Ethical Concerns

Conducting social science research requires recurrent questions of judgment and discretion in the ethical realm. As Laine [2000: 29] observes,

“The overlapping of roles and relationships presents researchers and other professionals with a range of complex ethical and moral dilemmas for which there is no satisfactory solution. Multiple roles (friend / therapist /

researcher) and dual relationships (friend/researcher) have a propensity to create “conflicts of interests.”

I see as the most important of the ethical guidelines put forward by the British Sociological Association [2004] the requirements to obtain informants’ informed consent and to avoid causing harm. I attempt below to recollect honestly the ethical dilemmas and decisions that I as a relatively junior researcher faced, especially because I was always reminded that to continue in the field I required the continuing support of senior managers. As Van Mannen [in Emerson (ed.), 1983: 277] says, what could seem quite abstract decisions are in practice “immediate, personal and excruciating decisions”. Embedded in fieldwork are reciprocal expectations of the researcher and the researched that operate within asymmetric relationships of power. The researcher has to negotiate power relations in terms of access with managers who possess economic resources and have an important say in creating and reproducing authority in the plant.

Even once I had received formal informed consent from management to conduct my study, I needed the informed consent of managers and workers. Informed consent is constantly negotiated at multiple levels to maintain trust and take the dialogue to a deeper level. As Coffey [1999: 26] says, this requires a continuous process of identity management. The maintenance of my carefully constructed identity (no less carefully constructed for being true) as a friendly research student was crucial to getting the consent of middle managers and workers. Coming from an overseas university also gave me a veneer of prestige, but I also had to reassure them that I would not reveal what they said. I also was careful to avoid empathising with workers when I spoke to managers like Mr. N, who I knew was hostile to them, which inevitably would have made him think I shared his views. I see this as an example of what Burgess [1995: 202] describes as the “white lies” fieldworkers must occasionally tell.

The researcher must also be careful that no harm comes to people as a result of participating in the study. Some commentators on “ethical situationalism” [Hammersley, 2007: 238) suggest that one should concentrate on protecting from harm those people who are vulnerable rather than everyone, such as Mr. N, for instance, since “the likelihood of offence to someone cannot be avoided”.

I was therefore particularly careful not to betray the trust of middle managers and workers. Indeed, middle managers often asked what I was going to do with their opinions and perspectives, and could not think how the minutiae of events, conversations and impressions would be relevant. Consequently, I had to be careful that I did not share middle managers’ points of view to their superiors, especially when asked directly by Mr. AB or the GM, Mr. SDN. Since they had given me a role in troubleshooting on GEMBA and finding out the hold-ups in its implementation, they did ask me questions about others’ attitudes. But I would skirt their questions, or tell them nothing I thought consequential. Workers were even more nervous, and as noted above I tended to meet them off-site as a result, where our conversations could not be overheard.

In these circumstances the researcher is always nervous about performing his or her identity appropriately. As Laine [2000: 6] says in the immediate situation there may be little the researcher can do “to ameliorate the anxiety that could impede progress towards establishing rapport and trust”. One of my most anxious moments was when Mr. AB tried to read my notebook, but luckily my handwriting and cryptic notes meant that he was unable to understand my notes. Even now, however, the emotional burden of carrying the plant and its individuals in my mind has been very difficult to me, although I follow Burawoy as seeing this as a key aspect of analysis.

As the thesis neared completion, I became more concerned about whether the written version of the thesis, especially if it were published, would reveal the identity of either the case study firm or individuals within it. Access to the firm was granted in the

first place under the proviso that I would take adequate precautions to protect the identity of corporate policies and individuals, although the firm was less worried about being named. However, disguising the identity of the firm may be difficult, since individuals in the industry and academic practitioners who know the sector might deduce it. The

automotive industry is so capital-intensive that there are only a finite number of big players. Protecting the identity of individuals may also be a problem, although I have used pseudonyms for them as well as the firm. Clearly before anything from the thesis is published more care will have to be taken to disguise their identities. However, so much time has elapsed since the main body of the fieldwork that people may not be so

identifiable as they might have been, even to insiders.