BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Conducting global team-based ethnography: methodological challenges and reflections

    Jarzabkowski, P. and Bednarek, Rebecca and Cabantous, L. (2015) Conducting global team-based ethnography: methodological challenges and reflections. Human Relations 68 (1), pp. 3-33. ISSN 0018-7267.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    Jarzabkowski et al HR Ethno March 2014 (Accepted).pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript

    Download (544kB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Ethnography has often been seen as the province of the lone researcher; however, increasingly management scholars are examining global phenomena, necessitating a shift to global team-based ethnography. This shift presents some fundamental methodological challenges, as well as practical issues of method, that have not been examined in the literature on organizational research methods. That is the focus of this paper. We first outline the methodological implications of a shift from single researcher to team ethnography, and from single case site to the multiple sites that constitute global ethnography. Then we present a detailed explanation of a global, team-based ethnographic research project that we conducted over three years. Our study of the global reinsurance industry involved a team of five ethnographers conducting fieldwork in 25 organizations across 15 countries. We outline three central challenges we encountered; team division of labour, team sharing, and constructing a global ethnographic object. The paper concludes by suggesting that global, team-based, ethnography provides important insights into global phenomena, such as regulation, finance, and climate change among others, that are of interest to management scholars.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Rebecca Bednarek
    Date Deposited: 22 Dec 2015 09:38
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:20
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/13670

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    694Downloads
    6 month trend
    188Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item