Tony J. Watson

Ethnography, Reality, and Truth: The Vital Need for Studies of How Things Work in Organizations and Management

There is considerable potential for ethnography to play a larger and more mainstream role in organization and management studies. Ethnography is not a research method. It is a way of writing about and analysing social life which has roots in both the sciences and the humanities. Whilst it prioritizes close and intensive observation in the gathering of information and insights, it may additionally and potentially use any of the full range of other research methods. A powerful rationale for ‘good’ ethnographic work is offered by Pragmatist Realist principles of truth, reality, and relevance-to‐practice. Research based on these principles investigates the realities of ‘how things work’ in organizations. In doing this, it rigorously grounds and contextualizes the activities which the researcher observes and the accounts which they receive from organizational members. To do this well, researchers must avoid being diverted from the analysis of organizational patterns and managerial processes by researchers trying to ‘get into the heads’ of organizational members in order to capture their subjective experiences. Various moves can be identified which would encourage and enable more people to work ethnographically and to produce research which is inherently critical and is unfettered by attachment to any narrow specialist method, concept or ‘perspective’.

Management “flavours of the month”: their role in managers' lives

Existing analyses and critiques of the succession of management fads and fashions entering managerial discourse and activities are complemented and developed by drawing on participant observation research carried out in an organization utilizing a variety of “packaged innovations”. It is shown that what are sometimes mocked as “flavours of the month” (FOMs) play a role in the double-controlproblem faced by all managers: the problem of managing their personal identities, careers and understandings at the same time as contributing to the overall control of the organization in which they are managers. Managers in the organization studied are shown generally to be critical of the “flavour of the month effect” but there is nevertheless an equivocality about how such ideas and practices can function.

Entrepreneurship in action: bringing together the individual, organizational and institutional dimensions of entrepreneurial action

There is increasing recognition that entrepreneurship research needs to achieve a better balance between studying to entrepreneurial activities and setting these activities in their wider context. It is important that these good intentions are realized and one way of doing this is to bring together ethnographic research with concepts from sociology and from pragmatist thinking. In this study, field research material is interwoven with a set of key concepts to ensure that balanced attention is paid to issues at the levels of the enterprising individual, the organization and societal institutions. The field research is innovative in combining depth study of several enterprises and their founders with the analysis of broader aspects of ‘entrepreneurship in society’. It achieves this through a process of ‘everyday ethnographic’ observation, reading, conversation and ongoing analysis. In the spirit of a pragmatist conception of social science, the underlying logic of entrepreneurial action is identified. This is a logic which needs to be appreciated by all of those who wish to understand and/or engage with the entrepreneurial dimension of contemporary social and economic life.

Critical social science, pragmatism and the realities of HRM

The tendency of HRM writers to act as prescriptive advisors and legitimators to corporate management needs to be balanced if not replaced by critical-analytical and social scientific research. The notion of the sociological imagination provides inspiration and valuable guidelines for a type of realist research which, in addition to informing people directly implicated in human resourcing activities, has the potential to inform democratic processes as opposed to furthering the particular interests of one segment of society. To do this, it is helpful to adopt a realist and a philosophically pragmatist style of thinking. In line with pragmatist principles, it is argued that we are better placed to get to grips with the realities of human resourcing principles and practices if we conceptualise ‘HRM’ in terms of labour or employment management generally rather than treat it as just one variant of employment management. It is also important to appreciate the vital connection between HRM and bureaucracy. As a ‘vignette’ from research on HR processes in a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) illustrates, pragmatism also provides a methodological base for theory development and research on HRM processes, working in the sociological-imagination tradition. Pragmatic realism also has implications for how HRM scholars engage with the world outside the university.

Strategic Exchange in the Development of Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS).

The potential of computerised human resource information systems (HRIS) is often not realised for several reasons. Taking a relational/processual rather than a systems approach, a case study of a global HRIS developement project is examined using strategic exchange to highlight important social considerations of organisational, group and individual projects.

Ethical Choice in Managerial Work: The Scope for Moral Choices in an Ethically Irrational World

Ethical and moral aspects of the work of managers are given less direct attention in the literature than we might expect given the growing attention being paid to business ethics more generally. Theoretical analysis together with an account of one self-avowedly ethically sensitive senior manager is used to argue that corporate managers may be less ‘morally mute’ than they are often alleged to be. Managers - ‘strategic’ ones at least - necessarily deal with ethically sensitive pressures coming from the various constituencies with which an organization strategically exchanges. In this, there is scope for individual managers (who are, themselves, resource-dependent constituencies) to bring to bear their personal ethical preferences on decisions and to mediate corporate priorities. The extent to which managers generally recognize this scope and exploit opportunities to adopt ‘ethically assertive’ as opposed to ‘ethically reactive’ orientations is an important question for detailed research.

Entrepreneurship, Management Learning and Negotiated Narratives: ‘Making it Otherwise for Us—Otherwise for Them’:

A dialogic and drama-like narrative is presented. This has resulted from an unexpected circumstance in which a business idea is seen to emerge. This narrative provides a valuable resource for a ‘negotiated narrative’ style of entrepreneurship management learning and it is used to contribute to the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship itself and to the production of a novel way of conceptualizing entrepreneurial processes generally. Emphasis is given to the emergent and relational processes through which learning occurs and through which entrepreneurial opportunities are realized. Entrepreneurship can thus be seen as a matter of entrepreneurial actors relationally ‘becoming otherwise’ through enabling customers or clients to ‘become otherwise’.

Making organisational ethnography

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the “manifesto” for organisational ethnography being put forward in the first issue of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography.Design/methodology/approach – The author draws upon several decades of personal experience of field research and ethnographic writing, in and around organisations, to suggest ways in which this type of research and publication can be advanced.Findings – It is wise to see ethnography as much more than a research method; it is a way of presenting research – research which can be carried out using a variety of investigative methods in addition to the essential activity of intensive field research. To work fully within the spirit of ethnography, it is vital to set organisational activities within the broad societal order of which they are part. Ethnographic researchers should consider undertaking “everyday ethnography” (seeking ethnographic insights in the course of their daily lives) as an element of their studies.Originality/...

Entrepreneurial action and the Euro-American social science tradition: pragmatism, realism and looking beyond ‘the entrepreneur’

Entrepreneurship studies are dominated by the disciplines of economics and psychology and work within a limiting methodological frame of reference; a ‘scientistic’ and individualistic framework that dominates the US-led mainstream of research. To achieve a more balanced scholarship, it is helpful to look at an alternative style of research and analysis which has deep and intertwined European and American roots. This looks to other social sciences such as sociology, as well as to history and the philosophy of science. Its adoption would encourage to shift the focus away from ‘entrepreneurs’ and onto the much broader phenomenon of entrepreneurial action or ‘entrepreneuring’ in its societal and institutional contexts. Such a shift would open up a greatly expanded range of research questions and enable a better balance to be achieved between attention to individual entrepreneurial actors and their organizational, societal and institutional contexts. A pragmatist and realist frame of reference, which recognizes both the importance of processes of social construction and the existence of a ‘real world’, has considerable potential to enrich and expand the scope of entrepreneurship scholarship.

Narratives in society, organizations and individual identities: An ethnographic study of pubs, identity work and the pursuit of ‘the real’

Narratives play a very significant role in human social life. An ethnographic study within and ‘around’ a contemporary ‘real-ale’-based pubs organization shows narratives playing a part in the construction of reality at a societal level, in the negotiation of order at an organizational and family level and in the shaping of self identities at the level of the human individual. It is shown that narrative resources at these three levels of social reality come together in particular individual and social circumstances. In the process of doing this an ethnographic narrative about the ‘fall and rise’ of ‘real beer’ and ‘real pubs’ is produced. This offers significant anthropological insights into a culturally interesting aspect of recent and contemporary British life. In addition, insights are offered about processes of ethnographic enquiry and the potential for an ‘everyday ethnography’ style of research that ‘grounds’ theoretical work, without resorting to a notion of ‘grounded theory’.