Ethnography

The word Ethnos has Greek origins and in simple terms means the similarity of certain groups - as separated by culture or race (see Smith, 1986). In this sense, ethnography can be described as the 'graphic' details and story of a similar people, race or culture. Vidich and Stanford describe ethnography as:

…descriptive anthropology - in its broadest sense, the science devoted to describing ways of humankind (2000:40).

Hence, the ethnographer is one who observes, depicts and narrates the story of the specific cultural group she or he is studying. Based on anthropological traditions and the study of ancient peoples and cultures, ethnographic research has evolved from its

roots in sociology and extended as a worthy methodology to a variety of disciplines to examine a range of social phenomena. Chambers defines ethnography as being:

…principally defined by its subject matter, which is ethnos, or culture, and not by its methodology, which is often but not invariably qualitative (2000: 252).

Chambers also warned that the term culture is 'ambiguous' in its meaning as it can be used in relation to describing both micro and macro groups, that is, a specific

grouping of people such as students in a classroom to that of a nationality. In this study, the ethnos is an organisation, specifically a public sector health organisation.

Bronislaw Malinowski 's anthropological ethnographies fully embraced and included detailed descriptions of what is known as fieldwork within the contexts studied Harvey and Myers (1995). According to Erickson, Malinowski:

…conceptualised social action as meaningful to the actor producing it, and considered the actor as taking account of the meaningful action of others... Malinowski asserted that the authority of the realist ethnographic text and other forms of interpretive, qualitative research should rest on such research describing social action from the point of view of the native (1996: 1).

It is the 'point of view of the native' or the ability to hear other voices (Hull, 1994) or the multiplicity of dialoguing voices (Tedlock, 2000), that is the essence of

Ethnographic inquiry explores the human condition and the cultural environment and settings in which people live and work as it is not restricted to the unity and

similarities of any particular group, it also explores the differences, such as: discord, power and conflict (Goulding, 2002). 'The ethnographer's method of collecting data is to live among those who are the data' (Rosen, 1991:5).

Ethnography and fieldwork challenges both the researcher and the researched:

…in a world of infinite interconnections and overlapping contexts, the ethnographic field cannot simply exist, awaiting discovery. It has to be laboriously constructed, prised apart from all other possibilities for

contextualisation to which its constituent relationships and connections could be referred (Amit, 2000:6).

Wolcott (1988:189) described the tenuous and difficult role of the researcher to manage the diverse relationships during ethnographic research as ‘walking a fine line’. Tedlock (2000) also describes the difficulty of the role:

... ethnographers traverse both territorial and semantic boundaries, fashioning cultures and cultural understandings through an intertwining of voices, they appear heroic to some and ludicrous to others. They are cross-dressers, outsiders wearing insiders' clothes while gradually acquiring the language and behaviours that go along with them (2000:455).

It is the balance between the two boundaries that is required and not easily achieved. During the course of this study, the 'fine line' walked by the researcher was that between Board and management, management and staff. That is, the design of the research required the researcher to be on site for two days per week. The office that she occupied was situated on the 'executive floor' and was originally occupied by the CEO. As such the researcher was quickly labelled as being on the side of

management simply because of the location of the office.

These challenges were also faced by others who have adopted such a methodology. Samra-Fredericks described her interpretation as to why such challenges exist. She said:

…human interaction in organizations does not unfold neatly. It is a layered and complex lived experience which defies simple findings and prescription (2000:323).

The complex and unpredictable nature of human existence and interaction beyond the boundaries of an organisation is further described by Schwartz and Ogilvy:

A conscious being - say, a human being - is very complex and

unpredictable…When people interact they affect each other. Because of this complexity of interaction, people don't always see the same things; they have unique perspective's. In the same way, the emergent paradigm of the actual world is complex, holographic, heterogeneous, indeterminate, mutually

causal, morphogenetic, and perspectival…we are like the world we see (1979:15).

Despite the challenges, the use of ethnographic research to explore the organisational perspectives' of both management and workers appears to be growing. Examples can be found in different workplace contexts and areas such as manufacturing,

information systems, Boards, management, unions and accounting (see: Harvey and Myers (1995), Watson, (1996), Ram (1996), Brown, (1998), Black, Greene and Ackers (1999), Samra-Friedericks, (2000), Dey (2002), and others. Ram (1996) argued the value of using ethnography as a methodological approach for building knowledge in the area of labour management. In his study of a small West Midlands clothing manufacturer, he stated:

The ethnographic approach was crucial to the unraveling of the complexities and tensions inherent in the management process. Insights generated by the method allow prevailing views of managerial practices in such settings to be questioned; and more generally, highlight the potential of ethnography as a means of management research (1996:35).