Ethnographic Case Study Research Articles

From WorkSpaces to WorkPlaces: A Multilevel Model of Place Crafting

Past studies of the impact of work space on work outcomes have generated mixed results in the organizational space literature. We apply a new perspective grounded in theorizing on place rather than space, and explore the notion that organizations are best positioned to influence employees when they transform their workspaces into workplaces. Through an ethnographic case study, we uncover a process of place crafting—a multi-level collaboration to transform the office space into place, initiated by the organization, taken up by employees, and sustained by a partnership between the organization and employees—that engenders employee place attachment. The model we develop shows that space and place are involved in a symbiotic relationship – space provides structure and social fabric for place to emerge, and place breathes life, humanity, and meaning into space. We discuss potential challenges, and practical applications, of the place crafting process.

Modes, Models, and Momentum (M3) in Decision-Making: Entrepreneurs Collaborating on Complex Problems

M3 theory introduces a descriptive framework for entrepreneurial innovation through collaboration in pursuit of solutions to more complex market problems. Through a Social Realism epistemological lens, M3 coding presents complex strategic positions as essentialist (via modes), relative (via models), and dynamic (via momentum) to plot the dynamic trajectory of innovation transmuting over time. At a fundamental level, the M3 theory identifies a consistent set of rules that decision-makers intentionally or unintentionally engage with or ignore to take strategic positions based on four integrated yet polarized pairs of modes: +S, +R and +C, +D. Systematic (+S) vs. responsive (+R) strategies, juxtaposed the tension of processes dedicated to increasingly sophisticated +S bounded rational cognitive processes; planning, compartmentalizing, regulating emotions, against increasingly +R sensitized intuiting; reflectivity, associating, emotionally expressive action. The second pair, conforming (+C), vs. differentiating (+D) strategies. intersects but expresses the tension between +C’s converging; through adapting or conveying socially perceived superior norms, or exploiting existing resources and power, against +D’s departure from traditional norms; with exploration; novelty-seeking, sabotage, risk-taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery. Finally, dynamism (momentum) informs how strategic modes and models of decision-making improve and adjust in sophistication under the pressure and demands of the four drives (+L). The M3 theory is informed by three distinct but interrelated and simultaneous empirical streams of data: (i) field data from five ethnographic case studies, with research participant feedback loops; (ii) the mapping of 200+ peer reviewed decision-making models; and (iii) prototyping the principles in the construction of the emergent M3 theory.

The Myth of Employee Experience: From False Premises to Benevolent Subordination

The concept of employee experience, developed by the management consulting industry to address the link between human resource management and firm profit, is fashionable among HRM professionals. In this ethnographic case study, we take a critical look at its evolution and show that it is based on two false premises: the false premise of perspectives and the false premise of relationships. We therefore question the underlying logic of employee experience and portray it as a myth. Given the lack of academic research on employee experience in general and critical research in particular, we make a contribution by introducing the notion of benevolent subordination. It describes how senior managers may frame HRM initiatives such as employee experience as well-intending and benevolent, obscuring their own subordinating acts and the adverse outcomes that these acts may bring about for the employees themselves.

The Paralysis of Perceived Powerlessness – How Emotional Tensions Influence Corporate Climate Action

In responding to the climate crisis, organizations navigate in an increasingly volatile emotional milieu in which feelings of fear, guilt and anger may influence corporate sustainability transformations and climate action. We conduct an eight-month ethnographic case study of an Energy Company (EnCo) in Germany to understand how intra-individual emotional tensions influence the externally visible corporate sustainability transformation process over time. Through analysis of observational, interview, and documentary data we explore emotional tensions that emerge from paradox corporate role expectations and emotional display rules which compete against corporate actors’ true emotions and beliefs about climate change. We develop a dynamic leader-follower-interaction model that shows how the leaders’ emotional display affects the perceived sustainability commitment and sustainability action of followers over time. We argue that emotional dissonance fosters the delegation of responsibility to act against climate change to authorities with more perceived power. The paper contributes to the literature of paradox theory and organizational responses to climate change by drawing attention to the relevance of emotions in navigating the corporate sustainability paradox over time.

Striving for Social Sustainability of Football Commercialization: An Ethnographic Case Study of the German Fan-Governed Club HFC Falke

In several European countries, a new football fan type has emerged in recent years—the post-consumer fan. These fans break with commercialized football by founding their own clubs in order to incorporate their vision of football. This vision is antagonistic to commercialized “modern football”. However, the newly founded clubs compete in the existing commercialized structures and need to generate financial capital. To date, little is known about how clubs deal with these contradictory goals. Based on a 27 month long ethnographic participant observation and ten semi-structured interviews, this article investigates how the members of the German club HFC Falke negotiated sponsoring and players’ wages. It highlights how the clubs implement alternative practices in order to remain close to their values while being competitive. As a result, they emphasize the democratic process, and implement normative guidelines. Some of the strategies are known from previous research on other clubs but during our research we also detected new strategies. The club and its members experiment with new practices, such as transparent payment based on effort and sponsoring used for the fans’ benefit (e.g., subsidies of beer prices on matchdays). Through these normative guidelines and practices, the clubs strive to establish a more sustainable football in commodified structures. The discussions in the club and its practices might also inspire debates on the future of professional football.

Crafting the success and failure of decentralized marine management

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the design and revision of a decentralized marine management scheme implemented on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia named Plan de Gestion de l’Espace Maritime (PGEM). Drawing on an analysis of over 50 consultative workshops and meetings, held from 2018 to 2021 during the PGEM revision, we document the materials, discourses, and practices local stakeholders (e.g., fishers, cultural and environmental activists, government staff, and scientists) combine to build their interpretations of PGEM success or failure. We examine the diversity of domains these interpretations draw from (ecology, marine livelihoods, culture, religion, and politics) and how they are put into practice in people’s engagement with—or resistance to—the local marine management and governance design. Our results highlight how the controversies around the revision of Moorea’s PGEM overflowed the boundaries of ecology as construed by scientific experts. Stakeholders interpreted “marine resource management” as something well beyond just “marine resources” to include politics, identity, Polynesian cosmology, and livelihoods. Our findings provide generalizable patterns for understanding how natural-resource management policies are received and repurposed by local actors.

Assessment and Feedback to Enhance Online English Language Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has promoted online learning-teaching on a large scale. During the pandemic, English language learners could not complete their learning in the traditional class. To maintain learners learning, most universities have adopted online teaching. Assessment and feedback are critical components of instructional scaffolding, particularly in the online learning environment. These components highlight how English language learners can aid in accomplishing learning objectives and developing self-regulated experiences. This study aimed to explore the design of assessment and feedback of online teaching activities and online teaching processes adopted by English lecturers during the pandemic. The ethnographic case study design is the framework to outline qualitative research. This thematic approach confirms the qualitative researcher’s active participation in identifying assessment and feedback patterns in enhancing English language learners. Given the complexity of assessing and feedback, the study discovered that assessing and feedback could enhance learning English in online situations. These are included the specification of 15 characterizations of the assessment aspect, 15 recommendation elements for conducting the online assessment, and 10 practical online feedback features. The description assessment and feedback remain inextricably and undeniably connected. Online feedback means to be the English lecturers’ reaction to an English learner’s performance.

The embodied palimpsest

In the South Asian dance style of bharatanatyam, the devotional bodies of dancers and the gods they portray model a performative porosity about ‘religious bodies.’ But what embodied resonances of religiosity transfer when the intention of the dancer or topic is not marked as devotional? Apsaras Arts’ Agathi: The Plight of the Refugee (2017–18) offers an ethnographic case study through which I aim to deepen the theory around the porosity of bodies by developing the theoretical construct of an embodied palimpsest: a framework that allows previous ‘erased’ layers to become present and interactive with later layers. I demonstrate how the choreographed gestures and rasas, or aesthetic moods, utilized to embody certain Hindu myths inform this danced portrayal of migrant experiences, but also note how the interactive layers of the palimpsest reshape classical theories about rasa, in particular karuna rasa, the mood of compassion, and can be used to particularize theories about kinesthetic empathy.

“Nací Hablando Los dos”: Young Emergent Bilingual Children’s Talk About Language and Identity

ABSTRACT This article examines young children’s perceptions and ideas about their emergent bilingualism drawing on data from an ethnographic case study of the language development of a Head Start classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine the language practices of 4-year-olds in a bilingual (Spanish/English) classroom. The findings discussed in this paper focus on the children’s understanding of the language(s) they speak and how they come to understand the complex interactions of their languages, identity and the contexts within which they use them. Examples of children’s conversations where they explicitly discuss and articulate their knowledge of language demonstrate that young children are both capable of discussing their bilingualism and are developing an understanding of the intersections between language(s) and identity. These findings build on previous work that emphasizes the importance of examining language ideologies in early childhood classrooms and has implications for how to support young emergent bilinguals.

Heritage tourism products based on traditional nature-related knowledge: assessment of cultural, social, and environmental factors in cases from rural Austria

ABSTRACT We investigate success and sustainability factors for tourism offers based on intangible cultural heritage, such as traditional nature-related knowledge and practices, and propose an assessment framework for communities. Using examples from rural Austria, where such practices serve as tourism attractions in many communities, we demonstrate how ‘packaging’ knowledge and practices into tourism offers can contribute to sustainable tourism development with shared benefits in rural areas away from well-known tourism centres and attractions. Such activities also contribute to safeguarding and revitalisation of intangible cultural heritage and cultural landscapes in a sustainable manner, balancing entertainment, and educational/cultural values. Using a social constructionist frame and ethnographic case study approach, data from interviews with 19 stakeholders from four regions, selected through purposive sampling, were analysed and their experiences and perceptions were complemented by participant observations. Results of the thematic data analysis were categorised into different groups of sustainability and success factors building the assessment framework for tourism potential. We discuss factors such as mechanisms of stakeholder engagement and benefit sharing, and characteristics of good cultural interpretation and tourism experience by analysing good practices and flaws of the four case studies and provide recommendations for using the assessment framework in practice.

Embodiment in action: Engaging with the doing and be(com)ing

Over the past two decades, embodiment has been seen as valuable in the field of language and literacy education. Drawing on a six-month long ethnographic case study conducted at an R1 university in the U.S., this paper examines how a range of embodied activities, as part of the shared and distinct material←→discursive itineraries (Barad, 2007; Scollon, 2008), were mediated into culturally and linguistically diverse students’ (pre-service teachers’) doing and be(com)ing across time and place. Data analysis includes a mediated approach and theory-informed thematic analysis of classroom discourse and two individual interviews with the students. Findings point to the affordances of using embodied activities to (1) support students from diverse backgrounds in (un)making sense of theories and practices in connection to their lived experiences and identifications, and (2) create critical and dialogic spaces for students to engage with and contest dominant discourses in both school context and society at large.

Children learning to sketch: sketching to learn

PurposeThis study aims to understand children’s sketching behavior while they engage in interest-driven design activities. Particularly, the authors examine their information sharing practices and the learning opportunities that may occur when they engage in a sketching activity.Design/methodology/approachThe data collection is based on a participatory design approach, cooperative inquiry. For analysis, the authors used the ethnographic case study approach, which allowed us to consider the particularity and complexity of sketching and its affordances within each distinct design activity.FindingsThe authors found children share information about their expectations, experiences, beliefs and knowledge via their sketches. Additionally, through sketching activities, they were engaged in multiple learning opportunities including how to label sketches, build on ideas, sketch in collaboration and innovate on ideas.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings demonstrate sketching can be used to gather information about the broader contexts of children’s lives which can be leveraged to identify their needs and improve the design of future technologies for children. Additionally, participating in sketching gives children opportunities to develop their sketching skills, a useful multimodal skillset for both design and personal expression.Originality/valueThis empirical research is original in its context of focusing on children sketching experiences in an interest-driven design environment occurring virtually in the informal setting of a library.

Videogames and (language) education

There is a productive discussion concerning the use of videogames in (literacy) education, focusing on their unique pedagogic potentials and on their interconnection with contemporary developments in textual and semiotic issues. Our main aim is to extend this discussion towards a more critical post-videogaming perspective, in the sense that videogames have to be considered as part and parcel of the contemporary, complex socio-cultural and historical context. Therefore, we focus on highlighting indicative aspects of this complexity, and we adopt concepts from the field of critical sociolinguistics, such as scales, strategies, and orders of literacy. We analyze a combination of quantitative (1.185 questionnaires) and qualitative data (6 ethnographic case studies) originating from children 11-15 years old. Our analysis reveals that, although videogaming tends to be a common youth practice, the other important differences/inequalities permeating parenting strategies, school practices, and children’s literate identities remain unchanged, posing serious questions in terms of the promising educational use of videogames. We propose a historically sensitive perspective in order to connect videogames with schooling and especially L1 teaching.

Women in low intensity political conflict (through the lives of Kashmiri women)

The analysis of gender in conflict and fragile situations is an emerging area of research. Little to no attention has been paid to it up until very recently. There is scant scholarly work available that directly addresses this issue, and there is no research on the relationship between gender and low intensity conflict in Kashmir. It is in this light that the current research note has been written. It traces the broad impact that conflict has had on the lives of women living in the Kashmir region, the conflict centric part of Jammu and Kashmir. Through this research note it is established that the women in Kashmir have been exposed to the shock of unpredicted fragility, and the study is further endorsed by some instantial ethnographic case studies. These shocks have impacted them economically, psychologically and socially. Generations of women have been suffering from the negative impact of the conflict. Alhough disastrous for the most part, women have gradually developed some resilience. With time more and more Kashmiri women have been striving towards gaining economic independence by learning skills, by the acquisition of education and by being gainfully employed.

Disciples of Christ and cosmopolitanism in a city of conflict: minority subjectivities in a faith-based school in Jaffa, Israel

ABSTRACT Located in Israel’s contested city of Jaffa, The Church of Scotland’s Tabeetha School is a faith-based, colonial-international school featuring an unlikely combination of Arab-Palestinian pupils, Christian ethos, Scottish spirit, and globally oriented curriculum. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the Scottish School, this article unpacks the value of a Christian and international education as an alternative to the segregated Israeli public education system, which has institutionalised discriminatory practices against the Arab-Palestinian minority. Considering the hostile sociopolitical context, findings reveal how complex intersections of religious tradition, colonial legacy, local ethnonational agendas, and multicultural discourses shape student subjectivities rooted in transnational, cosmopolitan, and advocacy global citizenship models. For Jaffa’s Arab-Palestinians, international education within a Christian school offers alternative avenues to attain educational equity, employment opportunities, and belonging by accumulating international capital and developing pragmatic global citizenships. Despite the exclusion of Arab-Palestinian identities within the bounds of the Jewish state, Tabeetha School creates space enabling their preservation while encouraging students to forge new transnational attachments and allegiances, which provide advantage in our increasingly globalised world.

Building a DIY skatepark and doing politics hands-on

In recent years, informal and unauthorised amateur urban design solutions have become an urban trend in the global North. These Do-It-Yourself (DIY) urbanism actions can be playful commentaries, critical interventions or functional improvements to urban spaces. In general, DIY urbanism tries to make urban everyday life better, but it is not always considered a political act. This paper presents an ethnographic case study of a DIY skatepark building in Tampere, Finland, and describes a group of skaters’ political subjectivisation and how they learned hands-on to influence urban governance. After the city’s failed skatepark plan, the skaters turned their discontent into a tactical spatial appropriation, a DIY skatepark, and later shifted their mode of politics to strategic claim-making. By doing so, the skaters became not only skilled skatepark builders, but also an organised association promoting skateboarding and influencing urban development and culture. This paper argues that DIY urbanism has transformative potential to act as a catalyst for bottom-up change in a contemporary city.

Methodologies of law as performance

ABSTRACT Despite the growth in scholarship in the broad field of law as performance, there is little critical attention paid to methodologies of research. With attention to the growing research in this field, this paper shall consider methodological approaches to law as performance. This paper considers how traditional qualitative methodologies, such as ethnographic observations, case studies and comparative analysis, are used in law as performance studies. The paper then goes on to consider different methodologies, such as narrative, story-telling and also performance- or practice-led research, which position the legal researcher as practitioner and are under-utilized within legal research. There are difficulties posed by these new methodologies, including framing research questions, demonstrating generalizable claims, and dealing with the subjectivity of analysis. The paper considers how performance practitioners have overcome these difficulties to create performance-led research that yields new understandings, and how these approaches could be brought to bear on the performance of law.

Urban Food Infrastructures: The Role of Inner-City Universities

ABSTRACT Urban food infrastructures are oft-forgotten as crucial for sustainability transitions. This ethnographic case study explores the eating spaces of an inner-city university to assess its sustainability outcomes. By considering knowledge as embedded in and through social practices as “general understandings”, the paper argues that the neo-liberal organisation of eating spaces understands campus spaces as assets, conceives students as individualistic consumers, and outsources sustainability initiatives. The paper contends that these understandings have established a dominant pathway for retail prioritised, gentrified and uni-functional eating spaces, marginalising some existing hybrid and convivial food infrastructures that may be pathways for sustainable and just outcomes.

Fun, lifelong relationships and a safer community: understanding collective leadership practice in a grassroots association

The relational processes and practices that create and sustain grassroots associations have received limited attention from researchers. This article addresses this gap, exploring collective leadership of grassroots associations through a ‘leadership-as-practice’ lens (Raelin, 2016a; 2016b). It adopts the concept of ‘bundles’ of leadership practice (Schatzki, 2005) to analyse data from a single ethnographic case study. Adopting this conceptual lens, we identify a set of ‘bundles’ of related practices – organising, engaging and accounting – that constitute the enduring reality of the grassroots association’s collective leadership.

What community for community-based tourism?

ABSTRACT Community-based tourism (CBT) is a way of organizing tourism that must have a consistent effect on the configuration of the community. Therefore, community is a strategic element in the analysis of CBT. However, studies into CBT are usually lacking an anchoring point for a solid conceptualization of community. To define community in the context of CBT, we propose a phenomenological perspective that focuses on collective action and reciprocity; this analytical strategy helps us to better understand CBT experiences and evaluate their consistency. To illustrate and develop our proposal, we present two ethnographic case studies to analyse the articulation between tourism and community. Although more in-depth exploration of this theoretical perspective is needed, it appears to enhance our understanding of the nature of community-based tourism and the possibility of establishing comparative criteria between experiences.