 Subjects -> ANTHROPOLOGY (Total: 398 journals)
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- Problematising access: reflections on ethnography in a bureaucratic
organisation-
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Authors: Nikkie Buskermolen
Abstract: The article aims to explore the methodological implications of gaining access into a bureaucratic organisation for an ethnographic research project. It broadens the understanding of this crucial part of ethnographic research and problematises the notion of access by questioning the view of access as an official, singular and straightforward moment prior to fieldwork. The article is based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork at the office of a Dutch health insurance company. In this article, the author shows that research in a bureaucratic setting requires a deep level of reflexivity especially in order to maintain access and deepen the relationships in the field. The study of bureaucratic organisations is a relatively new field of investigation for anthropologists and is becoming more popular. The question of how to study these types of organisations in terms of access has not yet been fully addressed through an ethnographical lens.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2023-03-14
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-06-2022-0012
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
- Introducing “navigating failure in ethnography”: a forum about
failure in ethnographic research-
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Authors: Rafael Verbuyst, Anna Milena Galazka
Abstract: The authors introduce a recurrent section for the Journal of Organizational Ethnography which scrutinizes the various manifestations and roles of failure in ethnographic research. The authors peruse a wide body of literature which tackles the role of failure in ethnographic research and draw on the experiences to argue for a more sustained and in-depth conversation on the topic. “Failure” regularly occurs in ethnographic research, yet remains under-examined. Increased discussion on the topic will enrich debates on methodology and fieldwork in particular. While various scholars have commented on the role of “failure” in ethnographic research, an in-depth and sustained examination of the topic is lacking.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2023-02-06
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-10-2022-0027
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
- Suffering, recovery and participant experience in a video game development
accelerator-
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Authors: Devon Gidley, Mark Palmer, Amani Gharib
Abstract: The authors aimed to explore how involvement in a creative development accelerator impacted participants. In particular, the authors considered the role of suffering in the acceleration process. The authors conducted an ethnography of a rapid prototyping program in video game development. Data collection included participant observation (162 h before, 186 during and 463 h after the main prototyping), interviews (23 formal and 35 informal) and artifact analysis (presentations, documents, games). Acceleration led to individual suffering via burnout, lack of sleep, overwork and illness. In turn, participants required varying periods of recovery after participation and diverged in their longer-term reaction to the experience. The authors make two contributions. First, the authors deepen empirical understanding of the embodied impact of participation in an organizational accelerator. Second, the authors develop a theoretical process model of suffering in an accelerator program based on time and initiation. This paper focused on a single iteration of a program based out of an incubator in the United Kingdom (UK) Suffering was discovered as part of a larger study of the program. Business and technology accelerators are becoming a popular way to organize work. This research suggests that accelerator structures might lead to unintended and negative participant experiences. This research challenges the assumption that accelerators always benefit, or at least not hurt, participants. The authors add to the limited attention paid to suffering in organizations. The authors conclude the impact of an accelerator is more complex than usually portrayed.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-12-20
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-07-2022-0023
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- White, Brown, mad, fat, male and female academics: a duoethnography
challenging our experiences of deficit identities-
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Authors: Joanna Fox, Jas Sangha
Abstract: The authors are two social work academics working in a UK Higher Education Institute. Social work is underpinned by principles of anti-oppressive practice which leads to challenge discrimination and stigmatisation. The authors explored experiences of deficit imposed by others' perceptions of the physical and ethnic appearance and mental health status. The authors consider how these features influence how the authors locate themselves within the wider contexts of academic spaces in higher education institutions (HEI). Using duoethnography, a collaborative research methodology, the authors recorded reflections on their experiences for five months and met weekly to discuss their material. This process enabled them to engage in dialogic narrative through collaborative writing using both structured and unstructured reflections. The authors analysed the reflections using thematic data analysis. Four themes were generated that led to understanding how the authors could challenge oppression. The oppression became visible as the authors reflected on the common experiences of deficit. The understanding of other's oppression as well as the authors’ own became clearer as the unconscious experiences became conscious. The authors began to locate the experiences of being both privileged and oppressed in the wider social context of the HE. Finally, the authors recognised how the “deficit” identities could transform into strengths. This personal journey of two academics reflecting on how they are paradoxically both privileged and yet oppressed challenges other professionals to honestly explore how they themselves can occupy both roles and become allies in confronting discrimination in all its forms.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-12-15
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-07-2022-0024
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- Braided identities in acute care nurses' practices of work: professional,
clinician, employee-
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Authors: Sarah Lake, Trudy Rudge, Sandra West
Abstract: This paper aims to explore how dispositions of nursing habitus carry shift handover into practice in acute care. Handover (the exchange of information by nurses between shifts) is more recently purported to be a procedure that transfers the responsibility of and accountability for care to maintain patient safety. Using Bourdieu's theory of practice as lens, this paper examines data from an ethnographic study of nurses' work in acute care to reveal what happens in and around nurses' practices of handover. Exploring handover as a practice enables identification of nurses' responsibilities of work as professional, clinician and employee. These responsibilities are not practised separately, rather, as braided identities they are embodied into nurses' practices of work. Nurses' clinician and employee identities address the clinical and organisationally relevant material contained in handover, but it is in the ways that nurses embody their responses that their professional identity becomes evident. Viewing handover as a procedure suggests that nurses are rule followers and/or sole players and conceptualises nurses as individualised professionals only. This received knowledge as doxa misrecognises the centrality of connectedness between nurses in their work in the acute care setting. Recognising nurses' braided workplace identities as being professional, clinician and employee upends the doxa of nurses work as tasks and roles in the delivery of healthcare in the acute care setting.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-12-07
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-04-2022-0004
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- “Too quality”! Professional boundary setting and the ISO 56000
standard on innovation management. In honor of Dorothy E. Smith
(1926–2022)-
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Authors: Maria Duclos Lindstrøm
Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to pay homage to Dorothy E. Smith (1926–2022), and her lifelong significance for organizational ethnography. Building on Smith, the empirical purpose of the paper is to analyze professional boundary setting on behalf of innovation management as it occurred in the recent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committees (TC) 279 committee on innovation management. The paper is an ethnographic study of the drafting and publication of a novel international management standard on innovation management, the ISO 56000-series published in 2019. It is based on fieldwork from the ISO committee and integrates relevant standardization documents, observations and interviews. The paper analyzes four occasions for textual professional boundary work ranging from negotiations of content and choice of ISO standard formats to the unprecedented high-level liaison agreements across international organizations. In each instance, the analysis depicts distinct textual features related to ISO standardization. The analysis shows how the standard becomes positioned as extending and complementing the ISO 9001, not as a radical, freestanding alternative to quality management. The paper presents original data from the ISO standardization committee. It develops Smith's general textual ontology into a theoretical framework for analyzing how professional boundary setting occurs in the textually structured context of ISO standardization. It gives attention to the implications of questions of objectification and standardization as these apply to contemporary research into innovation and organization.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-12-05
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-07-2022-0022
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- – Paradoxes of shame-relieving processes among impoverished Spaniards
after 2008’s great recession
 Open Access Article-
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Authors: Hugo Valenzuela-Garcia, Miranda Jessica Lubbers, Jose Luis Molina
Abstract: The aim of the paper is to ethnographically detail the poverty-shame nexus in contemporary Spain, and to highlight the contradictions of the newly adopted consumption-based models of inclusion led by charities. Drawing on 39 cases out of a sample of 78 gathered through two long-term research projects, the paper employs a mixed-methods approach that mainly draws on a multi-sited ethnographic approach and interviews. The paper ethnographically documents major contradictions that shed light on the complex relationships between poverty, shame, work and consumption in modern societies. This paper analyses the sources of shame in the experience of poverty and downward mobility, but also it opens new ground for understanding the complex poverty–shame nexus and lets some questions unanswered. The contradictions highlighted shed light on the complex relationships between poverty, shame, work and consumption that may inform modern policies to fight poverty. Ethnography gives voice to these individuals that currently experience an increasingly precarious and unequal modern world. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the processes that underlie modern poverty and downward social mobility and points out the contradictions generated by consumption-based models of inclusion. While the poverty-shame nexus has been already analyzed from the point of view of stigma and exclusion from the labor market, the links between a growing consumerism and the neo-liberal values that underlie our modern societies are largely unexplored. The ethnographic contribution and the detailed case studies are also original in the case of Spain.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-07-11
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-11-2021-0056
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- Governing anticipation: UNESCO making humankind futures literate
Open Access Article-
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Authors: Ulrik Jennische, Adrienne Sörbom
Abstract: This paper explores practices of foresight within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program Futures Literacy, as a form of transnational governmentality–founded on the interests of “using the future” by “emancipating” the minds of humanity. The paper draws on ethnographic material gathered over five years within the industry of futures consultancy, including UNESCO and its network of self-recognized futurists. The material consists of written sources, participant observation in on-site and digital events and workshops, and interviews. Building on Foucault's (1991) concept of governmentality, which refers to the governing of governing and how subjects politically come into being, this paper critically examines the UNESCO Futures Literacy program by answering questions on ontology, deontology, technology and utopia. It shows how the underlying rationale of the Futures Literacy program departs from an ontological premise of anticipation as a fundamental capacity of biological life, constituting an ethical substance that can be worked on and self-controlled. This rationale speaks to the mandate of UNESCO, to foster peace in our minds, but also to the governing of governing at the individual level. In the intersection between the growing literature on anticipation and research concerning governmentality the paper adds ethnographically based knowledge to the field of transnational governance. Earlier ethnographic studies of UNESCO have mostly focused upon its role for cultural heritage, or more broadly neoliberal forms of governing.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-06-24
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-10-2021-0055
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- Studying trust in the leader by co-produced autoethnography: an
organizational esthetics approach
Open Access Article-
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Authors: Päivi Kosonen, Mirjami Ikonen
Abstract: This paper aims at examining the prospects and possibilities of autoethnography in trust research. The focus of this study is on trust-building in a management team from an esthetic leadership perspective. The empirical context of the study is the organization of higher education during a funding reform. This study adopted a qualitative research strategy with co-produced autoethnographic methods. The data comprised the researcher's diary, field notes and written texts from informants. Autoethnographic methods were applied in data gathering; more precisely, the data were collected by the moving observing method of shadowing and complemented with the management team's written texts reporting their feelings. The data were analyzed by constructing autoethnographic vignettes and a critical frame story. The findings of the study contribute to the methodological discussion of autoethnographic research when studying a complex phenomenon such as trust-building. The findings suggest that the role of authenticity in trust-building may vary depending on the esthetic leadership style. Furthermore, the findings contribute to the esthetic leadership theory by a proposal of esthetic reassurance as intentional leader-embodied communication aiming to reinforce follower trust in a leader. Co-produced autoethnography is applied in studying trust-building. Furthermore, this paper provides an inside view of the meaning of esthetics in leader-follower relationships in higher education organizations.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-02-21
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-04-2021-0020
Issue No: Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
- Book review: Of what is this a case'
-
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Authors: Mike Rowe, Harry Wels
Abstract: Book review: Of what is this a case'
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-11-04
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-10-2022-092
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2022)
- Multicultural experience in organisations: an auto-ethnographic
enquiry-
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Authors: Dhammika (Dave) Guruge
Abstract: This paper aims to draw attention to multicultural experience as a manager. It is an auto-ethnographic enquiry which comprises own experiences and intercultural and intra-cultural engagement of the author’s self in both mono-cultural and multicultural environments drawing from archival records of personal account of experience. The paper adopted auto-ethnographic enquiry of the author’s experience in multicultural environment. The auto-ethnography as a research method is discussed along with its criticisms, validity, reliability and generalisability. The findings include power distance, elitism in hiring practices, inclusivity of women, challenges in South Asian Muslim countries, challenges in the non-anglophone country and their implications for a practitioner. As the author employed an auto-ethnographic enquiry based on the author’s prior experience, this raises questions about wider generalisability and applicable contexts. Findings of the enquiry can be tested using further qualitative enquiries such as in-depth interviews with a sample of stakeholders in a multicultural environment. The paper provides insights useful in managing in multicultural environments discussed. Also, it provides implications for policy makers in organisations. Practitioners can use the paper to get an insight into the markets the author already have been to and use the learning for decision-making during market development efforts. Auto-ethnography in multicultural environment is scant. This auto-ethnographical enquiry provides original content of practitioner experience compared with the related theory.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-10-27
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-05-2022-0008
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2022)
- A Seventh-day Adventist farm community in Tanzania and vegetarianism as a
social practice-
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Authors: Tamas Lestar
Abstract: This paper is the outcome of an empirical research on a Seventh-day Adventist farm in Tanzania. The author investigated the role of Christian spirituality in switching to and maintaining vegetarian practices. Dietary change is proposed in the sustainability literature as a crucial trajectory to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between spirituality and climate-friendly dining in a localised Christian context and discuss their significance further for wider society. Social practice theory (SPT) provided the tools to explore, empirically, the dynamic development of dietary practice within the farm community and its relation to the outside world; according to SPT, following the main building blocks of practices, namely materials, competences and meanings (cognitive or emotional), helps to understand the evolution of practices in society. Findings show that the spiritual element of the community's dietary practice is key in maintaining commitment to vegetarianism, despite the rationale focussing exclusively on human health. Expanding the rationale to animal compassion and environmental concerns could enhance the stabilisation of the practice within and beyond the community's realms. The research showcases, probably for the first time, how a localised vegetarian practice may be linked to broader societal developments and policymaking through the application of SPT.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-09-20
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-05-2022-0009
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2022)
- Cultural practices and organizational ethnography: implications for
fieldwork and research ethics-
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Authors: Mohammad Alshallaqi
Abstract: This study focuses on the practical and ethical implications of the cultural practice of wasta for organizational ethnography in the Middle East. Wasta is a form of intercession rooted in the Middle Eastern cultural context and is similar to other cultural practices such as “guanxi” in China. Such practices do not only shape organizational lives in those contexts, but also how organizational ethnographies are designed and carried out. The data in this study are derived from field notes and the author’s reflections on the fieldwork of an organizational ethnography aimed to investigate a digital transformation project. This study draws on the lens of positionality to illustrate how wasta helps favourably reconfigure a researcher’s positionality during interactions with gatekeepers and participants, thereby facilitating access and data collection. The study also presents the ethical concerns related to reciprocity triggered by wasta. Finally, this study demonstrates how wasta functions as a situated system to ensure ethical research practices. The study demonstrates that it is inevitable that organizational ethnographers engage with cultural practices such as wasta or guanxi during fieldwork in such cultural contexts. Furthermore, the study provides theoretical and methodological contributions for future researchers by engaging in a reflexive exercise to present a more nuanced and theoretically informed understanding of wasta. Moreover, it shows how it is exercised during fieldwork, the ethical concerns inherent in its exercise and how they can be mitigated. The paper concludes with practical recommendations derived from this fieldwork experience for future research.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-03-22
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-06-2021-0036
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2022)
- COVID-19 and tourism stakeholders: experience, behaviour and
transformation-
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Authors: M.R. Dileep, Joshu Ajoon, Bipithalal Balakrishnan Nair
Abstract: The tourism sector’s fragility lends significance to mental health and wellbeing, especially amongst workers in the hotel and tourism sectors. However, stakeholders’ subjective wellbeing and mental health in these sectors due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remain under-researched, especially for destinations with unique selling propositions (USPs). Thus, this study investigates the effects of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic on various stakeholders in Kerala, India. In particular, the authors assess the mental health and welfare of those involved in the tourism sector with an eye on how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the field’s psychological and technical developments. This study employs an ethnographic approach to understanding the idiosyncratic experiences of stakeholders using in-depth interviews (n = 68), focus group interviews (n = 3) and participant observation for 14 months. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings reveal the shifting perceptions in the tourism sector’s workforce by detailing various societal, technical and physical transformations, especially amongst the younger generations. The resultant psychological mapping generates a framework of the emotional perspectives of stakeholders during each stage of the pandemic. This study also highlights the urgency of crisis-management training for the workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all spheres of global business, resulting in unprecedented challenges in both personal and professional life. The sector’s fragility lends significance to mental health and wellbeing, especially amongst workers in the hotel and tourism sectors. However, the subjective wellbeing and mental health of stakeholders in these sectors due to the COVID-19 pandemic remain under-researched, especially for the developing destinations with USPs.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2022-03-09
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-07-2021-0043
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2022)
- A lack of mess' Advice on undertaking video-mediated participant
observations-
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Authors: Ea Høg Utoft, Mie Kusk Søndergaard, Anna-Kathrine Bendtsen
Abstract: This article offers practical advice to ethnographers venturing into doing participant observations through, but not about, videoconferencing applications such as Zoom, for which the methods literature offers little guidance. The article stems from a research project about a BioMedical Design Fellowship. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Fellowship converted all teaching activities to online learning via Zoom, and the participant observations followed along. Taking an autoethnographic approach, the authors present and discuss concrete examples of encountered obstacles produced by the video-mediated format, such as limited access and interactions, technical glitches and changing experiences of embodiment. Changing embodiment in particular initially led the authors to believe that the “messiness” of ethnography (i.e. misunderstandings, emotions, politics, self-doubts etc.) was lost online. However, over time the authors realized that the mess was still there, albeit in new manifestations, because Zoom shaped the interactions of the people the authors observed, the observations the authors could make and how the authors related to research participants and vice versa. The article succinctly summarizes the key advice offered by the researchers (see Section 5) based on their experiences of converting on-site ethnographic observations into video-mediated observations enabling easy use by other researchers in relation to other projects and contexts. The article positions video-mediated observations, via e.g. Zoom, which are distinctly characterised by happening in real time and having an object of study other than the online sphere itself, vis-à-vis other “online ethnography” methods. The article further aims to enable researchers to more rapidly rediscover and re-incite the new manifestations of the messiness of ethnography online, which is key to ensuring high-quality research.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2021-12-24
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-07-2021-0037
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2021)
- Composite actors as participant protection: methodological opportunities
for ethnographers-
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Authors: Jennifer MJ Yim, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to persuade ethnographers to consider using composites for studies in which protecting participants from identification is especially important. It situates the argument in the context of the transparency and data sharing movements' uneven influence across disciplines. The paper reviews problems in maintaining confidentiality of research participants using pseudonyms and masking. It analyzes existing literature on composites, conditions of composite use and identifies composite actors as a form useful to place-based ethnography. Methodological aspects of composite actor construction are discussed along with potential opportunities composites offer. Construction of composite actors is best accomplished by aggregating thematically during deskwork. Composites provide enhanced confidentiality by creating plausible doubt in the reader's mind, in part, through the presentation of aggregate rather than individual-level data. This discussion advances the methodology of constructing composites, particularly composite actors, providing guidance to increase trustworthiness of ethnographic narratives that employ composites.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2021-10-18
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-02-2021-0009
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2021)
- Rendering the hidden visible: subjected to “work on the self” in a
local labour market measure-
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Authors: Jon Sunnerfjell
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to complement the literature understanding present labour market measures as infused by a so-called neoliberal rationality, fostering self-managerial selves by means of self-inspection. It does so by providing a much-needed illustration of how such “work on the self” is achieved in practice. The analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork tracing the “active society” at the local level, depicting practices aimed at activating welfare clients in a local labour market measure organised in a rural Swedish municipality. Here, the author was offered to undergo a method aimed at enhancing participants' employability. As a result, data consists of ethnographic as well as auto-ethnographic accounts from this experience. This analysis shows how destabilisation of subjectivity was central to the remoulding of individuals into employable and self-reliant selves. Moreover, by dispersing responsibility to the individual, it is shown how the organisation was able to refrain from accountability, hence reducing the levels of uncertainty and ambiguity that is part and parcel of people-processing welfare organisations. The article concludes with the warning that, in the wake of “local worlds of activation”, municipalities may sometimes draw on questionable assumptions of the human mind and behaviour, as well as the vulnerability of individuals' self-understanding, as a way of managing the “active society” at the local level. The literature on activation lacks ethnographic accounts depicting concrete practices of turning the socially excluded into active and employable selves. Here, this article offers an illustrating example of such practices in action.
Citation: Journal of Organizational Ethnography
PubDate: 2020-12-15
DOI: 10.1108/JOE-04-2020-0012
Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 3 (2020)
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Hybrid journal * Containing 3 
