Organisational ethnography
Study work cultures through sustained field engagement
Organisational ethnography investigates how work, identities, rules and power are enacted in everyday organisational life. Sustained field engagement combines observation, conversations, participation where appropriate and documentary material. Formal structures and managerial accounts are studied alongside informal routines and contradictions. The organisational boundary may extend across sites or digital systems when the practices being studied do so.
Choose when tacit routines, culture or informal coordination are central and sustained field access is realistic. Protect space for perspectives across organisational hierarchy and for recording events outside formal meetings.
Strengths
- Reveals tacit routines and informal power
- Shows how technology and policy are enacted in practice
Limitations
- Immersion and access can be time-intensive
- Gatekeepers may restrict critical or marginal perspectives
Know the boundary
An organisational interview project without field engagement should not automatically be called ethnography.