Organizational Ethnography Research Articles

Advantages and limitations of virtual online consultations in a NHS acute trust: the VOCAL mixed-methods study

BackgroundThere is much enthusiasm from clinicians, industry and the government to utilise digital technologies and introduce alternatives to face-to-face consultations.Objective(s)To define good practice and inform digital technology implementation in relation to remote consultations via Skype™ (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA) and similar technologies.DesignMultilevel mixed-methods study of remote video consultations (micro level) embedded in an organisational case study (meso level), taking account of the national context and wider influences (macro level).SettingThree contrasting clinical settings (Diabetes, Antenatal Diabetes and Cancer Surgery) in a NHS acute trust.Data collection and analysisMacro level – interviews with 12 national-level stakeholders combined with document analysis. Meso level – longitudinal organisational ethnography comprising over 300 hours of observations, 24 staff interviews and analysis of 16 documents. Micro level – 30 video-recorded remote consultations; 17 matched audio-recorded face-to-face consultations. Interview and ethnographic data were analysed thematically and theorised using strong structuration theory. Consultations were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the Roter interaction analysis system (RIAS), producing descriptive statistics on different kinds of talk and interaction.ResultsPolicy-makers viewed remote video consultations as a way of delivering health care efficiently in the context of rising rates of chronic illness and growing demand for services. However, the reality of establishing such services in a busy and financially stretched NHS acute trust proved to be far more complex and expensive than anticipated. Embedding new models of care took much time and many resources, and required multiple workarounds. Considerable ongoing effort was needed to adapt and align structures, processes and people within clinics and across the organisation. For practical and safety reasons, virtual consultations were not appropriate for every patient or every consultation. By the end of this study, between 2% and 20% of all consultations were being undertaken remotely in participating clinics. Technical challenges in setting up such consultations were typically minor, but potentially prohibitive. When clinical, technical and practical preconditions were met, virtual consultations appeared to be safe and were popular with both patients and staff. Compared with face-to-face consultations, virtual consultations were very slightly shorter, patients did slightly more talking and both parties sometimes needed to make explicit things that typically remained implicit in a traditional encounter. Virtual consultations appeared to work better when the clinician and the patient knew and trusted each other. Some clinicians used Skype adaptively to support ad hoc clinician-initiated and spontaneous patient-initiated encounters. Other clinicians chose not to use the new service model at all.ConclusionsVirtual consultations appear to be safe, effective and convenient for patients who are preselected by their clinicians as ‘suitable’, but such patients represent a small fraction of clinic workloads. There are complex challenges to embedding virtual consultation services within routine practice in the NHS. Roll-out (across the organisation) and scale-up (to other organisations) are likely to require considerable support.LimitationsThe focus on a single NHS organisation raises questions about the transferability of findings, especially quantitative data on likely uptake rates.Future researchFurther studies on the micro-analysis of virtual consultations and on the spread and scale-up of virtual consulting services are planned.FundingThe National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Whose home is it anyway? Performing multiple selves while doing organizational ethnography

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to nuance the idea of natural access proposed by Mats Alvesson in his description of at-home ethnography, and to offer a performative view of Alvesson’s suggestion that, in at-home ethnography, the ethnographer must work with “the processual nature of the researcher’s self.”Design/methodology/approachThe author offers a reflection on the several years of ethnographic research the author conducted, of which some parts were done in a living community of which the author was part. Being literally at home, as well as being very familiar in the other research settings the author describes, allows for a critical reflection on what “at-homeness” means.FindingsUsing Butler’s notion of performativity, the author argues that “the processual nature of the researcher’s self” Alvesson speaks of, can best be understood as multiple selves, of which some emerge during the research process. The author furthermore problematizes Alvesson’s use of the term “natural access,” by arguing that this kind of access is neither easy, nor devoid of power relations.Originality/valueThis paper uses an experience of conducting research in the home, as well as an experience conducting research in a setting where the researcher arguably blent in well, to question what the “at-home” in at-home ethnography means, and how the researcher can deal with it.

Coming “home” to do glocal engaged scholarship? A reflexive account of managing competing commitments during an organizational ethnography

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on how the author’s status as an international academic wanting to maintain “local” research relationships in the author’s country of origin both improved and derailed the process of conducting an organizational ethnography.Design/methodology/approachUsing visual representations of the research design process inspired by Maxwell’s (2013) model, the paper traces the evolution of a glocal engaged scholarship project and the personal, professional, and commitments that pulled the researcher and the research project in competing directions.FindingsThe first iteration of the project showed that, despite geographical nomadism, the author was firmly anchored to professional norms and methodological choices, with these attachments to values, principles, and practices constituting a global academic “home.” As the project unfolded, local organizational needs and desires that called into question the researcher’s local organizational knowledge and methodological choices destabilized the author’s sense of home, creating a situation of “away-ness” that acted as a catalyst for reflexivity about the project and relationships with organizational partners.Originality/valueBy overturning a view of home as being rooted in a particular locale and homelessness as being nomadic, this confessional tale problematizes the idea that some organizational ethnographers and projects are local while others are foreign.

Researcher self-care in organizational ethnography

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer practical researcher self-care strategies to prepare for and manage the emotions involved in doing organizational ethnographic research. Institutional ethics policies or research training programs may not provide guidance, yet emotions are an integral part of research, particularly for ethnographers immersed in the field or those working with sensitive topics or vulnerable or marginalized people.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork over nine months with a voluntary organization in the UK, Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, to explore the experiences and activities of volunteer visitors who offer emotional support to women detained indefinitely in an immigration removal center. The author is a “complete member researcher,” or “at-home ethnographer,” a volunteer visitor and a former detainee.FindingsThe author describes the emotional impact the research personally had on her and shares learning from overcoming “compassion fatigue.” Self-care strategies based on the literature are recommended, such as a researcher self-assessment, identification of the emotional risks of the research, and self-care plan formulated during project planning. Suggested resources and activities to support the well-being of researchers are explored.Practical implicationsThis paper provides practical resources for researchers to prepare for and cope with emotional and mental health risks throughout the research process. It builds awareness of safeguarding researchers and supporting them with handling emotional disruptions. Without adequate support, they may be psychologically harmed and lose the potential to critically engage with emotions as data.Originality/valueThe literature on emotions in doing research rarely discusses self-care strategies. This paper offers an actionable plan for researchers to instil emotional and mental well-being into the research design to navigate emotional challenges in the field and build resilience.

Ethnographic encounters: towards a minor politics of field access

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to explore the insight that can be brought by Deleuze and Guattari's concept of minor literature with regard to questions of field access within the context of organizational ethnography. This paper draws from an ethnographic account of scientists negotiating access during a field expedition to Fiji. While the scientists could secure access prior to their departure by abiding by the legal dimension of plant collecting in the field, they had to renegotiate access in the field by engaging with different epistemologies, codes and forms of relationality. Positioned as an ethnography of field access, this paper highlights the enmeshment of codes, practices and trajectories in the negotiation of field access and seeks to set the lines of a ‘minor politics of access’ within the context of organizational ethnography.

What Is a Clinic? Relationships and the Practice of Organizational Ethnography

This article examines the practices of ethnographers carrying out research in and, especially, on organizations. Ethnographers studying organizations, like other ethnographers, emphasize close observation and understanding the meaning of actions, words, and artifacts; they differ from other fieldworkers, though, in focusing on the organization itself, not just what happens inside it. Because fieldwork relationships are the core technology of organizational ethnography, this article argues, the challenges of studying organizations differ from the challenges of doing ethnography in other settings or with other analytic purposes precisely because the character of the organization and its activities shape what the researcher can and will study. This article discusses how fieldwork relationships are constrained and shaped as ethnographers submit their projects for ethics review, gain access to research sites, hang out in the organizations they are studying, interview informants, study organizational documents and paperwork, and handle requests to give back to the site.

From Ethnography of Organizations to Analysis of the Real Life Circumstances of People? Book Review: Rakopoulos T. (2017) From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily, New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. 229 p.

From Ethnography of Organizations to Analysis of the Real Life Circumstances of People? Book Review: Rakopoulos T. (2017) From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily, New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. 229 p.

Critical Performativity in the Field: Methodological Principles for Activist Ethnographers

It has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners. However, there is a lack of systematic inquiry into how such engagement might be undertaken, which this article redresses. We propose activist ethnography as a suitable methodological framework for critical organizational scholarship, drawing on organizational ethnography, militant ethnography, and participatory action research, to construct a theoretical framework which we use to analyze four ethnographic vignettes of our own experiences of research with activists. Our contribution is to (a), assess the methodological challenges and opportunities of engagement with activism, (b) give an account of our own experiences as activist ethnographers for others to learn from, and (c) propose strategies whereby the challenges of academic activism might be negotiated and the opportunities maximized.

Performing Accountability: Unanticipated Responses to Administrative Reform

At the heart of New Public Management (NPM) reforms lies a theory of accountability for results. In the past three decades, this normative idea transferred from the “Anglo-American heartlands” of such reforms to many other parts of the world. By means of an organizational ethnography of a Mexican water users' association, the article shows that, in spite of reforms, such an organization can operate as a body that is largely unresponsive and non-transparent to its users and the regulatory authority. The management instead reverses accountability and shifts blame downwardly. Because culture shapes the reform from the inside, reform does not necessarily change and depoliticize managerial practice as intended but does have concrete implications for the practice and effects of accountability arrangements. The article argues that management performs accountability culturally, and this works to morally legitimate managerial conduct that is unaccountable for results and produces a sub-optimal financial and organi...

Cultural analysis in three indigenous productive organizations from an interpretive-symbolic perspective

Most cultural scientific studies in Colombian organizations have been characterized as being deterministic and by establishing cultural typologies, according to the analysis of internal and external organizational variables. Additionally, most of these studies are oriented towards considering Colombian organizations within modern westernized contexts as the unit of analysis, leaving out of the scientific discussion, the traditional Colombian organizations that have been designed and developed from native perspectives and grounded in the ancient cultures of the country. In contrast, this research defined three indigenous productive organizations as units of analysis to describe and characterize their culture from an interpretative-symbolic perspective, analyzing their own cultural features and components based on the theoretical model of cultural dynamics. The methodology is based on organizational ethnography and cultural analysis of emerging categories. The results show that although there are points where three indigenous productive organizations meet regarding material, intangible and social aspects, every organization has its own cultural characteristics that defines as “indigenous-traditional” or “western-modern”.

A Visual Turn for Organizational Ethnography: Embodying the Subject in Video-Based Research

For organizational ethnography we argue that traditional philosophies of onto-epistemological realism be supplanted by interpretive and reflexive thinking to provide fresh theoretical assumptions and new methodological proposals for film- and video-based research. The argument is developed in three phases: First, to establish analytical context, we explore the historical evolution of the ethnographic organizational documentary and discuss habitual problems – methodological, philosophical and technical – that filmmakers have faced when claiming qualities of directness and objectivity in their work, that is, through the style of ‘film-truth’. Second, to advance new conceptual logic for video-based organizational research, we supplant the objectivist and realist philosophy underpinning traditional documentary filmmaking with sociologically interpretive and reflexive arguments for undertaking ethnography in organizations, a subjective process which importantly yields greater understanding of affect and embodiment. Finally, to define new methodological opportunities, these interpretive and reflexive arguments are marshalled to underpin a strategy of participatory thinking in video-based organizational ethnography – a ‘withness’ approach facilitating a greater sense of affect and embodiment as well as polyvocal interpretation of visual data; a practice which sees filmmakers, social theorists, participants and viewers alike united in analytical space.

Academic Activism, Radical Ethnography and the Critical Scholar

It has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners. However, there are few examples of such engagement and thus a lack of systematic inquiry into how it might be undertaken. This paper seeks to redress this lack. We evaluate the potential of ethnography as a radical methodological framework for critical scholarship, drawing on organizational ethnography, urban anthropology and participative action research to construct a theoretical framework which we use to analyse four ethnographic vignettes based on our own experiences of engagement with activists. Our contribution is to 1) assess barriers to engagement, 2) explore identity conflicts between activist and researcher roles, 3) examine the ethical dilemmas of researching those we closely identify with and, 4) suggest ways in which to balance research and activism in order to benefit both. We conclude that, despite the difficulties, there is much to be gained by this form of critical performativity.

The Land Sparing Complex: Environmental Governance, Agricultural Intensification, and State Building in the Brazilian Amazon

Since 2004, annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen nearly 80 percent, even as agricultural production in the region has increased. Understanding this land use transition requires a theorization of the relationships among environmental governance, agricultural intensification, and state building. Drawing on key informant interviews, municipal-level case studies, and an organizational ethnography of an international environmental organization, I argue that declines in deforestation engineered by new governance arrangements are part of a project of economic development and state building through environmental regulation. This project is implemented by a complex of government, nongovernmental, and corporate actors. I describe the emergence of this complex and the land sparing logic that animates it. Land sparing policy inverts previous logics of state territorialization and environmental conservation with the aim of shifting the Amazonian economy from an extensive mode of extraction to an intensive mode of production. Two municipal case studies follow variation in land sparing policy implementation. The cases identify determinants of land sparing policy effectiveness and collateral effects, including tendencies toward agro-industrial consolidation at the expense of smallholders.

Atmospheres of mistrust and suspicion: Theorising on conflict and affective practice in a child protection social work agency

Organisational conflict is normally recognised as a disruptive activity which interrupts relational dynamics and productivity. However, this paper will argue that in addition, if conflict is not resolved carefully, it can trigger negative affect which will in turn unsettle and destabilise a whole workforce. Based on the findings from an organisational ethnography, the author examines how conflict emerged in a child protection social work agency by theorizing on the concept of affective practice. In doing so, the author makes the argument that although affect emerges in interaction it can be exacerbated by the unintentional pursuit of problematic strategies. Examining affective practice in such a way enables studies to bring into play the atmospheric factors which impacted on those who were present at that moment so that readers can understand how people were moved, attracted to or pained by certain social interactions. This is important when trying to comprehend how coercive power approaches in social work prevent care objectives from being met. The paper will conclude by suggesting that when practitioners are preoccupied with trying to survive in the workplace they will find it difficult to meet the needs of the children and families they are working with.

Using a dual-sited organizational ethnography to examine change within and between community sport organizations

ABSTRACTAn increasingly diverse range of theories have been used to examine organizational change in sport. The methodological techniques used have revealed much, but are increasingly routine. Here, a novel use of organizational ethnography is used to examine change, both within and between two partners within an inter-organizational partnership. A longitudinal, dual-sited, organizational ethnography was performed between 2008 and 2012. This internal perspective gathered data on the structures, practices and relationships impacted by a common external stimulus (national sport initiative). One organization's values moderated their responses to the implantation of quality control systems and their attitudes to program expansion. This resistance created tensions between the partners, resulting in the deterioration of organizational relationships. This paper provides both a case of organizational change in sport management, while demonstrating some opportunities and challenges for using this dual approach. Both theoretical and methodological implications for practice are discussed and further research opportunities presented.

Hydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water

ABSTRACTBeginning with colonial times and continuing to the present, irrigation engineering has been and is an important site for the construction of gendered power and hegemonic masculinities. The strong connection between masculinities and professional irrigation cultures provides one possible explanation of why hydraulic bureaucracies are so resistant to change: it makes behaviours and codes of conduct that are learned seem natural. Taking inspiration from masculinity studies and from feminist studies of technology and organizations, this article proposes two possible lines of inquiry for critically disentangling how the irrigation profession becomes or is made masculine. The first is the feminist historical analysis of water bureaucracies, and the second is a critical ethnography of contemporary irrigation organizations. Such studies are needed both to create more space for women engineers in government water agencies and to contribute to unravelling important cultural aspects of water politics.

Social media and the promise of excellence in internal communication

PurposeFor many years the excellence theory (Grunig, 1992), with its ideal of two-way symmetrical communication, has been the dominant normative framework in public relations (PR). From an affordance perspective, social media seem to side perfectly with this promise of a more balanced power relation between participants in the communication loop. The purpose of this paper is to see if this promise was realized in the context of an internal communication practitioner’s social software use.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a critical case approach for the organizational ethnography. Therefore, the authors selected an IT company where the formal position of internal communication was being created. In this environment, the authors considered it “least likely” to find the unidirectional model of “push communication.” The authors used the network gatekeeping theory (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008) to study technology usage patterns in the organization.FindingsThe analysis indicates that the internal communicator uses social software to interact with other employees. The authors additionally found these tools to affect the gatekeeping role of internal communication, altering the position’s ideological focus through its ability to shape the technological environment.Research limitations/implicationsOn a theoretical level, the network gatekeeping theory proved to be useful to study power relations inside organizations. On a practical level, the authors found themselves combining different data sources to grasp the complexity of organizational communication practices.Originality/valueThis research questions the widespread assumption that adoption of social software leads to excellence in PR. Additionally, the use of ethnographic methods in PR has been rare.

The words leader/líder and their resonances in an Italo-Latin American multinational corporation

The problems of ‘lost in translation’ are well known. Yet some terms of English managerial vocabulary, which are perfectly translatable in other languages, remain untranslated. One explanation of this phenomenon is what Linguistic anthropology call negative semantic resonances. Semantic resonances focused on the issue of which meanings can or cannot be expressed by a single word in different cultures. In this paper, based on an organisational ethnography of Latin American expatriates working for an Italo-Latin-American multinational corporation (Tubworld), we analyse the resonances of the word leader/líder and director, direttore, capo, guida, coordinador, caudillo among a group of expatriates; all Italian, Spanish or multilingual speakers who use English as a second language in their everyday interactions. The paper explains how the different uses contribute to create a meaning of what a leader should and should not be; someone who leads without leading, sometimes a manager. The authors, an Italian native speaker who learnt Spanish during childhood and use English as his everyday language and a Spanish native speaker, argue that Italian or Spanish speakers not only avoid the words duce and caudillo (the vernacular vocabulary for leader, not in use due to the political and cultural meaning) but also the word leader/líder itself, as it resonate to the other two (violent, authoritarian, autocratic, antidemocratic leadership) but furthermore because the word, a lexical loan from English, failed to encapsulate the complexity of leading multilingual organisations like Tubworld.

Professional Utopianism and Administrative Naivett. Uncertainty and Archaeology in the Shipwrecks of Pisa (1998-20??) (Appendix)

This paper is an appendix to our chapter of the same name, published in the Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice (Neil Silberman and Angela Labrador, editors, Oxford, 2017). Our chapter examines the organizational dynamics that emerged from the 1998 discovery of a group of well-preserved Roman shipwrecks in Pisa, Italy. Known as the Navi di Pisa (‘ships of Pisa’), the shipwrecks are globally important finds, but also highly fragile, requiring costly conservation interventions and access to extensive technical expertise. The excavation, conservation, and museification of the finds have now stretched over 20 years and represent an extremely complex example of organizational activity. Due to limitations of space, empirical data had to be kept to a minimum in our chapter. But as qualitative researchers with an interest in heritage organizations, our research has an ethnographic flavor, a sort of organizational ethnography (Brannan et al., 2012), in which interesting research questions tend to emerge during field research, or even after its completion (Zan 2013) – as is often the case with qualitative research. We disagree with frequently-heard critiques that such research constitutes mere “description”, as if reconstructing the sequence and contents events and complex processes were not fundamental to both theory and practice. We find that the process of ‘reconstructing’ the story of a complex project is valuable in itself, since we care about the empirical situation being examined – quite apart from the possibility of wider generalizations and implications.

The ‘diverse economies’ of applied theatre

Abstract Some of the perennial tensions in applied theatre arise from the ways in which practice is funded or financed. They include the immediate material pressures and pragmatic dilemmas faced by theatre makers on the ground and the struggle to secure the resources needed to produce and sustain work or to negotiate the dynamics and demands of particular funding relationships. In the applied theatre literature, there are many examples of groups and organizations that have compromised their political, pedagogic, artistic or ethical principles to make their work economically viable. There are also ongoing debates about the nature of the relationship between applied theatre and the local, national and global economic conditions in which it is produced. These debates examine the extent to which economic conditions shape the forms and intentions of socially committed theatre movements over time. This article takes a practice-based approach, drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2012 with three applied theatre companies: Applied Theatre Consultants Ltd in New Zealand; C&T in the UK; and FM Theatre Power in Hong Kong. This multi-sited organizational ethnography generates critical insights into the ways in which these companies bring social and artistic values to bear on business models and financial relationships. Analysis of the companies’ practice takes seriously the aim of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s (2006) diverse economies project: to imagine and create spaces of economic possibility. Organizational, management and economic processes can be insidious technologies by which capitalist/neo-liberal ideologies infiltrate socially committed theatre and performance. But they can also be critically informed practices, involving considerable ethical consideration, creativity and care.