Executive Doctor of Management Weatherhead School of Management

EDMP 612

Participant Observation & Ethnographic Methods/Project I

Instructor: Paul Salipante

Principal Guest Instructor: Bart Morrison

Fall 2002

Inquiry, Naturalistic and Otherwise

The first year inquiry sequence focuses primarily on naturalistic inquiry. Its materials and assignments are intended to aid participants in producing an applied research project using ethnographic methods. This research will constitute the first portion of the program’s Applied Research Project requirement. In addition, the first year sequence presents an overall introduction to inquiry, comparing constructionist, qualitative and quantitative modes of inquiry, especially in regard to their epistemological bases and their differing framing of research questions. This introduction will serve as a foundation for the inquiry seminars in all three years of the program. The goal of the program’s inquiry courses is to develop practitioner-scholars, individuals engaged in practice-oriented careers who perform rigorous research that generates knowledge for guiding practice.

It is commonly held that scientific knowledge can usefully inform private and public action. To personally contribute to improved action through inquiry and writing requires knowledge about knowledge. What are the premises, strengths, and limitations of different ways of knowing? During this century Western philosophy of science has staged a protracted debate over whether the world is knowable and, if so, in what ways. At one pole of the debate is positivism, which holds that the causes of phenomena can be discerned. At the opposite pole is relativism, claiming that knowledge cannot be definitive. Broadly speaking, the program’s inquiry courses start closer to the relativist pole and gradually move toward the positivist pole. In the first year inquiry sequence, we will explore methods that rest upon the premise that humans construct and interpret their realities, a premise associated with the social construction of reality paradigm. We will utilize interpretive methods that are relatively unstructured yet rigorous, and rely upon naturalistic data that can be observed and gathered from subjects’ personal accounts of experiences. The second year inquiry sequence will emphasize more structured qualitative approaches, while the third year sequence will focus on the quantitative approaches of modern empiricism.

Each of these three modes of inquiry -- quantitative, structured qualitative, and interpretive -- relies on differing premises, techniques, and criteria for generating and assessing knowledge. These are all too easily ignored when their products find expression in the information and arguments used to formulate organizational and public policy. Our task will be to gain sufficient understanding of the epistemological foundations and research methods of these three modes, and especially of interpretive inquiry, that we can critically evaluate information that they produce.

EDMP 612 – Fall Semester

The first semester course involves a first participant observation project (a “mini-ethnography”), experience with phenomenological interviewing, and naturalistic data analysis. A foundation for these active research efforts is built through discussion of qualitative and constructionist approaches to inquiry. Throughout the semester participants prepare for their own first year ethnographic research project, which will be conducted during the second semester, by formulating their long-term research interests and developing a formal research proposal for the spring semester project. In so doing, participants build a knowledge base of existing literature in their chosen research area and begin to explore relationships with potential faculty advisors.

Overall goals

To develop skills of observation, analysis and interpretation, and written presentation, and to contribute to each participant’s self-awareness as a scholar.

To formulate personal research interests and questions that can be pursued in the program and acquire an appreciation of the value of differing modes of inquiry for pursuing those interests.

Sub-goals

To gain experience with the complete cycle of empirical inquiry, from initial design to data collection to analysis to conceptualization to implications for application, and to scholarly presentation.

To explore the nature of practitioner-scholarship, and to understand the premises, limitations and particular strengths of each of several modes of inquiry as they pertain to the pursuit of such scholarship.

To generate a research proposal for the second semester project, by framing one’s applied research interests, generating research questions and designing a participant-observation study.

To confront the challenges facing practitioner-scholars in their efforts to generate knowledge for guiding practical social and organizational action.

In order to accomplish these goals, the seminar’s readings and discussions will concentrate primarily upon the philosophies and methodologies of ethnographic inquiry.


Types of Readings

The seminar draws on three types of readings. Research reports represent the product of a mode of inquiry, in the form of individual research studies, or syntheses and commentaries of collected research. Some of these pieces will be found in the two integrative seminars (Collective Action; Culture and World Politics) being offered this semester. Methodological and epistemological commentaries, critiques, and debates provide challenging questions about the nature of knowledge in human studies, guiding seminar dialogues about the modes of inquiry illustrated in the research reports and their implications for practitioner-scholarship. Methodological texts, of which the majority will deal with ethnographic methods, explain a particular method, criteria for judging research using the method, and specifics for performing research using the method. These texts provide criteria for assessing research reports, make more meaningful the epistemological critiques, and provide enough details of methods to aid participants in the production of their own ethnographies this semester and in making future methodological choices that fit their experience, skills, and viewpoint.

Research Projects

The first semester inquiry course will guide participants through three research-related projects:

1)  a short ethnography

2)  phenomenological interviews

3)  a research proposal. For the first of these, participants will engage in direct fieldwork, creating field notes from direct observation, then analyzing these to develop an interpretation. This project is described in the accompanying document titled “Producing a Mini-Ethnography”

SEMINAR SESSIONS

Residency 1 The Nature of Qualitative Research and Participant Observation, and

August 21-24 Challenges to the Quantitative Treatment of Man

In the EDM Program we are concerned with applied, integrative research -- inquiry that can be applied to social and organizational problems and that integrates various bodies of knowledge with one’s own field research. In this first session of the first inquiry seminar, we will consider a fundamental social problem -- the societal treatment of economic and ethnic differences across groups. Despite our concern with research that can be applied, our intent at this point is not to propose ameliorations and remedies but, rather, to examine how the attempts to measure differences (primarily in IQ) across groups has fallen short of providing effective guidance for social policy, and how more interpretive understandings of less privileged populations can inform that policy. And, to begin to build your own personal skills in inquiry, you are beginning your first field research project, the micro-ethnography assignment described in the accompanying “Producing a Mini-Ethnography” document.

Each of the readings for this residency is listed below. I suggest that you start by reading the first chapter of Whyte’s classic ethnography, Street Corner Society. Ponder how Whyte presents his material and consider whether this is description, theory, or some combination of the two. Then, read the section of his autobiographical Appendix, which describes how he carried out this first foray into participant observation. Then you can return to read his second chapter. Read the rest of the ethnography more rapidly, then return and read carefully the remainder of the Appendix. This appendix is valuable in laying bare the trials and tribulations of learning ethnography, an experience that you will be sharing as you pursue your first ethnographic assignment. Note that Whyte’s book also provides insight into the societal treatment of group/ethnic differences. Return to his claims about how the broader society treats people in slums after you have completed the second set of readings for this residency.

While Whyte gets down and dirty regarding the production of ethnography, the next two readings provide more measured insights into the purposes and methods of ethnography. It is strongly recommended that you read through these before engaging in your written assignments for the first residency. Katherine Dettwyler’s book, Dancing with Skeletons, can guide your written self-reflections, as her book has been both criticized and praised (depending on the epistemological stance of the commentator) for its highly personal and reflective treatment of her research experiences. People learn as much about themselves as about others when they engage in participant observation. You are encouraged to see in Dettwyler’s work (and in Whyte’s) how ethnography can liberate the researcher, and readers, by opening them to culture shock and cultural differences. Note the strong connection of this text with this residency’s readings on “insiders” and “outsiders” in the Culture and World Politics seminar.

Having read these two ethnographies, you can turn to two texts that describe the ethnographic research process. While nominally dealing with the writing of ethnographic fieldnotes, Emerson, Fretz and Shaw provide a broad introduction to an interpretive approach to ethnography that emphasizes direct observation. This text should provide you with further insight into the procedures that Whyte and Dettwyler followed to produce their ethnographies. Read the first four chapters to gain not only a general understanding of observational data collection but also to guide you in your own data collection for the first residency’s fieldwork assignment. In some contrast to Emerson et al., James Spradley emphasizes the interviews that often accompany observational studies. An initial reading of this book will alert you to interviewing and analysis tasks that you will pursue later in the semester. Note that both of these texts emphasize that ethnography seeks to understand the realities and meanings of the participants being observed and interviewed. Your task will, similarly, be to understand the meanings and realities of those you observe, setting aside your own preconceptions and striving to avoid premature interpretations that proceed more from your own background than from the realities of those you are studying.

The four readings noted above provide you with a solid base from which you can proceed, as a novice, with your first ethnographic fieldwork at McDonalds.

Bashar Nejdawi wrote our fifth reading as his mini-ethnography last fall. His work gives you an idea of what you can hope to produce in your own mini-ethnography. Note Bashar’s rich descriptions, possible because of the detailed footnotes that he took. Analysis of these produced interesting insights from a setting that we normally take-for-granted.

Qualitative research accounts, when read, often seem story-like and give the appearance of being easily produced. The reflections of Whyte and Dettwyler and your own initial field experiences at McDonalds, indicate the reality: Qualitative research is difficult. John Van Maanen’s collection of articles in Qualitative Methodology makes more explicit the many challenges and choices facing the qualitative researcher. We will read several of these articles in the coming months. For now, Van Maanen’s introduction presents a case for researchers’ making greater use of interpretive and qualitative methods in organizational studies, which have come to be dominated by quantitative inquiry.

In a somewhat similar vein, Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man points to some of the flawed research carried out in the name of scientific, quantitative inquiry. This piece brings us full circle to the issues of poverty explored by Whyte on the North End’s streetcorners, but the methodology is entirely different. Gould shows that quantitative inquiry has addressed the phenomenon of observed differences across groups, often attempting to establish that there are scientifically measurable differences across ethnic groups that “explain” differential economic attainments and life outcomes. Conclusions from such scientific inquiry can greatly affect the broadest of private and public policies. They influence our explanations and debates about the sources and proper treatment of individual and collective differences in society. A small but important part of this debate rests on inquiry into intelligence, and it is this inquiry that we will consider. The issues raised by Gould’s analyses are many, including the presence in quantitative work of the type of researcher subjectivity for which interpretive work is often attacked, and the role that academic (sub)disciplines play in framing research issues in ways that suit their theories and methods. Lest we conclude that the types of researcher flaws presented by Gould have been successfully purged by modern research methods and standards, note that Gould’s book pre-dated the “Bell Curve” debate, in which two psychometricians claimed that their data forced them to conclude that ethnic differences in IQ pre-destined lower economic attainment for African-Americans. It appears that there are no “magic bullet” methods of research that ensure arriving at uncontestable scientific truths. Rather, no matter the mode of inquiry used, progress in producing knowledge seems to rest primarily on researcher integrity, rigor, and open-minded curiosity, and on critical dialogue (and Gould-like debunking) in the scholarly community.

Readings for Residency 1:

  1. Wm. Foote Whyte (1943, 1955). Street Corner Society. University of Chicago Press. Read the Appendix in parallel with the text. Read at least half of the book, enough to ponder how Whyte describes the scene in some chapters, then analyzes it in others.
  1. Katherine Dettwyler (1993). Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
  1. Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, & Linda L. Shaw (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. University of Chicago Press. Read Ch. 1 to 4.
  1. James Spradley (1979), The Ethnographic Interview. San Diego, CA., Harcourt Brace and Janovich.
  1. Bashar Nejdawi, mini-ethnography of McDonalds, Fall, 2000.
  1. Stephen Jay Gould. (1981). The Mismeasure of Man. NY: W.W. Norton. Chapters 1, 5, 7, Epilogue.
  1. John Van Maanen (ed.) (1983). Qualitative Methodology. Sage Publications. Read p. 7 and “Reclaiming Qualitative Methods for Organizational Research: A Preface,” 9-18.

Fieldwork & Written Assignment

(See accompanying document, “Producing a Mini-Ethnography”):

a.  Field notes on McDonalds observations.

b.  Own background, positionality, and research interests.


Residency 2 Presenting and Interpreting Naturalistic Data, and