Inside Organizations: Anthropologists at Work.

David N. Gellner and Eric Hirsch, eds. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 271 pp. $68.00, cloth; $23.00, paper.

In recent years, the field of organization studies has shown increasing interest in an anthropological approach to the study of organizations. This began in the 1980s with the rise, spread, and popular acceptance of the concept of organizational culture and has been furthered by acknowledgment of the limits to positivism along with a warmer embrace of qualitative methods. The success of organizational ethnographies published in the academic and business press attests to their appeal. At the same time, anthropologists have increasingly turned their attention to Western, industrialized societies and their institutions. This edited volume addresses these parallel trends by seeking to answer the question, "Can methods devised and refined in the early days of anthropology for the study of non-industrial societies be as successful and revealing in the study of organizations in the industrial world?" (p. 1). It consists of 11 chapters speaking to the delights and pitfalls of ethnographic research in a range of organizational settings, along with an introduction by the editors and afterword by John Van Maanen. Most of the authors of the main chapters are anthropologists based in U.K. universities or research organizations, and all but one chapter illustrates research in U.K.-based organizations.

In their introduction, Hirsch and Gellner discuss the nature of ethnography as both method and product, as well as reasons for its spread to other social science disciplines. In particular, they identify key issues related to the ethnographic study of organizations. These include the classic anthropologist's dilemma of insider vs. outsider roles and its relation to problems of access; the difficulty of specifying ethnography and the boundaries of what is to be studied; finding a focus; the process and parameters of good ethnography; and the problem of writing it up, especially when its subjects are likely to read it with great interest. They conclude with a discussion of "symmetrical anthropology," which holds that all organizations, institutions, and societies can be studied the same way. Hirsch and Gellner highlight the difficulties of this stance, given the complexity, embeddedness, and partial connectedness of modern organizations. They group the succeeding chapters into five sections, based on the type of organization studied. In each chapter, the author recounts his or her fieldwork experience in modern organizations. Partial ethnographies are provided, but the main focus is on discussing the problems these anthropologists encountered, how they solved them (or wish they had), and what they learned about studying complex organizations or what contributions ethnography can make in these contexts.

In part 1, on business organizations, Chapman describes his scholarly journey as a social anthropologist, from the Celtic villages of Brittany to multinational organizations in the U.K. His research colleague was an economist whose principal methods had consisted of structured interviews and questionnaires; Chapman's own prior research had relied on participant observation. Each made important contributions to the project, although, reasonably enough, Chapman's emphasis is on what anthropology has to offer business studies. He also reflects on the differences between studying businesses and more traditional anthropological settings. In the second chapter, Ouroussoff relates her fieldwork in a multinational manufacturing company and a large, nonprofit service organization to insights gleaned about the prevalence and meaning of sexual liaisons and their relationship to the corporate ethos. She questions the potential contribution to anthropology of "rationalist ethnography," with its assumption of rationality as the primary agent for organizational coherence. She does, however, see potential contributions of ethnography to organization studies, particularly in its emphasis on underlying cultural processes that form managers' meaning systems and orientation to reality.

Part 2 includes two chapters describing research in science organizations. Hine worked in a mouse genetics laboratory as part of a larger project investigating the use of information technology in medical research. She offers intriguing ideas about doing ethnography in settings with highly specialized knowledge, along with the insight that the content of science itself is open to social analysis. Thus, Hine learned more about how information technology (IT) was used in the lab by shifting her focus from IT to the work of the lab in its entirety. Macdonald uses her work in a London science museum, following the development of an exhibit on food, to discuss the key features of ethnography. From there, she considers contributions of an anthropological approach to the study of organizations, specifically, relativism, the importance of implicit models and cultural assumptions, and pointing out the lack of universality in much of what we find in organizations.

Part 3 comprises three chapters related to family, health, and welfare. Simpson didn't study an organization so much as an institution and the processes around it. He investigated organizational effects in the divorce process, particularly attempts to reframe it from being a legal process, adversarial and based on metaphors of conflict, to a conciliation process, focused on joint interests and relying on metaphors of growth and movement. Pulman-Jones uses his work in an education and treatment unit for children with chronic behavioral and emotional problems to consider affinities between ethnographers and organizations. He finds that they share a common intellectual background and an instrumental nature, the need to describe and prescribe. Parker draws on her work in a clinic that conducts both clinical practice and research in genito-urinary medicine. She describes the sexually charged climate, the tensions between research and clinical practice, and the struggle to deal with confidentiality and anonymity and notes how broader society is acted out within the clinic. In her work, she also became aware of the clinic's status as a marketplace--seeking to attract patients and funds for research and health care--and how the emergence of HIV infection in the 1980s changed the sociology of the clinic and the culture of its work. It is somewhat difficult to extract lessons on conducting organizational ethnography from these chapters, however, largely because the authors offer little direct reflection on the research process or on the contributions and compromises involved.

Part 4 includes three chapters related to development and politics. Mosse discusses his work with rural development projects in India. He is especially good at drawing more general conclusions and reflecting on the research process and method and includes a useful discussion of the tensions, drawbacks, and tradeoffs of ethnography in organizations. Mosse identifies the insider-outsider dilemma expressed in competing emphases on "observant participation" or "participant observation." While he sees a contribution by anthropologists in acknowledging that there is no one true viewpoint, he also sees the tension between analysis and engagement. Having gained access to a program or organization for research purposes, one may be torn between providing critical analysis, defined outside the program, and conducting action research, oriented to problem solving. Abram recounts her ethnography of policy, i.e., the planning process for land-use development in the U.K. Discussing the tension between the politics of policymaking and the technical competencies of "experts," she notes the importance of ethnographers' understanding multiple groups and the interactions among them. Mascarhenas-Keyes discusses a failed large-scale project, of which she was the director, to assess access to and develop computer skills among disadvantaged populations. Although she emphasizes the need for researchers to understand the context of any organization they are studying, she does not argue for detailed ethnography. Instead, she advocates "rapid organizational analysis" and offers a checklist to help researchers achieve this understanding. Along the way, she recounts the problems encountered in her project and shows how the checklist would have benefited her.

Part 5 is a single chapter by O'Neill, which discusses some practical and ethical dilemmas involved in participant observation, noting that sometimes being a participant gets in the way of observing and makes it difficult to maintain an analytic stance. Yet, if the researcher-observer fails to get involved--to participate, and thus to accept the members' perspective-he or she is in danger of being tolerated only briefly. O'Neill's dilemmas are portrayed in his case study of himself as a former ambulance worker, purportedly observing ambulance crews for ethnographic study, yet jumping into action in a real emergency.

In his lively afterword, Van Maanen considers the aims and strengths of organizational ethnography and provides a literature review, somewhat concentrated on business-related accounts, that illustrates his points. He categorizes ethnographies by area of inquiry--organizational processes and informal relations, organizational identity and change, organizational environments, and organizational morality and conflict--and places each of the book's main chapters in these categories. Finally, he discusses areas in which ethnographic work might prove especially fruitful in the near future. These focus on changes taking place in and around organizations, often where formerly distinct boundaries--e.g., between work and home, between organization members and outsiders--are shifting and becoming blurred.

This book will be of interest to anthropologists interested in doing work in organizations. More to the point for ASQ's readers, it could be useful to students of organizations hoping to extend their research to new settings or to develop insights into emerging phenomena that may not be amenable to a more deductive approach. Although this is not an ethnographic how-to, readers will find the discussions of research dilemmas and tradeoffs, ethical questions, and constraints presented by particular settings helpful. All of the chapters highlight, directly or implicitly, questions of access, trust, ethics, usefulness, and legitimacy. Many of the case studies are also interesting, such that I often wished I were reading a more complete ethnography. The point of this book is not to present a set of ethnographies, however, but to provide pieces of ethnography to illustrate and reflect on the ethnographic process and contribution. There did seem to be a lack of coherence among chapters, as well as unevenness in the level of insight offered on ethnography in organizational research. This may, in fact, mirror the biases of anthropology for description over prescription and for particularism over generalization. I found Van Maanen's afterword helpful in this regard and also benefited from rereading Hirsch and Gellner's introduction after reading all the main chapters. This was a small concession to make for a text that is potentially valuable in exploring new research areas and methods and stimulating our thinking along the way.

Sarah J. Freeman

School of Business Administration University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Milwaukee, WI 53201

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Author:	Freeman, Sarah J.
Publication:	Administrative Science Quarterly
Date:	Mar 1, 2003
Words:	1700
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