Journal of Organizational Ethnography最新文献

{"title":"Performing an FSC audit","authors":"W. Cook, E. Turnhout, S. van Bommel","doi":"10.1108/JOE-10-2020-0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-10-2020-0039","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) intends to promote responsible forestry through its certification scheme. The primary engine that drives this promotion is auditing. Audits serve a dual purpose: they make forest managers accountable for their claim of meeting the FSC standard, and they make the actions of auditors and auditee account-able, or able to be put into an account. The latter of these is rarely investigated, despite it being crucial to understanding how FSC audits are done.Design/methodology/approachThis article examines FSC forest certification audits as practices where the FSC standards gain meaning. In-depth analysis of these practices enables insight into how different values related to forest certification and auditing are articulated and negotiated in practice, characterizing particular modes of auditing. In this paper, the authors examine the practices of FSC forest management auditors in multi-day audits in Africa and in Spain. Their materials were analyzed and coded using Goffman’s elements of dramaturgy.FindingsThe authors’ findings show that auditing practices entail a series of nested performances in which the auditors and auditees interact together and in which front stage and back stage performances constantly alternate as auditors and auditees perform for each other and simultaneously for an absent audience.Originality/valueThe authors’ analysis demonstrates how in these performances, professional values related to following auditing rules and ensuring that audits are rendered account-able in a particular way take a prominent position. This risks overshadowing the accountability of the FSC system which is ultimately grounded in its ambition to improve forest conservation and management.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42346819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The securitized workplace: document protection, insider threats and emerging ethnographic barriers in a South Korean organization","authors":"Michael M. Prentice","doi":"10.1108/JOE-02-2021-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-02-2021-0010","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regulatory and cyber security concerns.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on 12 months of intensive embedded fieldwork in a South Korean firm from 2014 to 2015 and follow-up interviews in 2018. The author followed an immersive and inductive approach to collecting ethnographic data in situ. The author was hired as an intern in a Korean conglomerate known as the Sangdo Group where he worked alongside Human Resources managers to understand their work practices. The present article reflects difficulties in his original research design and an attempt to analyze the barriers themselves. His analysis combines ideas from theories of securitization and document studies to understand how the idea of protection is reshaping workplaces in South Korea and elsewhere.FindingsThe paper highlights three findings first that South Korean workplaces have robust socio-material infrastructures around document protection and security, reflecting that security around document leaks is becoming integrated into normal organizational life. Second, the securitization of document leaks is shifting from treating document leaks as a threat to organizational existence, to a crime by individual actors that organizations track. Third, that even potential document leaks can have transitive effects on teams and managers.Originality/valueOrganizational security practices and their integration into workplace life have rarely been examined together. This paper connects Weber's insights on bureaucratization with the concept of securitization to examine the rise of document security practices and policies in a South Korean organization. The evidence from South Korea is valuable because technological developments around security coupled with organizational complexities portend issues for other organizational environments around the world.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49142391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Real-estate valuation and the organization of the city: a document-centred ethnography of Tel Aviv's planning in action","authors":"Uri Ansenberg","doi":"10.1108/JOE-10-2020-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-10-2020-0038","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe increasing financialization of urban organization has been well-documented over the last couple of decades. Nevertheless, the planning process has been seen as distinct from the financial. By questioning this assumption and examining where the two spheres interact, this paper argues that the enmeshment of finance and planning produces an overlapping of the two, which refuses any attempt of demarcation.Design/methodology/approachBy focussing on a specific type of document, the Standard-21, around which a large proportion of the Israeli construction is planned, assembled and committed, this article proposes a view of urban organization which highlights the centrality of real-estate valuation, as a practice of prediction and estimation, in the creation of the urban landscape.FindingsThe rationale of city planning is reframed as a financial process, a representation informed by an ethnographic study of the valuation practice.Originality/valueThe literature on urban financialization is rarely based on ethnographies. Answering the growing calls for an ethnographic perspective, this paper offers a novel account of the city and as a result produces a view of the interplay between finance and planning that was previously unnoticed.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45591989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Food assistance in Portugal: organizational challenges in three different contexts","authors":"F. Augusto","doi":"10.1108/JOE-08-2020-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-08-2020-0029","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeDrawing on an ethnographic research study, developed in three different food assistance initiatives (FAIs) operating in Portugal, this article seeks to explore the elements that characterize them and the main organizational challenges they face.Design/methodology/approachParticipant observation was carried out in a surplus food redistribution charity, a soup kitchen and a social supermarket, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with supervisors of these FAIs. The study followed an inductive coding strategy, and a thematic analysis was developed.FindingsThe main results point to an appreciation of the initiatives and the role they play, but they also highlight the existence of several challenges, mainly related to: 1) difficulties in accessing sources of funding, 2) the absence of an intervening state and 3) a scarcity of resources that allow a thorough assessment of their activities and services provided, which weakens the public image of these responses.Originality/valueThe development of food assistance in Europe has a long history. Over the past few years, this sector has grown significantly. Nowadays, it is possible to identify several realities around emergency food provision. However, this heterogeneity has not been sufficiently explored in the literature. In addition, there are few studies that report on the variety of initiatives that coexist in Portugal and establish a comparison between them. The current paper intends to overcome this gap by seeking to understand the main models of food assistance operating in the country.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41752570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Control and autonomy: resource dependence relations and non-profit organizations","authors":"Malin Arvidson, Stig Linde","doi":"10.1108/JOE-05-2020-0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-05-2020-0021","url":null,"abstract":"For non-profit organizations (NPOs) external funding is an essential resource. Studies highlight how control is attributed to funders and so external funding threatens the autonomy of the recipient organization. The purpose of this study is to investigate how external control can be structured and exercised, and to explore how control interacts with organizational autonomy.,The research is based on interviews and participant observations with NPOs and their funders over a period of time. It reports from four different funding-relations: contract-based, social investment, gift-funded and civil society–public partnership. The concept of organizational discretion is used to analyse how control and autonomy are interconnected in these relationship.,The analysis illustrates the value in exposing the different discretionary boundaries related to external control and how control can become a sparring partner in the organization's striving for autonomy. A concluding argument is that control and autonomy are each other's companions rather than antagonists. The study leads us to question a general assumption that NPOs strive to avoid resource dependence and external control but instead may use such control to develop strategies for independence and self-realization.,The empirical material is unique as it includes voices of recipient organizations and funders, and offers a comparison of different controlling-relations. The study presents an innovative analytical framework based on the concepts of discretionary space and reasoning, which supports a critical discussion regarding the idea of external control as detrimental to the autonomy of NPOs.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43851922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Guest editorial","authors":"A. M. Hauge, Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen, A. Pedersen, A. Pors","doi":"10.1108/JOE-04-2021-080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-04-2021-080","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43112204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Communicate belonging? Duoethnography of an organisational change study","authors":"Ivana Crestani, J. Taylor","doi":"10.1108/JOE-01-2019-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-01-2019-0004","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis duoethnography explores feelings of belonging that emerged as being relevant to the participants of a doctoral organisational change study. It challenges the prolific change management models that inadvertently encourage anti-belonging.Design/methodology/approachA change management practitioner and her doctoral supervisor share their dialogic reflections and reflexivity on the case study to open new conversations and raise questions about how communicating belonging enhances practice. They draw on Ubuntu philosophy (Tutu, 1999) to enrich Pinar's currere (1975) for understandings of belonging, interconnectedness, humanity and transformation.FindingsThe authors show how dialogic practice in giving employees a voice, communicating honestly, using inclusive language and affirmation contribute to a stronger sense of belonging. Suppressing the need for belonging can deepen a communication shadow and create employee resistance and alienation. Sharing in each other's personal transformation, the authors assist others in better understanding the feelings of belonging in organisational change.Practical implicationsPractitioners will need to challenge change initiatives that ignore belonging. This requires thinking of people as relationships, rather than as numbers or costs, communicating dialogically, taking care with language in communicating changes and facilitating employees to be active participants where they feel supported.Originality/valueFor both practice and academy, this duoethnography highlights a need for greater humanity in change management practices. This requires increasing the awareness and understanding of an interconnectedness that lies at the essence of belonging or Ubuntu (Tutu, 1999).","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47372643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Challenges of a social enterprise supporting mothers in Hungary","authors":"Henriett Primecz","doi":"10.1108/JOE-07-2019-0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-07-2019-0031","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how and to what extent social enterprise can contribute to improving women's life in Hungary.Design/methodology/approachThe case study was based on a four-month organizational ethnographic study of a café. Participant and non-participant observations were supplemented with interviews with the founder, the manager, visitors and informal conversations with the staff and visitors. Social media communication was also reviewed.FindingsThe empirical results from the organizational ethnography allowed us to gain insights into the impact of the investigated organization on its target group, young mothers, in a post-socialist gender context. The dominant post-socialist gender regime has remained almost entirely untouched and the outcome of the operation of the social enterprise only helped women to accommodate their everyday life to their disadvantaged social situation.Originality/valueWhile previous studies have uncovered the dualistic nature of social enterprises, this analysis shows that an award-winning and popular social enterprise in Hungary could nevertheless only minimally influence the social situation of women. In spite of the good intention of the owner, the all-encompassing prescribed gender roles are hardly questioned, and consequently, women's situation hardly ameliorates.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44683404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impostor syndrome: language barriers in organizational ethnography","authors":"Virginia Rosales","doi":"10.1108/JOE-01-2021-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-01-2021-0003","url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThe use of organizational ethnography has grown significantly during the past decades. While language is an important component of ethnographic research, the challenges associated with language barriers are rarely discussed in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to open up a discussion on language barriers in organizational ethnography.Design/methodology/approachThe author draws on her experience as a PhD student doing an organizational ethnography of an emergency department in a country where she initially did not speak the local language.FindingsThe paper examines the author's research process, from access negotiation to presentation of findings, illustrating the language barriers encountered doing an ethnography in parallel to learning the local language in Sweden.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper calls for awareness of the influence of the ethnographer's language skills and shows the importance of discussing this in relation to how we teach and learn ethnography, research practice and diversity in academia.Originality/valueThe paper makes three contributions to organizational ethnography. First, it contributes to the insider/outsider debate by nuancing the ethnographer's experience. Second, it answers calls for transparency by presenting a personal ethnographic account. Third, it contributes to developing the methodology by offering tips to deal with language barriers in doing ethnography abroad.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42991028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Taking sides with patients using institutional ethnography","authors":"Caroline Cupit, J. Rankin, N. Armstrong","doi":"10.1108/JOE-12-2019-0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/JOE-12-2019-0048","url":null,"abstract":"The main purpose of this paper is to document the first author's experience of using institutional ethnography (IE) to “take sides” in healthcare research. The authors illustrate the points with data and key findings from a study of cardiovascular disease prevention.,The authors use Dorothy E Smith's IE approach, and particularly the theoretical tool of “standpoint”.,Starting with the development of the study, the authors trouble the researcher's positionality, highlighting tensions between institutional knowledge of “prevention” and other locations where knowledge about patients' health needs materialises. The authors outline how IE's theoretically and methodologically integrated toolkit became a framework for “taking sides” with patients. They describe how the researcher used IE to take a standpoint and map institutional relations from that standpoint. They argue that IE enabled an innovative analysis but also reflect on the challenges of conducting an IE – the conceptual unpicking and (re)thinking, and demarcating boundaries of investigation within an expansive dataset.,This paper illustrates IE's relevance for organisational ethnographers wishing to find a theoretically robust approach to taking sides, and suggests ways in which the IE approach might contribute to improving services, particularly healthcare. It provides an illustration of how taking a patient standpoint was accomplished in practice, and reflects on the challenges involved.","PeriodicalId":44924,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Ethnography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47833594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}