4 results
27 - Researching everyday practice: the ethnomethodological contribution
- from Part IV - Methodological Resources
-
- By Dalvir Samra-Fredericks, Nottingham Business School, United Kingdom
- Edited by Damon Golsorkhi, Linda Rouleau, David Seidl, Universität Zürich, Eero Vaara
-
- Book:
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Published online:
- 05 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 03 September 2015, pp 477-490
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The studies of work [Garfinkel] inspires […] [examine] the detailed and specifiable process of producing orders based on shared methods, trust, competence and attention.
Rawls (2008: 702)Introduction
Harold Garfinkel originally coined the term ‘ethnomethodology’ in the 1950s to capture his central interest in (for us, organizational) members’ ‘folk’ or everyday taken-for-granted methods (also called practices) or practical reasoning procedures for accomplishing a social order that constitutes sense. Garfinkel (1974: 16) later commented that ‘ethno’ referred, ‘somehow or other, to the availability to a member of common-sense knowledge of his society as common-sense knowledge of the whatever’. While Garfinkel's ‘daunting prose’ (Silverman 2000: 138) may deter us from reading him first-hand, others, such as Heritage (1984), have offered accessible summaries of his work. Garfinkel's ethnomethodological stance was also subsequently taken up in a unique way by Harvey Sacks (see Jefferson 1992; see also Silverman 1998) and colleagues in the late 1960s, establishing conversation analysis. Under the auspices of the ‘missing what’, both Garfinkel and Sacks argued that social scientists were missing out the observable and reportable ‘work’ – in other words, the everyday ordinary activities of members whereby they make accountable and visible those entities we call, for example, ‘welfare agencies’, hospitals, factories, courtrooms, families and various other kinds of organizations/bureaucracies.
In quite diffuse ways, ethnomethodological thinking and ideas have seeped into the management and organization studies field through the work of Weick (1995: 11) and Giddens (1984; see Boden 1991). More recently the social theorist and philosopher Theodore Schatzki (2005: 479) – when detailing the parameters of a practice turn in social theory – has also contended that his ‘site ontology’ is ‘clearly allied with a variety of micro-oriented approaches to social life, for example, ethnomethodology’. When turning to the more general substantive ‘topic’ in this chapter – strategy work – ethnomethodology has also been briefly referred to by Knights and Morgan (1991) in their Foucauldian-based appraisal/critique of corporate strategy and the inherent constitution of subjectivity and other ‘power effects’.
15 - Researching everyday practice: the ethnomethodological contribution
- Edited by Damon Golsorkhi, Linda Rouleau, David Seidl, Universität Zürich, Eero Vaara
-
- Book:
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Published online:
- 05 October 2012
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2010, pp 230-242
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The studies of work [Garfinkel] inspires […] [examine] the detailed and specifiable process of producing orders based on shared methods, trust, competence and attention
(Rawls 2008, p. 702)Introduction
Garfinkel originally coined the term ‘ethnomethodology’ (EM) in the 1950s to capture his central interest in members' ‘folk’ or everyday taken-for-granted methods (also called practices) or practical reasoning procedures for accomplishing a social order that constitutes sense. Garfinkel (1974, p. 16) later commented that ‘Ethno’ referred ‘somehow or other, to the availability to a member of common-sense knowledge of his society as common-sense knowledge of the whatever’. While Garfinkel's ‘daunting prose’ (Silverman, 2000: 138) may deter us from reading him first-hand, others, for example Heritage (1984), have offered accessible summaries of his work. Garfinkel's ethnomethodological stance was also subsequently taken up in a unique way by Harvey Sacks (1992; see Silverman 1998) and colleagues in the late 1960s, establishing conversation analysis (CA). Under the auspices of the ‘missing what’, both Garfinkel and Sacks argued that social scientists were missing out the observable and reportable ‘work’. In other words, the everyday ordinary activities of members whereby they make accountable and visible those entities we call, for example, ‘welfare agencies’, hospitals, factories, courtrooms, families and various other kinds of organizations/bureaucracies.
In quite diffuse ways, ethnomethodological thinking and ideas have seeped into the management and organization studies field through the work of Weick (1995, p. 11) and Giddens (1984; see Boden 1991).
9 - The interactional accomplishment of a strategic plan
- Edited by Nick Llewellyn, University of Warwick, Jon Hindmarsh, King's College London
-
- Book:
- Organisation, Interaction and Practice
- Published online:
- 20 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 11 February 2010, pp 198-217
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
This chapter draws on a study of organisational members doing their everyday work in a large UK private sector company. It forms part of a programme of work inspired by ethnomethodology (EM) seeking to examine the ways particular members constitute ‘strategy’ and facets of ‘organisation’ alongside a situated identity we know as either ‘senior manager’ or ‘strategist’ (Samra-Fredericks, 2003a, 2003b, 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2007). From having audio/video recorded organisational members' naturally occurring interpersonal routines over time and space, in this chapter, I focus on the behind-the-scenes efforts of two senior members refining for the nth time a written draft of their strategy document into a polished version for consumption both internally (employees, executive and the board of a public limited company (PLC)) and externally (City analysts, investment companies, media and the like). This chapter touches on how an annual strategy document was interactionally assembled and, as part of this, how members built elusive and spectacular objects and phenomena such as ‘markets’ and ‘environment’ as well as consolidated claims to knowing. Given that the strategic story is arguably the most costly story to be told in organisations (D. Barry and Elmes 1997; Samra-Fredericks 2003b), real-time studies of the ‘work’ of strategic story writing form an important field of study within organisation studies. However, fine-grained studies of everyday strategic management practice-as-interactionally-done as proposed here remain rare.
9 - Strategizing as lived experience and strategists' everyday efforts to shape strategic direction
- Gerry Johnson, Lancaster University, Ann Langley, Leif Melin, Richard Whittington, University of Oxford
-
- Book:
- Strategy as Practice
- Published online:
- 10 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 02 August 2007, pp 165-178
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Abstract
This paper draws together the ethnographic and ethnomethodological/conversation analytic traditions to outline an innovative and multidisciplinary approach for researching strategists-at-work. Ethnography is premised upon close-up observation of naturally occuring routines over time/space dimensions and ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, upon a study of people's practices and inherent tacit ‘methods’ for doing social and political life, much of which is accomplished through talk. Through the observation and recording of strategists talk-based interactive routines and from drawing upon seminal studies within the social sciences, the paper aims to map out a number of analytical routes for a fine-grained analysis of strategists' linguistic skills and forms of knowledge for strategizing. This includes their speaking of morals and the assembly of emotion as they construct a shared definition of the future. To illustrate the approach and its scope, the paper draws upon one ethnomethodologically informed ethnography. It will specifically focus upon aspects of the relational-rhetorical basis of strategic effectiveness as constituted by one strategist who was judged, from amongst a group of six, to have influenced strategic processes.
Editors' introduction
More than any other paper presented in this book, this article gets down to the micro level of doing strategy. It first appeared in the 2003 special issue of Journal of Management Studies on micro strategy and strategizing, and it was chosen for this book both because of its clear contribution to research on the practice of strategy and because of its innovative methodological approach (i.e. conversation analysis, see chapter 3).
In substantive terms, the paper shows how strategists can shape strategic direction in interaction with their colleagues.