been doubts and some negative aspects of our process? – One reflection is that our course director could have discussed the students’ work presented at each seminar more closely in relation to its specific tradition. Instead, we were left with the responsibility to determine whether we had

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aligned with the prescribed tradition or not. On the other hand, that may have led our process in a different direction, possibly away from the permissive aspects of the dialogic milieu we experienced. – Although this process enabled this openness, it can also create insecurity in the sense of lacking the structure and assessment we are used to. Feeling entrusted during the course, we were obliged to find structure and independently trust in our individual work. – The course design has certainly required us to omit the process and embrace uncertainty. While that could be a concluding remark for our discussion, I think we likewise should reflect on what has been the focus of our discussion. We set out to discuss interpretative traditions, however, since we decided that we should try to write a paper together, our discussion has converged on learning perspectives and enculturation into an academic culture. Don’t you agree? – I certainly do. I want to return to Bloom’s Taxonomy (Ramsden, 2003) here. My point is that, through our discussions and in writing this paper, we have climbed further up on the model’s ladder. Our way of making sense of post-positivist traditions has not only contributed to our understanding of qualitative methods but also created new knowledge and influenced academic culture – at least within our own organization. – I see your point. Looking back at the mandatory course’s reading assignments, this subsequent course has permitted us to create new knowledge based on our learning experiences. The process has also led us to a shift from learning about qualitative methods to a shared reflection on how we learn about them.

INTER-ETHNOGRAPHY AS COLLECTIVE BECOMING Summing up our experiences from the course, our learning certainly goes beyond the confines of our course’s curriculum. As noted in the final seminar, ‘this has not been a course in qualitative methods alone, but also a way of being socialized into an academic profession’. Becoming a researcher is certainly an implicit objective for every course on the doctoral level, but here, the intertwining of course content and didactics seems also to have contributed to making the processes of cultural becoming transparent. In this sense, we (in hindsight) conclude that our undertakings qualify as an example of ethnographic organizational fieldwork: We have indeed read and learned about qualitative methods in the post-positivist traditions, but above all, we have together been students of post-positivist academic culture. We have studied ourselves in our everyday setting, our interactions, our sensemak-

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ing processes – and we have explored how we, and our identities, evolve over time in a reflexive manner (Cunliffe, 2010; Van Maanen, 1988). Much of this ethnographic orientation is certainly owed to the craft perspective (Prasad, 2005) permeating our endeavour. However, this orientation is also something that has been realized in retrospect, through our writing process. Had we not decided to write this text in addition to following through with the course, we would not have had the opportunity to reflect individually what we had learned as a collective, and collectively discuss our individual learnings. The reflexivity of the researcher much often called for in qualitative research (cf. Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000) in this regard transcended from an individual project to a collectivist one, replacing the focus on self with an attention to selves. To highlight this transcendence, we propose inter-ethnography as an alternative approach to advance conversations on organizational ethnography. As we see it, this approach addresses ‘in-between’ aspects of organizational ethnography in two distinct but interrelated ways. Firstly, inter-ethnography embraces knowledge creation processes as a collective accomplishment. Instead of perceiving organizational ethnography as an individual and subjectivist project, conveyed by research practices such as autoethnography (Ellis et al., 2011) or confessional tales (Van Maanen, 1988), inter-ethnography mediates a social constructionist (Berger and Luckmann, 1966/1991) understanding of how knowledge is created. Knowledge is in this regard viewed as the outcome of processes of enculturation in which actors in, and by, their interactions develop a subjectivity – an intersubjectivity – that resides between them. The ‘inter’ in inter-ethnography thus denotes a progressive movement from the sole researcher’s subjective interpretations to the research collective’s dialogues. The consequences of this movement are manifold, as we see it. Inter-ethnography not only challenges how and by whom organizational ethnographies are conducted in the field, but it also calls in question the way ethnographies traditionally are being written. If inter-ethnography is a collective accomplishment beyond individual researcher’s omnipotent interpretations, then inter-ethnography should consequently allow for polyvocality, a chorus of multiple voices in both the field, and in the writings. In our study, we have tried to allow for such polyvocality, by ordering our research material in accordance with John Van Maanen’s (1988) triptych of different ways of ethnographic writing. Our report from the field in this sense progresses from a realist account of the organizational setting via our confessions about our own learning processes to an impressionistic dialogue between us. The reason for this polyvocal presentation of our material, however, is also a matter of transparency – on behalf of the reader. With inter-ethnography we would also like to inculcate that ethnographic knowledge making processes

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do not make a halt with the authoring of a text. Ethnographic knowledge simply resides between writer and reader, and transparency represents an open invitation to the reader, from the authors, to partake in the joint production of intersubjectivity. Secondly, we not only conceive inter-ethnography as a matter of researchers constructing co-reflected understanding, oscillating in-between the individual and the collective as well as in-between acting, writing and reading. We also see inter-ethnography as a fundamental break with the notion of the ethnographer as acting from a specific position from which he or she engages in either observation or participation (or a mix thereof) in order to understand the organization’s culture without ‘going native’. Regardless of whether this position is external (etic) or internal (emic) to the organization, this position is assumed to be a static one: a position from which the researcher cannot escape. It represents the starting point for the researcher as well as the endpoint. With inter-ethnography we instead envision ethnographic research in terms of a dynamic collective presence: Actors are present in the field, they interact with one another – and in and by their interactions their cultural positions, dispositions and identities alter. The alterations that we in this manner envision are simultaneously individual and collective. The actors’ presence are interrelated; interchanged and interlocked to one another by intersubjectivity. The consequence of this collective presence is that it becomes rather devoid of meaning to conceptualize organizational ethnography in terms of insider/outsider or observation/participation. Even the notion of going native loses its relevance since there is no static non-native position to go from – or return to. All there is, is a collective presence in becoming. In our study, to illustrate the collective presence in becoming, we intentionally did not make any distinction between us, besides the different formal positions that we occupy. The knowledge we created, we created together – as equal cultural actors and researchers. The questions that were asked throughout our research process, about post-positivist traditions and academic culture, we have posed to ourselves – and answered together, as good as we can, here and now. And so our inter-ethnography ends, leaving us more confused, but at a higher level, in the movement from individual positions to collective presence, inviting you – the reader – to join our ongoing conversation about inter-ethnography.

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REFERENCES Alvesson, Mats and Kärreman, Dan (2011) Qualitative research and theory development: Mystery as method. London: Sage. Alvesson, Mats and Sköldberg, Kaj (2000) Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage. Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas (1966/1991) The social construction of reality. London: Penguin Books. Biggs, John B. and Tang, Catherine (2011) Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Brooks, Jacqueline Grennon and Brooks, Martin G. (1999) In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Cunliffe, Ann L. (2010) ‘Retelling tales of the field: In search of organizational ethnography 20 years on’, Organizational Research Methods, 13(2): 224–39. Ellis, Carlyn E., Adams, Tony E., and Bochner, Arthur P. (2011) ‘Autoethnography: An overview’, Historical Social Research/Historische sozialforschung, 12(1): 273–90. Emerson, Robert M. and Pollner, Melvin (2003) ‘Constructing participant/observation relations’, in Mark R. Pogrebin (ed.), Qualitative approaches to criminal justice: Perspectives from the field. London: Sage, 27–43. Erickson, Ken and Stull, Donald (1998) Doing team ethnography: Warnings and advice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fairclough, Norman (2003) Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Abingdon: Routledge. Foucault, Michel (1966/1994) The order of things: An archeology of the human sciences. London: Routledge. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1989) Truth and method. New York: Crossroad. Garfinkel, Harold (1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Geertz, Clifford (1973/1993) The interpretation of cultures. London: Fontana Press. Glaser, Barney G. and Strauss, Anselm L. (1967) The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Gold, Raymond L. (1957) ‘Roles in sociological field observation’, Social Forces, 36: 217–23. Hammersley, Martyn (2006) ‘Ethnography: Problems and prospects’, Ethnography and Education, 1(1): 3–14. Hein, George E. (2002) Learning in the museum. Abingdon: Routledge. Knorr Cetina, Karin (2010) ‘The epistemics of information: A consumption model’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(2): 171–201. Kostera, Monika (2007) Organizational ethnography: Methods and inspirations. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Law, John and Ruppert, Evelyn (2013) ‘The social life of methods: Devices’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3): 229–40. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1895/1977) The Antichrist, in Walter Kaufmann (ed.), The portable Nietzsche. New York: Viking Penguin, 565–656. Ottenberg, Simon (1990) ‘Thirty years of fieldnotes: Changing relationships to the text’, in Roger Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 139–60.

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Piaget, Jean (1964) ‘Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2: 176–86. Prasad, Pushkala (2005) Crafting qualitative research: Working in the postpositivist traditions. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Ramsden, Paul (2003) Learning to teach in higher education (2nd edition). London: Routledge Falmer. Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Westbrook, David A. (2009) Navigators of the contemporary: Why ethnography matters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

8. Media analysis: on the importance of everyday images Alexia Panayiotou I like to run an exercise with my students: I tell them whenever they want to find out the dominant perception about anything in society, they should ‘Google image’ it. So, when, for example, they want to find out the dominant cultural perception of ‘manager’ they type the word and go to the ensuing images. Or, for ‘leader’. Or, ‘organization’. The results are quite fascinating because – unless a Google algorithm is already in place due to previous related searches – the images reveal what Google or Google users think ‘managers’ or ‘leaders’ or ‘organizations’ are all about. Managers, for example, are overwhelmingly young, white, Western males, uniformly dressed in dark suits and plain ties. It is not until several scrolls later that one finds … a young, white, Western female, uniformly dressed in a dark suit and plain heels. The exercise swiftly reveals the social hierarchy of organizations without even delving into Kimberle Crenshaw Williams’ (1994) ‘intertextuality’. There are no African or Asian managers, no one over the age of 40 (despite what statistics tell us about the average age of middle managers), no managers in wheelchairs, not even anyone who wears … red! Similarly, leaders, even in cartoon form, are male and ahead of the crowd. And organizations, though made up of humans, are likened to machines. This chapter discusses the use of media analysis as a method of conducting ethnographic research on and in organizations. In Kostera (2007), ‘media texts’ were defined to include the press, popular publications, television programs, radio broadcasts and films. ‘Text’, a term borrowed from literary theory, has been used in media analysis to include, not just written texts, but also non-linguistic works such as film and television shows (Frow, 2006). Today, this list can be further extended as websites, company videos, podcasts, blogs and social media take center stage in our visually rich world. All of these are not just ‘carriers of ideologies’ but also ‘arenas of political negotiations’ as Denzin (1997, cited in Kostera, 2007, p. 170) argues. One need only think of President Trump’s infamous tweets to understand this point. As such, media texts can serve as fruitful sites of inquiry for the organizational ethnographer seeking to understand how meaning is made, both cognitively and aesthet110

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ically, in and around organizations. So, in my vignette above, for example, Google images tell an interesting story about the dominant ideology around management and organizations, both in and outside the corporate world. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: (1) to explain the importance of incorporating media analysis in our research as organizational ethnographers; and (2) to present the richness of these methods as currently used in the study of organizations. I will showcase a variety of media sources which I think have the potential to offer ‘alternative possibilities for generating knowledge’ (Bell et al., 2014, p. 6). The list is not meant to be exhaustive; rather, it can be considered an inspirational beginning for those interested in conducting ethnographic research. Before continuing, I note here that I am working within the interpretivist tradition (Kostera, 2007; Ybema et al., 2009) and treat organizational ethnography as a way of making meaning of organizations, organizing and organizational phenomena (e.g. strategy, policymaking, conflict, etc.). Thus, I see ethnography as a combination of both method and theoretical perspective (Gaggiotti et al., 2017; Pedersen and Humle, 2016). Methodologically speaking, media analysis, which is covered in this chapter, complements the more recognizable methods of ethnographic research, observation and interviews, in making sense of organizations, especially since ethnography offers a way into understanding the nuanced conflicts and struggles over organizational meanings, culture, identity and values.

WHY ETHNOGRAPHY? WHY MEDIA ANALYSIS? Organizational ethnographers are fascinated by the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday life. What others may find mundane or boring, ethnographers treat as an ‘intriguing mystery’ (Ybema et al., 2009); so, for ethnographers, ordinary exchanges between ordinary people on an ordinary sort of day can hide details about a company’s culture, power dynamics, control issues, toxicity or collegiality. Ethnographers seek to shed light on the ‘blind spots’ created by the taken-for-granted that happens in our workplaces, from the watercooler position (Gagliardi, 1996), to the way we dress (Rafaeli et al., 1997), to company logos (Kassinis and Panayiotou, 2017), to the photographs used in corporate annual reports (Kuasirikun, 2011). As Ybema and colleagues (2009, p. 1) write, ‘the very “ordinariness” of normality often prevents us from seeing it: we tend to have a blind spot for what is usual, ordinary, routine’. It is precisely this ‘poor awareness’ that ethnographers seek to remedy, holding a deep appreciation of ‘the extra-ordinary in the ordinary’ that helps uncover the ambiguities, complexities and obscurities of organizational life (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 2). I think the definition of ‘extraordinary in the ordinary’ is beautifully

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captured in what the novelist Georges Perec (1989) calls the ‘infra-ordinary’ (in contrast to the extraordinary) (cited in Ybema et al., 2009, p. 2). Media analysis enables ethnographers to look deeply into the ‘taken-for-granted’ of everyday organizational life. As such, the watercooler position can tell us something about power relations, the way we dress reveals staff’s relationship to their professional identity, company logos can hide greenwashing, and photographs in corporate annual reports can shed light on sexist organizational cultures. As we witness a ‘visual turn’ in organization studies (Bell et al., 2014), we realize then that the information or knowledge embedded in an organization’s visual artifacts is a fundamental entry-point to understanding its culture and ethos. So, these artifacts become an indispensable part of conducting an ethnography. As McDowell (1998, p. 168) writes, contemporary capitalist economies are based on flows of information and symbols rather than material goods, so signs and symbols, representation and meaning must enter our analysis. Furthermore, as I argued in Panayiotou (2010), images of economic acts and actors are important aspects of power, especially as these are portrayed in popular culture, so an analysis of cultural forms must play a key part in understanding the operation of global economic forces (Lash and Urry, 1994). In addition, as Bell and Davison (2013, p. 171) argue, expanding the methodological repertoire of management researchers to include the methods above ‘is not simply a response to the increasing prevalence of visual representation and communication in organizational contexts. It is also a means of extending the epistemological foundations of management knowledge in order to generate insights into aspects of management and organizational life that have tended to remain under-explored within the field’ (emphasis mine). Of course, treating the ‘mundane’ and ‘everyday’ as knowledge is in itself a radical act; as sites of inquiry, these taken-for-granted knowledges can ‘unsettle’ both what we know and what we see (Cunliffe, 2002, p. 38). Looking at the ‘tacit, aesthetic and embodied aspects of organizational life’ (Toraldo et al., 2018, p. 438) which are often difficult to articulate in traditional methodological and rationalist paradigms, requires researchers to engage fully and sensually in the inquiry, using all our bodily senses (Panayiotou, 2019; Strati, 2007). This means we must also become vulnerable, reflexive or, better, self-reflexive as Cunliffe (2002, p. 36) notes, which can be demanding, even disconcerting as we reveal that which has been (carefully) hidden and assumed to be normal. These are, after all, the ‘elusive knowledges,’ as Toraldo et al. (2018, p. 438) appropriately call them, so traditional forms of inquiry will be inadequate. I now turn to a discussion of media sources that can potentially interest the ethnographer and enrich her work.

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UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH MEDIA ANALYSIS A plethora of media sources, as defined above, have been used in the study of organizations. Below I mention some of the more widely used sources, such as film, television and fiction, some less used such as videos, music, comic strips, cartoons and children’s stories, as well as some that are more recent, such as corporate webpages. These categories broadly map on to the distinction I make in this chapter: media on and media from organizations. The first encompasses sources that can be used to enter or experience an organization ‘as if’; in other words, sources such as films, novels, videos and cartoons, enable readers/ viewers to experience an organization as ‘real’ without physical presence. The second category, media that stems from organizations, such as corporate websites or corporate annual reports, offer an insight into a specific organization and can thus become part of an ethnographer’s array of different types of ‘data’ collected within a broader study.

MEDIA ON ORGANIZATIONS Film and TV Series Much has been written about the power of popular films to help explore organizations (e.g. Czarniawska and Rhodes, 2006; Panayiotou, 2010, 2015; Panayiotou and Kafiris, 2011). As Bell (2008, p. 4) writes, films portraying managers and organizations offer a descriptive account of a lived experience, not unlike an ethnography, as they ‘provide an account of organizations based on language and actions of social actors in the setting’. Films also offer a physical and mental space through which the audience can test many of our commonly held assumptions about organizations. As Czarniawska and Rhodes (2006) explain, film with its wide appeal and broad accessibility, teaches practices (reported or invented) and offers templates or ‘strong plots’ that may be more influential than academic publications for understanding organizations and management. This way, film provides a potential means of connecting theory with lived experience in a way that ‘tells it as it is’ (Bell, 2008, p. 3). As argued in Panayiotou (2010), the reason that we the audience ‘get’ some of the semiologically complex representations in film is that we share the same codified language as that used by filmmakers; if the representations seem unrealistic we would, most likely, reject the scenario, resulting in a box-office failure that filmmakers are unlikely to risk. It is in this light that Alvesson and Willmott (1996) argue that film can also offer the potential for critical analysis as it explores social relations through which management is accomplished,

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along with the exercise of power that underpins it – again, not unlike an ethnography. Rhodes and Westwood (2008) in fact, argue that popular films can offer powerful critical commentaries. For example, the 1992 film version of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross offers a tongue-in-cheek commentary on ‘the reproduction of particular forms of masculinity and phallocentric social structures in organizations’ (Rhodes and Westwood, 2008, p. 2). Brewis (1998) writing about the film Disclosure and McDowell (1998) writing about Wall Street show how film provides audiences with an accessible way of making sense of their own experiences in organizations, especially difficult subjects such as sexual harassment, fraud and violence. In a similar vein, Hopfl (2002, p. 21) discussing Hitchcock’s Vertigo shows how the narrative of the film provides insights into ‘the melancholy of commodified representations in the obsessive-compulsive pursuit of organizational idealization’. In my own work I have relied on popular films (e.g. Wall Street, Big, The Firm, Office Space, Boiler Room, etc.) to discuss the construction of masculinity and management as often synonymous and intertwined in the workplace (Panayiotou, 2010); prevailing cultural representations of managers and firms, as well as the costs of resistance to managerial power (Panayiotou, 2012); and the construction of gender and space, which enables us to appreciate how female executives may use spatial practices to potentially subvert organizational patriarchal structures (Panayiotou, 2015). In Panayiotou and Kafiris (2011), we also used the representation of corporate space in film to interrogate the construction of power, asking ‘who enters which space and who sits where’. Seeing the built world as ‘telling a story’, we sought to understand how doors, windows, walls, furniture and steps are ‘part and parcel of power relations in the workplace’, echoing Kanter’s (1977) ethnographic findings on the gendered, spatial segregation of the workplace. As a side note, I mention that I also use films as a way of making such important ethnographic readings more ‘visual’ for my students. So, after reading Kanter’s Men and Women of the Corporation for example, my students choose a film from a list of films taking place in an organization and are tasked with analyzing gender relations. Subsequently, in the absence of permission to enter any other organization as researchers, I ask them to walk the halls of the main administration building on campus and to note their ethnographic observations on where men and women sit, who is behind closed doors and who is in cubicles, etc. In this context, I believe that films can work towards making organizations ‘come alive’, especially for students with minimal work/ organizational experiences. Television series have also been used to discuss several themes of interest to organizational scholars. In fact, as Rhodes (2001) writes, short of entering boardrooms and lunch rooms, offices and factories, the one place where we can learn about law offices, hospitals, army barracks, cafes, shoe shops, schools or

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malls, is through television. Television is the place where organizations exist outside of their physical form. From the law firm of L.A. Law to the oil fields of Dallas to the hospitals of ER, television becomes the medium through which organizational knowledge is created in a potentially more powerful way than management texts (Hassard and Holliday, 1998). Other TV series analyzed include The Office – a valuable ‘cultural text’ according to Tyler and Cohen (2008) – as well as several British ‘sitcoms’ of the 1950s to early 2000s, such as The Rag Trade, On the Buses, Hi-de-Hi!, Dinnerladies and Absolutely Fabulous analyzed by Rhodes and Westwood (2008), which offer interesting critiques of gender, class and their intersections in the workplace. More recently, Bell and Sinclair (2016) have analyzed the Danish television drama series Borgen, to shed light on the representation of women leaders and to discuss how women leaders’ bodies and sexualities are rendered visible or invisible in the workplace. Showing how popular culture can also provide alternative representations of women leaders as embodied and agentic (not just stereotypical representations), the authors argue that ‘a popular television series can reveal the metapicture of women’s embodiment in leadership in a way which disrupts the conventional representation of treating women as spectacle that has dominated popular culture’ (Bell and Sinclair, 2016, p. 334). In a similar vein, Wilson-Brown and Szczur (2016, p. 226) show how the strong African American female characters of the TV dramas produced by Shondaland, the production company of Shonda Rhimes whose lineup includes Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, can alter women’s representation in several professional arenas (law, politics, medicine), while simultaneously ‘demonstrating the very real and significant challenges that African American women in leadership positions face’. All of the aforementioned examples help us experience organizations as ‘real’, not only in the sense of feeling part of the story played out on our screens (we empathize with and live vicariously through the protagonists) but also in helping to make sense of our own organizational experiences. As noted, in my classes, where sending students to organizations to study issues of power, privilege or oppression is infeasible, I use film and TV series as realistic ethnographic representations (and substitutes) through which we can view what power looks like and therefore problematize it. For students with work experience, film and TV series also act as a way into discussing own examples of topics that are rarely covered in textbooks, such as harassment, sexism, classism or racism.

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Science Fiction One may not consider science fiction as a site of ethnographic inquiry about organizations, especially since it is often regarded as ‘a low status genre’ (Rhodes and Westwood, 2008, p. 79). Ironically though, science fiction holds an important status in the study of organizations, both because of the centrality of science in the genre but also because it is in many cases ‘explicitly about organizations’ (Phillips and Zyglidopoulos, 1999). For example, Rhodes and Westwood (2008, p. 11) use the 1982 film Blade Runner to ‘critically interrogate contemporary organizational behavior’. Since science fiction ‘represents a world (so) different to our own … [we are forced to] consider our own reality more critically’. Blade Runner in particular reflects how technology has become so central in our lives that it is inextricably linked to subjectivity and what it means to be a person in the world, as well as the implications of this for humanity. As the authors note, the film becomes a critical representation of the way that corporate power increasingly encroaches on all aspects of life and identity. In this context, although the use of science fiction with its oftentimes exaggerated representations may seem counter-intuitive to conducting traditional ethnography (which seeks to represent the everyday as realistically as possible), it is still a valuable medium through which ethnographic researchers can understand the workings of organizations. More recently, Yost’s (2016) analysis of science fiction narratives shows how popular culture can also help re-imagine leadership. Focusing on the gender dimensions of leadership, Yost discusses the representation of strong and powerful women in Star Trek (e.g. Uhura), Babylon 5 (e.g. Commander Susan Ivanona), and Survivors (e.g. the government official Samantha Willis who is a survivor of a pandemic and attempts to restore order and rebuild society), among others. She argues that science fiction, long considered the ‘domain of boys and men’ (Yost, 2016, p. 197), can in fact be used to discuss gendered practices in organizations, including masculinist types of leadership that may be hidden or at least not readily seen when studying organizations. Similarly, Harding (2018) uses the Terminator film series to analyze the theories of leadership that they implicitly contain and to discuss the ‘vulnerability’ of leadership. Interestingly, Harding presupposes a science fiction scenario herself (being consistent with the theme of the book After Leadership) in which all leadership textbooks have been destroyed and only films of the twentieth century are left – an interesting thought experiment, in which we are asked to travel to this post-apocalyptic world and construct a new leadership studies that exposes the limitations and biases of established thinking on leadership, so as to re-imagine ‘a brave new world’. Interestingly, if not ironically, writing this chapter in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, this type of research is eerily current and anything but

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fiction. With much talk in the popular press about the success of female leaders in handling the pandemic,1 as well as the importance of showing vulnerability, compassion and empathy,2 what seemed like ‘science fiction’ can now be seen as a useful ethnographic study of feminine (and feminist) leadership on the ground, with much to tell us about the types of skills required in the handling of such crises. Rock Music Songs and music have also been used as ‘a set of cultural texts that provide opportunities for insightful ways of understanding the cultural meaning of work’ (Rhodes, 2004, p. 23). With their wide accessibility, songs, much like films, offer a uniquely placed and potentially powerful critique to dominant discourses about work and organizations (Panayiotou, 2010). In Rhodes (2007, p. 22), rock music is treated as ‘a cultural discourse that provides insight into the tension between representations of utopian imagination with the often hard realities of the experience of work’. Rhodes shows that three images of work are delineated in rock music: ‘work as a dystopia to be escaped, the troubled relationship between work and love utopias, and the idea of work as false, yet culturally potent, utopia’. Rhodes provides a long list of songs that, much like ethnographic accounts, play out cultural, work and organizational politics: From Chuck Berry in the 1950s singing about ‘a poor boy dreaming of the Promised Land’ in California, to UB40 in the 1980s singing about the hardships of unemployment (incidentally, UB40 was the code for the unemployment benefit form in the UK at the time), to Radiohead telling us of the vacuity of human interaction in the offices at ‘Palo Alto’, to the 2003 UK band Planet Funk singing about being ‘a slave for the minimum wage’, music provides ‘a means to connect with currents in contemporary society that … organizational discourse is afraid of and tried to avoid’ (Rhodes, 2007, p. 44). Writing about the music of Bruce Springsteen in particular, Rhodes (2007, p. 23) also argues that music serves as a ‘valuable social critique of a romantic conception of ordinary work based on a valorization of organizations’. Powell and Veiga (1986) also use Springsteen’s music to teach students what work ‘feels like’ especially as it relates to various work/life dilemmas and how to understand the nature of a ‘motivational climate’ at work. As most popular music about organizational life has been written by individuals at the bottom of the organizational ladder, either on the outside looking in or on the bottom looking up, their perspective has much to offer in understanding working life – much like participant observation in a more traditional ethnographic study. As such, it also offers a perspective different from textbooks which are written largely through the managerial perspective and convey the false impression that subordinates will immediately and without hesitation respond

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to management requests. It is in this vein that Rhodes and Westwood (2008, p. 14) argue that the punk rock music of The Sex Pistols helps us question ‘the dominant ethos of contemporary capitalism’. Similarly, Clegg and Hardy (1996) analyze James Brown’s ‘It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world’ to highlight issues of representation in organization, while Linstead (2003) uses Bob Dylan’s ‘Love Minus Zero / No limit’ to explore silence and organization. These examples, Rhodes and Westwood (2008) claim, can both inspire and embellish academic work and, I would add, especially ethnographic work. If one of the key elements of ethnographic research is the importance of feeling with those we study, then songs can be envisioned as powerful ethnographic accounts that bring to the forefront the oppressed or unarticulated emotions of working and organizational life. Novels and Fiction Several researchers have written about the power of novels and fiction to shed light on organizational issues not typically touched upon by organization studies texts (e.g. Czarniawska, 1997; Phillips, 1995; Rhodes and Brown, 2005). As such, they are also important means that researchers can rely on to understand lived organizational experience, much like more traditional ethnographic accounts. Czarniawska-Joerges (1995) was among the first to advocate for stronger links between management writing and narration, while her co-edited book with Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (1994) showcases how literature can enhance our understanding of organizations and management. Knorr Cetina (1994) actively argued for introducing fiction in the social sciences. All of these authors claim that fiction can both explain and put to the test what academics consider ‘theories’ resembling, therefore, the work that more traditional ethnographies accomplish. Indeed, as Nelson Phillips (1995) writes, we should acknowledge that the barriers between fact and fiction, and art and science, have become increasingly difficult to defend. Hassard and Holliday (1998, p. 1) accurately note that while classroom texts present ‘rationality, organization and monolithic power relations’, novels and other aspects of popular culture bring to the forefront ‘sex, violence, emotion, power struggles and the personal consequences of success and failure,’ that may be more representative of what goes on in daily organizational life. From Sloan Wilson’s 1955 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and William Whyte’s 1956 Organization Man, to more recent novels and plays such as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, as well as Richard Russo’s Straight Man (Patient et al., 2003), David Foster Wallace’s novels (Michaelson, 2016), and even the James Bond series (Parker, 2018), works of narrative fiction offer a unique understanding of work and

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organizations, including job loss, envy in the workplace, white-collar frustration, managerial abuse and resistance to corporate power. Pullen and Rhodes (2013) note that orthodox organization and management theory tends to ‘clean up’ its texts and to smooth out paradox, doubt, uncertainty and inconsistency – the very ‘stuff’ that organizations are made of. In doing so, however, they lose relevance and importance. Narrative fiction, on the other hand, ‘weaves a pattern of truth’ (Phillips, 1995, p. 634) and can ‘provide a valuable complement to traditional ethnographies’ (Phillips, 1995, p. 639). As Michaelson (2016, p. 214) writes in regard to the works of Wallace, for example, ‘his central concern was the allure of the gifts of commercial production and the unwitting complicity of both producers and consumers in perpetuating entertainment at the expense of the examined life’. His ‘disquiet’ about the commercialization of everyday life and the dehumanizing effects of business provides not only a powerful critique but also a representation of lived experience that most academic texts cannot or do not convey—and most ethnographies do. Acknowledging the importance of the novel in the study of organizations, Organization Studies recently devoted a specially themed section (2019) to this genre. Beyes et al. (2019, p. 1787) indicatively write in the introduction to the section: Novels espouse an epistemological freedom that is beyond even experimental forms of scholarly research and writing. Precisely this freedom makes novels so conducive to thought. Their enduring presence in organization studies demonstrates literary fiction’s power of conveying how things are, might be, or can be thought of; of inventing new ways of seeing; of enabling different vocabularies as well as staging and transmitting specific affects.

With references to Kafka’s novels and stories and McCarthy’s Satin Island, Beyes et al. (2019) argue that novels are an integral part of knowing and meaning-making in organization studies. Drawing on DeCock and Land (2006), who poignantly use the notion of the ‘seam’ to describe the connection between literary writing, literary criticism and organizational thought, the authors argue that novels ‘can contain, invent and perform organizational thought’ (Beyes et al., 2019, p. 1788). As such, they can be an important part of an ethnographer’s toolkit. Kociatkiewicz and Kostera (2012) have used one genre of fiction, the detective novel, and in particular the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, to juxtapose what they call ‘extended Holmesian rationality’ present in these narratives vis-à-vis the type of rationality apparent in management literature. The authors argue that the character of Sherlock Holmes shows how imagination can be both ‘part and parcel of rationality’, a notion that could be difficult if not impossible to study otherwise. In fact, quoting Czarniawska (1999), Kociatkiewicz and Kostera (2012, p. 163) agree that management writers are ‘like writers

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of detective stories: they deal with similar plots, where a seemingly obvious symptom lies at heart of a non-obvious problem to be figured out and solved’. Famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes and management researchers use similar methods, they say, and surround themselves with similar mystique. Using the works of Doyle allows them, therefore, to ‘foreground the pitfalls of ignoring the complexities of the notion of rationality, the importance of considering connections between rationality and imagination, and to propose the extended Holmesian rationality as a relevant concept for management thought and practice’ and, I add, ethnographic thought and practice in particular. Comics, Cartoons and Children’s Stories A special section is needed for comics, cartoons and children’s stories since they may not come readily to our minds when discussing the use of media analysis. Yet, several writings in the study of work and organizations have utilized these seemingly unconventional means. Kessler (2001) for example has written about the comic strip character Dilbert which has had tremendous success in portraying dysfunctional aspects of the workplace. Doherty (2011, p. 286) has also written how Dilbert provides a view into employee dignity. As she writes, ‘Dilbert [shows how] managers often viewed their subordinates as exploitable commodities and threatened them with abuse … [while] employees feel their dignity challenged’. In fact, in an interview with the comic strip’s creator, Scott Adams, Cheng and Dennehy (1996, p. 207) have called Dilbert ‘terse organizational storytelling at its best’. As they write, Adams ‘in just three panels of a comic strip [can get] readers to laugh and think about the absurdities of everyday life in a large, complex organization’. I had actually met Adams in 1989 through a friend when he was working at Pacific Bell in the San Francisco Bay Area, right around the time he launched his comic strip. Knowing firsthand the stories he experienced – which were not unlike the stories that my friend and I were also experiencing while working for large multinationals in Silicon Valley – as an organizational researcher, I can truly appreciate the words of Cheng and Dennehy above. In addition, although laughing at Dilbert is an easy pastime for many, in many ways, it is just as poignant an ethnography as Kunda’s (2006) influential depiction of ‘control and commitment in a high-tech corporation’ (from the book’s title). Popular cartoon series have also been used as a view into organizational life. Rhodes (2001), for example, used the popular sitcom The Simpsons to highlight issues of power and control, as well as corporate abuse, in ways that resemble what Bakhtin describes as the ‘carnivalesque’ in organizations. Rhodes and Westwood (2008) discuss MTV’s Beavis and Butthead as well as South Park and focus specifically on the central placement of ‘Burger World’ restaurant and the Starbucks coffee chain in these series respectively, to critique ‘the

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cultural invasion process associated with the encroachment of multinational corporate cultures—with their accompanying consumer imperatives—into existing and localized cultural contexts’ (Rhodes and Westwood, 2008, p. 121). Both of these series offer a uniquely placed critique of the nature and effects of contemporary forms of consumption and the overwhelming effects of McDonaldization (Ritzer, 1996; see also Rhodes, 2002). More recently, Griffin et al. (2017) used Disney animations to showcase how expectations about working life and in particular representations of work and gendered workplace roles may influence children. By juxtaposing earlier animations that presented girls as weak and ‘avoiding work’ (e.g. Snow White, The Rescuers) with more contemporary productions featuring stronger girls engaged in paid work (e.g. Frozen, The Princess and the Frog), the authors introduce the concept of ‘organizational readiness’ to explore how consumption of these cultural products by the future workforce may configure their ideas about working life. The authors argue that this is perhaps more powerful than even visiting an organization: as cultural artifacts, animations may have both ‘representational and performative power’ as they ‘underpin and transmit taken-for-granted expectations, images and ideals of organizational life’ (Griffin et al., 2017, p. 871). Children learn through such films what life in organizations may be like, even without visiting one. Similarly, Grey (1998) has used the representations of organization in children’s literature from 1930 to 1968 to argue that, in line with the ‘conditioning argument’, literature has the capacity to inform the worldviews of those who have read it. By implication, he says, individuals who have read the Famous Five adventures, the Jennings stories, and Swallows and Amazons, all very popular children’s stories, carry with them understandings of organizations developed in early childhood that are potentially difficult to alter later on. In a similar vein, Ingersoll and Adams’s (1992) study of twenty-nine American children’s stories, shows how the stories depict organizations and organizational life, with an emphasis on one of the ‘dominant strands of US national culture’, technical rationality. The authors argue that these representations inform images, ideas and symbols that become part of a shared consciousness of the reality of organizations; they create a very specific even if unarticulated ‘meaning map’ which provides tools for analyzing situations, beliefs about how things ought to be done and rationales for those beliefs—not just for children. Thus, although not ethnographies in the traditional sense, all of these stories provide powerful means through which to ethnographically understand organizations. I now turn to a second large category of media that can potentially aid the work of organizational ethnographers, media that is produced by the organization under study.

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MEDIA FROM ORGANIZATIONS Company Videos Videos have been used in a variety of forms to study organizations. I mention here a poignant example by McCabe and Knights (2016, p. 184) who argue that videos provide a ‘unique artefact for studying the culture of an organization’ as they reveal sometimes hidden attitudes. These researchers analyzed CEO-produced corporate videos to study how leadership is presented through images, metaphors and language. They found that the videos were heavily imbued with military, sport and war images. According to the authors, ‘the theme of masculinity leapt out from watching these videos [in how] leadership was represented’ (McCabe and Knights, 2016, p. 183). Videos in this case provided ‘a more subtle understanding of an organizational culture and the contextual relationships within the social setting under investigation’ (Kunter and Bell, 2006, p. 179) and helped to uncover what the authors called ‘the hidden aspects of gender’ in the companies investigated. I emphasize the word ‘hidden’ as above, since I believe that revealing the hidden or taken-for-granted is the core of any ethnographic study. In this context, I am reminded of one of the most informative and detailed accounts I have read on Enron’s problematic organizational culture (The Smartest Guys in the Room), which, although not conducted by ethnographers but by investigative journalists, has much in common with an ethnography in depicting a very toxic workplace. The authors write that they relied on ‘executive calendars, personnel files, depositions, court records, emails, consultants’ studies, internal memos, presentations, board minutes’ (McLean and Elkind, 2004, p. v), quite possibly what many ethnographers would also do in an academic study. However, I cannot help but think how revealing and perhaps prophetic company videos could have been, had they been studied before the ‘downfall’, in assessing the company’s culture of greed and illegality. Websites, Search Engines and Blogs One site of inquiry which remains rather under-explored, yet can offer significant knowledge about organizations and organizing especially for ethnographers, is corporate websites. One study by Singh and Point (2006, p. 363) notes this omission, claiming that corporate websites must be treated as ‘artefacts that reveal information about the corporate culture’. Their paper specifically aims to ‘unravel the specific notions of gender and ethnicity promoted by companies in web-based diversity statements’ (2006, p. 364), since they find

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that these are telling in regard to the corporate ethos and actual commitment to diversity. In Kassinis and Panayiotou (2017), my colleague and I used the BP website as our empirical context to analyze the visual story that unfolded before and after Deepwater Horizon and argued that a carefully constructed visual narrative potentially mitigated the impact of the environmental catastrophe caused by the disaster. We claim that websites, through their use of visuality, act as powerful corporate storytellers; in the case of BP, it was a cleverly disguised story of greenwashing which could have been revealed through careful analysis of the visual discourse used on the website. Other interesting works on websites include Elliott and Robinson’s (2014) study, which examines corporate web identity, drawing upon the concept of corporate identity as ‘the immediate mental picture’ that audiences have of an organization. The same authors (2012) analyzed four UK business schools’ websites to discuss how their MBA programs project their distinctive approaches to internationalization. Coupland and Brown (2004) analyze the web identity of Royal Dutch/Shell, while Pollach (2003) worked with the websites of BellSouth, Lockheed Martin, Ben & Jerry’s, McDonald’s, Nike and Levi Strauss, to show that the companies ultimately belong to different ‘ethics paradigms’. If websites are corporate tools deployed to avert the limelight from risky practices as in the case of BP, or are part of companies’ image, identity or culture work as the additional examples given, then they can surely enrich the ethnographer’s work and add to the array of different data sources of use to the ethnographer.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS Media analysis can be part of an organizational ethnographer’s ‘toolset’, used to understand organizations and cultures as it ‘captures those components of a text that are subconscious, unintentional’ (Kostera, 2007, p. 169). Importantly, media analysis helps us understand how official ideologies are created and re-created. As Kostera (2007, p. 169) writes, ‘(these) messages are commonly “hidden”’ so the role of the researcher is to analyze all the accessible texts and ‘look for traces of the ideological message and then give this message a name’. One way then of conceptualizing ethnography is what Kociatkiewicz describes as ‘discovering the hidden story’ but also going beyond that to ‘piece together the dispersed fragments’ into a coherent whole (cited in Kostera, 2007, p. 174). In this chapter I have concentrated on the use of media, both media on and from organizations, to showcase what valuable resources these may be in understanding the organizational world. Due to space limitations, I have not discussed producer intentions or the possible multiple readings and inter-

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pretations of these texts. I have also not discussed important concepts such as ‘model’ or ‘critical readers’, even though ‘ethnography is always about a certain fragment in time’ (Kostera, 2007, p. 170). I hope nonetheless that a spark has been created so that the discussion can continue in the pages of this volume and elsewhere. What I would most like to leave the reader with is that, everything around us can (and perhaps should) come under scrutiny since ‘meaning’ is found in everything we do and in all that we are (Kostera, 1995).

NOTES 1.

2.

See for example: https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2020/​05/​15/​world/​coronavirus​-women​-leaders​.html; https://​www​.dailyo​.in/​variety/​covid​-19​-coronavirus​-in​-india​-corona​-warriors​ -women​-empowerment/​story/​1/​32836​.html. See   for   example:   https:// ​ w ww ​ . businessinsider ​ . com/ ​ h ow ​ - leaders ​ - can ​ - be​ -empathetic​-help​-employees​-during​-coronavirus​-pandemic​-2020​-4; https://​www​ .mckinsey​.com/​business​-functions/​organization/​our​-insights/​tuning​-in​-turning​ -outward​-cultivating​-compassionate​-leadership​-in​-a​-crisis.

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Panayiotou, Alexia and Kafiris, Krini (2011) ‘Viewing the language of space: Organizational spaces, power and resistance in popular films’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(3): 264–84. Parker, Martin (2018) ‘Employing James Bond’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 27(2): 178–89. Patient, David, Lawrence, Thomas and Maitlis, Sally (2003) ‘Understanding workplace envy through narrative fiction’, Organization Studies, 24(7): 1015–44. Pedersen, Anne Reffe and Humle, Didde Maria (eds.) (2016) Doing organizational ethnography: A focus on polyphonic ways of organizing. London: Routledge. Perec, Georges (1989) L’infra-ordinaire. Paris: Seuil. Phillips, Nelson (1995) ‘Telling organizational tales: On the role of narrative fiction in the study of organizations’, Organization Studies, 16(4): 625–49. Phillips, Nelson and Zyglidopoulos, Stelios (1999) ‘Learning from foundation: Asimov’s psychohistory and the limits of organization theory’, Organization, 6(4): 591–608. Pollach, Irene (2003) ‘Communicating corporate ethics on the World Wide Web: A discourse analysis of selected company websites’, Business and Society, 42: 277–87. Powell, Gary and Veiga, John (1986) ‘Using popular music to examine management and OB concepts: A rejoinder to Springsteen’s thesis’, Journal of Management Education, 10(1): 79–81. Pullen, Alison and Rhodes, Carl (2013) ‘Parody, subversion and the politics of gender at work: The case of Futurama’s Raging Bender’, Organization, 20: 512–33. Rafaeli, Anat, Dutton, Jane, Harquail, Celia V., and Mackie-Lewis, Stephanie (1997) ‘Navigating by attire: The use of dress by female administrative employees’, Academy of Management Journal, 40: 9–45. Rhodes, Carl (2001) ‘The Simpsons, popular culture, and the organizational carnival’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 10(4): 374–83. Rhodes, Carl (2002) ‘Coffee and the business of pleasure: The case of Harbucks vs Mr Tweek’, Culture and Organization, 8(4): 293–306. Rhodes, Carl (2004) ‘Utopia in popular management writing and the music of Bruce Springsteen: Do you believe in the promised land?’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 7(1): 1–20. Rhodes, Carl (2007) ‘Outside the gates of Eden: Utopia and work in rock music’, Group and Organization Management, 32(1): 22–49. Rhodes, Carl and Brown, Andrew (2005) ‘Narrative, organizations and research’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(3): 167–88. Rhodes, Carl and Westwood, Robert (2008) Critical representations of work and organization in popular culture. New York: Routledge. Ritzer, George (1996) The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary social life (revised edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Singh, Val and Point, Sebastien (2006) ‘(Re)presentations of gender and ethnicity in diversity statements on European company websites’, Journal of Business Ethics, 68: 363–79. Strati, Antonio (2007) ‘Sensible knowledge and practice-based learning’, Management Learning, 38: 61–77. Toraldo, Maria Laura, Islam, Gazi and Mangia, Gianluigi (2018) ‘Modes of knowing: Video research and the problem of elusive knowledges’, Organizational Research Methods, 21(2): 438–65.

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Tyler, Melissa and Cohen, Laurie (2010) ‘Spaces that matter: Gender performativity and organizational space’, Organization Studies, 31(2): 175–98. Whyte, William (1956) The organization man. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Wilson-Brown, Carrie and Szczur, Samantha (2016) ‘Working in Shondaland: Representations of African American women in leadership’, in Carole Elliott, Valerie Stead, Sharon Mavin and Jannine Williams (eds.), Gender, media and organization: Challenging mis(s)representations of women leaders and managers. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 225–42. Ybema, Sierk, Yanow, Dvora, Wels, Harry and Kamsteeg, Frans (eds.) (2009) Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Yost, Kimberly (2016) ‘Mediating the future: Women political leaders in science fiction television’, in Carole Elliott, Valerie Stead, Sharon Mavin and Jannine Williams (eds.), Gender, media and organization: Challenging mis(s)representations of women leaders and managers. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 197–208.

9. Reading and interpreting social media: exploring positive emotional expressions in organizing Noomi Weinryb, Nils Gustafsson and Cecilia Gullberg As our world has widened, it has become increasingly difficult to record and interpret it. (Czarniawska, 2014, p. 8)

As we enter the 2020s, digital forms of organizing are permeating almost every concerted form of collective action. The type of organizational digital tools that perhaps are most widely available for interactions of individuals and organizations alike are social media. In this chapter, we ethnographically explore the implications of a specific aspect of social media – positive emotional expressions – by probing into their proliferation and meaning for organizing. In organization studies, most research on social media and emotions has primarily looked at it as an aspect of specific organizational efforts (cf. Toubiana and Zietsma, 2017), rather than probing into the performative organizational implications that social media platforms in and of themselves entail beyond any singular organizational experience. In contrast, Gaggiotti et al. (2017) advocate for organizational ethnographers to move beyond the trappings of any one specific organization, and instead focus on the broader context of social organizing. In a sense, this may be seen as a call to ethnographically engage with organizational fields (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Albeit formulated in other words (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000), this is also the argument of Watson (2012, p. 17), who writes ‘that we can only create successful organisational ethnographers if, in every study, we give full consideration to the broader “social organization” as well as to the more local “formal organization”’. On social media, written emotional expressions are everywhere to be seen (Arcy, 2016; Gerbaudo, 2016; Riordan, 2017), spanning across organizational boundaries. Emotional content is ubiquitous, not least through the use of emojis/emoticons (Derks et al., 2008). These can be found in individual 129

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postings, loose networks organized by individuals, as well as in the communication of established ‘formal’ organizations. Previous research has claimed that the emotional architecture of social media is specifically designed to drive traffic on the platform, in turn generating profit for the platform owners (Lee et al., 2018; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2018). Social media platforms are thus created for multiple and emotionalized interactions between individuals, and these interactions may also take the shape of organizing efforts. From an organizational perspective, social media interactions may drive emotionally galvanized organizing of individuals (Gerbaudo, 2016), but we know less about the broader implications of social media for established organizations, although research has suggested that they may be grave (cf. Gustafsson and Weinryb, 2020). At the same time, much has been written about negative emotions on social media (Celik, 2019; Näsi et al., 2015) but there is a lack of more fine-grained knowledge about the consequences of positive emotional expressions not only for loosely organized collective action, but also for traditional managerial practices of established organizations. In sum, the prevalence of positive emotional expressions on social media may have broad implications for organizing, both online and offline, and both in loosely organized emotional interactions as well as in established organizational practices. To learn more about this, we need to engage ethnographically with these phenomena, using a variety of methods at hand to capture the elusive. As Rouleau et al. (2014, p. 4) write: ‘new forms of organisational ethnographers have emerged in response to rapidly changing organisational environments as well as technological advances’. To ethnographically study emotional expressions on social media and their implications for organizing, we thus need to be open to new, and sometimes unexpected, avenues of research.

ORGANIZATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY, SOCIAL MEDIA AND ORGANIZING With the rise of the digital universe, ethnographers from many disciplines have coalesced to interpret and engage with the digital interactions in a broad sense. One of the more influential voices in this vein is Kozinets (2010), who coined the term netnography. Basing his work on marketing research, Kozinets (2002) described a comprehensive and detailed step-by-step plan for how to study digital communities in an ethnographic manner: ‘Netnography is based primarily on the observation of textual discourse, an important difference from the balancing of discourse and observed behavior that occurs during in-person ethnography’ (Kozinets, 2002, p. 64). While laying the ground for an important and interesting research stream, a central challenge in the study of digital organizing persisted: for ‘how will the ethnographic researcher be able to make adequate sense out of communication that restricts important cues such

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as nonverbal behaviors?’ (Lindlof and Shatzer, 1998, p. 176). Although this lack of nonverbal cues to some extent can be redeemed by video-clips, photos and emojis, there are still elements of organizing that contain non-digital elements pertaining to the meaning attributed to digital behavior, both online and offline. In the words of Spradley (1980, p. 70) ‘The ethnographer observes behavior but goes beyond it to inquire about the meaning of that behavior’. In order to understand the digital sphere ethnographically, we believe that there is a need to probe into not only emotional expressions that are manifested on social media, but also their meaning. As organizational ethnographers, our preoccupation is not only with behavior, but also with the meaning of organizing. As Spradley (1980, p. 16) writes: ‘Any explanation of behavior which excludes what the actors themselves know, how they define their actions, remains a partial explanation that distorts the human situation. The tools of ethnography offer one means to deal with this fact of meaning’. We here argue that digital interactions, and in our case social media interactions specifically, are not isolated phenomena to be ethnographically read and interpreted in and of themselves in their online manifestation. Rather, we advocate for a hybrid approach, similar to the work of Jordan (2009) on hybrid ethnography and the concept of connective ethnography (cf. Dirksen et al., 2010). In this stream of research, an underlying assumption is that those digital interactions that are prevalent in most contemporary forms of organizations and organizing, may have performative effects beyond the digital interaction in and of itself. This implies that the digital infrastructure may influence, and potentially alter, not only what is organized online, but also those other organizational practices and processes that are not in and of themselves always digital. Therefore, our contribution in this chapter differs somewhat from netnography as described by Kozinets (2002, 2010) as we move between the digital aspects of organizing and those taking place in other spheres of the organization. By considering organizing practices broadly, we here wish to exemplify and provide inspiration on how organizational ethnographers may move beyond any specific methodological approach in their aim to understand social phenomena rather than rigidly pursue any one type of methodology; be that participant observation, shadowing or any other ‘classical’ ethnographic approach. Instead of viewing ethnography as a methodology, we here see it as an epistemological approach to research (Gaggiotti et al., 2017; Yanow, 2012), interacting with and probing the social world to entice a deepened understanding of it. Our view is that ‘organisational ethnographers are cultural explorers, discovering how organisational actors make sense and get things done and how organisational communities and identities continually emerge over time’ (Cunliffe, 2010, p. 229). Therefore, we will here lay out an example of how an ethnographic epistemology may be practiced by contemporary organiza-

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tional ethnographers, by combining methodological approaches and crossing traditional demarcations to try to grasp elusive yet endemic contemporary organizational phenomena.

READING SOCIAL MEDIA TO CAPTURE THE ELUSIVE What will we then study more specifically? In order to grasp elusive phenomena standing at the crossroads of social media, emotions and organizing, we will lean on some established concepts of organization theory – namely collective action and managerial practices. We believe that ‘theoretical concepts are ingredients that go into the ethnographic mix, alongside and in interaction with observed fieldwork episodes and recorded/remembered utterances and conversations’ (Watson, 2012, p. 12). We will not use these concepts in a deductive manner, but rather follow Watson’s lead in creating an iterative process, moving between theoretical concepts and organizational ethnographic work. To capture complex empirical phenomena involving language, images, symbols, and emotions, both online and offline, we use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, both from social media and outside of social media. The idea behind this mix of methods is related to our aim to read social media ethnographically, trying to capture elusive organizational processes beyond any specific organization’s experience (cf. Gaggiotti et al., 2017). Why will we then study collective action? Previous research has shown that emotional expressions are imperative for collective action by individuals in loosely organized networks, but we know less about the implications for established ‘formal’ organizations (Gerbaudo, 2016; Gustafsson and Weinryb, 2020; Weinryb et al., 2019). As contemporary society is rife with such ‘formal’ organizations, it is important to look at them in a comparative manner, trying to understand their social media interactions alongside more individual forms of organizing on social media. And why will we study managerial practices? As has been advocated by Stinchcombe (2005), extreme cases may be of utmost interest in trying to ethnographically understand our social world. In an organizational context, what may be more antithetical to emotionalized organizing than the often rationalized practices of managing, for example, evaluating and rewarding performance or communicating with external stakeholders? Managerial practices have indeed been subject to heavy-handed standardization and rationalization (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Not least, past decades have seemingly cemented the predominant trends of the so called ‘audit society’ (Power, 1997), even further promulgating the global rationalization of management (Drori et al., 2006; Jang, 2005; Meyer et al., 1997). Given their high degree of rationalization, managerial practices are thus an interesting extreme case to study in the emotionalized context of social media.

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ORGANIZATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY BEYOND ANY ONE SPECIFIC METHODOLOGY Given our wish to explore how we can read social media ethnographically, we try to unpack the proliferation and meaning of positive emotional expressions in several ways. In order to stay within a specific organizational field, we have here chosen to focus on Swedish civil society organizations and organizing. More specifically, we explore different organizational facets of positive emotional expressions on social media in such organizing, using a variety of methodologies: 1. Collective action and positive emotional expressions, quantitatively comparing the usage of such expressions in loosely organized networks and established civil society organizations. 2. Managerial practices and positive emotional expressions, trying to qualitatively explore what the proliferation of such expressions actually entails for rationalized organizational practices. The social media accounts we use here are primarily Facebook materials, which were collected and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In order to enable a quantitative analysis, the posts of 59 Swedish Facebook groups associated with organizing voluntary work during the 2015 European refugee crisis were collected through the Netvizz application (Rieder, 2013). The collection was limited to the three months considered to contain the peak of engagement in Sweden, September–November, 2015, and amounted to 8074 posts. A list of these Facebook groups can be found in Table 9.1. In order to enable a qualitative analysis, the same posts were manually saved in PDF format, amounting to thousands of pages. We then chose one particular Facebook group for an in-depth analysis, which will be described further below. In addition to the social media material, as a means to understand meaning, in-depth conversations concerning positive emotional expressions and social media were conducted with four focus groups comprised of 26 managers of established Swedish civil society organizations. The focus groups were conducted at two separate professional training seminars for civil society managers conducted in Stockholm in the fall of 2017 and lasted 1–2 hours each. The participants in the groups were specifically chosen as they had management positions in their established civil society organizations. All quotes used in the paper, also those from Facebook, were translated from Swedish to English by the authors. This translation also protects the anonymity of Facebook participants as their quotes are not immediately traceable online. To analyze collective action and positive emotional expressions we first conducted a qualitative analysis of a limited number of groups to tease out

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Table 9.1

Share of positive emotional expressions in groups and pages Posts

Organizational

Comparative

September–

type

classification

November 2015

Share of enthusiastic posts, %

Members 9

Group/

December

page

2015

Network

Refugee focused network

32

31.30

2002

group

Network

Refugee focused network

31

22.60

10 860

group

Network

Refugee focused network

648

21.00

3094

group

Network

Refugee focused network

437

17.20

18 186

page

144

16.70

2716

page

Network

Refugee focused organization

Network

Refugee focused network

112

11.60

5107

page

Network

Refugee focused network

877

10.80

9983

group

Network

Refugee focused network

289

9.70

1911

group

Network

Refugee focused network

301

7.00

5171

group

Network

Refugee focused network

44

6.80

1453

page

Network

Refugee focused network

167

6.60

5623

page

Network

Refugee focused network

527

6.60

2759

group

Network

Refugee focused network

423

5.70

3108

group

Network

Refugee focused network

50

0.00

2298

group

Network

Refugee focused network

21

0.00

5122

group

109

19.30

589

page

64

15.60

1083

page

Organization

Temperance movement organization

Organization

Religious organization

Organization

Religious organization

72

15.30

940

page

Organization

Left wing organization

463

13.60

15 848

page

Organization

Religious organization

125

8.80

1392

page

Organization

International organization

24

33.30

3328

page

Organization

International organization

17

29.40

693

page

Organization

Aid agency

14

28.60

481

page

Organization

Religious organization

95

26.30

8913

page

Organization

Aid agency

4

25.00

285

page

Organization

Religious organization

50

22.00

1716

page

Organization

Aid agency

146

21.90

276 577

page

Organization

Aid agency

88

21.60

38 760

page

Organization

Left wing organization

182

21.10

5384

page

Organization

Aid agency

21

19.00

846

page

Organization

Religious organization

69

18.80

7365

page

Reading and interpreting social media: emotional expressions in organizing

Posts Organizational

Comparative

September–

type

classification

November 2015

Organization Organization

Aid agency Temperance movement organization

Share of enthusiastic posts, %

135

Members 9

Group/

December

page

2015

247

17.80

39 130

page

42

16.70

1118

page

Organization

Aid agency

192

16.70

116 768

page

Organization

Left wing organization

57

15.80

2291

page

Organization

Religious organization

137

15.30

930

page

60

15.00

8324

page

Organization

Adult educational association

Organization

Religious organization

29

13.80

219

page

Organization

Left wing organization

169

13.00

17 939

group

65

10.80

4693

page

Organization

Refugee focused organization

Organization

Religious organization

77

10.40

8235

page

Organization

Religious organization

108

10.20

3436

page

30

10.00

2178

page

Organization

Refugee focused organization

Organization

Religious organization

20

10.00

472

page

Organization

Religious organization

76

9.20

3910

page

Organization

Left wing organization

56

8.90

6138

page

Organization

Aid agency

91

8.80

1002

page

Organization

Religious organization

84

8.30

15 651

page

Organization

Religious organization

104

7.70

2417

page

Organization

Left wing organization

119

7.60

4612

page

Organization

Religious organization

28

7.10

2858

page

106

6.60

3161

page

91

6.60

6508

page

64

6.60

120 470

page

Organization Organization

Refugee focused organization Temperance movement organization

Organization

Aid agency

Organization

Refugee focused network

111

6.30

9580

page

Organization

Aid agency

85

4.70

78 175

page

Organization

Aid agency

59

3.40

3884

page

Organization

Left wing organization

49

2.00

2387

page

Organization

Religious organization

72

1.40

6035

page

8074

12.60

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a specific sample of positive emotional expressions employed in the posts. This vocabulary was subsequently tested for and analyzed quantitatively. In a first round of qualitative coding of some of the largest organizational initiatives in our data set, we created a lexicon consisting of eleven words and one emoji that we used to subsequently test for the prevalence of positive emotional expressions in the quantitative data set. The lexicon can be found in Table 9.2. It should be observed that this is a rather coarse measurement: there are words that could have been included, but have not been; and although the occurrence of words has been checked for context, there is no measurement for whether the post is supposed to be interpreted in an ironic sense, etc. Despite this, we believe that we are able to provide a rough estimate of the prevalence of posts containing positive emotional expressions, which is useful especially when comparing different types of organizations and networks, as well as when comparing over time. Table 9.2

Words coded as positive emotional expressions

Word stems in Swedish

English translation

fantastisk

fantastic heart emoji

glädje

joy

hjälte

hero

hjärta

heart

kämpa

to champion

kärlek

love

stolt

proud

underbar

wonderful

vänner

friends

älska

love

To see if positively emotionally charged vocabulary on Facebook would be as prevalent in established organizations as in loosely organized networks, we compared the usage of positive emotional expressions in different forms of organizing. In the very preliminary and descriptive initial quantitative analysis, we have distinguished between two forms of organizing, in order to fully

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compare established organization with loosely organized networks drawing on the distinction made by Bennett and Segerberg (2013): • Organizationally brokered networks are networks set up and used by established civil society organizations. Social media is used for mobilizing and management rather than for self-organizing. In our study, pages and groups administered by established organizations are called simply ‘organizations’ and are considered as such. • The loosely organized networks are basically non-organizations formed around the technological platform characterized by a high degree of personalized engagement. In our study, pages and groups that started out as networks are called simply ‘networks’. On social media, positive emotional artifacts abound, both in the form of emojis and emotional vocabularies, and as forms of collective action we can study them quantitively. Yet we also wish to learn about the meaning of these positive emotional markers, seeming to signify an emotionalized behavior. Costello et al. (2017) describe how it is possible, and perhaps desirable, to look at the online interactions in combination with other methods, to understand the broader context of these interactions. Although we may see these emotional artifacts and the way they are used on social media, we still are at a loss on how to interpret what this behavior means. In order to ethnographically read social media, we thus need to do what ethnographers have always done – in different periods and settings – we also need to talk to people engaged in this behavior. We need to hear their stories in order to interpret what is actually going on, but we also need to observe their behavior. To learn more about managerial practices in relation to positive emotional expressions, we analyzed one particular Facebook group from our 2015 sample as well as the focus group interviews. The Facebook group was a Swedish loosely organized network initiative that emerged in the fall of 2015 to help refugees on the island of Lesbos. The group was characterized by a large number of members and intense interaction among these, and the posts of the group amounted to 350 pages in total. Here, we specifically coded for behavior on social media, with a particular focus on how the use of money was communicated and accounted for in both emotional and more rationalized ways. The focus group interviews were first coded to identify managerial practices, such as communicating with subordinates and evaluating performance. In the second round of coding, we probed more deeply into the potential effects of positive emotional expressions specifically on managerial practices. In this second round of coding, four major themes arose, and we will center our presentation of the qualitative data around these themes.

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EXPLORING COLLECTIVE ACTION AND POSITIVE EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIONS As stated above, 8074 Facebook posts have been analyzed from 59 groups and pages, all considered to be instrumental in organizing and mobilizing voluntary work in relation to the refugee crisis in 2015 (Table 9.1). Forty-eight were Facebook pages and 11 were groups. At the time of the time of data collection (December, 2015), they ranged in number of members/followers from about 200 to 277 000 (UNICEF Sweden). Forty-five of the groups/networks were coded as organizations and 15 as networks. The organizations had on average higher membership/follower numbers (57 000 on average) compared to the networks (5000 on average). It could be expected that the networks would be more active on Facebook, considering that they relied on communication and organization via social media to a much higher extent than established organizations with a permanent membership base. This expectation was confirmed in the analysis: despite their lower number and having substantially lower membership/followership rates, the networks in the sample posted 4103 times in comparison to 3971 posts from the organizations. That the organizations generally have higher membership/follower numbers means that their posts are visible to more people. For this reason, posts from organizations generally have higher engagement rates (208 on average) than posts from networks (53 on average). Engagement is measured as the total number of shares, likes and comments per post. There is unsurprisingly a statistically significant correlation (0.3, significant at the 1% level) between engagement rate for a post and the number of members/followers of the respective group or page. It should however also be remembered that most posts only get very little engagement, with a small number of posts attaining very large engagement rates. This tendency towards power law distributions is well known within studies of internet phenomena and widely attested in the literature (Hindman, 2018). The number of followers/members is however not the only thing that affects engagement rate, to which we will return shortly. The intensity of posting varies to an extreme extent during the period under study (see Figure 9.1). There is a peak in posting early in September 2015, coinciding with the publication of the image of the drowned refugee boy Alan Kurdi on the shores of Turkey, as well as a well-publicized speech by Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven at a rally in support of refugees in which he famously stated that ‘My Europe does not build any walls’. The intensity then drops sharply at the end of September and stabilizes at a lower level for the rest of the period. The different ways that organizations and networks use Facebook posts is very visible when comparing activity over the period. Whereas posting explodes among the networks during early September and

Reading and interpreting social media: emotional expressions in organizing

Figure 9.1

139

Facebook posts per day and organizational type, September– November 2015

then rapidly collapses, the rate of posting for the organizations is much more stable all throughout the period although we also here see the uptick in activity in September. From October onwards, the organizations produce more posts per day than the networks. This reflects the boom-and-bust quality that many spontaneous networked movements show, where large numbers of people can be mobilized in a very short period of time, but where the mobilization can be fragile. In contrast, established civil society organizations can benefit from concentrated moments of mobilization, but can to a larger extent rely on a permanent membership base, a steady flow of donations, a structure that includes a clear hierarchy and more channels for internal communication, etc. As our specific point of interest here is the use of positive emotional expressions in posts, we will now turn to this topic. Out of the 8074 posts, 14.1% contain positive emotional expressions. The share of positive emotional expressions posts is roughly equal across five different types of posts: text-only status updates, photos, videos, links and events, with posts including photos having the largest share of positive emotional expressions posts at 18.7%. There are large differences between individual pages and groups: whereas the Facebook page of the Swedish Red Cross Youth in Gothenburg (categorized as organization) has 41.2% positive emotional expressions posts (maximum), the Facebook page of Ingen Människa Är Illegal (No Person Is Illegal) Gothenburg (categorized as network) has 0 positive emotional expressions posts (minimum) out of a total of 50 during the period. Comparing

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organizations and networks, we would expect networks on average to have a higher share of positive emotional expressions posts due to the greater need for networks to use positive emotional expressions in order to engage and mobilize in lieu of a permanent member base. However, it is actually the other way round: 16.3% positive emotional expressions posts for the organizations compared to 12.6% positive emotional expressions posts for the networks.

Figure 9.2

Number of positive emotional expressions posts per day and organizational type, September–November 2015

In our analysis we see that organizations are even more active in using positive emotional expressions in their posts than networks. Is this pattern also stable during the studied time period? Yes! (see Figure 9.2). Looking at the number of positive emotional expressions posts, networks post a large number of positive emotional expressions posts in September, following the general trend in number of posts, whereas organizations have a steadier trend with a smaller uptick in September. From October, organizations post more positive emotional expressions posts than the networks. The analysis however reveals that the share of positive emotional expressions posts increases for networks but not clearly so for organizations (Figure 9.3). This probably reflects the fact that the number of practically oriented posts containing brisk practically-oriented

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141

information goes down, while general pleas for solidarity gradually take up a larger part of the total number of posts.

Figure 9.3

Share of positive emotional expressions posts per day and organizational type, September–November 2015

There also seem to be instrumental reasons for using positive emotional expressions language in posts: it increases the engagement rates. Positive emotional expressions posts get an average engagement rate of 300 compared to 100 for non-positive emotional expressions posts. Positive emotional expressions substantially increase the engagement rate both for posts from organizations and networks. From this brief analysis of the Facebook posts, we can see that established civil society organizations depend on the use of positive emotional expressions for creating engagement to the same degree as loosely organized networks. This is interesting if we consider that intuitively one may think that networks would be more prone to engage a loose group of followers through emotions compared to organizations, who have a more stable base of members. But does the use of positive emotional expressions for collective action on social media have any consequences for rationalized managerial practices in established

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civil society organizations? To answer this question, we now turn to the other parts of our data; the qualitative Facebook data and the focus groups.

EXPLORING THE ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF POSITIVE EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MANAGERIAL PRACTICES Positive Emotional Expressions as a Complementary Management Language In all the focus groups, positive emotional expressions appear to be considered an important complement to other usage of language. It was not a separate discourse per se, but rather an altered use of specific words in extant discourses. One reason that is put forth in the focus groups is that positive emotional expressions, including emojis, is a means of nuancing written messages, which can easily be misinterpreted in the absence of body language and tone of voice. Another reason has more to do with outreach and relevance. Some of the organizations have consulted specialists, with regards to how to communicate, and the staff has undergone training. This indicates a professionalization in the usage of positive emotional expressions, and in the training courses the managers have learnt that they should ‘use hearts and emotions in order to break through’. One organization has engaged a so-called professional influencer to increase the positive emotional commitment around their cause. Several of the participants of the focus groups tell about a shift in the emotional expressions used in various communication channels. One concerns the emphasis, which some suggest has shifted from more negative to more positive. One manager refers to ‘the almighty pep’ in the organization, implying that more or less everything, even the duller tasks, are framed in positive terms. Negative messages are according to the same manager not communicated in emotional terms to the same extent, but rather as debate articles. They also try not to spark engagement among their members by using a negative tone. Another change in emphasis concerns the meaning of positive emotional expressions, which many suggest is becoming inflated. Another manager refers to a sense of being ‘micro boosted’, implying a very frequent exposure to positive emotional expressions from coworkers when simply performing her small daily tasks. Just like positive emotional expressions and emojis in general, which constitute a means to try to more precisely convey a written message, the intensified positivity seems to serve to adjust for misunderstandings. The use of positive words and superlatives appears to nurture a continued, self-reinforcing, need to use them, and preferably to use them even more all the time. Even people who do not like using emojis have to do so in order to keep workers in a good mood and avoid being perceived as angry. An ‘OK’

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is no longer sufficient but needs to be complemented by a range of positive words and emojis. The use of positive emotional expressions is also seen in our qualitative analysis of Facebook data. As illustrated in the previous section, both Facebook page administrators and stakeholders use such vocabulary. Even though there is certainly also criticism from the members/activists’ side, many of the posts by the Facebook page administrators are followed by highly enthusiastic comments from stakeholders. ‘You do such a fantastically important work!’; ‘Magic!! You are so good!!’; ‘Thanks for everything that you do!’. The highly positive emotional expressions are thus also present in the qualitative Facebook data. Some of the participants in the focus groups describe how the above-mentioned changes in vocabulary have transferred into their organizations. It is supposed to be fun and rewarding all the time, and in this quest for positive messages when we talk to each other … yes, we do it a lot when you work in different types of conventions and events and I believe that it derives from how we communicate on social media.

Others have not noticed such an effect. I represent an employer organization and our members are companies and organizations, so we are not … I do not recognize this at all. We are very … we try to use spoken language but not with hearts and emojis, but we are more boring and correct.

As the last quote suggests, these differences may have to do with rather varying demands of the different stakeholders. This will be elaborated in the next section. Tailoring Positive Emotional Expressions to Different Audiences: A Professional Managerial Competence The use of positive emotional expressions appears to be adjusted when accounting to different stakeholders, both inside and outside of the organization. As indicated above, there are differences in how civil society organizations communicate with members depending on whether the members are organizations or individuals. A contrasting example to the one above is provided by the manager of an organization with individual members. I feel that we consciously have shifted to conveying an unserious image and an unserious language, it has always been very important for us to do, for I at least have always believed that young people do not engage in X [name of organization] because they love statutes and protocols and love sitting in meetings, but because they love X. It is the first step towards engagement.

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Similar thoughts are presented by another manager, who highlights the importance of emotional vocabulary in creating a culture that appeals to young people. Today young people often want to more clearly identify with the organization they engage in. This, this is my identity, this is part of my brand, if you will. Then I think that such words are really important, trying to create a certain culture, a certain ambiance and a certain pep as you have talked about. It is also about values but I think that emotional words play a role there.

The use of positive emotional expressions is thus perceived as a source of fun and engagement and to some extent as a contrast to being serious and correct. For some of the managers, adapting to a more emotional vocabulary is a challenge. It is perceived as a distinct skill, something that needs to be acquired. This could be interpreted as an altered form of emotional competence. In addition to learning to communicate in this language, it also comes with having to handle so-called trolls who can easily spread negative emotions in an organization’s social media presence. And the other way around, as people advance in a civil society organization, they need to adjust from a frequent usage of positive emotional expressions to a more neutral language that is deemed suitable for communicating with politicians and other organizations. Here, the use of positive emotional expressions seems to have created a competence problem; while lowering the threshold for volunteer engagement, those engaged by the positive emotional words are less prepared than other volunteers for more administrative tasks further up in the organizations. At last you reach a point for your engagement in the organization where a certain competence is needed. If you are part of the association you have to acquire a basic understanding of how government grants work, and that means reading our regulations and appropriation. … And suddenly the emotions become rather irrelevant in that context. It is not sufficient to say that we think that the distribution key for government grants sucks, it is not a sufficiently nuanced description of how we view the problem.

This last quote indicates that although rationalized managerial practices may have been altered inside civil society organizations and in relation to potential donors and members, this is not as much the case in relation to public administration. Managers’ Emotional Challenges and Opportunities with the Prevalence of Positive Emotional Expressions: Stress, Injustice and Wellbeing Among managers, the frequent use of positive emotional expressions seems to cause both emotional challenges, in the form of stress and perceived injustices,

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and but also opportunities for emotional wellbeing managers. We will start with the challenges and then move to the opportunities. The first challenge we identify is an inflation in terms of how management work is valued. This concerns pressure to perform in accordance with the grandiosity signaled by the frequent use of positive emotional expressions. Some feel stressed when they do not receive overwhelming response for their management performance. One manager also believes that it may scare people off. We use these words for rather small achievements if you look at the bigger picture, but the way we highlight it, it sounds as if you have discovered Atlantis, and that’s the thing, they are amazing who do this voluntarily, but for others it may be … dissuasive. That you do not have the energy to find Atlantis, sort of.

Another challenge is a concern about what type of activity may be acknowledged as a valid and appreciated task for managers to perform. In the focus groups, concern is voiced over the gap between visible forms of performance that are lauded on social media in positive emotional words, and the ‘invisible’ day-to-day work that some tasks require and that may be completely inappropriate to display in social media but that nevertheless entail a lot of complicated management work, e.g., handling a sensitive staff issue. This may result in a disproportional appreciation of some colleagues and members, at the expense of others. It may potentially also encourage managers to focus more on tasks that can be accounted for in a way that may render them positive feedback on social media. Even though the urge for popularity is a perennial management problem, it seems like the instant visibility rendered to them on social media may amplify challenges related to inconvenient work. Yet another challenge concerns the competence and structures needed to govern the use of positive emotional expressions. As described earlier, not everyone is familiar or comfortable with positive emotional expressions, both on and off social media, which causes stress among managers. There is also an awareness of the uncontrollable element of social media, how rapidly something can spread compared to when published on paper. This calls for more guidelines, e.g., with regards to how to handle trolls, but also how to manage employees and make them use positive emotional expressions in appropriate ways. Members and other activists who are not informed about the managerial practices of positive emotional expressions, or where such guidelines do not exist, may sometimes engage in social media conversations without being aware of the professional practices of the organization, which may cause stress for all involved. One manager even argues that some organizations may be afraid to use positive emotional expressions in ways that would potentially be appropriate, as a result of the enormous outreach of social media. As an example of this, one respondent recounts the story of a viral spread of a posi-

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tively charged humorous message posted by a junior employee at a very large faith-based organization, that incurred severe reputational costs and additional face-saving work for top management. Under the influence of social media it is also suggested that the increase in positive emotional expressions has provided opportunities by creating more space for speaking about emotions also when meeting in real life in the organization. One manager describes how organizational meetings often begin by letting everyone around the table account for how they feel at the moment, which in turn may provide some explanation for, e.g., an individual’s ability to take on additional tasks. There is also an increased mix of personal and professional emotional interaction online, where colleagues give each other positive emotional feedback on personal social media accounts. This may create both a greater sense of community among coworkers, but also cause discomfort as interactions sometimes are perceived as too private. Some managers speak specifically about keeping their public and private roles apart on social media, while others recount how they merge the two spheres.

DISCUSSION Following the idea of the value of studying extreme cases, combined with the indication of the relevance of emotional expressions for collective action, we here have tried to understand if even rationalized managerial practices are subjected to the proliferation of positive emotional expressions, and what this may mean for these practices. By mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, we have here presented an example of how elusive empirical phenomena may be approached by organizational ethnographers. Our broad and unorthodox analysis points to an inflation in the usage of positive emotional expressions in civil society organizations, indicating an emerging institutionalization process of positive emotions as an important means to organize the field of Swedish civil society. This process entails the replacement of previous forms of engagement based on shared negative experiences or contentious politics by strong positive emotional content. Focusing on the transformational aspect, we see indications of a discursive positive emotional standardization (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000; Lindebaum, 2012), which in essence threatens established rationalized ways of organizing, not only in loosely organized networks coalesced through social media, but also in established civil society organizations predating the advent of social media, often by many decades, in their managerial practices. This points to the increasing importance of emotional language competence in terms of the usage of positive emotional expressions to manage stakeholders, both inside and outside of the organization, and both on social media and in other contexts.

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More specifically, by combining our reading of behavior on social media and its broader meaning, we can see indications of an alteration of what emotional competence entails across the civil society sector, where managers from different types of fields and catering to diverse populations describe an increase in positive emotional expressions in their organizations. We also see that this puts new demands on the proficiency of managers and their coworkers in how to use the altered meaning of positive emotional expressions when managing their organizations and accounting for their activities. Managers need to learn and incorporate positive emotional expressions into their work, but there are also challenges involved in inhabiting this institutional ethos comfortably (Hallett and Ventresca, 2006; Voronov and Weber, 2016). There are always many areas of management that cannot be boosted and shared with others, and managers thus need to distance themselves from fully implementing positive emotional expressions into all of their daily work. Along the same lines, managers need to adjust their emotional expressions according to the audience; rationalized standardized accounts are still of relevance in communication with for example public administration, but less so with other stakeholders. There thus seem to be increased demands on managers to incorporate positive emotional expressions into their practices, and at the same time to compartmentalize their use of this newly acquired emotional competence. This entails a selective demonstration of emotional competence acquiescence, actually putting more complex demands on the emotional competence proficiency of these managers to both incorporate and avoid the increased prevalence of positive emotional expressions in their work. In this way the prevalence of positive emotional expressions becomes an additional layer of structuration (Barley and Tolbert, 1997) in managerial practices across established civil society organizations, indicating an alteration of institutionalized rationalized practices, meaning that positive emotional expressions change the way managers organize and account for their work.

CONCLUSION Modern organizing is fragmented and spans multiple, often simultaneous contexts, implying that ‘Traditional techniques need to be updated if they are to be of use in the study of contemporary fields of practice’ (Czarniawska, 2014, p. 9). We have here presented an ethnographic mixed-methods case study on the proliferation and meaning of positive emotional expressions in organizing, exploring it as induced by social media, but not necessarily only taking place in the digital realm. By doing this, we hope to encourage others to move beyond perceived methodological and organizational boundaries when necessary, in service of the broader aim of a nuanced, comprehensive and complex understanding of the organizing of our social, and partially digital, world.

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In his seminal text on ethnography and participant observation, Spradley (1980) emphasized the importance of any ethnographic reading to probe not only into behavior, but also into meaning. He writes: ‘The essential core of ethnography is this concern with the meaning of actions and events to the people we seek to understand’ (Spradley, 1980, p. 5). We have here tried to read social media and its implications for organizing in a hybrid-ethnographic manner, by using a mixed-methods approach to explore the proliferation and meaning of positive emotional expressions on social media ethnographically. As Yanow (2012, p. 33) points out, the importance of ‘situated meaning front and center: ethnography of whatever stripe is concerned with sense-making, that of situated actors’ when conducting organizational ethnography. We hope that our effort to try to capture an elusive and prevalent phenomenon which extends beyond any specific organizational experience may inspire others to engage a variety of methodological approaches to unpack complex multi-modal digital phenomena.

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10. Autoethnography through the folk tale lens Anna Zueva Once upon a time in the UK lived an organisation scholar who loved folk tales. These were no ordinary tales of comings and goings, credits and debits, profits and losses, normal and abnormal distribution curves (although these can sometimes be extraordinary too!), but tales of wonder and magic, brave heroes who talked to animals and trees, wise maidens who could make rivers flow out of their sleeves, dragons who lived under bridges, and the king of death who hid his own death in an egg. She loved these tales ever since she was a little girl. For reasons now concealed by time, she became an organisation scholar. But her beloved folk tales never faded into the background. Instead, the magic maidens, heroes and dragons were haunting the tales she herself was spinning in her scholarship more and more.

*** The nineteenth-century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin wrote of the fairy tale ‘Tale of sense, if not of truth! Food for thought to honest youth’ (1977/1834). The social sciences have similarly looked to fiction literature and the fairy tale in particular for instruction and inspiration. The relationship between literature and the social sciences, including management/organisation research, is extensive despite not being mainstream. It is also varied. Scholars have treated management writing not just as ‘literature’ in the sense of a ‘body of scientific work’ but as ‘literature’ in the sense of ‘literary text’ and suggested that it should be subject to various form of literary criticism (Easton and Araujo, 1997). Others represented organisational realities through literary modes of writing (e.g. Akin, 2000; Jermier, 1985; Mintzberg and Westley, 2000 cited in De Cock and Land, 2006). There also have been numerous writings using ‘great literature’ (De Cock and Land, 2006, p. 521) as a source of lessons and reflective lenses for the study of organisational life. Related to this latter endeavour is the work of writers who draw on a different form of literary heritage – myths and folk tales and the characters and plotlines that appear in them (e.g. Bowles, 1997; Czarniawska-Joerges and Wolff, 1991; Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2010, 2015; Mrotek, 2001; Moxnes, 2013). For example, scholars used archetypal images of kings (Kociatkiewicz 151

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and Kostera, 2012) and heroes (Ford et al., 2008) to reflect on the nature of organisational leadership. Such literary elements passed down to us through millennia of human existence are attractive points from which to start a reflective journey. Like anything that has been honed and polished by generations of poets, they are complex and multi-faceted, shimmering with delicious ambiguities that lead us down paths winding and diverging in unexpected directions, opening previously hidden vistas. No mythical hero is just good and no mythical villain is just evil. The mythical king is noble but proud, the wise granny in a fairy tale is also a witch. *** As time went by, the organisation scholar who loved folk tales found herself wandering deeper and deeper into the UK university system. She taught in different universities and stood before increasingly diverse groups of students. The students came from all walks of life and had varied educational, national and cultural backgrounds. While she always wanted to talk to them, they did not always want to talk to her. Many also did not appear to want to read the texts she admired and was keen to share. The silences in the classroom were oppressive. The organisation scholar often found herself thinking ‘I was not like this when I was a student!’ This phrase also made a regular appearance in the staff common room. But then she sensed that nostalgia was not the answer. She was now a teacher and not a student. How would memories of herself as a student all those years ago help her in her teaching? What did it mean to be a teacher? Who was she as a teacher?

*** One way of attempting to understand the self and one’s own experiences within society is an autoethnographic study or a critical reflexive study of the researcher’s own experiences that also provides an insight into wider socio-cultural systems (Ellis, 2004; Campbell, 2017). In social sciences, autoethnography is part of the fairly recent and ongoing reflexive turn where scholars strive to examine their own subjectivities and their formative impact on their work (e.g. Harding et al., 2010). Having been accused multiple times of a lack of objectivity-enabling detachment of observation, the separation of the researcher and the researched (Ellis, 2009), autoethnography has of late secured a position of relative respectability in organisation studies. The objective representation of reality is not the pursuit of autoethnographers (Holt, 2003). Their focus is on the study of the subjective and deeply personal experiences and constructions of reality that are likely to be inaccessible to the detached external observer (Polkinghorne, 1997). Attachment is an asset. The resulting nearly limitless access to the object of study has potential of generating rich data and detailed and nuanced accounts of often intimate and emotional experience (Freeman, 2004; Sturdy 2003).

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Autoethnographic studies also have the potential to offer much more than a detailed insider perspective. They often give voice to those who otherwise would have remained unheard. They are a way to ‘speak up’ (Liu and Pechenkina, 2016, p. 190; Haynes, 2011; Spry, 2001) for the minority and/ or marginalised groups who otherwise would not do so for the lack of faith that those who propose to speak on their behalf (i.e. other researchers) will do so with sufficient accuracy and respect. The insider perspectives offered by those who are routinely othered within their societies serve as a critical challenge to mainstream views (Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Hernandez et al., 2015). Similarly, autoethnography can help us turn a critical gaze towards something that is so familiar that it usually evades our attention (Ford and Harding, 2008). In this sense, autoethnography can be a powerful tool in a political endeavour, challenging our present conceptions of the normal and the rational. Autoethnography, being a personal subjective account, also lends itself to a non-traditional form of writing. Liu and Pechenkina (2016, p. 191) write of the autoethnographic form of accounting for oneself as ‘full of doubts and emotional pain and discomfort’. Arguably, in addition to placing us in a position of vulnerability through exposure, virtually unlimited access to a particular subject generates a data set replete with complexities, ambiguities and contradictions that invite us to write differently from the usual paced, dispassionate and well-structured form. It pushes us towards a certain freedom of emotional expression, admittance of vulnerability and appreciation of ambiguity that is normally not found in academic writing (Gergen and Gergen, 2002). It can be said that some professions also seem to slide into autoethnographic research more naturally than others. Social workers, accustomed to accounting for their own actions in front of courts, clients and other professionals, may find autoethnographic methods familiar (White, 2001). For the educators actively engaged in education research, autoethnography is a method practically forced upon the scholars by the closeness between their research and classroom activities (Barkhuizen and Wette, 2008; Dyson, 2007). Autoethnographic explorations of teaching in higher education, while still relatively rare, are becoming more commonplace (e.g. Barnett, 2011; Ford et al., 2010; Kempster and Iszatt-White, 2013). For instance, while current literature on higher education teaching contains more than a few contributions on teaching and the experiences of South-East Asian and particularly Chinese students in universities in Anglo-Saxon countries, most of this literature is focused on examining the otherness of this group of students in relation to their educational institutions (Crawford and Wang, 2015; Iannelli and Huang, 2014). Few studies focus their attention on to the ones who look upon the foreign student ‘other’ (e.g. Dunn and Wallace, 2004). ***

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While wanting to reflect on her teaching experiences and practice in a critical way through autoethnography, the organisational scholar who loved folk tales was hesitant. She was not sure where her reflexivity would be grounded. Years of reading poststructural literature taught her to regard her inner sensemaking with deep suspicion. She knew that she was unlikely to be a sovereign subject, able to pronounce objectively critical judgement on herself and others. She knew that autoethnography could not lead her to one and only true representation of her internal voice, an authentic account of herself. Who is she who is reflecting on herself, looking from inside onto the inside? Who is she making sense of her experiences, plucking some out of the darkness and shoving some into even darker corners, arranging them into neat rows the recollections that were a messy torrent of a lived life just before?

*** Ellis et al. (2011, p. 273) speak of autoethnography as an approach ‘that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)’. We study ourselves as the embodiments of culture. We treat the personal as cultural (Dyson, 2007). We reveal aspects of the social by considering how it is expressed through our actions, thoughts and emotions (Doloriert and Sambrook, 2009; Ellis et al., 2011; Ellis and Bochner, 2000). ‘The autoethnographic text emerges from the researcher’s bodily stand-point as she is continually recognizing and interpreting the residue traces of culture inscribed upon her hide from interacting with others in contexts’ (Spry, 2001, p. 711). At times, autoethnographers attempt to read the broader cultures they live in in the text of their experiences by theorising directly from their experience. Even these attempts (e.g. Ford and Harding, 2008) are, however, shaped by the researcher’s theoretical allegiances. And for most, theory, in a more or less defined form, precedes and shapes the analysis of own experiences, mediating between the researcher and the researched selves. This can be seen as part of being ‘self-reflexive but not self-indulgent’ in the exploration of the self (Liu and Pechenkina, 2016, p. 190). Avoiding self-indulgence means denying absolute totalising authority to our own voice, even when speaking of ourselves. It also means striving for awareness of the voices that may speak through us, declaring our assumptions. In this way, autoethnography is a means of personal emancipation, of escaping the habitual scripts that shape our identities, of looking upon oneself as the other (Spry, 2001). Theory facilitates our ability to look from the outside in by its nature of being a voice that is not just ours. Assuming a theoretical position provides us with a lens to see through while acknowledging that it is only one possible lens, producing one possible image out of a multitude. It is an acknowledgement that, as writers of texts, we do not write anew but instead re-work and re-combine the texts previously written (Barthes, 1977). Being explicit about

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theory is a way to honest disclosure of the prior texts that constitute our own. It is a way to move autoethnography beyond being a mere confessional (Sambrook, 2015; White, 2001). By expressly grounding the analysis of our experiences in specific theoretical frameworks we acknowledge how the pre-existing texts constitute our accounts of ourselves. Ultimately, this means that the stories we tell do not reveal but rather produce ourselves. Theory informs and structures our narratives (Haynes, 2011). We fashion ourselves through our analysis and writing. *** The organisation scholar who loved folk tales felt that yes, she could certainly draw on multiple philosophical traditions and works of diverse authors to make sure the stories she wrote were not mere self-referential anecdotes. But she also wanted to make sure that her accounts of herself could speak to many others. She wanted to tell stories to others, to connect with others, to start conversations. She wanted her experiences to be shared through her reflection.

*** While literally bringing our subjectivities to life, theory also lets us move beyond focusing purely on our individual experience and connects us to others. After all, we draw our theoretical assumptions from within our communities of practice (Cunliffe 2010; Haynes, 2011). Theory is the language that lets us speak to others within our communities, making collective sense of our culture as embodied in us. Autoethnography is not just about the self. Ultimately, we write about ourselves to reflect on the values and practices we share with others. Perhaps this drive to connect to others explains why many autoethnographies are collective projects. Scholars work as co-authors, reflecting on each other’s accounts (e.g. Hernandez et al., 2015; Liu and Pechenkina, 2016). Arguably, myths and folk tales and the archetypal characters and plotlines that appear in them are the ‘theory’ that holds meaning for the widest possible community. Scholars of mythology have long noted that the same characters and the same plotlines appear in the tales of many if not all peoples throughout the world (Campbell, 1991; Propp, 2012). The characters, among many others, are the Hero, the Maiden, the Crone, the Wise Man, the King, the Trickster. The plotlines are the heroic quest, the violation of a prohibition, the rescue of a mate. Karl Jung (e.g. 1972) and the mythologists whose work he informed (e.g. Campbell, 1991, 1992, 1993) explained the worldwide repetition of essentially the same stories by suggesting that humanity as a whole shares an unconscious – the collective unconscious – that is populated and informed by the same archetypal images. Archetypal images reflect and represent universal human experiences such as birth, maturity, finding a mate, and death. They are

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the form that basic, often biological, aspects of the human journey through life take when they are processed by a human mind. Correspondingly, the myths and folk tales built around the archetypal images are not mere entertainment. They are instructionals that aim to socialise us into various aspects of life. However, they do not accomplish this task by providing a list of prescriptions. Rather, like a deck of Tarot cards, they offer a collection of narratives, complete with plots and characters, that we can use to write the narratives of our own lives and thus make sense of our own existence. As mentioned at the start of this chapter, this sense-giving power of myth has not remained unnoticed by organisation scholars. A number of us have meditated on what is revealed about organisations and our lives within them when we look at them through the kaleidoscopic lens of myth (e.g. Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2012, 2015; Mrotek, 2001; Moxnes, 2013; Ford et al., 2008; Zueva-Owens, 2020). *** The organisation scholar who loved folk tales easily related to others in her academic community who used myth and archetypal images in their work. She appreciated myth not only from an aesthetic perspective, but also felt its instructional power, its ability to aid reflexivity. Over the years, observing the twisted political landscape of her native country she privately wondered ‘Were these people not raised on the same folk tales?’ And as most post-soviets of her time, she often made sense of the world through the words of her more prominent compatriots. The poet Vladimir Vysotzkij’s words about the importance of reading ‘the necessary books’ were imprinted on her memory. But the choice of an archetypal sensemaking narrative was a daunting one. With all the millennia of folk wisdom on offer, where to turn?

*** The same broad archetypal images lie at the heart of the tales of different peoples around the world. Nonetheless, the ways in which these images are expressed are localised, with the details of the plots and characterisations fleshed out within particular cultural contexts (Campbell, 1991). This can make it challenging for a researcher to rely on one broad archetypal image and instead forces her to make a choice of a narrative. One obvious criterion that can be used in the choice of an archetypal narrative is the familiarity of the narrative to the researcher. If the researcher draws on the narratives from her own culture, the details, the variations, the nuanced meanings will be more accessible to her. She will also be able to avoid the pitfalls of drawing on the heritage of cultures other than her own – misunderstandings, misuse, cultural appropriation. Focusing on the tales from her own culture also allows the researcher not just use these tales as sensemaking

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devices but also perhaps connect with how these tales and the archetypal images they contain are embedded in her own psyche, shaping her subjectivity. Another decision to be made is which type of archetypal narrative to employ – myth or folk tale. Vladimir Propp (2012), a prominent scholar of the Russian folk tale, sees them as quite different. Myths have sacred meanings. Some myths, being tales of gods, may even possess veracity for the people who tell them. Folk tales, on the other hand, are told mainly for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure. Propp (2012, p. 16) defines them as ‘oral stories, known among the people with the purpose of entertainment, containing events that are unusual in the everyday sense (fantastic, miraculous, or everyday), and distinguished by a particular compositional and stylistic structure’. Among the Russian folk tales, Propp (2012) particularly singles out the so-called wonder tales or tales of magic and enchantment that are also characterised by the regularity of plots and characters. A typical Russian wonder tale has some form of a magical heroic quest at its heart, and is also framed by particular forms of openings and closings. The wonder tale is also close in form if not in the sacrality of its substance to myth. It contains a similar array of archetypal characters and derives many of its plots from myth. For instance, Rybakov (1987) discusses clear similarities between the Greek Hades and Persephone myth and the Russian folk tale of Marya Morevna, a newly married warrior queen kidnapped by Koschej the Deathless, a rather enigmatic figure who can be read as the king of death. *** The organisation scholar who loved folk tales and wonder tales in particular was glad at this endorsement of her beloved subject by the prominent minds of her nation. The choice between myth and folk tales as a sensemaking device did not exist for her. If she wanted to choose the familiar, she had to choose the folk tale, for centuries of mostly forced Christianisation have all but erased the old myths from the Russian minds. The wonder tale may not carry sacred meaning, but its building blocks were still the elements of the collective human unconscious. One question, however, remained. Which, of all the archetypal characters in the wonder tale, would serve best as a lens through which to reflect upon and write the story of her own experiences as an educator? The Hero may be a tempting choice. Are we, as educators, not heroic? Do we not bring light? But the Hero was young. He/she was constantly on the move, crossing boundaries, following untrodden path to strange lands, seeking out adventure, fighting dragons. Even though she felt she could qualify as a dragon fighter in her educator role, her usual position in either the swivel chair or by the lectern did not feel quite so mobile. Neither did she feel quite so young.

***

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Baba Yaga is one of the key characters in the Russian wonder tale (see Johns, 2004 for a thorough English-language overview). She is an old witch, often depicted with a crooked back and a hooked nose, who lives in a small wooden hut that happens to stand on a pair of chicken legs. *** The organisation researcher regards the bottom part of her swivel chair and finds it not dissimilar to a chicken leg. ‘Am I the Baba Yaga?’ she thinks.

*** Baba Yaga is a character who lives in a liminal zone. Her hut-on-chicken-legs often stands on the edge of the forest or on the boundary between two kingdoms – the familiar one (the ‘thrice-ninth kingdom, the thrice-tenth dominion’) from where the Hero starts the journey and the unknown, hostile one that he is to enter. The Hero must pass through her hut before crossing the boundary into the unknown kingdom and beginning his quest in earnest. We can often see the Wise Woman archetype in Baba Yaga. The Hero must pass through her hut for a reason. She bestows important information about the unknown kingdom that will be helpful on the Hero’s quest (‘Ivan the Cow’s Son’ tale, Kruglov, 1983), she provides the Hero with magic steeds that will help him rescue his wife (‘Marya Morevna’ tale, Kruglov, 1983) or gifts the Heroine a skull with glowing eyes that will help the her dispatch her evil stepmother and cruel stepsisters (‘Vasilisa the Beautiful’ tale, Kruglov, 1983). *** ‘Is my swivel chair in fact on the border between two kingdoms?’ thinks the organisation scholar. ‘Am I the passing-through point for my students?’ May the students be the heroes on a journey where the organisation scholar herself and the degrees that she may bestow on them are not the final destination? In this case, what is their ultimate quest? What is in the land where they are travelling? How will any gifts of knowledge and skill she gives them aid them on their quest, help them find their way through the unknown land? The organisation scholar saw how easy it was for her to get caught up in her own research interests, sharing them with her the students, and lose sight of the fact that she may be a mere stopover on her students’ journey.

*** Baba Yaga does not help just anyone, however. In order to pass through her hut and receive information/magical objects, the Hero/Heroine must know and say the right words. Upon coming up to the hut, he/she invariably utters ‘Hut, hut, turn so your front faces us and your back is to the forest, we have to come in and eat bread and salt’ (e.g. ‘Ivan the Cow’s Son’ tale). Once inside the hut, the Hero/Heroine will find Baba Yaga lying on top of the stove, with her leg stretching from one corner of the hut to the other and with her nose

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stuck in the ceiling: ‘Fu-fu-fu! Before I had neither smelt nor saw the Russian spirit, but now it’s climbing onto my spoon itself, rolling into my mouth itself!’ (‘The Feather of Finist the Splendid Falcon’ tale, Afanasyev, 2014). To avoid being eaten, the Hero often evokes the sacred ritual of hospitality: ‘Eh, old witch! You have not yet given us food or drink, and already asking for news!’ (‘The Sea King and Vasilisa the Most Ingenious’ tale, Afanasyev, 2014). The Heroines (usually maidens sent on impossible errands by their wicked stepmothers) placate Baba Yaga not with words but by performing extra-challenging chores set for them by the hostile Baba Yaga. *** The organisation scholar recalls multiple times when she would receive emails, often from international students that would start ‘Dear Mrs Organisation Scholar’s Last Name’. A few times she even received emails that started ‘Dear Mrs Last Part of Organisation Scholar’s Formerly Double-Barrelled Last Name that was her Husband’s Name’. She remembers rolling her eyes and, occasionally, writing responses ‘Dear Student, please do not call me “Mrs”. You are welcome to address me by my first name or, if you wish to be formal, by “Dr”.’ Conforming to the set ritual appears to be just as important in the organisation scholar’s office as it is in Baba Yaga’s hut. She certainly had unkind thoughts about the hapless students who did not use the correct form of address or violated some other form of Anglo-Saxon university ritual. She has not, however, thought of these violations as pertaining to rituals that may not be familiar to the students. Instead, she has vaguely regarded them as the students’ personal failings. They just could not be bothered to conduct themselves in the right way. She did not regard them as ‘Other’ in the Levinasian sense, did not consider that they may be as different from herself as a live human smells differently to Baba Yaga.

*** Being an archetypal character, Baba Yaga is not one-dimensional. In the tales mentioned above, she appears in the guise of a Wise Woman, giving information and valuable objects to the Hero. In other tales, however, she is truly a Witch. One of her specialisms is baking small children in ovens and eating them. In the tales, the clever child manages to trick Baba Yaga and bake her instead. However, there is always an assumption that she has successfully eaten quite a few children before finally facing justice (e.g. ‘Swan-Geese’ and ‘Ivashko and the Witch’ tales, Kruglov, 1983). Even in the tales where she ultimately helps the Hero/Heroine, she does not always give this help willingly and often behaves in a menacing manner. Sometimes the Hero/Heroine have to steal the objects Baba Yaga promises to them as she is not willing to give them up. Baba Yaga usually gives chase that puts the Hero/Heroine in mortal danger.

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These tales remind us of the liminality of Baba Yaga’s character. She lives in the borderlands between the known and unknown kingdoms, but she also lives on the boundary between life and death. She is often described as closely acquainted with Koschej the Deathless (the King of Death figure) and, as Rybakov (1987) notes, her hut-on-chicken-legs recalls in appearance the small wooden burial chambers lifted up on stilts that were used by some pagan Slavs. For the Hero/Heroine, Baba Yaga is as much a source of danger as she is of assistance. *** Baba Yaga brings to the fore the liminality of the organisation scholar’s own role as an educator. She is the giver of knowledge, the helper, the guide, but she is also the judge. This is the reason she can never be friends with her students, even those she has worked with closely for years, while they remain her students. The students who make her most uncomfortable are the ones hanging on her every word from the front row of the lecture theatre, their hands always raised. They are so committed, but what if they deliver mediocre coursework and she has to issue disappointing marks? The distance necessary for judgement must be maintained; the discomfort is justified. Baba Yaga and the Hero/Heroine are never friends. Just as Baba Yaga eats children, the organisation scholar judges most harshly those who are most immature, most ill-prepared and most careless as the result. The children who do not heed their parents’ warning end up in Baba Yaga’s oven. However, do all the organisation scholar’s students get a warning? The right warning?

*** The moral of the story is that the folk tale, with its familiarity and its archetypal nature has much to offer as a frame of reference for autoethnography. Its familiarity to the researcher makes it an accessible analytical framework. The researcher chooses the folk tales that are most familiar to her, that are of her culture. This reminds us that our choice of theory is generally not incidental. Our history, our bodies, our physical environment play a role. The folk tale’s archetypal nature increases the possibility that others will see themselves reflected in the researcher’s autoethnographic narrative, helping make sure that the researcher’s narrative does not revolve solely around herself. The characters in the folk tale are never one-dimensional, helping the researcher explore diverse aspects of her experiences, to see beneath the surface. Just as autoethnography, the folk tale does not claim to be the truth, it’s clearly a story and not a theory (Bochner, 1994; Spry, 2001). The attention given in folk tales to liminality of being aids in explaining unclear, conflicting feelings, it provides food for thought and reflection, ensuring that the hidden, uncomfortable aspects of our personality and experience are not brushed under our swivel chair mats.

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The multiplicity of archetypal characters in the folk tale gives the researcher many different possible standpoints for the examination of her experience and the structuring of her narrative. Is she the Heroine as well as Baba Yaga? Is she the Evil Stepmother? How about the Mother of the Hero? The King? *** It would not have escaped the attention of the reader that the autoethnographic vignettes presented here were told in the third person. The writer was led to adopt this mode of writing by the folk tale. The folk tale is never told in the first person. It is not a story of one individual, a narrative of one life. It is intended to reflect the broad human experience. Perhaps the point also is that the reader (or rather listener) of the folk tale does not come to identify with one voice only, but tries on many roles played out by the archetypal characters. In an autoethnographic account, the use of the third voice may help the readers to link their own experiences to the author’s without creating a pretence of objectivity or universal generalisability of the account. The telling in the third person also draws attention to the ambiguity of the autoethnographer’s role – she is both the researcher and the researched, writing her tale in the third person even though the tale is clearly told by her about herself. It also highlights the fact that in taking advantage of the intimate closeness between ourselves as researchers and ourselves as the subject matter, we still search for the distance, for a degree of ‘unfamiliarity’ (Ford and Harding, 2008, p. 234) that would allow us to unearth aspects of ourselves that are unfamiliar to us. Finally, the third person telling points to the ambiguity about the personality of the researcher. The unreliable narrator is a frequent literary device. The question of who is the researcher-narrator of the autoethnography never goes away. The third-person telling is a reminder that autoethnography is not a revelation but a process of construction rather than exploration of the self (Ford and Harding, 2008), the striving to know oneself while recognising the impossibility of knowing fully.

FURTHER ‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT TO HONEST YOUTH’ The above example of using a fairy tale as a methodological device in an autoethnography concerned the personal experience of the researcher. But what of situations where a researcher uses autoethnography as a method to explore an experience that is new to her, that prior to the start of the research belonged to someone else? Will a familiar narrative and a set of characters be a guide through another’s universe? Foremost, the wonder tale stands as a metaphor for the exploration of another’s life by the means of first-hand experience. The researcher can measure out her steps and read her experience through the wonder tale narrative lens: Researcher, what is your quest? What was the violation of the prohibition that started the journey? When and how was the boundary into the strange kingdom

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crossed? Which magical helpers did you meet on the way? Ultimately, how were you transformed by the experience? What new understanding did you gain? Are you still Ivan the Fool or are you Ivan the Prince now? As in exploration of own life experiences, the journey into another’s life implies an ongoing tension between the roles of the researcher and the researched. In the latter case, however, keeping the play off between roles in some form of balance may present a bigger challenge. The temptation to distance oneself, to retreat to the relative comfort of the original outsider position may be overwhelming. The external researcher position is comforting not only because we start off from it, but also because the academic world still privileges dispassionate objectivity. The fairy pushes us to engage with both roles through its embrace of ambiguity. Not only its many archetypal characters provide us with many possible reflective angles, but whoever we imagine ourselves to be, whichever archetypal character we don to structure the reflection upon our experience, this character is never one-dimensional and never complete. A Witch is never just a Witch. She is also and always a Wise Woman. Identities are ever-shifting and our job is to follow these shifts, to transform through our experience our understanding of both the researcher and the researched, to recognise the absence of finality. ‘The researcher must learn to think and write in ways that accomplish the dismantling of stereotyped images of identity and reality’ (Ronai, 1998, p. 419). The fairy tale is also a reminder that the understanding we generate through our experience is never final. In Russian wonder tales, the Hero’s journey often ends with the words of the nameless narrator ‘I was there, I drank mead and beer, they flowed down my moustache, but none got into my mouth’. These words seem to stand proof to the veracity of the tale. But how can one fail to imbibe at a feast? Is any of this true? The fairy tale pushes us to consider alternative realities, to face how we are not just transformed but also displaced and fragmented through our experience (Gannon, 2006). It asks for the humility of acceptance that the tales we spin are never complete.

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Freeman, Mark (2004) ‘Data are everywhere: Narrative criticism in the literature of experience’, in Colette Daiute and Cynthia Lightfoot (eds.), Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 63–81. Gannon, Susanne (2006) ‘The (im)possibilities of writing the self-writing: French poststructural theory and autoethnography’, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 6(4): 474–95. Gergen, Mary and Kenneth Gergen (2002) ‘Ethnographic representation as relationship’, in Art Bochner and Carolyn Ellis (eds.) Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 11–33. Harding, Nancy, Jackie Ford and Brendan Gough (2010) ‘Accounting for ourselves: Are academics exploited workers?’ Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21(2): 159–68. Haynes, Kathryn (2011) ‘Tensions in (re) presenting the self in reflexive autoethnographical research’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 6(2): 134–49. Hernandez, Kathy-Ann C., Faith Wambura Ngunjiri and Heewon Chang (2015) ‘Exploiting the margins in higher education: A collaborative autoethnography of three foreign-born female faculty of color’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(5): 533–51. Holt, Nicholas L. (2003) ‘Representation, legitimation, and autoethnography: An auto-ethnographic writing story’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2(1): 1–22. Iannelli, Cristina and Jun Huang (2014) ‘Trends in participation and attainment of Chinese students in UK higher education’, Studies in Higher Education, 39(5): 805–22. Jermier, John M. (1985) ‘“When the sleeper wakes”: A short story extending themes in radical organization theory’, Journal of Management, 11(2): 67–80. Johns, Andreas (2004) Baba Yaga: The ambiguous mother and witch of the Russian folktale. New York: Peter Lang. Jung, Carl Gustav (1972) Four archetypes: Mother, rebirth, spirit, trickster. London: Routledge. Kempster, Steve and Marian Iszatt-White (2013) ‘Towards co-constructed coaching: Exploring the integration of coaching and co-constructed autoethnography in leadership development’, Management Learning, 44(4): 319–36. Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy and Monika Kostera (2010) ‘Experiencing the shadow: Organizational exclusion and denial within experience economy’, Organization, 17(2): 257–82. Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy and Monika Kostera (2012) ‘The good manager: An archetypal quest for morally sustainable leadership’, Organization Studies, 33(7): 861–78. Kociatkiewicz, Jerzy and Monika Kostera (2015) ‘Into the labyrinth: Tales of organizational nomadism’, Organization Studies, 36(1): 55–71. Kruglov, Jurij (ed.) (1983) Russian folk tales. Moscow: Prosveschenie / Круглов, Юрий (сост.) Русские Народные Сказки. Москва: Просвещение. Liu, Helena and Ekaterina Pechenkina (2016) ‘Staying quiet or rocking the boat? An autoethnography of organisational visual white supremacy’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 35(3): 186–204. Mintzberg, Henry and Frances Westley (2000) ‘Sustaining the institutional environment’, Organization Studies, 21: 71–94.

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Moxnes, Paul (2013) ‘The Hero’s dream and other primordial patterns of imagery: Archetypal influences on organisational fantasies and ideations’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(4): 638–53. Mrotek, Diana (2001) ‘The drama of dysfunction: Value conflict in US managed care’, Human Relations, 54(2): 147–72. Polkinghorne, Donald E. (1997) ‘Reporting qualitative research as practice’, in William G. Tierney and Yvonna Lincoln (eds.), Representation and the text. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 3–22. Propp, Vladimir (2012) The Russian folktale (trans. and ed. Sibelan Forrester). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Pushkin, Alexander (1977/1834) ‘The tale of a golden cockerel’ (trans. Walter Arndt), Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 11(1): 1–6. Ronai, Carol Rambo (1998) ‘Sketching with Derrida: An ethnography of a researcher/ erotic dancer’, Qualitative Inquiry, 4(3): 405–20. Rybakov, Boris (1987) Paganism of ancient Rus (Язычество Древней Руси). Moscow: Nauka. Sambrook, Sally (2015). ‘In (re) search of the self: Autoethnography in HRD research’, in Mark N. K. Saunders and Paul Tosey (eds.), Handbook of research methods on human resource development. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 92–107. Spry, Tami (2001) ‘Performing autoethnography: An embodied methodological praxis’, Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6): 706–32. Sturdy, Andrew (2003) ‘Knowing the unknowable? A discussion of methodological and theoretical issues in emotion research and organizational studies’, Organization, 10(1): 81–105. White, Sue (2001) ‘Auto-ethnography as reflexive inquiry: The research act as self-surveillance’, in Ian Shaw and Nick Gould (eds.), Qualitative research in social work. London: Sage, 100–15. Zueva-Owens, Anna (2020) ‘Fools, jesters and the possibility of responsible leadership’, Organization, 27(4): 613–33.

11. Ethnography meets storytelling: a marriage made in heaven Hamid Foroughi While observation is seen as the flagship for ethnographic studies (see Chapter 3 in this volume), myth and stories that one picks up in the field are what drive researchers’ curiosity and imagination. This is of course not too surprising given the paramount role of storytelling and oral traditions in both traditional and contemporary societies. Humans are often described as ‘homo narrans’ (Fisher, 1985, p. 6) – ‘storytelling human’ or indeed ‘homo fabulans – the tellers and interpreters of narrative’ (Currie, 1998, p. 2). Storytelling also plays a key role in organizing processes, such as sensemaking, mobilization and leadership (Brown, Gabriel and Gherardi, 2009; Foroughi, Gabriel and Fotaki, 2019). We talk about ‘storytelling organization’ to emphasize that organizations are entities in which stories are a key part of members’ sensemaking (Boje, 2008, 1). Storytelling research as a research agenda aims to capture and analyse everyday work stories of organizational members, as a window to understanding organizational members’ outlooks, feelings and lived experiences (Gabriel, 1991, p. 871). Storytelling could be also an arena for the symbolic reconstruction of organizational realities (Foroughi, 2020). In this chapter, I will start by discussing the connection between storytelling and ethnographic research methods. I will look at how the intersection of ethnography and storytelling research and techniques can be utilized in the research process, from design to the write-up of the research output. I will then outline a brief overview of organizational storytelling as a research agenda. I finally propose two complementary research approaches in combining ethnography and storytelling: ethno-narrative and ethno-story.

ETHNOGRAPHY AND STORYTELLING Ethnography and storytelling are two distinct – but closely related – research traditions. While observation is seen as the flagship for ethnographic studies, stories have long been a source of inspiration for much classic ethnographic research. Malinowski’s (1926) Myth in Primitive Psychology and Lévi 166

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Strauss’s (2013) Myth and Meaning are two classic examples. Among more recent ethnographic research, Arlie Hochschild’s work Strangers in Their Own Land shows how long-term immersion in the field allows researchers to discover and reflect on ‘deep stories’ within a community – ‘narrative[s] as felt’, or the story that they believe to be true about themselves and their society (Hochschild, 2018). Many organizational ethnographers also have come to see storytelling research as a complementary research tool. Merlijn van Hulst (2012), for instance, discusses how ‘storytelling’ has helped him in ‘seeing’ what was going on in the field more clearly. I stumbled upon a concept that was even more helpful in ‘seeing’ what was going on there: storytelling […] that concept helped me understand more clearly how the experiences I encountered during various forms of observation, conversation and reading connected people in the field to each other, as well as myself as a researcher to the field. (Yanow et al., 2012, p. 339)

One reason for such appreciation of storytelling tools and concepts in ethnographic work is that both research traditions emphasize understanding the lived experience of (organizational) participants and the meaning people afford to stories as a way to understand the complexity of human lives, cultures and behaviours. Storytelling researchers maintain that stories and the process of storytelling are the primary ways in which meaning, both individual and collective, is expressed (Fisher, 1985; Morgan et al., 1983). Therefore, storytelling offers us a different way of knowing, of investigating the lived experiences of individuals, and of exploring subjectivity – which furthers our understanding of the complex and unpredictable life of organizations (Czarniawska, 1997, p. 29). The storytelling approach, similar to the poststructuralist turn in ethnographic research, draws on interpretivism as its core research philosophy that presupposes that meanings are constructed by social actors. The researcher’s task is then to ‘elucidate the processes of meaning constructions and clarify what and how meanings are embodied in the language and actions of social actors’ (Schwandt, 1994, p. 222). The link between storytelling and ethnography can be further discussed in two respects: (i) storytelling as a way to present the ethnography and (ii) storytelling as a way to conduct ethnographic research. The former has been discussed extensively in earlier work (e.g. Cunliffe, 2010; Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993; van Maanen, 2011). The core idea behind this work is that rhetoric is inevitably an integral part of ethnographic research work and research writing (Watson, 2011). They further discuss how storytelling techniques can be used to tell a convincing story using the language of community members and by weaving observations and insights about culture and practices into the text (Humphreys and Watson, 2009). Fictional forms are used by interpretive

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researchers seeking innovative ways of representing empirical materials and ethnographic experiences (Rhodes and Brown, 2005). De Cock (2000, p. 597), for instance, advocates using literature as a source of insight that might ‘inspire and instil a sense of humility in organizational scholars’ and points to ways of writing that value imagination and enthusiasm over an excessively structured analysis and dry knowledge. Others advocate using dialogue form in specific stories to produce ‘a composite, interpretive narrative that relates an impressionistic account of the concept under investigation’ (Brown and Kreps, 1993, p. 54). The latter – the idea that storytelling can be used as an inquiry approach in ethnographic research – is more complex and requires further discussion. This is what I aim to do in the remainder of this chapter. In what follows, I first explain the storytelling as a research approach. I then discuss two alternative ways to design the ethnographic approach based on storytelling: ‘ethno-narrative’ and ‘ethno-story’. I finish the chapter by providing several recommendations for storytelling research.

STORYTELLING AS A RESEARCH AGENDA Organizational storytelling started as an alternative research agenda in the 1990s but it has now established a conventional foothold beside the dominant, scientific narrative of organization studies (Beigi et al., 2019). Storytelling has been applied to the study of a broad range of organizationally relevant topics, including – but not limited to – change management (e.g. Brown et al., 2009; Rhodes, 1996), leadership (Boje and Rhodes, 2006; Foroughi et al., 2019), memory and identity (Brown and Humphreys, 2002; Foroughi and Al-Amoudi, 2020), marketing and branding (e.g. Randazzo, 2006) and entrepreneurship (e.g. Garud et al., 2014). Czarniawska (1997, 1998), a prominent advocate of narrative research, discusses how over three decades, storytelling research has transformed from initially a descriptive method of ‘narrating organization’ to a method of ‘collecting stories’ as a research tool and finally as a theoretical perspective to understand ‘organizing as narration’ (Czarniawska, 1997, 1998). Narrating organizations consists of telling about organizations using a narrative structure (e.g. a sequence of events or plot, in literary terminology). This approach most often produces case studies, and fictional stories and novels relating to organizational life. The second approach, collecting stories, was initially part of documenting cultural artefacts (e.g. Martin, 1992; Martin et al., 1983; Smircich, 1983; Wilkins, 1983), but later was developed as a separate method of understanding and analysing organizational life (e.g. Boje, 1991; Gabriel, 1991, 2000). Finally, ‘organizing as narration’ represents the most recent effort to understand various organizational constructs, e.g. identity (e.g. Brown,

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2006), change (Brown et al., 2009) and leadership (e.g. Boje and Rhodes, 2006; Foroughi et al., 2019), from a narrative and storytelling perspective. Storytelling research is not a monolithic research agenda and similar to other research conventions, has its divisions. For instance, different approaches can be used to collect stories which yield different types of research and require a different analysis. These can be categorized in three groups: ‘archival stories’, ‘elicited stories’ and ‘stories in situ’. Archival stories are pre-existing stories – available in written, audio or video format – and can be found in corporate archives, such as internal bulletins, annual reports, or public domains, such as corporate websites and social media platforms. Research using archival stories often aims to analyse them to understand the existing patterns in these stories (e.g. temporal patterns, morphological structures) and to reconstruct their underlying meaning structures. A recent example of this type of research is Boje et al. (2016). The authors use archival stories to discuss how micro storytelling in Burger King outlets has informed the corporate strategies. Elicited stories are usually collected through interview studies (although this could be done by open-ended questionnaire such as the Critical Incidence Technique too). The aim is to encourage research participants to recount their own stories – or those of others – which are part of the social life of the research site. The researcher is expected to provide a clear account of what the research is seeking to achieve by eliciting specific stories. (For comprehensive guidance on how to elicit stories see Gabriel, 2000, pp. 135–52.) Classic examples of using elicited stories are demonstrated in pioneering work by Gabriel (1991, 1995). ‘Stories in situ’ refers to capturing storytelling as it occurs in the field. This could be done by audio or video recording of certain meetings and group discussions that are deemed to be ripe with storytelling or as part of broader ethnographic research. This is inspired by the ethnographic research tradition which emphasizes the study of people in their naturally occurring settings as a means of grasping the complexity, intricacy, and mundanity (commonplace activities) of organizational life (see Ybema et al., 2009). Onsite ethnographies allow researchers to benefit from soaking in the environment where stories are situated. Also by gaining a richer experience of the organization the researcher is better able to interpret different communication channels, such as body language, elicitation of terse linguistic constructions (loaded with sub-text), as well as an understanding of the context in which the conversation took place.

DEFINITION OF STORY Related to the above, there has been a long-standing debate about ‘what counts as a story’ in organizational storytelling research (Boje, 2008; Foroughi, 2020;

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Gabriel, 2000). In particular, two different approaches have emerged in the literature. Gabriel (1991, pp. 857–8) defines stories as ‘narratives through which events, at times major, at others trivial, become charged with symbolic significance’. He emphasizes the uniqueness of stories as ‘proper narratives, with beginnings and ends, held together by actions and plots’. Boje (1995, p. 1000), on the other hand, defines story as ‘an oral or written performance involving two or more people interpreting past or anticipating experience’. Boje (2008, p. 13) focuses on terse stories or what he termed antenarratives – fragmented and ambiguous stories that may not appear in linear time. These different definitions also imply different research approaches and data collection strategies. Researchers who are interested in analysing elicited stories usually use the former – Gabriel’s definition of story (e.g. Foroughi, 2020; Jagannathan and Rai, 2017) while those interested in stories in situ often use Boje’s definition of a story (e.g. Adorisio, 2014). In what follows I argue that they are not mutually exclusive and can be combined (for an example, see Foroughi and Al-Amoudi, 2020). However, building research based on different understandings of ‘what story is’, leads to different approaches to researching storytelling. In particular, in the next two sections, I underscore two research approaches in combining storytelling research with ethnography: ‘ethno-narrative’ and ‘ethno-story’.

THE ETHNO-NARRATIVE APPROACH Ethnographers collect stories among other cultural forms such as situated interactions, artefacts, symbols and rituals. But their ethnographies do not usually focus on emerging stories in the field. ‘Ethno-narrative’ pay particular attention to how storytelling evolves within a given research site. This was first described as a distinct method of inquiry by Hansen (2006) who suggested that researchers should treat the context of construction as ‘constitutive’ as text in meaning-making. Hansen builds his methodological argument based on an earlier plea that asked researchers to think about how to examine context as something separate from text that provides additional meaning to the text (Deetz, 2003). Such an emphasis on the context of construction is in contrast to the earlier narrative research which focused solely on the text as the primary data source (Fairclough, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987), and in extreme cases, assumed that there is nothing ‘outside the text’ (Martin and Frost, 2011). Even when this literature takes ‘context’ into account, narrative researchers often favour textual data over contextual or ethnographic data (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1998), and context is assumed to have only a moderating role in aiding textual interpretation (Hansen, 2006). An ethno-narrative approach uses talk in ‘naturally occurring interactions’ to grasp the immediate context of production and interpretation of discourse (see

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Hansen 2006, p. 1064, for examples; see also Boje, 2008; Samra-Fredericks, 2003). Going beyond a conventional textual analysis of ‘discourse-in-use’ featured in conversation analysis (Sacks and Jefferson, 1995) or discourse analysis (Potter and Wetherell, 1987), ethno-narrative requires the researcher to ground her analysis based on an (ethnographic) awareness of implicit assumptions that guide both the production and interpretation of discourse. Ethno-narrative approach builds on Boje’s (2008) approach to storytelling research that focused on capturing ‘living stories’ or emergent stories in dialogues around a certain organizational issue (e.g. Boje, 1995; Boje and Rosile, 2003; Boje et al., 2004; Whittle et al., 2009). This approach therefore largely relies on examining how organizational participants use terse narrative, or fragmented antenarratives in daily conversation to make sense of various situations and to reconstruct their identity and character. Hansen (2006) and others who advocate this approach argue that combining ethnography and storytelling allows researchers to take into account not only themes and assumptions underlying the discourse but ‘cultural and contextual understandings that shape discursive actions’ (Hansen, 2006, p. 1063). This gives ‘text’ a margin of play and opens up some room for new plausible interpretations drawing on the context (Kilduff and Mehra, 1997). Observing discourse as it happens combined with cultural awareness, Hansen (2006) suggests, could give insight about the discursive battles that take place during the construction of a text, and free researchers from a narrow focus on the dominant narrative which survived the battle.

THE ETHNO-STORY APPROACH The ethno-narrative approach as described above has inspired many studies (e.g. Adorisio, 2014; Whittle et al., 2009) and revealed the potentials of integrating storytelling with ethnographic research. Having said this, the ethno-narrative approach has several limitations too. Ethno-narrative is focused on the study of ‘discourse-in-use’, that is the study of conversation as it occurs in its natural setting. This means that the researchers should be able (and be permitted) to record several extensive group conversations often with the support of a tape recorder. Many ethnographers may not be able to secure such a level of access. An extensive use of the tape recorder also increases the risk of intimidating or unnerving potential participants (storytellers). As Gabriel (2000, p. 40) warned, the presence of a tape recorder may seriously constrain participants from ‘telling tales that may not be factually backed up or that may compromise them with colleagues, subordinates, and superiors’. Moreover, studying narrative in situ may not capture the narratives which are ‘untold’ in the public space of the organization (see Foroughi 2014; Izak et al., 2014). Finally, as the ethno-narrative approach relies on the analysis of

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terse stories in a conversation it is often restricted to actors’ storytelling in one isolated situation, and thus often overlooks the links between one story and another. This means that the relevance of stories to the broader organizational context is often ignored. An alternative method, which I call ‘ethno-story’, has the potential to avoid the above problems whilst remaining committed to examining the constitutional role of context in giving meaning to stories. Ethno-story focuses on understanding an organizational ‘narrative ecology’ – the totality of narratives that are interacting within a social group (Gabriel, 2016; Foroughi et al., 2019) and aims to understand how different types of stories emerge, interact, fight, compete, adapt, develop and die. When pursuing ethno-story research, one can use stories that are collected from different sources – e.g. interviews and observation – but the researcher should examine how each set of stories are created, whom they are created by, and the media through which they are passed. Foroughi and Al-Amoudi (2020), for instance, use this approach to examine the changes in the narrative ecology of a charity organization after it underwent major organizational changes. By comparing stories that were collected in the interview settings with those collected during their observation, they show that certain types of narratives were marginalized or excluded in the organization – which they argued manifested ‘collective forgetting’ and a loss of power of a group of staff members. Ciuk and Kostera (2010) follow a similar approach in their analysis of organizational oblivion. They draw on known archetypes as an interpretive tool to make sense of a collage of stories (as well as non-storing) that they collected in their study. One major feature of this approach is that it focuses on collecting and analysing what Gabriel (2000) calls ‘proper stories’ with plots, storyline and characters. Terse stories still will be considered but they are analysed in relation with other stories which confer meaning to the terse stories. Linde’s (2009) excellent book – Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory – is another work that retrospectively can be claimed as an example of the ethno-story approach. Linde presents her study of organizational memory based on material that was collected in a three-year ethnography in a major US insurance company. The rich data collected allows her to examine the organizational narrative ecology, and specifically to analyse and compare a wide range of stories that she collected across the organization. In one of the chapters, she discusses three different versions of a story that depicted the leadership of the founder of the insurance company in resolving a tricky situation. Linde (2009) compares these stories for their structure, differences in positioning and linguistic differences – such as choice of words and evaluative structure. This allows her to discuss how the past is being used in the organization to support cultural change.

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I show another example of ethno-story in my recent work – ‘Collective Memories as a Vehicle of Fantasy and Identification: Founding Stories Retold’ (Foroughi, 2020). In this Organization Studies article, I compare three different renditions of a charity organization’s founding story that utilized one of the key story plots: romantic, epic and comic. I show that whilst the founding story was retold in a variety of ways, including terse stories, the full meaning of such stories can be understood when they are analysed in connection to related archetypal stories of the founding story. For instance, one of the staff members shared with me a terse story about the organizational founding when I asked her about the organizational history: Everyone knows how STY was set up by Ellen and the events surrounding it. … I mean that she had to face those angry mobs and … (Foroughi, 2020, p. 1356)

This terse story at first does not tell us much about the characters in the story or the outlook of the storyteller but does hint at an epic rendition of the founding story that I had elicited in another conversation. This rendition of the founding story gave the story some sense of ‘religious fervour’ and was only recounted by a certain group of staff members. Sometimes, the most important thing is changing the attitudes of the clients. To get them seeing an alternative way of living, that despite their troubles, they can have a normal life, like others. I guess this is something we have been always good at […] When Ellen started STY, she was faced by 100 young guys, threatening to burn the place down. While others [staff] left the place, she stood there, saying ‘Come on in, this is your space.’ She convinced them not to burn the place, and turned them around to be STY’s first clients. (Foroughi, 2020, p. 1357, emphasis in original)

My long-term immersion in the field enabled me to collect a wide range of stories that were connected to the founding story and explore the connections between these different stories. I analysed the differences between various renditions of the founding story and questioned how this story was retold, by whom and for what purpose. I concluded that the similarities and differences in how these founding stories were evoked represented social fantasies that were shared by different groups of staff members in the case-study organization, who used the retelling to reaffirm what they thought was the core purpose of the organization. This approach could be fruitful for understanding organizations as sites of negotiations and contestations. It also allows the researcher to provide a more context-specific analysis of organizational stories, particularly by showing sensibility towards different factors that might contribute to the emergence of a particular story in a given setting – including the characteristics of the teller, the audience, the situation, the timing, and the purpose and the impact of the

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storytelling. One shortcoming might be that ethno-story research can be very time-consuming. Moreover, unless the researcher is very familiar with the research site, it is very difficult to predict what type of stories are going to yield more analytical value for the research before one starts the fieldwork. As such, it would be advisable that researchers who want to use this approach consider spending a longer time in the fieldwork, or alternatively, organize to do their fieldwork in two stages with a time-lag to allow them to reflect on the stock of stories they have collected before finalizing their fieldwork.

CONCLUSION Storytelling and ethnographic research have much in common, including not least, a similar research philosophy – interpretivism – which emphasizes understanding the lived experience of (organizational) participants and the meaning people afford to stories as a way of understanding the complexity of human lives, cultures and behaviours. Moreover, both research approaches can be empowering and liberating by giving voice to those traditionally marginalized and providing a less exploitative research method (Lewis, 2011). Combining narrative/story analysis, which is somewhat abstract (that is ‘non-situated’), with the ‘material groundedness’ of ethnography has the potential to move the narrative research beyond the traditional ‘constructivist domination’ and ‘discursive isolationism’ (Phillips and Oswick, 2012, p. 468). In this chapter, I introduced two alternative research approaches that I labelled ethno-narrative and ethno-story. Each has a particular advantage but can yield different types of insight. I also argued that each of these methods is based on two distinct definitions of what the story is. The ethno-narrative approach usually focuses on analysing ‘situated’ terse stories as they emerge in a particular conversation. Ethno-story is about analysing how narrative ecology of a social group changes – so it focuses on understanding how different types of stories emerge, interact, fight, compete, adapt, develop and die. These two approaches require different research design and therefore, it is important for those who wish to use storytelling approaches in their ethnographic study to pay attention to these differences.

REFERENCES Adorisio, A. L. M. (2014) ‘Organizational remembering as narrative: “Storying” the past in banking’, Organization, 21(4): 463–76. Beigi, M., Callahan, J. and Michaelson, C. (2019) ‘A critical plot twist: Changing characters and foreshadowing the future of organizational storytelling’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 21(4): 447–65. Boje, D. M. (1991) ‘The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1): 106–26.

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Boje, D. M. (1995) ‘Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as “Tamara-Land”’, Academy of Management Journal, 38(4): 997–1035. Boje, D. M. (2008) Storytelling organizations. London: Sage. Boje, D. M., Haley, U. C. and Saylors, R. (2016) ‘Antenarratives of organizational change: The microstoria of Burger King’s storytelling in space, time and strategic context’, Human Relations, 69(2): 391–418. Boje, D. M. and Rhodes, C. (2006) ‘The leadership of Ronald McDonald: Double narration and stylistic lines of transformation’, The Leadership Quarterly, 17(1): 94–103. Boje, D. M. and Rosile, G. A. (2003) ‘Life imitates art: Enron’s epic and tragic narration’, Management Communication Quarterly, 17(1): 85–125. Boje, D. M., Rosile, G. A., Durant, R. A. and Luhman, J. T. (2004) ‘Enron spectacles: A critical dramaturgical analysis’, Organization Studies, 25(5): 751–74. Brown, A. D. (2006) ‘A narrative approach to collective identities’, Journal of Management Studies, 43(4): 731–53. Brown, A. D., Gabriel, Y. and Gherardi, S. (2009) ‘Storytelling and change: An unfolding story’, Organization, 16(3): 323–33. Brown, A. D. and Humphreys, M. (2002) ‘Nostalgia and the narrativization of identity: A Turkish case study’, British Journal of Management, 13(2): 141–59. Brown, M. H. and Kreps, G. L. (1993) ‘Narrative analysis and organizational development’, in S. L. Herndon and G. L. Kreps (eds.), Qualitative research: Applications in organizational communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 47–62. Ciuk, S. and Kostera, M. (2010) ‘Drinking from the waters of Lethe: A tale of organizational oblivion’, Management Learning, 41(2): 187–204. Cunliffe, A. L. (2010) ‘Retelling tales of the field: In search of organizational ethnography 20 years on’, Organizational Research Methods, 13(2): 224–39. Currie, M. (1998) Postmodern narrative theory. New York: St Martin’s Press. Czarniawska, B. (1997) Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1998) A narrative approach to organization studies. London: Sage. De Cock, C. (2000) ‘Reflections on fiction, representation, and organization studies: An essay with special reference to the work of Jorge Luis Borges’, Organization Studies, 21(3): 589–609. Deetz, S. (2003) ‘Authoring as a collaborative process through communication’, in D. Holman and R. Thorpe (eds.), Management and language: The manager as a practical author. London: Sage, 121–38. Fairclough, N. (1992) ‘Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis’, Discourse & Society, 3(2): 193–217. Fisher, W. R. (1985) ‘The narrative paradigm: An elaboration’, Communicaton Monographs, 52: 347–67. Foroughi, H. (2014) ‘On becoming irrelevant: An analysis of charity workers’ untold epic stories’, Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 12(1): 8–23. Foroughi, H. (2020) ‘Collective memories as a vehicle of fantasy and identification: founding stories retold’, Organization Studies, 41(10): 1347–1367. Foroughi, H. and Al-Amoudi, I. (2020) ‘Collective Forgetting in a Changing Organization: When memories become unusable and uprooted,’ Organization Studies, 41(4): 449–470. Foroughi, H., Gabriel, Y. and Fotaki, M. (2019) ‘Leadership in a post-truth era: A new narrative disorder?’ Leadership, 15(2): 135–51.

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Gabriel, Y. (1991) ‘Turning facts into stories and stories into facts: A hermeneutic exploration of organizational folklore’, Human Relations, 44(8): 857–75. Gabriel, Y. (1995) ‘The unmanaged organization: Stories, fantasies and subjectivity’, Organization Studies, 16(3): 477–501. Gabriel, Y. (2000) Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gabriel, Y. (2016) ‘Narrative ecologies and the role of counternarratives: The case of nostalgic stories and conspiracy theories’, in S. Frandsen, T. Kuhn and M. W. Lundholt (eds.), Counter-narratives and organization. London: Routledge, 208–26. Garud, R., Schildt, H. A. and Lant, T. K. (2014) ‘Entrepreneurial storytelling, future expectations, and the paradox of legitimacy’, Organization Science, 25(5): 1479–92. Golden-Biddle, K. and Locke, K. (1993) ‘Appealing work: An investigation of how ethnographic texts convince’, Organization Science, 4(4): 595–616. Hansen, H. (2006) ‘The ethno-narrative approach’, Human Relations, 59(8): 1049–75. Hochschild, A. R. (2018) Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. New York: The New Press. Humphreys, M. and Watson, T. J. (2009) ‘Ethnographic practices: From “writing-up ethnographic research” to “writing ethnography”’, in S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels and F. Kamsteeg (eds.), Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life. London: Sage, 40–55. Izak, M., Hitchin, L. and Anderson, D. (eds.) (2014) Untold stories in organizations. London: Routledge. Jagannathan, S. and Rai, R. (2017) ‘Organizational wrongs, moral anger and the temporality of crisis’, Journal of Business Ethics, 141: 709–30. Kilduff, M. and Mehra, A. (1997) ‘Postmodernism and organizational research’, Academy of Management Review, 22(2): 453–81. Lévi-Strauss, C. (2013) Myth and meaning. London: Routledge. Lewis, P. J. (2011) ‘Storytelling as research/research as storytelling’, Qualitative Inquiry, 17(6): 505–10. Linde, C. (2009) Working the past: Narrative and institutional memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malinowski, B. (1926) Myth in Primitive Psychology. London: Kegan Paul. Martin, J. (1992) Cultures in organizations: Three perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, J., Feldman, M. S., Hatch, M. J. and Sitkin, S. B. (1983) ‘The uniqueness paradox in organizational stories’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 28(3): 438–53. Martin, J. and Frost, P. J. (2011) ‘The organizational culture war games: A struggle for intellectual dominance’, in M. Godwyn and J. Hoffer Gittell (eds.), Sociology of organizations: Structures and relationships. London: Sage, 315–36. Morgan, G., Frost, P. J. and Pondy, L. R. (1983) ‘Organizational symbolism’, in L. R. Pondy, P. J. Frost, G. Morgan and T. C. Dandridge (eds.), Organizational symbolism. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 3–35. Phillips, N. and Oswick, C. (2012) ‘Organizational discourse: Domains, debates, and directions’, The Academy of Management Annals, 6(1): 435–81. Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1987) Discourse and social psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: Sage. Randazzo, S. (2006) ‘Subaru: The emotional myths behind the brand’s growth’, Journal of Advertising Research, 46(1): 11–17. Rhodes, C. (1996) ‘Researching organisational change and learning: A narrative approach’, The Qualitative Report, 2(4): 1–8.

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Rhodes, C. and Brown, A. D. (2005) ‘Writing responsibly: Narrative fiction and organization studies’, Organization, 12(4): 467–91. Sacks, H. and Jefferson, G. (1995) Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003) ‘Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction’, Journal of Management Studies, 40(1): 141–74. Schwandt, T. A. (1994) ‘Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry’, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 118–37. Smircich, L. (1983) ‘Concepts of culture and organizational analysis’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 28(3): 339–58. Van Maanen, J. (2011) Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Watson, T. J. (2011) ‘Ethnography, reality, and truth: The vital need for studies of “how things work” in organizations and management’, Journal of Management Studies, 48(1): 202–17. Whittle, A., Mueller, F. and Mangan, A. (2009) ‘Storytelling and “character”: Victims, villains and heroes in a case of technological change’, Organization, 16(3): 425–42. Wilkins, A. (1983) ‘Organizational stories as symbols which control the organization’, in L. R. Pondy, P. J. Frost, G. Morgan and T. C. Dandridge (eds.), Organizational symbolism. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 81–91. Yanow, D., Ybema, S. and van Hulst, M. (2012) ‘Practising organizational ethnography’, in G. Symon and C. Cassell (eds.), Qualitative organizational research: Core methods and current challenges. London: Sage, 331–50. Ybema, S. Yanow, D., Wels, H. and Kamsteeg, F. (eds.) (2009) Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life. London: Sage

12. In search of openness to the ethnographic analysis of work: early organisational anthropology and contemporary organisational theorising Paweł Krzyworzeka and Hugo Gaggiotti INTRODUCTION While writing about origins of organising, Gibson Burrell warns that ‘the seeking out of origins is dangerous’ (Burrell, 2018, p. 21) because you can find out things that you were not prepared to learn. However, the risk in our chapter is different. Writing about the history of organisational ethnography is an especially delicate endeavour, as the researchers who practise within this research paradigm are keenly aware of the political nature of writing. Especially when we use material from the past and interpret it today, filtering through our categories, values, and sometimes fears. Genealogical endeavours like ours always threaten or support the existing status quo. This chapter is political as well; thus, as a disclosure, we decided to discuss motivations behind some of the decisions we made. We believe readers will spot our biases even quicker than we will. Our first political decision was to only use the work of William Lloyd Warner (1898–1970) to discuss the origins of organisational ethnography. Moreover, we present him more as a social anthropologist than a sociologist, aware that it is difficult to distinguish between these two disciplines at the time of Warner. We know that both decisions may result in reinforcing the popular narration that ethnography is originated from – or is even inseparable from (the radical view) – anthropology. However, we prefer to empathise with Dvora Yanow’s (2009) attempt to deconstruct this perception when she shows multiple sources of ethnographic practice. Indeed, we postulate that we should be less discipline-sensitive and focus more on how the history we construct can enrich our understanding of 178

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contemporary research practice. Such an approach will make the discussion about the sources and origins of organisational ethnography more fruitful. We direct this remark mostly to ourselves and those who identify themselves as ‘authentic anthropologists’. Pursuing a degree in anthropology combined with long-term fieldwork – as was the case for both of us – is a strong identity-building experience. It is hard to abandon the identity even when one formally switches – as we did – from departments of anthropology to business schools. Anthropologists tend to symbolically fortify their identity and preach the uniqueness of anthropology. We perceive anthropologists – including ourselves – as discipline-sensitive. Anthropologists reflected institutionally on their professional identity in projects like ‘Why the World Needs Anthropologists’, affiliated with the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and insisted on creating dedicated anthropological job titles when anthropologists begin work in business, such as ‘corporate anthropologist’ or ‘organisational anthropologist’. We made another important decision when analysing Warner’s research practices: we focused on two moments from the early history of organisational research in the Hawthorne project when – in our view – the ethnographic perspective failed. In contrast to the well-documented experiments conducted in the first half of the twentieth century in Western Electric, in Cicero (Illinois, USA), the analysis of the two failures from the Hawthorne project is an untold story; as it often happens with failures. By failure we mean a non-fulfilment, a potential that has not been fully realised, if realised at all; not a failure as a non-success or a non-performance of expected action. For many contemporary ethnographers, especially those working in the disciplinary configuration in which the Hawthorne experiments are known and recognised as an important landmark, the sole fact that an ethnographic approach was incorporated into the analysis of the case has a legitimising power. That was the moment when ethnography and the history of management and organisational research intertwined. However, it is precisely from this moment onwards when ethnography became necessary for the legitimation and explanation of the study in contemporary organising. It became one of the many possible methodological approaches, even a technique that researchers can choose from. As a result, there coexist such ontologically and epistemologically different approaches like advanced quantitative methods and autoethnography. If we take one of the most prominent journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly we will find a full range of approaches, ethnography included (but not autoethnography). We can even find journal articles that focus on the same topic, like values in organisations, but approaching the phenomenon from both quantitative and ethnographic-qualitative angles: political and personal CEO values (Chin et al., 2013) studied with quantitative methods, and ethnography-based research of control, values and body of

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investment bankers (Michel, 2011). As power play and legitimisation games exist in every discipline, management and organisation science are especially rough along the disciplinary frontiers. The chance to refer to the involvement of ethnography in the Hawthorne experiments has its legitimising power ready to use by those who happened to be in this playfield. As such, the sheer fact that a social anthropologist like Warner was invited to work with Elton Mayo and the team of researchers in Western Electric could be perceived as a shining moment in the organisational ethnography history. There are other available starting points to talk about the history of organisational ethnography, and some of them, like the Manchester School, could hold even more legitimising power. However, Warner’s story resonates with us, because like him we both have formal education in socio-cultural anthropology and experience in non-organisation based ethnographic research. Some researchers recognise that the use of ethnography in management and organisation studies has grown over the last two decades (Cunliffe, 2010; Rouleau et al., 2014; Yanow, 2009). Some even call this trend an ‘ethnographic turn’ (Rouleau et al., 2014, p. 2). Those analyses show that organisational ethnographers moved from studying single bound communities like funeral homes, theme parks, or governmental agencies (respectively Barley, 1983; Feldman, 1991; Van Maanen, 1991) to more complex, often multi-local constellations. Thus, it is not surprising that the way ethnography is practised is changing. Smets et al. (2014) illustrate this development with a graph that shows the growing number of studied sites proportionally increases the size of the research team and the number of instruments used. Smets et al. themselves did their research on reinsurance trading in London with the use of a range of tools, including 400 hours of video recordings of real-time real-world interactions. Current analytical, methodological, and even technical challenges of doing ethnography are important topics. However, we feel that there is a deficit of reflection on theoretical aspects of organisational ethnography; or, to put it more precisely, on the relationship between ethnographers’ assumptions about the ontological status of the organisation and their research practices. We want to contribute to this discussion. Firstly, by a particular way of describing the historical case of Warner, which reveals the interdependence of research practice, underlying theory, and power relations in early organisational ethnography. Secondly, by briefly describing some developments in organisational theory that created a more suitable theoretical climate for ethnography. Our take on Warner’s legacy generally aligns with the interpretation offered by Marietta Baba (2009) and continues the important discussion she initiated. We take her interpretation and our considerations (Gaggiotti et al., 2017) one step further by linking the lessons from the early instances of organisational ethnography with the opportunities created by recent theoretical developments.

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We argue that the ethnographic turn in organisation studies was possible thanks to the emergence of new ways of considering the nature of organising.

WARNER’S ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK IN AUSTRALIA Warner was shaped as an anthropologist during the fieldwork initiated by Radcliffe-Brown in Australia in 1926–1929. This research project resulted in a series of publications on the social and kinship system of the Murngin. First articles on the morphology and function of the kinship category in the Murngin gained wide acclaim in the international anthropological milieu and were discussed for many decades by leading anthropologists such as Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, Claude Lévi-Strauss, George P. Murdock, Eric P. Elkin, and Edmund Leach. Alfred Radcliffe-Brown proposed to Warner to conduct fieldwork in Australia in 1926 during his visit to the University of California, Berkeley, where Warner was studying. This happened during a dinner to celebrate the end of the academic year also attended by Bronisław Malinowski. Radcliffe-Brown supposedly said, ‘I say, Warner, how would you like to come to Australia with me? … I’m serious. If you are interested, let’s get together and talk’ (Warner, 1988, p. 1). Thanks to the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the young American anthropologist Warner joined the British scholar Radcliffe-Brown in Australia already the following year. However, in an earlier letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, Radcliffe-Brown recommended the young researcher and proposed the following action plan: If Warner were given a fellowship, he might profitably spend a short time with Hooton at Harvard and have some talk with Wissler. He would have to spend a month with me in Sydney getting a proper grasp of the nature of the Australian field and its problems. He could then spend twelve months with a native tribe. (Warner, 1988, p. 3)

As a result, Warner spent three years conducting research among the Murngin – in the local language the word means ‘spark’ – who inhabited the Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The sheer distinguishing and defining of a common name for the studied group came with difficulty, because this group lacked a political organisation. They were supposed to share a similar culture, myths, and ceremonies, a local organisation, a kinship system, and common language characteristics. However, they did not call themselves with the word ‘Murngin’ as an endonym.1 Warner devoted his first articles to the social system and began his book (Warner, 1937) by tackling this very topic. He considered kinship and the

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broader social system as fundamental, with other elements of culture anchored within it. He viewed it was necessary to know the social system so as to understand magic, totemism, and other phenomena. Everything else was supposed to be integrated within this coherent system. Warner notes that kinship organisation among the Murngin contributed to the emergence of a very complex personality. Warner’s findings sparked several decades of polemics among kinship researchers, which began to function in the literature as the Murngin controversy (Bberndt, 1955; Elkin, 1953; Lawrence and Murdock, 1949; Lévi-Strauss, 1949; Radcliffe-Brown, 1951; Shapiro, 1968). Warner’s monograph is extremely engaging even for researchers of organisations who do not have a deep knowledge of kinship systems or the culture of indigenous people of Australia. The work has all the features commonly regarded as the definition of a good ethnographic monograph even today and even outside of the socio-cultural anthropology milieu. First of all, Warner’s book shows culture from the group’s perspective. Especially in the section devoted to totemism, Warner takes great care to present indigenous interpretations of individual phenomena. To this end, he quotes excerpts of his interlocutors’ statements. He elaborates his scientific interpretations, which he sometimes calls sociological, in separate chapters. Descriptions of specific events that Warner observed and participated in, combined with quotes from conversations, allow the reader to enter into the Murngin’s social and cultural world. Dry technical analyses are intertwined with long fragments of engaging literature. The culmination of such a vivid ethnographic approach with pictorial material comes in the last chapter (Warner, 1958),2 in which Warner presents the story of Mahkarolla, his indigenous key informant and close friend. This chapter is composed primarily of Mahkarolla’s statements noted by Warner, which the latter weaved into a single chronological narrative that forms a life story. Warner’s additional input consisted of translating quotes from Pidgin English into standard English. We read about Mahkarolla’s childhood memories and receive a detailed description of his initiation from the viewpoint of the initiated. He also talks about his family relations: with his wives, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, and children. The stories of Mahkarolla the research participant turn into the story of Warner the researcher who describes their friendship, but also the difficult and deadly dangerous events that show the strength of their relationship. Both Mahkarolla’s and Warner’s tales are very personal. The tales depict the Murngin not through a typical representative of his group but an individual with private dilemmas, sympathies, and ethics. Warner shows great appreciation and respect for the wisdom of his friend and members of his group who impressed him during one of the councils due to the threat of war with neighbouring groups. However, we must note after Warner that the perception and interpretation of these events were

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reinforced by his own experiences of participating in the First World War. For him, the experience of participating in the war was a point of reference for the reflections on how meaningless violent solutions are, which he had heard from the Murngin. The story in this chapter overviews the Murngin culture from the viewpoint of a specific person. It allows readers to better understand the analyses from previous chapters in the frame of a single coherent narrative. To allow for a better understanding of Mahkarolla’s story, the author makes references to earlier parts of the work which describe the phenomena appearing in the story in a more analytical and abstract manner. Therefore, when referring to Mahkarolla’s relations with his mother-in-law, Warner refers to the section where he describes the specifics of the Mokul ↔ Gurrong relationship among the Murngin. We find this particular chapter in Warner’s book to be unique in the history of ethnographic literature. It ends with Warner’s description of his parting with Mahkarolla in Port Darwin, from where Warner sailed to Sydney after finishing his fieldwork. Escorted by Mahkarolla, Warner boarded the boat, but it turned out that natives were not allowed on board. Warner started looking for Mahkarolla who had stayed on the shore: ‘I hurried down to the other end of the boat to be nearer him to try to attract his attention. The whistle blew and we started to leave the pier. I called again. Mahkarolla looked up, waved, then lowered his head again. He was crying. That was the last time I saw him’ (Warner, 1958, p. 490). During the Murngin fieldwork, Warner’s anthropological and ethnographic skills and sensitivity strongly developed. The task he was confronted with consisted of understanding the life of a group radically different from the one he came from. For three years, Warner learned to conduct ethnographic field research, an approach that would later generate broad literature of both reflective works and technical guidebooks. At that time, he thoroughly learned and convinced himself of the validity and usefulness of the structural-functionalist theory. Most importantly, Warner gained a deep understanding of the various aspects of a different culture, which became an interesting point of reference for his own experiences that largely differed from the system of kinship, magic, totemism, initiation ceremony, gathering-hunting economy. With such a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience, Warner moved on to studying employee crews at Western Electric factories at the invitation of Elton Mayo.

ELTON MAYO AND THE HAWTHORNE EXPERIMENTS While the story of Warner has remained relatively unknown in mainstream management theories, the figure of Elton Mayo arouses automatic associations, at least with classic textbook content. Indeed, this is a common

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understanding among organisation studies researchers. As Damian O’Doherty (2017) refers, there is a case to be made that the foundations of organisational studies as a discipline could be rooted in anthropological paradigms, given the importance of ethnographic research conducted at Hawthorne. Ethnography served as a very creative source of Human Relations, a movement that pushed the previous approach based on the principles of scientific management in a new direction. Thanks to this current, which did not stand the test of time and socio-economic changes (Burawoy, 1979), scholars could nevertheless reinforce and single out human resource management as a separate management function and research trend. Elton Mayo (1880–1949), was an Australian scholar who on his way to Great Britain remained in the United States, where he came to see great personal and professional development opportunities. In the literature, Mayo is depicted as a psychologist, which indeed seems to best reflect his aspirations, practices, and theoretical inspirations. However, Mayo lacked formal education in psychology, as he abandoned his medical studies, never to return (Trahair, 1984). He left Australia as a professor of philosophy. In his homeland, Mayo was interested in social philosophy (Peltonen, 2015), to which he devoted his first book entitled Democracy and Freedom (Mayo, 1919). His strong ties with management started with his employment at Harvard Business School and participation – initially only as an external consultant – in a series of experiments conducted at Hawthorne Works,3 part of the Western Electric Company, a subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In the history of management, this project is usually considered foundational for the discipline itself. Its scale was exceptional: only between 1928 and 1930, as many as 21 000 structured interviews with employees were conducted at Hawthorne Works. However, the great scope of this project is most clearly visible through the fact that it became a groundbreaking landmark study in management history. However, it remains unclear what this breakthrough was about and what scientific value these discoveries engendered (Burawoy, 1979; Gillespie, 1993). One may metaphorically state that – thanks to the Hawthorne experiments – managers ceased to perceive employees as an extension of machines and started to use an extended vocabulary to refer to the conditions of work, such as ‘job satisfaction, resistance to changes, group norms, employee involvement, effective leadership’ (Sonnenfeld, 1985, p. 125). At one point in time, researchers from Harvard Business School, including Elton Mayo, were invited to participate as consultants. Mayo’s role and participation in the project gradually changed. Initially, he was an important instructor in conducting interviews. His visits to Hawthorne factories were neither frequent nor long. The most intense year was 1929, during which Mayo made five visits, each lasting for about a week. However, his enthusiasm

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later declined, and visits became less frequent. Mayo preferred sending his colleagues and assistants, including Steve Lovekin, Fritz Roethlisberger, and Warner (Gillespie, 1993). The story of Warner’s invitation to participate in the Hawthorne experiments has its sources in Australia, where Mayo met the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. He was the main reason for Mayo to become interested in anthropology. Malinowski and Mayo had a close and quite intense relationship. They were friends and had moments of close scientific cooperation (Trahair, 1984). Mayo generally felt comfortable drawing from various disciplinary traditions, anthropology being one of them. At one point, he expressed the need to use anthropological methods in the Hawthorne experiments and to invite an anthropologist to cooperate. This move coincided with the end of Warner’s study in Australia and the emergence of his new idea to study American society. Recommended by Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, Warner came to see Mayo and was sent by him to meet with Hawthorne researchers. And so began Warner’s adventure with the Hawthorne experiments.

WHY MAYO NEEDED ANTHROPOLOGY Thanks to his acquaintance with Malinowski, Mayo became interested in ‘primitive thinking’ and gained more expertise in anthropological paradigms on research (Trahair, 1984). The fact that anthropology influenced the effects of Elton Mayo’s work is demonstrated not only by his contacts with anthropologists. Mayo unscrupulously used references to ethnographic examples and anthropological theory. One of the first reviews of the book The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Mayo, 1933) mentioned that the negative side of the work was this unorthodox element, accusing Mayo of promoting anthropological research as a solution to nationwide economic problems (Trahair, 1984). Indeed, Mayo repeatedly endorsed anthropology in his study, usually citing Warner. Mayo introduces Warner as he stands currently in the modern canonical myth of anthropologists of work and organisation: Mr. Warner had recently returned from investigation of a tribe of North Australian blackfellows and set himself to adapt for use in a civilized community the anthropological methods employed to discover primitive social structure and function. (Mayo, 1933, p. 132)

In Australia, Mayo had the opportunity to personally meet and observe those researchers who founded the tradition of ethnographic field research. Mayo demonstrates a critical understanding of anthropology’s specificity when he writes how important in this type of research is a good mastery of techniques, both for the study of primitive communities and in the exploration of one’s

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own society. According to Mayo, the use of observational techniques without proper preparation can make one only see what one wants to see (Mayo, 1933). Furthermore, Mayo highly appreciates contemporary anthropologists and writes that one could guarantee proper observation only by using methods such as those developed to study the Andamanian and Trobriand communities.

THE RISKY BUSINESS OF ORGANISATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY Despite Mayo’s recognition of anthropological theory and techniques, the ethnographic approach presented by Warner had only a moderate influence on the whole project. In the Hawthorne research, anthropological inspirations partly influenced not only the methodology of data collection and analysis but also the interpretation of results. As shown by a short episode described by Richard Gillespie, this impact could have been even greater, but anthropology turned out to disagree with the internal policy of the studied company. This incident concerns a report prepared under the strong influence of Warner’s interpretation. However, presented to the managers in Cicero, the report met with a very negative reaction, because its conclusions undermined the role and effectiveness of the managers. The report was sent back for improvement before its presentation to the managers in New York City. The next version of the report softened the negative message by adding Mayo’s psychopathological analysis (Gillespie, 1993). In our opinion, the time when Warner collaborated with Hawthorne researchers shows the particularly interesting face of applying ethnography to research conducted for management practitioners’ needs. In the discussion on the use of ethnography in business, there is no place to express the view that the specificity of anthropology can often lead to conclusions unacceptable to managers of the organisation under scrutiny. This raises many problems. If a study is independent, not financed by the organisation under analysis, it can only cause difficulties in the moment of study results publication. However, the problem is different if the project is commercial. In this case, a very likely scenario is researchers’ self-censorship already at the stage of asking research questions or, as was the case with Mayo and Warner, at the stage of the presentation and interpretation of results. Firstly, one of the main strengths of ethnography – presented as a unique feature of this approach – is a holistic approach and openness to evolving research questions reformulated under the influence of empirical studies of an issue. Secondly, especially in its modern form, ethnography very critically perceives power relations, sympathising with those at the bottom of hierarchies and with marginalised groups. The ethnographic perspective specialises in questioning what management practitioners take as unquestionable certainty

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and – for understandable reasons – it is hard for the practitioners to be convinced of the usefulness of scrutinising these areas. The example of the first application of anthropology to research on organisations for the needs of management practice shows that the use of anthropology in this context can lead to its reduction into a fairly simple tool that allows one to answer previously formulated safe questions. In this context, we should mention that Elton Mayo understood very well the role played by senior managers’ political support for this study and the impact it might have on the kind and form of results that decision-makers expected. While the rest of the team tried to understand the deep reasons for the lack of convincing conclusions that could be drawn from the collected material, Mayo persuaded the project managers to formulate a clear and bold idea that should be presented to the Board. Besides, his preferred interpretations based on psychopathology were much more politically correct. An interesting light on this problem is shed by a discussion on power relations and freedom in qualitative social research triggered by the publication of a monograph titled Small Town in Mass Society by Arthus J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman (2000 [1958]). After the publication of this book about a small-town community of Springdale in upstate New York, some parties, including Cornell University, criticised the authors for the lack of protection of research participants’ identity – thus creating a public relations problem for the University – and the unauthorised use of empirical material gathered by the project team. The reaction of the Springdale community to this ethnography was illustrated as not entirely pleasing: the feature float of the annual Fourth of July parade followed an authentic copy of the jacket of the book, Small Town in Mass Society, done large-scale by Mrs. Beverly Robinson. Following the book cover came residents of [Springdale] riding masked in cars labeled with the fictious names given them in the book. … But the pay-off was the final scene, a manure-spreader filled with very rich barnyard fertilizer, over which was bending an effigy of ‘The Author’. (Cited in Vidich and Bensman, 2000, p. 397)

The issues raised in 1958 by the editorial team of Human Organization who initialised a public discussion about this issue were twofold. First, the authors’ obligations to the members of the community under study. Second, the authors’ obligations to the project director. However, apart from giving detailed and explicit answers to these issues, the authors in their response offered a more general critical reflection about ethnography, showing that the problem framed by the editors was too narrow. The authors’ thought-provoking comments begin with the observation that ‘[n]egative reaction to community and organizational research is only heard when results describe articulate, powerful, and respected individuals and

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organizations’ (Vidich and Bensman, 2000, p. 407). Here the first parallel could be drawn with anthropologists who study remote illiterate societies; they also describe the life of particular people, very often in potentially uncomfortable detail. But in these cases, such critique had been raised only rarely. Even if we take our earlier example of Warner’s work with the Murngin, we see that the identity protection of research participants was not Warner’s concern and was nearly impossible with such a small community. This kind of critical reflection came to mainstream anthropology only later, mainly with the postcolonial turn. The second parallel is more important for our argument. There was no such negative reaction to ethnographies concerned with ‘crime, minority groups, caste groups, factory workers, prostitutes, hoboes, taxi-dancers, beggars, marginal workers, slum dwellers, and other voiceless, powerless, unresected, and disreputable groups’ (Vidich and Bensman, 2000, p. 407). Ethical concerns grow with the increase of authority of individuals and institutions under ethnographic scrutiny. And, as Vidich and Bensman suggest, this is mainly a concern about the public relations and possible disturbances for the funding organisation, the university, and the researchers themselves. Furthermore, the problem is not only with the protection of research participants’ identity. What is at stake here is an equilibrium of power. Diverse interests and power relations are usually vailed, which is why we study them, but the sole description of ‘these factors, no matter how stated, will offend some of the groups in question’ (Vidich and Bensman, 2000, p. 408). Here we encounter the root of the problem identified in the first attempt to attribute ethnographic origins to the Hawthorne project. Vidich and Bensman offer a useful differentiation between researchers ‘working for a commercial firm, or even a governmental agency’ and those, like themselves, who address ‘fundamental issues which are related to the basic problems of social science’ (2000, p. 409). The former are obliged by contracts, and their work is supposed to meet the expectations of their sponsors. This is why such a researcher ‘writes, edits, and censors his own material so that it will appear in a way which enhances the interests of his employers’ (Vidich and Bensman, 2000, p. 409). The latter type of researchers’ obligation is to the science itself. This is why they risk the possibility of difficulties like those experienced by the authors of The Small Town in Mass Society. In our opinion, due to the unpredictable type of its outcome, ethnography is especially prone to leading a project to findings that may be unacceptable for some parties involved. Moreover, it is hard to predict beforehand what the results will be and who will be affected, due to our interests in unknown unknowns and blind spots and our openness to modifications of research questions. As Vidich and Bensman put it: ‘one cannot predict in advance the embarrassment which research may cause, including the embarrassment to oneself’ (2000, p. 409). We believe that

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the proliferation of quantitative perspectives in management could be usefully interpreted in this line. In this type of research, the scope of a project, the question asked, and the hypothesis tested are often pre-defined and approved in advance by the authorities and ‘important’ stakeholders so as to minimise the risks of uncomfortable findings. What we observe in our historical vignette of Hawthorne research is exactly a tension along these lines. As presented by Gillespie (1993), Mayo was more concerned with the expectations of management. Firstly, Mayo’s psychopathological interpretation was a safer one, because it did not question the status quo. Secondly, Mayo pragmatically understood that managers in New York are interested in concrete findings while other team members were engaged in an intellectually stimulating but inconclusive discussion about the complexity of the gathered material. In this situation, Warner not only presented an uncomfortable interpretation inspired by anthropological theory; he also practised untameable ethnography and seemed to be primarily interested in the fundamental problems of social science. A consequence of this approach was Warner’s move to begin an independent study of the social structure of Newburyport, a town in New England.4

LEAVING WESTERN ELECTRIC Warner’s decision to launch his own project in New England and discontinue the anthropological study of American society with Mayo and the Hawthorne team in Cicero is the second failure to attribute ethnographic roots to the Hawthorne project, which we define as unrealised potential. The causes of Warner’s decision, as often in such cases, are complex and multiple, not all initially available to a broader audience. We want to focus here on what Warner himself exposed when explaining his move to Yankee City. His justification shows that ethnography was not well-positioned to study organisations. In the first chapter of the first volume of Yankee City series, Warner and Paul S. Lunt (1941) produce a coherent narrative about how the Newburyport research was conducted. First, Warner indicates a close connection between his several-year-long research of the local community in New England and Mayo’s study on the outskirts of Chicago. However, the disintegration of the town of Cicero, in which the plants were located, and the difficulty to ethnographically capture the impact on Cicero5 of the huge and diverse city of Chicago forced Warner to look for another area for his study. The goal was to find a smaller town ‘in which the problems of the factory workers with a whole social context and the total community itself could be examined in all their interrelations’ (Warner and Lunt, 1941, p. 4). Warner chose Newburyport,

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a town of 17 000 inhabitants in Massachusetts, about forty miles away from Boston. Warner goes on to present what led him to this research: I had returned only recently from a three-year study of the community life in a Stone Age people in Australia. The techniques I had used there to understand the social organization and mental life of the Australian blacks were those of social anthropology. Although I had been deeply interested in the life of these particular people, my objective in studying them was not simply to understand how they organized their own social relations, but also to obtain a better understanding of how men in all groups, regardless of place or time, solve the problems which confront them. (Warner and Lunt, 1941, p. 3)

The starting point for Warner was the idea of applying anthropological techniques to a new research area. With this assumption in mind, he chose Newburyport. His justification of this choice shows that what was key to this anthropological approach was the possibility to present the studied community holistically. To obtain the level of knowledge about the study group that Warner has assumed and which he had managed to achieve during his Australian research, it was necessary for him to use very intensive and extensive research techniques: observation, interviews, surveys, document analysis, the collection and analysis of press clippings, and other methods described in the methodological chapter. Furthermore, Warner had to make use of an entire team of researchers to collect material and conduct research for many years.6 In his methodological manifesto on the study of modern society, Warner writes that, ‘contemporary society does not differ in kind but only in degree from the other societies of the world’ (Warner, 1962, p. 36). That is why research methods should evolve: Although, in the study of modern society, the anthropologist does not have to change his approach to the body of theory, he does have to change almost everything connected with methods and technique. At the very beginning of his research on modern life, he is forced to modify his usual way of specifying, defining and limiting the social object under investigation. (Warner, 1962, pp. 38–9)

Therefore, Warner believes that research design must be adapted to the more complex nature of the research subject and should be made more practical. However, he did not go so far as to recognise that the answer was statistics. Warner notes that statistical analysis of the entire US population captures the whole, but this kind of research leaves too many unanswered questions, as ‘knowledge about most of the rich and vital details of human living, believed necessary by all anthropologists, slipped through the rough mesh of their social statistics and left no meaningful trace’ (Warner, 1962, p. 41). On the other hand, Warner believes that a satisfactory approach does not consist in focusing on research of selected sections of the community, not even an in-depth one,

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like the study of working places such as factories. Such an approach does not allow one to understand the whole of modern society. One may argue that – unwilling to limit his research project within the boundaries of a single organisation – Warren ended up with encapsulating his research in a single town, a seemingly similar coherent entity. And this would be a valid argument. However, we want to recognise that Warner’s decision was a significant move towards a more holistic approach. It shows that, even back then, for someone interested in understanding fundamental social problems, the study of an organisation was not a valid research strategy. Hence, understanding local but broader than organisation structures, allowed Warner to answer organisation-level questions. A shoe factory strike described in one of the Yankee City volumes (Warner and Low, 1947) became a classic example of such organisational ethnography nested in a broader context. Diverse authors (Baba, 2009; Burawoy, 1979; Gaggiotti et al., 2017) reinterpreted Warner and Low’s book, but all seem to agree that it was a valuable piece of research in organisations and that those early ethnographers were ‘forced to move far beyond those shop floor conditions’ (Burawoy, 1979, p. 238). Let us summarise the original research problem and answer proposed by Warner and Low. The Yankee City workers were perceived as opposing unionisation, even union representatives from other cities considered them to be a stubborn community ‘always stupid enough to play management’s games’ (Warner, 1962, p. 154). The management felt safe knowing that the workers would never go on strike, and the former perceived them as dependable and practical. However, one day all the workers from all the factories in the area – a mixed group of people of diverse nationalities, ages, religions, social classes – joined the industrial union and became active members, within just a few hours. That event was especially puzzling to many researchers, because in the whole history of the town there was no single example of any strike action. Warner and Josiah Low proposed that the strike had its origins in two processes they observed as ethnographers of the Yankee City community. Firstly, the introduction of an assembly line destroyed the skill hierarchy and hierarchy based on seniority. Secondly, the ownership and managerial control shifted from the local town to New York, ‘the split between management and the community made it possible to mobilize the workers into organization to fight the management’ (Warner, 1962, p. 168). Especially the latter change was an important enabler that pushed workers to resist the management.

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ORGANISATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY BEYOND ORGANISATIONS For Warner, questioning what is inside and outside of an organisation was valid even if he was able to, as Marietta Baba (2009) puts it, see through the factory walls. The way we now understand such walls transformed significantly. Organisations are no longer – if they have ever been – entities closed in (physical) structures with clear boundaries. Postmodernist privileging of a ‘“weak” ontology of becoming which emphasizes a transient, ephemeral and emergent reality’ (Chia, 1995, p. 579) is probably the one to be blamed for the initial destabilisation of conventional organisational analysis. However, it is not only organisation theory that developed new perceptions of the organisation concept. What changed were also the social, economic and technological realities in which we analyse organising. For some scientific approaches, this may be a change that would be better ignored, as it makes it harder to clearly define the studied object. However, ethnography embraced these changes with open arms, so it can now develop its full potential. The work of Robert Cooper and those he inspired made an important contribution to ethnography-liberating de-reification of the concept of ‘organisation’ by raising important theoretical questions about its ontological foundations. Cooper develops a nuanced explanation of ‘the production of organization rather than organization of production’ (Cooper and Burrell, 1988, p. 106) without focusing much on the concept of organisation itself (Cooper, 1976, 1986). Instead, Cooper questions ‘the tradition in the social sciences that has made the individual organisation its object of study’, being himself interested in the beyond, because being ‘occupied with organizations is thus a way to stop thinking about organization’ (Spoelstra, 2005, p. 113). Cooper’s propositions are situated in a wider and currently more common intellectual trend that shifted the perception of organisations as ‘social facts’ to that of ‘ongoing and precarious accomplishments’ (Cooren et al., 2011, p. 1150). The important context to properly understand the shift from the theory of organisation to the theory of organising is a wider socio-economic transition with roots in the mid-twentieth century. Gilles Deleuze usefully captures it in the concept of ‘societies of control’ (Deleuze, 1992) built upon the Foucauldian notion of disciplinary societies. Disciplinary societies developed through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating at the outset of the twentieth century. In such societies, individuals were living in and passing from one to another closed environment, ‘each having its own laws: first, the family, then the school (“you are no longer in your family”); then the barracks (“you are no longer at school”); then the factory; from time to time the hospital’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 3). With the advancement of information technologies, this modern,

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enclosed, disciplinary control was replaced with more open societies, in which we may be ‘free’ to do whatever we want, but our behaviour is always modulated. While disciplinary control reached its limits – from the viewpoint of the accumulation of capital – societies of control offer new opportunities for the extraction of value within freedom under control. The emergence of new forms of control is interrelated with the emergence of new forms of capitalism, labour, and novel ways of organising. In this less bounded, more dynamic organisational reality, we observe a new wave of organisation ethnography that resonates with Warner’s claim for doing organisational ethnography nested in a broader context. This ethnographic turn could happen because ethnography is well-positioned to deal with such challenges methodology-wise, but it also is especially well-aligned with some theories that describe new organising and organisational forms, especially with the theoretical approaches that build upon such concepts as sensemaking, communication, and performance. In their research, ethnographers rely on these notions – in diverse forms – almost from the beginning, regardless of their research area and discipline. A prominent example of such an ethnographic-friendly stream of thinking in organisation science is the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) (Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Within the scope of the CCO, organisation is not perceived as a given but as emerging and – as in the very name of the concept – constituted by local acts of communicating. Therefore, CCO means that organisations ‘are constantly (re)produced, (re)incarnated, and (re)embodied in local interactions, and thus subject to change and renewal’ (Cooren et al., 2011, p. 1158). Communication should not be perceived as a mere component of organisation out of many; communication is a means by which organisations are established and sustained. This fundamental idea is developed within at least three explicit schools of CCO thinking: the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, the Four-Flows Model, and Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems (for an in-depth discussion on three CCO schools see Schoeneborn et al., 2014). Acknowledging the centrality of the communicative aspect of both organising and contemporary capitalism opens up our focal concept. This stream of thinking allows us to recognise new forms of labour and, as a result, new forms of organisations and organising that were previously left outside of the boundaries. As organisational forms are not given and real but rather emerging and constantly produced, ethnography became a way to inductively make sense of these forms. The American cultural anthropologist George Marcus refers to the economist Robert Solow’s observation that, ‘there is not some glorious theoretical synthesis of capitalism that you can write down in a book and follow. You have to grope your way’. Later, Marcus asks, ‘What does such groping mean

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for the ethnographer?’ (Marcus, 1995, p. 98). Thus, Marcus suggests that some anthropologists acknowledge that the problems they study are rarely located in one place, as they call for abandoning the practice of single location fieldwork and instead follow individuals, metaphors, stories, conflicts, ideas and things. Marcus calls this trend the emergence of ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (1995), a term and research strategy adopted by some other organisational ethnographers (Rouleau et al., 2014; Smets et al., 2014). Multi-sited research projects are designed around conjunctions, paths, chains, and for Marcus they are a ‘revival of sophisticated practice of constructivism … fertile practices of representation and investigation by the Russian avant-garde of momentous social change just before and after their revolution’ (Marcus, 1995, p. 105). The result of such constructivist-like ethnography would be a map of a cultural phenomenon – in our field it would be organisation/organising – that at the outset of a project is only loosely defined and tentatively outlined. In the field of organisation studies, our colleagues develop such new maps of organising, thus valuably broadening the core concept. Moreover, they sketch these maps with both types of tools: the empirical/ethnographic and the theoretical/ conceptual. Let us take an example of social media analysed by Armin Beverungen et al. (2015), in whose study companies like Facebook formally and directly employ only a fraction of the total number of people engaged in labour. Billions of users perform free immaterial work by posting and interacting digitally. According to Denis Mumby: Value within contemporary capitalism is tied less to factories and machinery and more to the ability of companies to communicatively create meaningful worlds within which social actors engage in processes of production and consumption. (Mumby, 2016, p. 13)

This shift in the nature of capitalist production has substantial consequences for organisation theory. Referring to Jodi Dean’s (2005) concept of communicative capitalism, Mumby argues for the inclusion of these processes of production into organisational analysis and viewing them not as happening ‘outside’ of organisations, because the production of value escapes ‘the walls of the corporation and enter everyday life through “immaterial labor”’ (Mumby, 2016, p. 3). Thinking about organisations today inevitably leads us to include consumers on the map that we construct, because it is almost impossible to separate consumption from production, as consumption becomes the act of co-production (Land and Taylor, 2010). For example, consumers become co-producers of companies and their brands, ‘discovering new uses, new meanings and new ideas to link to the brand; new synergistic combinations

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of the brand with other brands; and so forth’ (Gabriel et al., 2015, p. 633). As Yannis Gabriel elegantly concludes: It would not be an exaggeration to argue that the rise of the consumer and, relatedly, globalization, offshoring, financialization and dematerialization of production have all sounded the death knell of the traditional organization. (Gabriel et al., 2015, p. 632)

Since traditional organisations disappear both as an intellectual concept and empirical experience, researchers turn to methods that would allow them to grasp this newly emerging complex landscape. Ethnography turns out to be the well-equipped methodological tradition to tackle such a challenge. As our historical case of Warner reveals, even before the abovementioned changes, ethnography was not comfortably enclosed within organisational walls.

AS A WAY OF CONCLUDING: SEEDS THAT FELL ON GOOD SOIL In this chapter, we discussed the origins of organisational ethnography to show that even when ethnography was applied within the traditional vision of an organisation as an enclosed entity, it was significantly constrained methodologically, theoretically, and politically. Warner’s experience with the Hawthorne project presents how an ethnography informed research can threaten the existing power relations inside an organisation, and how such a threat could result in researchers’ self-censorship. In turn, the supplementary historical example of controversies around the publication of Small Town in Mass Society illustrated that ethnography is indeed especially prone to political pressures. Even when ethnography is applied in seemingly less restricted circumstances like a town and not an organisation, organisational actors (a university) may want to discipline ethnographers. These examples help us to reflect on the usual manipulation and power concealed in organisational research agendas, the always silenced voice of the subaltern (Spivak, 1994) and the institutional production of the meaning of ethics. We picked and described these stories as a warning, for consideration for all of us engaged in organisational ethnography. The second historical vignette from Hawthorne describes Warner’s decision to begin his own research project, independent from Elton Mayo and Western Electric, based in a small town in New England. We interpret this action like the previous one, as proof that ethnography and organisations make for a rather incongruous couple. Warner left the Western Electric Company project because of the specificity of ethnographic practice and the structural-functionalist theory that he applied. Both led him to study the

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socio-economic context of a local community broader than an organisation. As Marietta Baba (2009) convincingly argues, Warner’s research agenda is an example of early institutionalism. Ethnography favours openness, a holistic approach, and political autonomy, which is why we, as organisational ethnographers, enthusiastically observe and support advancements in the theoretical conceptualisation of organising. The above-described Communicative Constitution of Organization approach is a prominent example of such recent developments. It usefully facilitates ethnographic attempts of mapping the ‘organising beyond organisation’ by grounding them in theory. By shaking up the concept of organisation, these and other new approaches create a favourable theoretical climate for the application of ethnography. This observation is crucial for a better understanding of the ‘ethnographic turn’. The seeds sowed by early organisational ethnographers have been carefully nurtured for several decades by several generations of organisational ethnographers to finally flourish.

NOTES 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

The use of the word ‘Murngin’ to call the group was criticised in a review of Lloyd Warner’s work. And so, according to T. T. Webb, a missionary quoted by W. E. Lawrence and G. P. Murdock (1949), ‘“Murngin” is only the name of one totemic union or phratry. According to the current terminology, the group that Lloyd Warner studied is called Yolngu, which in the local vernacular means “man”’ (Keen, 1999). In the first edition of the monograph (Warner, 1937), Mahkarola’s tale was placed in an annex. Besides moving the part to the main text, Warner reduced the number of sections depicting technical and terminological material on kinship. These plants were located in Cicero, on the outskirts of Chicago, and they mainly manufactured telephones and components. Warner’s project resulted in the publication of the Yankee Study series of monographs, published before the Vidich and Bensman book, which also resulted in disturbances for the local community. We believe that this case is best described not in academic journals but a novel titled The Point of No Return by John P. Marquand (1949), a fiction writer who used to live in Newburyport when Warner and his team conducting their research. Warner understood disintegration not only as the fact that a relatively low share of inhabitants were families that had settled there long ago but also as something manifested in the high criminality in Cicero. Noteworthy, in the 1920s Cicero became the headquarters of Al Capone, from where he led his criminal organisation in Chicago (Iorizzo, 2003). The research team, composed primarily of Lloyd Warner’s students, consisted of thirty people in total. The most intense period was in the years 1930–1934, although research activities were not limited only to those four years.

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Van Maanen, J. (1991) ‘The smile factory: Work at Disneyland’, in P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, J. Martin, C. C. Lundberg, and M. Reis Louis (eds.), Reframing organizational culture. London: Sage, 58–76. Vidich, A. J. and J. Bensman (2000) Small town in mass society: Class, power, and religion in a rural community (Revised edition). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Warner, W. L. (1937) A black civilization: A social study of an Australian tribe. New York: Harper & Bros. Warner, W. L. (1958) A black civilization: A social study of an Australian tribe. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Warner, W. L. (1962) American life: Dream and reality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Warner, M. (1988) W. Lloyd Warner, Social Anthropologist. New York: Publishing Center for Cultural Resources. Warner, W. L. and J. O. Low (1947) The social system of the modern factory. The strike: A social analysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Warner, W. L. and P. S. Lunt (1941) The social life of a modern community, vol. 1. Yankee City series. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Yanow, D. (2009) ‘Organizational ethnography and methodological angst: Myths and challenges in the field’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 4(2): 186–99.

13. Learning to see the wood through the trees as a PhD ethnographer Sarah Bloomfield At Christmas this year I noticed that during the fun and frolics of the festive season not one of my extended family asked me how my PhD is going, which is very unlike them. I started my Doctorate nearly four and a half years ago and I believe my family’s silence was caused by the fact that they didn’t want to embarrass me about how long it is all taking. How could I possibly be in my fifth year without any output (apart from an MRes at the end of the first year)? What have I been doing with all that time? Even if they didn’t say as such, that is what I felt them thinking. And I guess that is what I am also feeling. Many of my relatives are journalists who churn out thousands of words per week. I try to reassure myself that an ethnography such as mine involves not only much more time spent in the field but also ‘greater depth of thought’ and a ‘more rigorously self-critical approach’ when compared to journalism (Brewer, 2000, p. 16). My aim for this chapter is to reflect on this in relation to my own experience of conducting an ethnography for my PhD. My Doctoral research focuses on how organizational paradox (Smith and Lewis, 2011) is experienced. Due to perpetually competing and intertwined organizational objectives within the organization where I conducted my ethnographic field work there is not just one ‘right’ outcome of their work, nor one ‘right’ way to proceed. I now realize that is the same with my PhD. There is not just one ‘right’ contribution to be demonstrated in my thesis, nor one ‘right’ way to get there. Through my ethnography I have found one path through the trees that has allowed me to see the wood from one perspective. But it is not the only path I could have taken. And my view of the wood is not the only view of the wood that can be seen. There are many different paths that would have enabled me to see the wood in many different ways. The view from above is very different from the view from below or the view from the side. This chapter is about my path. And my wood.

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MY PATH You Don’t Need to be Sexy You don’t need to be sexy: you can be mundane. (Vince, 2016)

I am not sure I will ever forget being told by my Supervisor that I didn’t need to be sexy. But I look back on it now as a starting point on my ethnographic journey. I knew I wanted to study the experience of competing organizational objectives, and I believed that an ethnography would be the best way to do that. We had thought, however, that it would be best to do that in a ‘sexy’ context so that my work would stand out. My Supervisor had just come back from a conference when he had heard Mark De Rond talk about his experiences with the medical team in Camp Bastian (De Rond and Lok, 2016): that research certainly stands out. And one of my PhD peers was learning how to rescue people trapped under buildings following earthquakes during her ethnography, training with a search and rescue volunteer organization (Weller, 2017). But then I found a forestry organization steeped in organizational paradox which includes conflicting objectives to cut down trees whilst also protecting the wildlife living amongst those trees. And the head office is located close to where I live with my family. So my Supervisor and I decided that doing ethnography in the ‘everyday’ (Ybema et al., 2009) might actually result in a stronger contribution. It has also given me access to lots of tree related metaphors to use in my writing! Though perhaps not that ‘sexy’, the fieldwork wasn’t ‘mundane’ either. My time with the organization was enjoyable and rewarding, and I got to spend time outside in beautiful locations. Having worked for many years in industry before my PhD, I was confident enough to get what I felt I needed from the experience. I decided not to take on a fixed role within the organization, believing that would limit my exposure to what I wanted to research. Instead I just invited myself to meetings and asked for interviews with anyone and everyone who seemed relevant and who I could physically get to meet. To achieve that I had to be quite brave and thick skinned at times, but I think my previous experiences of the world of work probably made that easier for me. I was brought into the organization by the CEO who I knew as a neighbour of mine. The fact that I knew the CEO would have had an obvious impact on my data when known by my participants (and hence something I had to reflect on when analysing my data), but being brought into the organization by the CEO also enabled me great access. There was nothing stopping me visiting anyone or anything. My age, gender and perceived academic standing (lowly PhD student) will have impacted on all of my relationships within the organization (something I also reflect on in my analysis). I was lucky, however,

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that the impact was a positive one with the CEO’s PA who was often a key additional gatekeeper for getting access within the organization. I ended up conducting 55 interviews, attending 40 meetings, work shadowing for 8 days, observing 3 days of training, making 2 further extended visits to sites and collating numerous documents. Though I wasn’t keen to leave the field I was told by academics that was ‘enough’ in terms of data. And I certainly have a lot of data: one of the ‘benefits’ of doing ethnography I guess (I write ‘benefits’ in inverted commas because having so much can sometimes leave me feeling like I am drowning in data). At times I worry there will be a negative academic judgement on my study as I didn’t take on a work role as others have done (e.g. Kenny, 2012; Kondo, 1990; Watson, 2001; Weller, 2017): I didn’t get the full embodied experience of participant observation within my ethnography. I even sometimes question why I am calling it an ‘ethnography’ and not a ‘case study’ if I was only observing and not actively participating in the setting. Like my participants who can only do the best they can do given the paradoxes they face in their organization, however, I believe my approach was probably the most suitable given what I wanted to achieve within the constraints of my PhD. Though I wasn’t actively participating in a work role I certainly wasn’t faceless within the organization. I was known and I had a personality there. I was a bit like the shopkeeper in the 1970s UK children’s TV programme Mr Benn1 who ‘as if by magic’ (Muffett, 2014) would suddenly appear: ‘me again!’. Journeying Qualitative researchers are always thinking, reflecting, learning and evolving – we do not reach a point where we have nothing more to learn. We are journeying, not arriving! (Braun and Clarke, 2019, p. 592; italics in the original)

In the qualitative methodology literature there is often reference to reaching a saturation point (e.g. Suddaby, 2006), when you find you are no longer generating useful information in the field. I never felt I reached that point. I am fascinated by the organization where I conducted my study and I would have liked to stay and keep on learning about it and from it. Similarly, with analysis and interpretation of data: is there a saturation point when you no longer learn anything more from your data? I certainly believe there is much more I could do with, and find from, my data. During the analysis I have also often gone off on many tangents and my Supervisors have had to gently steer me back onto more appropriate paths. I like to think, however, that all that ‘barking up wrong trees’ has actually just been part of the learning experience (which is what a PhD is after all isn’t it?). I have also delved into lots of different literatures (my Endnote library is testament to that) but I still wish that I had had time to

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read more and read more deeply. I have to accept, however, that, even though it will take 5 years in total, I won’t have the time to do everything I want to do during my PhD journey. I am now officially ‘writing up’. But I am also still analysing, interpreting, reading, attending conferences … Even when I am not actually doing any of those things I am still working on my PhD. It is always whirring around in the back of my mind. But, as my Supervisors often remind me, that whirring is important to enable creative interpretation. I cannot rush it. I need to give my qualitative data ‘time and space to breathe’ (Braun, 2020). It is only then that I will be able to see my wood through the trees. As well as giving myself time to enable creative insight and to generate the best I can from my Doctoral studies however, I do also have to finish. I did have to leave the field, and I do have to write up my study into a thesis document, due to the enforced time limit of the PhD. I often hear senior academics say how they have ‘been working on papers for years and years’. With a PhD we cannot do that. We do need to reach a point. But I realize now that does not mean it is an endpoint. There is still more that I can read: after. There is still more analysis I can do: after. I have been told on several occasions that it isn’t until say 10 years after the PhD that you realize what you have in your data. I now recognize that the written thesis and the viva are clarifying where I have got to at that point in time. Which for me means next September. That doesn’t mean that I won’t still be able to do more with my data in the future. But hopefully, having written up and submitted my thesis, it will mean that elephant will have left the room next Christmas. Method as Mystery Though the 18 months of fieldwork was reasonably straightforward, the simultaneous data analysis, and many months of wrestling with my data since leaving the field have not followed such a clear and well-marked path. When I wrote my transfer2 document it all seemed so simple: Simultaneous data collection and analysis will be employed throughout the research process (Suddaby, 2006). This will allow emergent themes to be pursued as the research project unfolds (Charmaz, 2008). The aim is to inductively construct abstract categories that synthesize and explain the social processes uncovered within the data. (Extract from own transfer document)

What I did not explain was how the ‘emergent themes’ would arise. They are doing so. Eventually. But they didn’t simply jump out at me from the data.

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I worked with my Supervisors to create them. And it is taking a lot of effort on all our parts. [Themes] reflect considerable analytic ‘work,’ and are actively created by the researcher at the intersection of data, analytic process and subjectivity. Themes do not passively emerge from either data or coding; they are not ‘in’ the data, waiting to be identified and retrieved by the researcher. Themes are creative and interpretive stories about the data, produced at the intersection of the researcher’s theoretical assumptions, their analytic resources and skill, and the data themselves. (Braun and Clarke, 2019, p. 594; italics in the original)

When I read empirical papers based on qualitative research it often feels like the analysis was ‘easy’ and ‘linear’. It certainly doesn’t feel that way for me. It is taking a very long time. And a lot of headspace. It has been messy and challenging, but also incredibly enjoyable. I would often say to my Supervisors ‘Am I just being stupid that I can’t get this?’. But when my repeated reading of the data, jumbled doodling in my notebooks, and challenging discussions with my Supervisors, enable insight from the data, it gives me unbridled satisfaction. Another potential elephant in the room, this time within academic circles, concerns my use of the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. Before I started my field work I confidently wrote: Coding will take place within the NVivo software environment. As much as possible coding will be done using verbs rather than nouns to keep the focus process based (Charmaz, 2008). After establishing which codes are appearing most frequently, and/or seem to be most significant, I will code in a more focused manner (Charmaz, 2008). I will group and select codes into categories that are the most pertinent to my research, which will help keep the process manageable. These focused codes will then be evaluated to determine which are the most relevant to explain or understand the micro processes related to paradoxical tensions. The most relevant will then be used to produce tentative theoretical categories, which will be re-tested within the continuing data collection (Charmaz, 2008). In this way there will be a progression from a large number of codes, through categories and sub-categories, to themes and issues that are available for theory building. (Extract from own transfer document)

I wish it had been that simple! I did transcribe all my interviews, upload them onto NVivo, and rigorously code them. I also typed into my laptop real time what was said and done during meetings and uploaded that data to NVivo and similarly coded. To me, however, NVivo became a filing system where I could easily retrieve data using the codes I had generated either to re-read similar content, or to more easily find quotes. I would not say that I analysed within the NVivo environment. I remember being told by a senior academic during my Masters in Research programme that we should use NVivo (even though senior aca-

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demics usually don’t) because, as PhD students, we need ‘to know the skeleton before we can draw a body’. I did try to learn the skeleton; however, personally I felt it hindered rather than helped the creative process. For me the interpretation had to take place outside of the software environment, as I doodled in my notebook, thought through as I went to sleep, and discussed with my Supervisors and others. ‘But what actually have I done?’ I asked my Supervisors more than once as I was wrestling with how I was going to write my methodology section. I felt I needed a label such as the ‘Gioia’ method or ‘Grounded Theory’ (Gehman et al., 2018), or perhaps a ‘Braun and Clarke reflexive thematic analysis’ approach (Braun et al., 2018). As I reflect on what I have done, however, I realize that my method of data analysis does not tie in exactly within anything I have read.

MYSTERY AS METHOD How was I to make the transition from pure description of the minutiae of everyday life, if even that was possible, to some more general observation, comment, interpretation, generalization, theory, conceptual framework my craft – and my advisors – required of me? (Kunda, 2013, p. 14)

My theoretical lens has always been, and still is, organizational paradox. In the early days of data analysis I would try and link what I was observing in my data with something I had read in the literature. As I tried to develop my findings, however, my Supervisors kept reminding me to focus instead on what was in the data. Care must be taken to avoid forcing interpretation of the data into their [previous theory] mould; any attempt simply to spot instances of concepts known from the literature should be avoided. Instead [previous theory] must be deployed as resources tentatively in order to make sense of the data. This requires the exercise of analytic nerve, tolerating uncertainty and ambiguity in one’s interpretations, and resisting the temptation to rush to determinate conclusions. (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 173; italics in the original)

As mentioned above, I had worked for many years before joining academia. Though I sometimes feel it is deemed the ‘wrong’ way to go about data analysis, it was impossible for me not to compare what I witnessed in the field with my own personal previous experiences. Like Gideon Kunda, I automatically explored ‘similarities and, more importantly, differences between my life and the lives I observed’ (Kunda, 2013, p. 19). It was that comparison that allowed me to pull out what I found particularly unusual, surprising, or counterintuitive, in the setting (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019): what Mats Alvesson and Dan

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Kärreman (2007) might call ‘breakdowns’. As Karl Weick wrote, ‘Whenever one reacts with the feeling that’s interesting, that reaction is a clue that current experience has been tested against past experience, and the past understanding has been found inadequate’ (Weick, 1989, p. 525; italics in the original). I would turn up to Supervisions with lists of what I found ‘odd’ to see if my Supervisors found them ‘odd’ too. My Supervisors obviously know the academic literature much better than me so they could also help with whether the ‘odd’ in the context was also ‘interesting’ from an academic perspective. As an example, I kept wrestling with the fact that nothing much seemed to get done in meetings, nothing seemed to get decided, and I struggled to see the formal leadership doing anything. Similarly I kept coming back to the fact that the ecologists were prepared to sign the form to cut down the tree where the birds they were protecting were nesting: how did they do that and still stay positive about what they were doing? I used a form of ‘mystery as method’, hence I borrowed the title for this sub-section from the sub-title of Alvesson and Kärreman’s (2011) book on qualitative research methods. The resolutions to these mysteries (which I discuss below) were not evident just from looking at the data: they are my interpretations of the data. Theorizing has been an iterative process in which I have used ideas to make sense of data, and used data to change or develop ideas (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019). I have gone back and forth between data and ideas and then gone ‘beyond the data to develop ideas that will illuminate them’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 168). The creative moment has been when data collected from the field have ‘become meaningful beyond themselves’ (Kunda, 2013, p. 18). As noted, I used as my starting point what I saw as interesting based on my previous working experience. I was really surprised therefore when I recently heard that two senior academics had, independently, said that prior work experience outside of academia is not relevant, in fact could be a negative, when it comes to securing an academic role. I struggle to understand that, and it made me question whether the way I have gone about my data analysis is ‘wrong’ and/or ‘unacademic’. As long as I am reflexive in what I do and have done, does prior work experience not serve as good a starting point as any in trying to understand the dynamics within the organization? I hope so as it would not be possible for me to leave all the influences of my past behind me, because they influence what I see and how I think today. You Are Not Alone As well as having the benefit of more time in the day to conduct the fieldwork and analysis compared to later on in academic life (when you also have a full-time day academic job to contend with) to me one of the great benefits of doing an ethnography as part of a PhD programme has been that I have

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formal Supervisors in place. Interpreting the data to develop new and interesting insights has been hard enough, but how much harder would it have been without my Supervisors? At the outset I naively hoped my Supervisors would read through my data and come up with more interesting insight than I had. Unfortunately for me, however, they obviously did not have the time or inclination to do that. Working together with my Supervisors has not been about trying to gain a better understanding of the data, or a consensus on meaning, instead it has proved an invaluable aid to developing ‘a richer more nuanced reading of the data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2019, p. 594) through endless (sometimes groundhog-day-like) discussions in supervisions. I used to feel bad that ahead of each supervision I would only send findings sections to be used as a basis for our discussion, rather than more complete papers including discussion sections linked back to literature reviews. I realize, however, that I have been taking what Milena Popova describes as an ‘inside out’ approach (Popova, 2019). I need to finalize the data sections before I can write the literature review and discussion sections side-by-side (followed by the conclusion and introduction side by side). Recognizing this ‘inside out’ approach as an accepted way (at least by Popova) of writing makes me feel a bit better, even if it does leave my Supervisors and me having to trust it will all come together in the end. My Supervisors haven’t been in the field, they don’t know the data like I do, but they can see it from an outsider’s perspective and hence help me to find my path and see my wood. Similarly they don’t come from the same philosophical perspective as me. When I stereotype to the extreme I say that one is a philosopher, one is a psychoanalyst, and I am an engineer. But what interesting conversations we have given our different perspectives and views on the world! As my data analysis has progressed and my findings sections have come together, my Supervisors have also helped link my ideas to those of others through their enhanced understanding of the academic literature. As insights started to take shape from our interpretive analysis of the data, my Supervisors would point to other literatures that might be relevant. And sometimes they have been, and sometimes they haven’t (hence my large Endnote library). Together, however, we have now managed to focus in on relevant literatures where my findings will contribute so I can start writing that literature review: I would have written and re-written so many literature reviews if I hadn’t waited until my findings were nearly finalized. My Supervisors have also always encouraged me to attend conferences and present my work. I now recognize the benefit that has given me. Writing for conferences has boosted my analysis as the act of writing itself has been a method of analysis and interpretation, something Kunda compares to ‘our quantitative colleagues repeatedly running data through statistical packages’

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(Kunda, 2013, p. 18). Attending conferences has also resulted in three work-in-progress papers that I can build on for my paper-based thesis, and the exposure has enabled invaluable feedback from others. At first I worried about presenting ‘work-in-progress’ ideas, but I now see that can actually be a benefit. I feel that, particularly as a PhD candidate, you don’t get shot down as aggressively when you present ‘what you are finding’ rather than ‘what you have found’. And being an ethnography you can always steer any awkward conversations away from theory back to the data where your feet are by far the most firmly planted in the ground.

MY WOOD I am reminded by my Supervisors every time we meet that I need to make both theoretical and practical contributions from my PhD. Using my analogy above, my contributions will be my ‘wood’. But how is my wood different from that of my travel journalist relatives? They would have described their wood (where it is, what it looks like, how it feels to be in it, what you could do within it …) in five hours. I am still struggling to describe mine after nearly five years! What Am I Looking For? I was extremely lucky to have some of my interview transcripts analysed by a group of Masters in Research students as part of one of their qualitative research methods sessions. I couldn’t believe at the time how many different interpretations could be made from the same data set. An equivalent thing had happened, however, when I had looked at someone else’s data as a participant on the same course the year before. I guess I thought at the time that it was just because we were all students and didn’t know what we were doing. I now realize, however, that we were all just looking at the same wood from different perspectives depending on where our own interests and experience lay. The same thing happened in my Transfer exam: where I saw ‘organizational paradox’ my examiner saw ‘identity’. And one of my Supervisors still sees ‘the trees as the leaders’ in the organization (something that is still a very long way from my comfort zone). Are there an infinite number of ways that one could look at the same wood? I was taught early on in my PhD journey that it is fine, and in fact expected, that the research question will change as a qualitative study progresses. As Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson write, ‘it is frequently well into the process of inquiry that one discovers what the research is really about, and occasionally it turns out to be about something rather different from the initial

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foreshadowed problems’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 168; italics in the original). To quote John Van Maanen: In practice, theory choices (the rabbits we pull out of our hats) rest as much on taste as on fit. And taste in ethnography as elsewhere, results from what is no doubt a complex interaction involving ethnographers, their mentors, their readings, their disciplinary orientations, their colleagues, their students, their subjects, their friends, their critics and their readers (increasingly their subjects too). (Van Maanen, 2011, p. 223)

My interests have always been on the experience of organizational paradox (when there is no ‘right’ way to do things). I did not know at the outset, however, that my interest in paradox would take me in such unexpected directions. How Am I Looking? I have ended up studying the dynamics between the organization and its members in the context of organizational paradox. Though my theoretical lens of paradox has always been clear to me, my ontological and epistemological positioning have proved much less easy to pin down. That surprises and troubles me. As does the fact that one of my Supervisors has been telling me I am taking a social constructionist approach, whilst the other says I am taking a positivist approach. Have I not been taught those are polar opposites? I felt particularly perturbed by the positivist label because, as Hammersley and Atkinson note, ‘the term “positivism” has become little more than a term of abuse among social scientists’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 5). Why would my Supervisor wish to abuse me in such a way? Additionally, are we not all taught ontology and epistemology at the start of our PhD journeys, and told that we need to be explicit about our approaches in our work? I am beginning to wonder if the philosophical discussions are not the ‘exact science’ I thought I had been taught. Does it depend, as one of my Supervisors once said, on what we have read? I can certainly understand now why my Supervisors are keen that I say ‘I am taking’ an approach, rather than ‘I am’ a positivist/pragmatist/ social constructionist etc. Maybe I do not need to resolve this philosophical discussion and I can hold the tension as my participants hold the tensions resulting from the organizational paradox they experience. As one of my Supervisors said during a dis-

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cussion about my confusion and the feeling that I needed to resolve it ahead of writing this chapter: Part of the opportunity in this chapter is to stay confused. I think really this is the beauty of doing it. Any reflexivity in relation to this, as this discussion demonstrates, only elaborates the confusion between different ways of understanding this because there is no single way of understanding it. How you position yourself methodologically in the organization studies area is often a compromise and intersection of different ways of thinking. (Vince, 2020)

My Trees Before I could see my ‘wood’ I need to see my ‘trees’ through a process that Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg (2018) might call ‘inductive ethnography’. One particular ‘tree’ I am presently working with is pride, which I found as a reoccurring element within my data. I know from a simple NVivo search that many of my respondents expressed pride during their interviews: ‘We’re all proud of what we deliver’, ‘I’m proud of some of the woodlands I’ve planted’, ‘I’m incredibly proud to be a wildlife ranger for the organization’. Being reflective, however, is there a chance they were expressing pride for an ulterior motive within the interview situation? Did they feel they needed to express pride for some reason? Alvesson and Kärreman go as far as to say ‘when considering statements of research subjects – whether in interview or through observation – we can see these not just as possibly revealing the meanings of those studied (or facts about their organizations) but as political action, moral storytelling, identity work, script application, and so forth’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007, p. 1269). Both my transfer examiner, and one of my early Supervisors, expressed strong reservations about the ability to identify emotions (such as pride) within academic research. I realize therefore that I need to go beyond just what the respondents say during their interviews if I am to focus in on pride within a theme. Though I had heard my respondents stating emotions related to pride in their interviews, and I could read it in the transcripts, I also felt I knew that the emotion was there from my own experiences in the field. For example, the fact that members still wore the organization’s clothing even though they didn’t have to (something I continuously noted in my reflective log) on days away from their regular workplace could have been an expression of pride towards the organization. Again, however, there could also be an explanation that they felt they needed to dress that way for other reasons. To me, ‘pride’ was also expressed implicitly during a particular day out with a wildlife ranger: a day that ended with me being sick on the side of the road from lack of food or water for hours. I arrived at the ranger’s home well before sunrise (noting my own slight anxiety in my reflective journey that it was dark,

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I was in the middle of a forest, and I had never met the guy before). I was asked to get in his truck and whilst he went off to get his gun and dogs (with me at this point surprisingly feeling less anxious!) he gave me a copy of a newspaper article to read based on him and his role (was this not him expressing pride?). We then headed out on a deer stalking mission.3 Our first port of call was a ‘high seat’,4 where the ranger sat for an hour looking out across open ground during sunrise (and I had a little snooze underneath beside his dog) but no deer came into sight. We then drove to another wood where he thought he might find deer browsing. And we stalked on foot. The fact that there were no deer to be found (apart from one that sped away as we got too close before he spotted it) could be taken as a sign of his good management of the deer population, but the ranger obviously did not want to leave it at that. He wanted to find a deer to shoot. So we kept walking. And walking. And walking. Eventually it became too late in the day (deer would be hidden, and too many people would be about to take a shot) so we headed back to his truck. Just as we drove off a beautiful stag came into view. And though he had said at the start of the day that he was actually after female deer at this time of the year, he lined up his sights from within the truck, and then jumped out and disappeared into the undergrowth when it moved away. The ranger managed to shoot the stag and I stayed by his side as he took out its insides by the side of the road, and as he changed the deer from a beautiful stag to productive venison back at the deer larder.5 The ranger sent me home with a pair of antlers as a memory of the experience. Maybe the ranger was just trying to prove his abilities, but to me what I felt from his actions during our morning together was extreme pride in what he does for the organization. Rather than discount this data from our morning together as contaminated due to changes in his behaviour due to my presence, I used that presumed change in behaviour as additional data. As Hammersley and Atkinson write, ‘data in themselves cannot be valid or invalid: this is only true in reference to the inferences drawn from them’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 189). The authors go on to say, ‘The point is that ethnographers must try continually to be aware of how their presence may have shaped the data and what the implications of this may be for the analysis’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 189). ‘How people respond to the presence of the researcher may be as informative as how they react to other situations’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 17). Though I never felt the discomfort of being sick on the side of the road again, I did have other experiences where I felt uncomfortable. Reflecting again I wonder if that discomfort was a result of other participants expressing their pride. For instance, one day when out with a forester I was repeatedly encouraged to have a go at driving a ‘forwarder’ (a massive vehicle that moves cut trees around). Surely my doing that broke health and safety rules from both my university and the organization where I was conducting my ethnography.

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But did I have a choice? Why not? Similarly I felt uncomfortable stroking an endangered dormouse during an afternoon out counting the number of mice nesting in boxes set up by a ranger. Why was I being asked to do these things that made me feel uncomfortable? The fact that I found ‘pride’ in many different instances served as a kind of triangulation (Flick, 2007) of its presence in the data, in that it gave me a means of ‘checking inferences drawn from one type of data source by comparing with data from another’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019, p. 195). The fact that I found ‘pride’ within the organization, however, is not going to get me a PhD, particularly given the type of organization I am working with. I need to go beyond the inductive logic that found ‘pride’ into a more creative interpretation of my data and I am doing that based on what I found counterintuitive. It surprises me for instance that, given the paradoxes faced by the organization, I have found ‘pride’ but not ‘guilt’ within my empirical material. My thematic analysis is therefore now going beyond the ‘semantic content’ of the data – e.g. the repetition of pride – and starting ‘to identify or examine the underlying ideas, assumptions, and conceptualizations – and ideologies – that are theorized as shaping or informing the semantic content of the data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 83; italics in the original). I am trying to move from the conceptions of my informants to my own interpretation of the situation. I am hopeful that by the employment of interpretive ethnographic techniques (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2018) I will be able to generate more interesting, insightful and resonant interpretations of what is happening within the organization, beyond just that people feel and express pride. Which hopefully will help to get me that PhD! So What? What my ‘wood’ looks like is something I am not yet able to write about as it is not yet fully visible, particularly within the ‘pride’ paper. I am hoping, however, that there will be soon be several ‘Bloomfield et al.’ papers where you will be able read all about it.6 I have for instance found other ‘trees’ (like pride) expressed repeatedly within my data, such as ‘balance’, ‘judgement’, and ‘compromise’. I went round and round in circles trying to understand their relevance but I now see these as informal internal processes accepted by all within the organization. I am toying with an interpretation of the processes as representing a moral order within the organization within a theme I am presently calling ‘effort equates to good’ to accompany one of ‘bad is not bad’. As another example, my discomfort about leadership appearing invisible within the organization has resulted in a counterintuitive theme related to the ‘distribution of not knowing’. And the struggle to understand the ecologists allowing the trees to be cut down has resulted in me challenging the idea that values are

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static ‘conceptions of the desirable’ (Gecas, 2008) and are instead much more dynamic in nature. Convincing the reader of my creative interpretations, my wood, is not going to be as easy as telling them about my trees. But I guess a PhD isn’t meant to be easy. The output of my research is going to have to answer that ‘so what?’ question. What is interesting in what I have found out, and how will it be used? One thing that I recognize is that the output of my research will be stories that bring my wood alive, rather than facts about a specific group of trees that my travel journalist relatives might write. My contribution will not be validated knowledge but rather ‘the suggestion of relationships and connections that had not previously been suspected’ (Weick, 1989, p. 524). Having said that, I am still hoping to build theory that will have relevance outside of my particular wood, whereas the output from my travel journalist relatives (and the consultants who have come and gone during my time with the organization) is only ever going to be relevant to that specific location. I hope that my stories about the dynamic between the organization and its members will have relevance elsewhere, with the theoretical insights, rather than the empirical data, being what is transferable (Watson, 2001; Yin, 1984). But am I allowed to say that as someone with social constructionist tendencies? I have been working on this for five years, so I really do hope that my implications for practice will extend beyond this particular organization.

ADVICE TO OTHER PHD TRAVELLERS I have been asked to end this chapter with some reflections to pass on to other PhD students setting out on their own ethnographic journey. I hope the ideas I provide below might be useful. Be Prepared To Get Lost I remember an academic telling me at the start of my ethnography that the most important thing was to get the PhD done as quickly as possible. I now completely disagree. To me the important thing is to spend as long as possible, to get as deep into the wood as possible, and to get lost. I believe that getting lost amongst the data is all part of the learning experience and will enable a much more creative output in the end. Accept That There Is No Map During my ethnography I attended a couple of ethnography symposiums but came away disappointed that, although I had heard about lots of ‘sexy’ contexts, I had not learnt how to build theory from fieldwork. I now recognize that

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is because there is no textbook way to do it. There is no map. The experience and methods will be different for each of us, and we need to be prepared to find our own way. Help Your Supervisors To Hold Your Hand Though your Supervisors have years of experience of research they have not been part of your fieldwork. Use the fact that your Supervisors don’t know your data like you do to give you confidence in discussions with them. And then use the fact that your Supervisors don’t know your data like you do as an additional tool to help you see that data from a different perspective. Find a way to work with your Supervisors to enable them to hold your hand, so you don’t feel alone, and to help you see your wood through your trees. Good luck. And enjoy!

NOTES 1. More information can be found out about the BBC children’s TV programme Mr Benn from the following Wikipedia entry: https://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​wiki/​Mr​ _Benn. 2. In other universities, and other countries, this might be called something else such as upgrade, confirmation, final seminar, opening of the dissertation process … 3. There are no longer any predators for deer in the UK, hence the need for the deer population to be maintained by continual culling, which also enables trees saplings to grow without being destroyed by over-grazing. 4. The high seat is a seat raised high off the ground to give good visibility and enable a clear line of sight for shooting. 5. The deer larder is where the carcass is prepared and hung ready for collection by the meat supplier. 6. I recognize, however, the additional challenges expressed in academic circles about getting papers published based on ethnographic work (e.g. Kunda, 2013; Watson, 2011): something I will need to worry about later!

REFERENCES Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D. (2007) ‘Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development’, Academy of Management Review, 32(4): 1265–81. Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D. (2011) Qualitative research and theory development: Mystery as method. London: Sage. Alvesson, M. and Sköldberg, K. (2018) Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research (3rd edition). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Braun, V. (2020) ‘Keynote presentation: The ebbs and flows of (a) qualitative research(er)’. Paper presented at the Sixth Annual Qualitative Research Symposium

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(Tick Tock: Unpacking Temporal Aspects of Qualitative Inquiry), University of Bath. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2): 77–101. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2019) ‘Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4): 589–97. Braun, V., Clarke, V., Hayfield, N. and Terry, G. (2018) ‘Thematic analysis’, in P. Liamputtong (ed.), Handbook of research methods in health social sciences. Singapore: Springer, 843–60. Brewer, J. (2000) Ethnography. Buckingham: Open University Press. Charmaz, K. (2008) ‘Grounded theory as an emergent method’, in S. N. Hesse-Biber and P. Leavy (eds.), Handbook of emergent methods. New York: Guilford Press, 155–72. De Rond, M. and Lok, J. (2016) ‘Some things can never be unseen: The role of context in psychological injury at war’, Academy of Management Journal, 59(6): 1965–93. Flick, U. (2007) ‘Concepts of triangulation’, in U. Flick, Managing quality in qualitative research. London: Sage. Gecas, V. (2008) ‘The ebb and flow of sociological interest in values’, Sociological Forum, 23(2): 344–50. Gehman, J., Glaser, V. L., Eisenhardt, K. M., Gioia, D., Langley, A. and Corley, K. G. (2018) ‘Finding theory–method fit: A comparison of three qualitative approaches to theory building’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 27(3): 284–300. Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (2019) Ethnography principles in practice (4th edition). Abingdon: Routledge. Kenny, K. (2012) ‘“Someone big and important”: Identification and affect in an international development organization’, Organization Studies, 33(9): 1175–93. Kondo, D. K. (1990) Crafting selves: Power, gender and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kunda, G. (2013) ‘Reflections on becoming an ethnographer’, Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 2(1): 4–22. Muffett, T. (2014) ‘As if by magic, Mr Benn reappears’. https://​www​.bbc​.co​.uk/​news/​ av/​entertainment​-arts​-27536659/​as​-if​-by​-magic​-mr​-benn​-reappears. Popova, M. (2019) ‘Writing the thesis from the middle’. https://​patthomson​.net/​2019/​ 10/​07/​writing​-the​-thesis​-from​-the​-middle/​. Smith, W. K. and Lewis, M. W. (2011) ‘Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing’, Academy of Management Review, 36(2): 381–403. Suddaby, R. (2006) ‘From the Editors: What grounded theory is not’, Academy of Management Journal, 49(4): 633–42. Van Maanen, J. (2011) ‘Ethnography as work: Some rules of engagement’, Journal of Management Studies, 48(1): 218–34. Vince, R. (2016, 13 June) [Supervision discussion]. Vince, R. (2020, 20 January) [Supervision discussion]. Watson, T. J. (2001) In search of management: Culture, chaos and control in managerial work. London: Thomson Learning. Watson, T. J. (2011) ‘Ethnography, reality, and truth: The vital need for studies of “how things work” in organizations and management’, Journal of Management Studies, 48(1): 202–17. Weick, K. E. (1989) ‘Theory construction as disciplined imagination’, Academy of Management Review, 14(4): 516–31.

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Weller, S. (2017) ‘Searching and rescuing selves: An ethnographic study of volunteer identities’. PhD dissertation, University of Bath. Ybema, S., Yanow, D., Wels, H. and Kamsteeg, F. (eds.) (2009) Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexities of everyday life. London: Sage. Yin, R. K. (1984) Case study research: Design and methods (5th edition). London: Sage.

Index vignettes in organizational research 7, 61, 67–9

academic culture 92, 105, 107 Academy of Management Learning & Education (2007) 71 Adams, G. 121 Adams, S. 120 Al-Amoudi, I. 172 Alvesson, M. 113, 205, 206, 210 Among Wolves (2018) 42 Anderson, L. 62–4 Angrosino, M. 82 An Italian Lady Goes to the Bronx (2007) 47 anthropological tradition 65 anthropologists 1, 179 anthropology of work 45, 60, 64, 92, 178–96 archetypal images of kings and heroes 151–2 myths and folk tales 156–7 Armin Beverungen, A. 194 Atkinson, P. 208, 209, 211 authentic anthropologists 179 autoethnography 59–61, 71 anthropological tradition 65 archetypal images see archetypal images autoethnographic vignettes see vignettes cultures 154 debates 62–3 defined 7, 65 education research 153 epistemological and political implications 62–3 left-leaning objectives 63 literature 151–2 marginality 70 personal subjective account 153 rise of 64–6 story-telling 62, 63 theory 154–5

Baba, M. 180, 192, 196 Bakhtin, M. 46, 120 Barley, N. 1, 78 Barley, S. R. 52 Bednarek, R. 67 Behar, R. 60 Bell, E. 112, 113, 115 Benedict, R. 23 Benjamin, W. 31 Bennett, W. L. 136 Bensman, J. 187, 188 Berger, J. 33 Beyes, T. 119 Bloomfield, S. 1, 17, 212 Bochner, A. P. 7, 62, 66 Böhm, S. 194 Boje, D. M. 169–71 Brewis, J. 114 Brown, A. 123 Brown, J. 118 Bruni, A. 49–51 Burawoy, M. 38, 39, 45 Burke, G. 180 Burrell, G. 178 Cahnmann, M. 23 Calås, D. 9, 98–9 Capote, T. 46, 56 chaotic scratch notes 19–20 Cheng, C. 120 Chiseri-Strater, E. 25 Ciuk, S. 172 Clegg, S. 118 Clifford, J. 3, 20 Cohen, L. 115 collecting stories 168 collective action 132

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and positive emotional expressions 133 see also positive emotional expressions collective becoming inter-ethnography as 105–7 communication 49, 78, 112, 130, 138, 139 body language 78, 142 ‘city communication’ (Polish expression) 78 emotional expressions 142, 147 Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) 193, 196 complementary management language 141–2 connective ethnography 131 conversation analysis (CA) described 86 dialogues 87 ethno-methodological inspirations 88 exchange of utterances 87–8 principles 87 Cooper, R. 192 Costas, J. 119 Costello, L. 137 Coupland, C. 123 Crafting Qualitative Research: Working in the Postpositivist Traditions (2005) 92 Czarniawska, B. 5, 6, 74, 113, 118–9, 168 Dalton, M. 39 data analysis 13–14 Davison, J. 112 Dean, J. 194 de Certeau, M. 31, 35 DeCock, C. 119 Deleuze, G. 192 Democracy and Freedom (1919) 184 de Monthoux, P. G.118 Dennehy, R. 120 Denzin, N. K. 59, 63, 65, 110 De Rond, M. 130, 201 description 20 ordering by types 20–21 diary-interview technique 52 direct observation 4, 40–42, 45 corporate culture 41

shadowing vs. 54–5 Doherty, E. 120 Doyle, A. C. 119, 120 Dunn, E. 78 Dylan, B. 118 Electronic Patient Record (EPR) 49–51 Elkin, A. P. 181 Ellborg, K. 9, 99–100 Elliott, C. 123 Ellis, C. 7, 62, 66, 154 Emerson, R. 25 emojis 142 emotional expressions collective action see collective action negative 130 positive 130, 146–7 emotional vocabulary 143–4 Engineering Culture (1992) 41 Ericsson, D. 9, 92, 100–101 Erlingsdóttir, G. 41 ethical approval procedures 40 ethnographic diary see fieldwork diary The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnograph (2004) 63 ‘ethnographic trend’ 180 ethnographic writing 106, 107 described 1 open questions 84 ethnography 1–3 autoethnography see autoethnography benefits of 202 inter-ethnography see inter-ethnography interviews see interviews meaning 1 media see media analysis observation see observation organisational ethnography see organisational ethnography research 16 shadowing see shadowing storytelling see storytelling theory 16–17 ethno-narrative approach 168, 170 context of construction 170 described 170

Index

limitations 171–2 living stories 171 use of talk 170–71 ethno-story approach 168, 170–72 archetypes 172 collective forgetting 172 narrative ecology 172 proper stories 172 terse stories 172–3 time requirement 173–4 evocative autoethnography 63–4 exotopia 46 experience-based learning 100 experiencing the field see fieldwork diary face-to-face interview 81 facial expressions unstructured interview 78–9 Fairclough, N. 95 fairy tales 93, 151–2, 161–2 female shadows 47–9 Ferczyk, Z. 74 fieldnotes 18–19 information to be included 25 poetry and 27–9 practical recommendations 25–6 scratch notes vs. field notes 19–20 fieldwork diary 18–19 intense participation 19 note taking see note taking poetic process see poetic process transcribing interviews see transcribing interviews folk tales 151–62 defined 157 Foroughi, H. 14, 172 Frandsen, A-C. 50 Fretz, R. 25 Gabriel, Y. 169–71, 195 Gaggiotti, H. 16, 129 Garfinkel, H. 34 Geertz, C. 20 George P. M. 181 Giardina, M. D. 63 Gillespie, R. 186, 189 Gilmore, S. 1 Glaser, B. G 94 Grey, C. 121

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Griffin, M. 121 Grounded Theory 94–5 group interview 81 groupthink 81 Gullberg, C. 12 Gustafsson, N. 12 Haley, U. C. 169 Hallgren, E. E. 9, 96–7 Hammersley, M. 208, 209, 211 Hansen, H. 170, 171 Harding, N. 116, 121 Hassard, J. 118 Hawthorne project 179–80 defined 189 Hayano D. M. 64–6 health service environment 42 Hochschild, A. 40, 167 Holliday, R. 118 The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (1933) 185 humans described 166 Humphreys, M. 7, 13, 14, 61, 67, 69 Husung, A. 9, 97–8 hybrid ethnography 131 images see media analysis impression management 20, 35, 49 sensual impressions 25 individual interviews 81 Ingersoll, V. H. 121 inter-ethnography 9, 91–2 collective becoming, as 105–107 co-reflected understanding 107 cultural traditions 95–6 discourse analysis 95 grounded theory 94–5 hermeneutic tradition 93–4 intersubjective process 102–105 knowledge creation processes 106–107 organizational setting 92–3 subjective learning experiences 96–101 crafting traditions 99 experience-based learning 100 learning by doing 96 learning by reading 96–7

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learning process 97 scientific findings 98 intersubjectivity inter-ethnography as 102–105 intertextuality 110 interviews CA see conversation analysis (CA) defined 74 ethics and trust ethical issues 79–80 language 82 shadowing people and screens 53, 54 transcribing 21–2 types of 75–6 Jackson, J. 18, 25 Jarzabkowski, P. 67, 180 Jordan, B. 131 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 62 Kafiris, K. 114 Kafka 119 Kamsteeg, F. 111 Kanter, R. M. 114 Kärreman, D. 206, 210 Kassinis, G. 123 Kessler, E. H. 120 Knights, D. 122 Knorr Cetina, K. 118 knowing-how knowledge 38 knowledge 106 Kociatkiewicz, J. 53, 119, 123 Konecki, K. 78 Kostera, M. 3, 4, 8, 14, 74, 110, 119, 123 Kozinets, R. V. 130, 131 Krylov, I. 93 Krzyworzeka, P. 16, 74 Kunda, G. 41, 52, 120, 205 Kurdi, A. 138 Land, C. 119, 194 language 8, 32 non-participant observation 32, 33 unstructured interview 78 Latour, B. 56 Leach, E. 181 Learmonth, M. 7, 13, 14, 67, 71, 121

learning by doing 96 experience-based 100 by reading 96–7 Leidner, R. 39 Le, J. K. 67 Levine, P. 24 Lévi-Strauss, C. 166–7, 181, 188 Linde, C. 172 Linstead, S. 118 literary analysis autoethnography see autoethnography folk tales see folk tales storytelling see storytelling writing 119, 151 Liu, H. 153 Löfven, S. 138 Lovekin, S. 185 Low, J. O. 191 Lunt, P. S. 189 Malinowski, B. 31, 166, 181, 185 Mamet, D.114, 118 managerial practices 132 and positive emotional expressions 133, 137 Manufacturing Consent (1982) 38 Marcus, G. E. 193, 194 Maynard, Kent 23 Mayo, E. 16, 183–9, 195 McCabe, D. 122 McDermott, M-L. 137 McDonald, S. 54, 55 McDowell, L. 112, 114 Mead, M. 31 media analysis 10–12, 123–4 ethnographers 111–12 media texts defined 110 from organizations company videos 122 websites, search engines and blogs 122–3 on organizations comics, cartoons and children’s stories 120–21 film 113–14 novels and fiction 118–20 rock music 117–18 science fiction 116–17

Index

television series 114–15 organization’s visual artifacts 112 understanding organizations through 113 Men Who Manage (1959) 39–40 Michaelson, C. 119 Miller, A. 118 Modzelewska, A. 8 Morevna, M.157 Mumby, D. K. 194 Musca, G. 130 Music for Chameleons (1980) 46 myths see folk tales narrating organizations 168 narratives archetypal narrative 157 choice of 156–7 ethno-narrative 168 fiction 119 Nietzsche, F. 98, 99 notes 18–19 note taking description 20–21 inscription 20 phases 3–4, 20–21 poetic process see poetic process transcription 20 observation 4–5 described 3 direct 40–42 non-participant observation 33–34 participant observation 4, 37–8 ethical approval procedures 40 immersive participation 39 O’Doherty, D. P. 184 organisational anthropology Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne experiments 183–6 Warner’s ethnographic fieldwork in Australia 181–3 organisational/organizational ethnography 16, 132, 178 an alternative approach 91 see inter-ethnography Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) 193, 196

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origins of 178 organizational constructs 168–9 organizationally brokered networks 136–7 organizational storytelling 166 research agenda 168–9 organizations 16 Ortmann, G. 119 Pachirat, T. 42 Panayiotou, A. 11, 12, 112–14, 123 Pechenkina, E. 153 Perec, G. 112 person-to-person interview 81 PhD ethnographer 200–214 advice 213–14 Phillips, N 118 poetic process field notes and poetry 27–9 language of poetry 23–4 poetic sensitivity 24 Point, S. 122 Polanyi, M. 38 Pollach, I. 123 popular culture 112, 115, 116, 118 Powell, G. 117 Prasad, P. 92, 97 Pratt, M. L. 66 professional influencer 142 professional managerial competence 143–4 Propp, V. 157 Pullen, A. 119 Pushkin, A. 151 qualitative analysis Facebook data 142–3 quantitative analysis emotional expressions 135–7 methods 179–80 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 180–83 reflexivity 42, 106 Reuters 52 Rhodes, C. 113, 114, 117–20 Robinson, S. 123 Roethlisberger, F. 185 role-playing 6 Rottenburg, R. 32

222

Organizational ethnography

Rouleau, L. 130 Russo, R. 118 Rybakov, B. 157, 160 Sacks, H. 86 Sanchez, M. 56 Sandberg, J. 92 Sanjek, R. 19 Saylors, R. 169 Schultze, U. 78 Sclavi, M. 6, 47, 48, 55 Segerberg, A. 136 semi-structured interview 76–77 definitions in writing 83–4 described 82 open question in writing 84 questions 84–6 sense-making conversation 80 data 205, 206 management 39, 41 shadowing advantages 55 described 5–7 disadvantages 55 female shadows 47–9 impact on person shadowed 56 other field methods, compared to 53–6 people and screens 52–3 psychological discomfort 55 shadowing objects quasi-object 50 shadowing people 52–3 Shaw, L. 25 Simpson, B. 54, 55 Sinclair, A. 115 Singh, V. 122 Sköldberg, K. 210 The Small Town in Mass Society (2000) 187, 188, 195 Smets, M. 180 social constructionism 92 social media 12–13, 129–30, 147–8 audit society 132 collective action 132 exploring collective action and positive emotional expressions 137–41 loosely organized networks 137

managerial practices 132 negative emotions 130 organizational ethnography, social media and organizing netnography 130 nonverbal behaviors 130–31 organizationally brokered networks 136–7 software shadowing 49–51 Solow, R. 193 Sparkes, A. C. 67 Spee, P. 180 Spradley, J. P. 131, 147 Spry, T. 67 Średnicka, J. 3, 4, 14 Stewart, K. 36 Stinchcombe, A. L. 132 stories archival 169 definition 169–70 elicited 169 in situ 169 proper 172 terse 172–3 unstructured interviews 77 storytelling 14–15, 175 autoethnography 62 ethnography and 166–8 ethno-narrative approach see ethno-narrative approach in organizing processes 166 research agenda, as 168–9 Strannegård, L. 45 Strauss, A. L. 94 Street Corner Society (1993) 37 structured interview 75 goal of 75 vs. unstructured interview 76 Sulima, R. 36 Sunstein, B. S. 25 Szczur, S. 115 teaching literature on higher education 153 observation of social life 34 Toraldo, M. L. 112 transcribing interviews 21 standards 22 symbols for gestures and face expressions 22

Index

visual representation 22 transcription meaning 20 methods 22 trolls 144 Trump, D. 110 Tyler, M. 115 typification non-participant observation 33–34 unstructured interview 75–6 body language 78–9 communication 78 description of events 78 facial expressions 78–9 interviewees’ train of talk 76–7 interviewee tests 79 languages 78 meaning 76 questions asked 77–8 solidarity structures 77 stories 77 word management 78 van Hulst, M. 167 Van Maanen, J. 106, 209 Veiga, J. 117 Vidich, A. J. 187, 188 vignettes 7, 60 construction of 69–70 defined 67 evocative autobiographical stories 68 examples of 68–9 descriptions of 69 in organizational research 67–9 problems with use of 69–70

223

visual methods graphics 15 images 15 stories 123 ‘visual turn’ in organization studies 112 Wałęsa, L. 79, 80 Wallace, D. F. 118, 119 Wallace, R. 137 Warner, W. L. 16, 178–83, 185, 186, 188–92, 195, 196 ethnographic fieldwork in Australia 181–3 Watson, T. J. 39, 129, 132 Wax, R. 54 Weick, K. E. 206 Weinryb, N. 12 Wels, H. 111 Westwood, R. 114–16, 118, 120 White, P. 49 Whyte, W. 37, 39, 118 Williams, K. C. 110 Willmott, H. 113 Wilson-Brown, C. 115 Wilson, S. 118 Winroth, K. 78 Wittgenstein, L. 33 Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory (2009) 172 Yanow, D. 111, 148, 178 Ybema, S. 111 Yost, K. 116 Zueva, A. 13, 14