1

DESIGNING FOR DRIFT

Planning Ethnographic Qualitative Research
on Groups

Michael G. Pratt and Najung Kim

BOSTON COLLEGE

As the epigraph suggests, ethnographic research may be the source of more failures than success. Clearly it would not be unique in this regard; especially if you consider that the rejection rate by top-tier organizational studies/management journals can exceed 90 percent. But as we discuss below, ethnographic research has its own unique challenges that make it a high-risk/high-reward endeavor. We think it is worth the risks. We challenge the reader to find a more engrossing, energizing, and personally world-changing methodology for studying a group – be it a small team, an organization, an occupation, or a “people.” Part of its allure may be in its subject matter – better understanding the cultures of groups. Its fun may similarly derive from the engrossing nature of its methods, such as actual participation in group life and the use of broad, largely unstructured interviews. Or perhaps its appeal is in the challenge in navigating the tension John Van Maanen raises: the pull between design and drift.

The design part is not that difficult to describe. In brief, to examine a group in an ethnographic fashion you have to: (a) select a research question; (b) locate a group to examine this question; (c) design your study; (d) obtain approval for your study through an Institutional Review Board (IRB); (e) gain access; (f) collect data; (g) analyze the data; and (h) write it up. Essentially, it is not that different, in abstract, to how you would approach other examinations of groups. However, as we will discuss below,how these steps are enacted in ethnographies may be unique. For example, engaging in “commitment acts” (Feldman, Bell, & Berger, 2003), finding key informants, asking grand tour questions, and the like are central to ethnographic studies. Moreover, what is more difficult to describe, but no less equally important, is the “drift” – taking advantage of where the study takes you. To be able to best “catch the drift,” requires tactics, tips, and training often not found in “how to” books on ethnography (e.g., Fetterman, 1998; Spradley, 1979). Our charge is to cover those topics that are the least well covered by existing texts and articles. In this spirit, we discuss the design of an ethnographic group study including gaining access, and preparing for observations and interviews. Before turning to these topics, we first provide an overview of ethnography.

Ethnography: What it is, when you do it, and why

While definitions vary, at their core, ethnographies are the study of a group's culture (Fetterman, 1998; Rosen, 1991; Spradley, 1979; Van Maanen, 1979). These groups may vary in size – from teams (Bechky & Okhuysen, 2011), to occupations and organizations (Kayser-Jones, 2002; Pratt, 2000a; Rosen, 1991; Van Maanen, 1973), to people living in certain areas (Mead, 1928; Venkatesh, 2002). Ethnographies also have specific ways of gathering data, such as participant observation and ethnographic interviews. Some studies are relatively “pure” ethnographies, which typically involve long periods (e.g., over 6 months) of being “in the field” (Fetterman, 1998). To illustrate, the first author's (Mike's) study of Amway distributors was his most pure ethnography: he spent over 9 months in the field working as a distributor and interviewing other current and former distributors. In organizational research, there are relatively few ethnographies that are pure, but several which contain some ethnographic elements (e.g., Hinds & Cramton, this volume). Mike's work, for example, often uses ethnographic interviews or some limited participant observation, such as rounding with doctors (Pratt, Rockmann, & Kaufmann, 2006) or being involved in a nurse's dress code task force (Pratt & Rafaeli, 1997).

Ethnographies should be used when you are interested in getting the perspective of the cultural participants or “informants.” The term “informant” rather than “subject” (as in a lab study) or a “respondent” (as in a survey) is not accidental, but speaks to the nature of the researcher to the researched. Informants, as the name describes, inform you. They are the cultural experts. You are not manipulating the conditions around them as you might for a “subject;” and “respondents” are often limited to answering questions on the topics and concepts that you deem critical. In the lab and when giving surveys, you are the expert; and you have a fair amount of control over what your subjects do and the kinds of questions they answer. Ethnography puts the researcher, who might have or be getting a PhD, into the unenviable position of often having to appear, or actually be, ignorant. Because you do not know what an informant will say or do, and where the study will “drift,” you may also feel like you have very little control. For some researchers, these conditions may be enough to dissuade them from doing ethnography!

Moreover, because you are getting the informants’ perspective, and are not testing concepts or constructs, you have ultimately to translate these understandings into “academese” to get published. This is both a daunting and exhilarating task. Part of the challenge is that you have to be careful not to do too much “violence to experience,” that is, you need to translate your research in such a way as to do justice to how your informants’ view the world. And if that is not enough of a challenge, your results will be detailed and specific, but gored on the horn of “generalizability” (McGrath, 1982). Thus, it is not clear whether your results will be comparable to any other group. All this and you often have to take hundreds of pages of data and fit them into a research article of roughly 40–50 pages in length.

High probability of failure, relatively low control, putting yourself into a situation where you are not the expert, and being placed between two worlds – that of your informants and that of your academic colleagues – where do I sign up? If you are still reading this chapter, you may have some of the critical characteristics of an ethnographer: persistence, self-confidence, and a desire to learn continuously. And in the spirit of mentioning the “high rewards,” at the time of this writing, Mike's ethnography has been the most fruitful – at least in terms of leading to publications (Barnett & Pratt, 2000; Pratt, 2000a, 2000b, 2003; Pratt & Rosa, 2003) – when compared to any other methodology he has used.

Getting back to the issue of when to do ethnography, we have stated that ethnographies are great for exploring the mindsets of individuals within a group – insights that can enrich, support, or even challenge our existing ways of knowing. Like other inductive qualitative approaches, it is good for understanding “why” individuals do things (e.g., their motivations) and “how” they do them (e.g., the process). It is not good for describing the prevalence of some attitude or behavior (e.g., how many Fortune 500 employees express high degrees of affective, normative, and calculative commitment towards their organizations). It is good for building theory, but not as good for testing it. It can also elaborate or change how we see existing theories. For example, “organizational commitment” in Amway looked very different from many of the existing models in the literature (Pratt & Rosa, 2003). Finally, ethnographies ground our knowledge and our claims. Most articles suggest that “organizations are changing” – but how can we really know this is true without taking the time and energy to figure out how the people we study are viewing the world around them?

First things first? The question and the group

In the beginning there is the research question; sometimes. While it is indeed the case that it is helpful to have a general idea of the kinds of questions you are interested in, sometimes a research question does not crystallize until one finds the appropriate group to study. We'll give you an example. When Mike was completing graduate school, he was struggling to put together a viable dissertation project. He knew he had an abiding interest in organizations that had “strong cultures” and conflicting belief systems, but he did not know where to go from there or how to narrow his focus. Fortunately, during this time of struggle, Mike saw his sister who had recently joined an organization he had never heard of: Amway. In their discussion, he became fascinated by the cultural/ideological elements of the organization, and his curiosity was piqued by what appeared to be identity changes in his sister; see Pratt (2003) for details. After reading about the organization, and attending a rally, he knew this was the organization he wanted to study. Once that decision was made, he was able to hone in on a research question around the issues of ideological contradictions, ambivalence and member attachments.

Ethnographic questions are not only of a certain form, they also tend to be of a certain type. As noted above, for qualitative research, the best research questions revolve around questions of “how?” or “why?” rather than “how many?” or “to what degree?” In addition, these research questions often deal with an issue or problem rather than a specific theory. That is, ethnographic research, like much qualitative research, is often problem centered rather than theory centered. Problem-centered research, as the name implies, is motivated by some conundrum in actual life. In Amway, Mike wondered how people could so strongly attach to a group that appeared to contradict itself in its most fundamental beliefs (e.g., put family before work, but miss kids’ birthdays to “build the business”). Because ethnographies attempt to look at the world through the informants’ eyes – and informants often do not think in theories – it is perhaps natural for ethnographies and problem-centered research to be related. If you start a study with a specific theory in mind, chances are you are simply going to get responses to and from your own perspective. Problem-centered research, however, carries with it at least two unique challenges.

First, problems lie at the intersection of multiple theories. Thus, going back to Mike's dissertation study, conflicting belief systems may be discussed in treatments of ideological conflicts, hybrid organizational identities, and differentiation perspectives on culture, just to name a few organizational examples. It may also require moving beyond the organizational literature. This is challenging when one needs to write up a proposal for an IRB, or possibly for a dissertation committee, because it means that you will be reading widely and integrating multiple theories when writing up your research.

Second, since problem-centered research lies at the intersection of multiple theories, you have to do an extraordinary amount of work, before you even go into the field, to show that the research question you are addressing has not been sufficiently examined before. This often involves writing an introduction to your research (or proposal) by crafting “theoretical frames” (Pratt, 2008). Creating theoretical frames involves constructing the argument that multiple theories imply, but do not directly address, the problem or issue with which you are concerned. For example, in Mike's dissertation proposal, he argued that conflicting belief systems should lead to ambivalence among members. However, reactions to ambivalence were that individuals might be more positive or more negative towards their organization, and that they might react by vacillating between beliefs or possibly by being paralyzed. Hence, in his proposal, he showed that extant research had proposed that almost any reaction can follow from ambivalence; but as importantly, he also was able to argue that no one had yet uncovered the conditions under which one response might be more likely than another.

Whether it precedes, follows, or is somehow iteratively involved with the construction of your research question, you must choose a group to study. For an effective ethnographic study, the group you choose is one that you should not be too familiar with. Thus, if you were a consultant before entering into academia, you should not attempt an ethnographic study of consultants. As noted above, you need to get your informants’ perspective on their culture and “how they do things.” If you have a fair amount of experience with a group, then (a) you are likely to come into the group with a lot of preconceptions and (b) it is more difficult to get away with asking the types of “dumb” questions that a newcomer would ask – and those needed to get at the group members’ world view. That said, it is unlikely that you will be entering a culture that is totally foreign to you. Thus, Rosen (1991, p. 14) writes:

While admitting that working in organizations may not be as exotic as going to a foreign land to study a little-known people, the level of familiarity one has with an organization can vary greatly. For Mike, while Amway was not an entirely foreign culture (e.g., they spoke English and wore recognizable clothing), the culture was nonetheless quite different from what he was used to, and thus he could more easily apply ethnographic techniques.

Other issues that are critical to choosing a group, and which may be more obvious, are finding: (a) groups that will allow you to get the data you need; and (b) groups that will allow you access. With regard to the former, if Mike was interested in examining how office layouts influence group interactions, Amway distributors would be the wrong group to study as they are largely a geographically dispersed group. With regard to the latter, it is helpful before launching into a full project to have some idea of whether or not you will be able to get access to a group, and what kind of access you will get. For both of these criteria, it may help to informally “hang out” with the group before beginning your official studies. Mike attended an Amway convention to get a sense of what kinds of individuals he was likely to meet, what challenges studying the group might entail, and to help him hone the types of research questions that could be answered by this particular group. He even started building connections with existing distributors.

In general, if you are using ethnography to build theory, you should review the tenets of theoretical sampling, which is different from statistical sampling common to quantitative methods. In brief, theoretical sampling involves choosing a sample for theoretical reasons, such as finding a group that is an extreme example of the phenomena you want to study (and thus where the dynamics you want to study will be clearer), or possibly a prototypical case where a specific group well represents a broader type of group. Mike's ethnography of Amway represented an “extreme case” (Pettigrew, 1990). His study of physicians, which was not a pure ethnography, was done because physicians are believed to be a prototypical profession; see Marshall and Rossman (1989), Miles and Huberman (1994), and Patton (1990) for a discussion of different sampling logics in qualitative research. One word to the wise before we leave this subject: as with most decisions in ethnographic research, choosing whom to talk to or observe in a group is an ongoing task. As the epigraph which begins this chapter suggests, you may have to “drift” a bit before finding out who is best to talk to and observe.

Gaining access: International Review Boards, gatekeepers,
key informants, and commitment acts

With question and context in hand, the design of the study is well under way. However, even brilliant designs are useless unless you can actually “get in” to study the group. Typically, access involves managing a local IRB process and gaining official entrée into the group itself. If this group is embedded in a larger organization(s), or if you are doing research with someone at another university, then gaining access may involve a more complex process involving multiple IRBs. IRBs and some elements of access happen iteratively, often starting with an official statement by the group allowing access, getting IRB approval, and then negotiating more details about access with the group; for more information on access, see Feldman et al., 2003).

International Review Boards

The primary university gatekeeper to any group is your local IRB. While there is some controversy over the role of IRBs, especially for social science research that largely involves talking and observing (see Gunsalus et al., 2007), you should always check in with your local IRB – even if they typically find that your research is ultimately exempt from review. Please know that, depending on your institution, IRBs may not know much about qualitative work, much less, ethnography. For IRBs used to seeing clear hypotheses, established measures, and the like, requesting permission to participate in the activities of the group, and to interview them – with no specific hypotheses in mind – may be troubling. From our own personal experience, IRBs may think that you are simply too early in your thinking to collect your data! From their standpoint, the institution would have to place a lot of trust in a researcher who is going into a situation without clear hypotheses. Thus, we found it is often helpful to (a) do a little method training with your IRB representatives; and (b) keep in touch with them throughout the process.

With regard to the former, you might write up a paragraph or two on what ethnographies are and how they are to be conducted. Ample “legitimizing” citations from academic books and articles are strongly encouraged. Some IRB reviewers may need to learn that there is a methodology involved and you are not simply, “hanging out with people and having conversations.” You should also be clear with the IRB that ethnography is not the same as investigative reporting. For one, investigative reporting is often about finding the sensational, whereas ethnography is about translating what everyday life is for a group (Fetterman, 1998). In addition, investigative reporters often want to reveal the identities of those involved in a particular situation (e.g., a crime or a scandal), whereas in an ethnography, you work to protect the identity of those whom you are studying. Both, however, use the term “informant,” and it is the investigative informant – who is expected to “snitch” on someone – that individuals often think of when using this term. This only adds to the confusion – and not just for the IRB. Again from personal experience, we would suggest not calling your ethnographic informants, “informants.” They will likely not only be startled, but will be less willing to talk with you (or will use the interview to complain or “snitch.”)

With regard to keeping in touch with your IRB, know that your “materials,” such as interview protocols, change and evolve, by design, over the course of data collection. At least some university IRBs, and perhaps all of them in the US, would like to see and approve any changes in such materials. Thus, you may be going back to your IRB multiple times. Develop a good relationship with at least one of your IRB representatives. You might be able to work out an arrangement whereby such constant updates are waived or limited (e.g., limited to very major changes); alternatively, they may be willing to expedite the review of any changes. Without a good relationship, expect significant added time on to your data collection process.

Gatekeepers and key informants

Once approved, gaining access to a group requires at least two “roles” which may or may not be found in the same person. To begin, you need someone who can actually grant you access to the group in question (i.e., a gatekeeper). In the study of medical residents, Mike and his colleague followed primary care physicians for three years, radiologists for four years, and surgeons for as many as six years. This would not have been possible without buy-in from one of the deans, and the department heads of every group studied. While these particular gatekeepers allowed the researchers wonderful access, they were “costly.” During interviewing, it became clear to the researchers that some of the residents were wondering if they were “spies” for the administration. The nice thing about extended stays in an organization is that they were able to dissuade them of this belief; however, it does point out the need to pay attention to unintentional effects of power and politics when choosing gatekeepers.

Moreover, the deans and department chairs were not actually residents, and would not have been good for the second role: a key informant. A key informant (or informants) is your “tour guide” – the person of whom you can ask a lot of questions at various points throughout your study. Non-key informants may simply be observed or possibly interviewed. However, the key informant helps you to decipher language, fill in missing pieces, and the like.

In his book on ethnographic interviewing, Spradley (1979) devotes an entire chapter to the characteristics of a good informant, such as a key informant. These characteristics include someone who is “enculturated” or is an expert in the culture. This person should also be currently involved in the group. Former group members may not be aware of what is currently going on in the group, and depending on how they exited, may be overly biased towards the group. For these reasons, the department heads would have been bad key informants: they had not been residents for a long time and how they thought about residency training may have changed over the years, especially now since they were responsible for residency training themselves. Key informants should also be able and willing to speak to you in their “native” tongue, that is, you do not want an informant trying to translate what is going on in academese, which they might do in order to be helpful. For example, two of Mike's key informants among Amway distributors sometimes tried to talk about what was happening at events in academic language. For example, at Amway conventions, more successful distributors get to sit closer to the stage, and often wear very formal attire, such as tuxedos and ballroom gowns. The majority of distributors (those who are not at the highest levels of sales) are made to wait in line to be seated, are not dressed as formally, and sit toward the back of the room at conventions. Telling him that the successful distributors “represent the dream and create a burn in people to be more like them” is much more helpful than, “I think the psychology behind what they do is that they want us to suffer a bit so as to better motivate us to sell more products.” The latter way of speaking means that the key informant is no longer representing his or her culture, but attempting to represent the researcher's. Thus, although these key informants were well intentioned, Mike had to always bring the conversation back to “distributor” language. A final characteristic of a good key informant is that they have to be able and willing to take the time necessary to answer your questions throughout what could be a very lengthy process. Cultivating a key informant(s) involves a lot of work, and a lot of trust. Thus, be sure to maintain this relationship. It is extremely difficult to “start over” with someone once you are well into a project.

Commitment acts

A final issue concerning access involves becoming accepted by the group as a whole. While this may be facilitated by a gatekeeper or a key informant, gaining access may also involve commitment acts. Commitment acts (Feldman et al., 2003) are activities you have to perform to be trusted by the group at large. For example, to truly be accepted as an Amway distributor, Mike had to have a sales meeting. This involved inviting his friends from graduate school to come over to his house and hear an Amway sales pitch. As Mike has written about elsewhere (Pratt,2003), this was very uncomfortable for him as it violated social norms – using friendship ties potentially to make money. However, this is exactly the kind of discomfort that all distributors feel. In fact, this tension is cultivated: upon joining as a new distributor, you are supposed to make a list of all of your family and friends so that you can contact them to either buy or distribute products. Thus, this commitment act had two benefits: (a) it showed his Amway “upline” sponsors that he was serious about Amway, and (b) it gave him unique insights into the psychology of distributing.

The notion of commitment acts brings to the forefront a tension or challenge that he did not foresee, but had to deal with in the field. Commitment acts are often referred to in the plural because they are ongoing. Thus, at some point, the researcher has to decide how far they are willing to go in order to join the community. For example, Peshkin (1984), a Jewish man who studied an evangelical Christian school, decided that while he would act in a Christian manner while on site (e.g., dress appropriately, not swear), he would not go as far as becoming converted to Christianity, despite his informants’ numerous and sincere attempts to convert him. For Mike, while he was willing to sell products and even sell the Amway lifestyle, he referred all individuals who wanted to distribute actively to his sponsor. Since he was leaving the field within a year, he did not think it was ethical to take on the potentially long-term mentoring role in this organization.

We want to close this section on gaining access with one strong proviso. Gaining access is not a dichotomous variable. You aren't “without” access one day and fully immersed the next. There may be false starts when entering (e.g., your gatekeeper really isn't a gatekeeper and you have to find someone else). In addition, the need for commitment acts may be ongoing, and the trust that others feel toward you (and vice versa) may ebb and flow throughout your study. So think of access – as well as leaving the scene – as an ongoing activity, not a “one shot deal.” It will, if nothing else, keep you focused on the need to maintain your relationships when in the field, and not burn your bridges for a short-term gain (e.g., you get some interesting “confession” from an informant, but turn him or her and the larger group against you).

I'm in, now what? Choosing and using your tools

While you will select which tools you are going to use before getting through an IRB, you will actually have to use them once you get in. Once upon a time, the methodological techniques you would bring to bear would comprise largely or entirely participant observation and ethnographic interviewing – with the possibility of some archival data gathering. However, ethnographic approaches have expanded to include new “tools.” Communication technology, for example, allows ethnographers to observe video recordings (video ethnography) or to view online groups via the internet (netnography); thus, you don't even need to be in the field with your informants! We will briefly discuss video ethnography and netnography after first reviewing two skills that are central to ethnography: interviewing and observation. We'll start with and spend the most time on observations as we believe that there are fewer guides for good observing, and because observations are central to each of these forms of ethnography.

Observations

Observation can vary in whether other informants know you are a researcher (overt) or not (covert). While a classic distinction, we are not sure whether or not an IRB will allow for fully covert observations. Observation can also range in terms of whether you actively participate in group activities (participant observation) or not (nonparticipant observation). So one choice you'll have to make is what kind of observation(s) you want to do. Historically, some have distinguished among four forms of participant observation: complete participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, and the complete observer (Angrosino & Perez, 2005; Gold, 1957/1958). The complete observer is just that: they do not interact at all with the people they observe. As noted above, this does not tend to be the stance taken by ethnographers. Observer-as-participant means that you interact somewhat with those you study, but the interactions are more casual and passive. The closest example to this approach that we note above is rounding with physicians without asking or answering questions. Participant-as-observer means actually engaging in the work being done by the group. Gold's (1957/1958) description bears similarities to Whyte's (1984) discussion of semi-overt participant observation where one joins a group but all know that the researcher is collecting data. This is the stance Mike took as an Amway distributor. Complete participants are covert and fully immerse themselves in the activities of the group. Traditional ethnographies favor the more participative approaches. However, the more you move toward complete participation, the greater the danger you will “go native” or completely adopt the values and goals of the group – essentially becoming a full member of the group you were studying. In Amway, informants encouraged Mike to go “native:” they hoped that he would eventually become so successful a distributor that he could leave his academic job.

We should be clear that, although we have discussed different ways to observe across studies, one can switch approaches within a study. For example, some days you may be more “participant” than “observer;” while at other times the “observer” role may dominate. We found that alternating between these two stances helps us alternatively to learn and engage (participant as fore) and to reflect and comprehend (observer as fore).

A second issue involves getting the proper training to observe, especially as a participant. Such training normally comprises coursework, if available, and apprenticing with someone experienced in the methodology. Most generally, learning qualitative methods often occurs by doing: by actually observing it in the field. Training, however, is an especially interesting issue when one is a participant observer in organizational groups.

Rosen (1991), for example, suggests that those studying organizations may want to pursue an MBA first. However, we suggest that such a course of action depends on the kind of group you are studying and what skills you need to attain a desired level of membership (e.g., marginal or full). For example, Van Maanen took police training before riding along with police officers (Van Maanen, 1973). Mike went to conventions, talked, observed, and modeled his upline distributors, and bought books and tapes in order to sell Amway products and Amway opportunities effectively. Neither required an MBA. However, if your group has specialized business skills, such as an accounting department, getting an MBA may make more sense.

What makes the issue trickier, though, are the dual needs of (a) examining groups that are sufficiently different from what you know, and (b) participating productively in said groups. Fulfilling both can be highly problematic. Rosen (1991, p. 17) further suggests a related tension:” researching while one ‘should be’ working [at your ‘new’ job].” Thus, before entering the field, you should think carefully about the amount of training you need to receive in order to engage in a participant role in such a way that you do not harm the productivity or the safety of the group.

One way to minimize these tensions is to participate in an entry position, where the skills needed are low, and where asking “dumb questions” – as the kind an ethnographer might – is acceptable. In addition, one can choose a participant role that is not highly interdependent on others’ roles. For example, while not a pure ethnographic study, Anat Rafaeli's and Mike's “participant observation” roles on the rehab unit involved being part of a dress task force for the unit. This allowed them to use their expertise in the area of dress and to engage in and observe activities of the rehabilitation unit; however, at the same time, these activities were buffered from the main tasks that the unit performed: patient care.

A third but related theme in the area of training is how you prepare yourself mentally for joining a new group. Some preparation is relatively straightforward. For example, we have discussed how Mike prepared extensively for joining Amway: he not only attended a convention, he also read about Amway, and listened to Amway tapes and read Amway books. But another thing that Mike did to prepare himself for entering Amway was create a type of psychological “time capsule” before he started. He wrote a snapshot of how he viewed himself – as well as the preconceptions, apprehensions, and opinions he had about his research project – before entering the field. He did not read it again until he had completed his research. At that point, he could see how, and in what way, that the experience had changed him. While there are certainly benefits poststudy, this self-reflective practice also helps to make you aware of potential biases or baggage you may be bringing into a study beforehand.

For a lack of a better phrase, participant observation also takes a certain type of “mental toughness.” For example, when studying Amway distributors, Mike had to navigate academic, familial, friendship, and distributor roles constantly. These were difficult to do physically, cognitively, and emotionally; see Pratt (2003) for a description of these struggles. Thus, one word of advice is to plan out where you can rest or periodically “escape” during the ethnographic process. For example, Mike's committee was worried that he might defect to Amway. Thus, they encouraged him to be highly skeptical. In the role as a distributor however, he had to engage in “positive thinking” and essentially suspend disbelief and “fake it until he made it.” In other words, his Amway colleagues wanted him to be a true believer. This tension was intense enough that Mike decided to not communicate with his committee members for weeks at a time (at least about the project) so that he could engage fully in his distributor role without the accompanying academic pressures. [Side note: this did not, of course, help assuage concerns that he was defecting.] Other tensions, however, he did not want to escape because these were the ones experienced by distributors. Thus, the tension between using family and friend networks for business deals were ones that all distributors face. To make sure he had the energy to deal with some tensions, however, he needed to find some respite from the others.

Fourth, and the one you are most likely to find in other written texts, is how you will actually conduct your observations. One major divide is whether your observations will follow a protocol and be structured, or whether they will be more unstructured. While we have found moving from an unstructured to structured approach is often helpful, this insight still does not help someone to figure out what they actually have to do during observations. It is not as obvious or as easy as you might think. We have found two resources, in particular, to be useful on this front. To start, Wolcott (1994, pp. 161–163) makes a distinction among “observe and record everything,” “observe and look for nothing in particular,” “look for paradoxes,” and “identify the key problem confronting a group.” As the descriptive titles imply, the first is very unstructured and involves recording everything you can. This process will provide a broad view of events and will help you realize what you are interested in: because you cannot record everything, looking at what you actually do record may be indicative of what you find most interesting. The second is more structured and forces you to look at discontinuities or surprises in the social landscape; and is great when you have a high degree of familiarity with the setting or when the field is overly complex. Looking for paradoxes is also structured, and involves looking for contradictions in behaviors, goals, and the like. This may help you understand key issues in the life of that group. For Mike, the apparent tension in Amway between putting “family before work” but “working on kid's birthdays” helped him to eventually ask questions about how such paradoxes were perceived (they really weren't) and resolved (i.e., through beliefs about how working hard now will allow you to spend more time with your family later). Finally, since cultures are often about how groups solve problems (Schein, 2004), looking for the key issue confronting a group can give you insight into what is important to the group and what is foundational to their world view. Again, this is somewhat structured, but offers a slightly different focus from looking at paradoxes or discontinuities.

Another resource for guiding observations is Whyte's (1984) Learning from the Field. Whyte has two terrific suggestions regarding the observation of groups. To begin, he suggests mapping the scene, paying special attention to where people stand or sit, who talks with whom, etc. Najung has successfully used this tactic. When she was observing an annual board meeting for a housing cooperative, she took note of where key board members sat, whether the employees were standing or sitting, how they set up the tables and chairs. In mapping out the territory, she noticed that employees were standing literally at the fringes of the group – at the corner by the door taking care of things and facilitating things. This observation was key in crafting interview questions about the relationship between board members, other house owners, and employees. A second tactic is to examine interactions, such as who proposes a specific action and who supports it (this is especially good for examining leadership and influence). Both verbal (e.g., speech content) and nonverbal (e.g., gaze, posture) are critical to watch.

Before closing this section, know that exiting the scene after observing as a participant is often very difficult. Douglas (1976) refers to field research as a “traitorous activity.” While we are not sure we would go quite that far, Mike does discuss (Pratt, 2003) the twin burdens of (a) the guilt he felt in leaving the field, and (b) the tremendous responsibility he felt to not do “violence to experience:” describing his experience among the distributors in a way which honored how they saw the world. While certainly a more intense an experience than what you will likely experience during an ethnography, we suggest that you watch the movie Donnie Brascoe, where Johnny Depp plays an underground FBI agent that infiltrates the mob, to understand better how one can come to identify closely with the group in which one is participating, and the difficulties of exit.

Interviewing

If done well, interviewing can be fun for both you and the informant, and even therapeutic for the latter. Before starting interview, it is often wise to make an interview “guide” or “protocol.” This protocol is used to provide some structure for the questions you will ask during an interview, and it is likely something that your IRB will want to see before you enter the field. There are now quite a few resources on how to prepare for and conduct an interview (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008; Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Seidman, 1998). However, we like Spradley's (1979) book, The Ethnographic Interview; it is a wonderful resource. His book outlines the kinds of questions you might want to ask during an interview. We've outlined these question types in Table 1.1. Please note that the purpose of these questions is to get a better sense of what an informant thinks is important. Moreover, mirroring the tension between design and drift, and the “structured-ness” of observations, there is also some tension inherent in deciding how much to structure an interview. In Table 1.1, descriptive questions are the least structured; and the answers to these questions are often used as the basis for asking more structured questions.

While we would refer you to Spradley (1979) for a greater treatment of these question types, we would like to point out one in particular, the “grand tour question.” Mike has found that no matter what type of interview he is doing, he likes to start with a grand tour question whereby the informant is asked to describe some aspect of their life. For example, acknowledging that few people have a “typical day,” he will then ask “can you take me through a day at work?” While this is sometimes used to “warm up” the informant and get him or her talking, the answers to these have provided a trove of useful information in studies. For example, in the physician study (Pratt et al., 2006), the grand tour questions elicited detailed descriptions of what the residents did during their shifts. These descriptions made it clear that the work they were doing did not align with what they thought they should be doing as residents (e.g., surgery residents getting paged in the middle of the night to put down a toilet seat). From this realization, Mike and his colleagues came up with the idea of work-identity integrity violations: an idea that became the heart of the paper.

In addition to the wonderful resources out there, there are a few practical things to consider while interviewing individuals. To begin, know that the protocol is just a guide, and that it is okay to ask questions in a different order. Ideally your interview will be experienced more like a conversation than a series of questions to be rattled off in a rigid order. Sometimes to make this more natural, you might follow up with questions in a way that fits how the informant is already talking. For example, pretend you have one section in your protocol that asks about the work that an individual does at work, and another about what he or she does at home. In the course of answering a grand tour question where a person is taking you through a typical day, the informant might mention that before work he takes his son to school, and that he has some of his best conversations with his son at that time. He may then choose to discuss this aspect of his morning routine for a while. Rather than pulling him back to what goes on at the office, you might talk more about this part of his morning, essentially skipping to later questions. Once you come to a natural end to that conversation, you can go back to the grand tour question about what happens at work.

Table 1.1 Spradley's (1979) a sample of interview question types

Interview question types	Descriptive	Structural	Contrast
What it is	• Asking informants broad questions whereby they need to describe something (e.g., an event, a typical day, how someone would say something)	• Asking informants about how they organize information (e.g., how many ways can a project succeed?)	• After discovering the differences in two terms (i.e., “folk terms”) you ask informants to confirm or disconfirm what you have found.
Specific interview question types	• Grand Tour questions	• Verification (e.g., is this right?)	• Contrast verification questions (e.g., can you tell me if I have got this right — that you do ‘y’ when doing ‘x’ but ‘b’ when doing ‘a’?)
	° Typical (e.g., typical day)
	° Specific (e.g., last night)
	° Guided (e.g., show me around the office)
	° Task-related (e.g., draw me a map)
	• Mini-Tour (smaller scale than grand tour — e.g., how do you “let someone go?”)	• Cover questions (e.g., are there other types of …?)	• Directed contrast questions (e.g., in looking at all cases of ‘x’, under which circumstances will you need to do ‘r’ in order to do ‘x’?)
	• Example (e.g., can you give me an example of …?)	• Included domain (e.g., is ‘x’ a type of'y’?)	• Dyadic contrast questions (e.g., what, if any, differences exist between ‘a’ and ‘b’?)
	• Experience (e.g., you must have had some experience in …)	• Substitution questions (e.g., you find ‘x’ people in organizations. What other types do you find?)	• Triadic contrast questions (e.g., of ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’, which two are most similar and which one is most dissimilar?)
	• Native Language	• Card sorting structural questions (take native terms and have informants respond to them).	• Contrast set sorting questions: make a pile of terms and ask informants to sort them into two or more piles based on how the terms are similar and dissimilar
	° Direct language (e.g., how would you refer to.?)
	° Hypothetical-Interaction (e.g., if you met another CEO, would you say it this way?)
			• Rating questions: rate ‘a’ through ‘e’ by which is the most to least difficult to do
	° Typical-Sentence: use a term in a typical sentence

Second and similarly, feel free to go “off roading” and ask questions that are not on your protocol. Mike has seen many new interviewers (himself included) who were afraid to go beyond the questions asked in the protocol in fear that one would not get to all of the questions in the allotted time. Part of this anxiety stems from the fact that people want to ask similar questions of everyone in order to compare them during data analysis. However, one critical part of the ethnographic experience is changing your questions to fit your emerging knowledge. How then do you compare individuals if you do not ask them all the same questions? There are a few ways to do this. To begin, remember that in ethnographies, you may be interviewing the same person (e.g., a key informant) multiple times. If you interview multiple people, multiple times, it is easier to go back and ask them questions that are similar to those that you asked of others. Barring that, you might be able to go back to people you interviewed to ask some follow-up questions. Another approach is to ensure that, while you might not ask everyone the same questions, be sure to that every question is asked of at least a few informants. In addition, it is important to remember that not every question needs verification by all members. For example, questions about the ordering of an event may be relatively established after asking a handful of informants, so there may not be a need to keep asking the question. Other questions, such as how the group defines its purpose, or which groups are seen as the “competition” (and why), may be worth getting a broader set of informants. As a rule of thumb, the more contested or complex the issue, the more people you might like to ask about it.

When considering where to interview, you might want to consider meeting somewhere on or near where the group normally works. Being at work may “cue” work-related memories and identities. Ideally, you can interview the person in her or his office, if that person has a door or works in a quiet/low-traffic area. This may allow for a private conversation. However, if you are interviewing someone in an office, ask that the person to forward his or her phone calls (if possible), try to ensure that the computer in the office is not on, and ask the person if they could block out the time as “unavailable” on a public schedule or let his or her administrative assistant know. These will cut down on the potential interruptions during an interview. Depending on the status of the informant (and your own status), it may not be appropriate or comfortable to demand too much in this arena, but you can always ask politely. For those whose time is at a premium, you might suggest that the interview will be shorter if there are fewer interruptions.

If an office is not available, you might try for a small conference room. Big conference rooms may play havoc, acoustically, with your recording equipment. [As an aside, we always try to record our interviews – and Mike has learned the hard way to use both a primary and back-up recording device (see also Hinds & Crampton, this volume). There may be some debate over the use of such recording devices and how they influence how people answer questions, but we tend to find that people ignore these devices once the interview has started.] No matter what the size of the conference room is, be sure to set it up before the informant enters. For example, always be sure to arrange the seats so that the informant does not sit very far from you. It is awkward to set up at one end of the table and have your informant enter and sit at the opposite end. If there are multiple chairs, Mike will often put off to the side all of the “extra chairs” so that the informant has only one place to sit.

Najung found out the hard way about meeting in an office or private conference room. An informant told her that the only place she could be interviewed was a common area near the entrance of her workplace building. Despite it being after work hours, several colleagues passed through the common area during the course of the interview. Not surprisingly, the informant stopped speaking each time someone passed by, significantly interrupting the flow of the conversation and likely influencing the quality of the data obtained.

If there is not an office or a small conference room where the group perform their jobs, then you might consider an off-site area. Do not, unless you absolutely have to, interview at a restaurant or public café. It may sound convenient for the informant to “do lunch” during an interview, but it is a huge hassle for the interviewer. Here are our top five reasons for avoiding these places for interviews (not in any particular order). First, voice recorders often pick up background noise in restaurants, making the quality of the voice record difficult to transcribe. Second, it is hard to establish rapport with an informant when someone is coming up periodically to ask you “how things are” and “whether you want some more iced tea.” Invariably, such interruptions come during the discussion of sensitive topics. Third, and especially if you are in a small town, you might get a visit from someone you or the informant knows – even the person's co-worker/team mate. While you might be able to extricate yourself quickly, it is more difficult once they see the tape recorder and want to know what you are doing. And if the person you are interviewing was hesitant to interview before, especially if they are concerned with anonymity, then such an encounter can be devastating. Fourth, the informant may find it difficult to eat and talk – and may prioritize the former over the latter. Last, but not least, people may be hesitant to talk about sensitive topics in public during the interview. So if you need to find a place off-site, you might use your own office or a small conference room in your own building.

Finally, there are unique issues that arise when you are interviewing intact teams, especially if you know that team members talk with each other frequently. Perhaps the biggest issue is that you have to be even more careful about the interview process in these situations, because you can quickly get a reputation based on how earlier interviews go. While it is rare that we would ever challenge an informant (e.g., bring up the inconsistencies in their own stories, confront them about a known lie), it would be an especially bad thing to do during the first interviews with a cohesive group. If you get a reputation as a “jerk” with one team member, you'll likely have it with most or all of them. You should also be wary that the content of your interview protocol may spread. When Mike was studying residency groups, there were times during interviews when someone would say, “I heard you were going to ask me this.” Sometimes team members will even come up with theories about why you are asking certain questions, so be open to “listening” for them. In one interview, for example, an informant whom Mike had interviewed multiple times was acting strangely. When he explored the reasons for this, it became clear that people in his cohort were convinced that he was trying to get “dirt” on their residency program chairs. He addressed the concern with this informant, and soon this information spread to others in this person's cohort.

New “tools” for ethnographic studies: Video ethnography
and netnography

As we indicated at the start of this section on “tools,” there are two relatively new ways to conduct ethnography that sometimes bypass a fundamental aspect of traditional ethnographies: physically being in the field with your informants. However, like traditional ethnographies, both video ethnography and netnography are focused on studying the cultures of groups.

Video ethnography

Video ethnography is an ethnographic analysis of video recordings that allows researchers to analyze detailed physical and verbal interactions in great depth. While it is possible to do the video recording yourself, it is more common that the video you analyze has been filmed by someone else. If taking the more common route, you can opt simply to analyze a video that someone else collected for a study, similar to an archival analysis. Alternatively, you may have someone film your own interactions with a group, allowing yourself the chance to observe your own behavior and interactions with others in the group and analyze them. This ability to see your own interactions with a group is a unique opportunity afforded by video ethnography. Another unique strength of video ethnography is that video technology allows you to repeat, revisit, and thus “re-observe” the same scene multiple times. Consequently, video ethnography is a good option if your research question requires interaction analysis (Goffman, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1981; Hughes, 1971): a type of analysis premised on the notion that “talk and bodily conduct are … the primary vehicles through which people accomplish social activities and events” (Heath & Hindmarsh, 2002, p. 104).

Given its strength in capturing verbal and nonverbal interactions, video ethnography has been extensively used in communication research, qualitative sociology, and educational psychology to examine: (a) nonverbal cues, such as behavioral, physical movements, facial expressions; (b) relationships between these nonverbal cues and utterances; (c) the interactive relationship between physical settings and human interactions; as well as (d) the verbal communication that people generate while talking or interacting with others. [See the following for an overview of this method: Ellis & Bochner (2002); Gottman & Notarius (2000); Hall, Murphy, & Mast (2006); Lebaron & Streeck (1997); MacMartin & LeBaron (2006); Maynard (1992); Perakyla (1998); Pilnick & Hindmarsh (1999); Rich & Chalfen (1999); ten Have (1991); and Weingart, Olekalns, & Smith (2004).] While good in these situations, video ethnography also comes with some unique drawbacks as well.

To illustrate, this form of ethnography has the potential to lead to the depersonalization of your informants. During the data collection process and also the data analysis stage, researchers can detach themselves from the actual human beings filmed in video tapes, which hinders one's ability to see the world through the eyes of an informant. Moreover, bogged down by the detailed movements and verbal cues in the video, researchers can easily think of these individuals as objects rather than thinking about them as humans. There are also technical issues involved, whether one does the actual filming (e.g., checking cameras, recorders, videotapes, lighting, location of the camera, etc.) or not (e.g., assessing proper speed of playback functions, decisions regarding the use of software to code data). Finally, video ethnography also raises some unique ethical issues. It is important to keep in mind that these individuals are exposed (i.e., vulnerable to identification) whenever you play the video. Thus, its use requires a greater effort to protect the anonymity of an informant's identity than it would if you were doing a more traditional ethnography. Consequently, there may be heightened concerns from one's local IRB, unless of course the videos you are analyzing are in the public domain.

Netnography

Netnography is a “qualitative research methodology that adapts ethnographic research techniques to study the cultures and communities that are emerging through computer-mediated communications” (Kozinets, 2002, p. 62). More specifically, netnographies most often involve observation of electronic bulletin boards (e.g., newsgroups), web-pages, listservs, email exchanges, multiuser games (dungeons), and chat rooms. Because it was created by a consumer and marketing researcher (Kozinets, 1998), most studies have focused on behaviors and attitudes of online consumer groups (e.g., Beaven, 2007; Daugherty, Lee, Gangadharbatla, Kim, & Outhavong, 2005; Giesler, 2006; Jeppesen & Frederiksen, 2006; Kozinets, 2001, 2006; Maulana & Eckhardt, 2007). However, netnographies have potential for examining organizational groups as well (e.g., internal message boards of companies). The data one gathers in netnographies are typically textual (e.g., conversations among members of an online forum saved as text files and/or the researcher's written field notes); but one may also gather visual data (e.g., print screens). As one moves towards gathering more visual data, the pros and cons of this approach become similar to those of video ethnography.

When employing this method, researchers can range in terms of how overt or covert one is, or how active a participant one is, in the online community being examined. As with traditional ethnographies, your choice of how to observe depends on your research question. Beyond that, there is some differing advice given about what is the best way to observe online groups. For example, some suggest that your default should be to identify yourself as a researcher when observing an online community (Kozinets, 2002). Langer & Beckman (2005), however, suggest that one may want to be more covert when examining sensitive topics; but as we have discussed above, covert observation is often frowned upon by IRBs. Given the public nature of online groups, such concerns may be attenuated somewhat. Kozinets (2002) suggests that covert observation should only be considered when one can access the online group without having to apply for membership, that is, the group is fully in the public realm. Of course, one's local IRB may have its own guidelines. Regarding how active one should be in group activities, the general tendency has been to conduct netnographies using nonparticipant observations (e.g., lurking). But more recent thinking on netnographies involves more active participation (Kozinets, 2006), bringing netnographies more in line with ethnography's participant observation focus.

There are several strengths of the netnography. First, in contrast to traditional ethnographies, time and resources spent on collecting data are often much less. For example, not only is access often easier to negotiate, the extent of your travel may be walking to your office computer, and some of your data comes to you “transcribed.” Also, depending on the size of the community as well as one's observational status (e.g., covert versus overt), the researcher may have to worry less that his or her presence in an online community will unduly influence the behaviors and attitudes of the members of that community. Third, because these members in the online communities can use pseudonyms or go incognito, they may feel more comfortable talking about sensitive issues, and may be more willing to share their true thoughts regarding an issue without pressure to answer in a socially desirable way.

One of the more unique limitations of netnographies, however, includes the lack of informant identifiers. This anonymity may have at least three undesirable consequences. First, in contrast to arguments that individuals may be more honest online, it may that individuals use their online personas to lie about their attitudes or behaviors, or to manipulate others’ perceptions on them. Second, because you cannot track down the informants, it is harder to ask them follow-up questions. And without follow-ups, you have to rely more on your own interpretation of informants’ statements rather than their own. Third, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to assess characteristics which may supplement one's interpretation of data. For example, pretend you are assessing a reaction to a new organizational policy on a corporate intranet. It would be interesting to know if “ReginaN”, “SmithM” and “WangL” are male or female and whether they are relatively young or old in order to better understand trends in group members’ responses.

The ethnographic study of online communities is currently a growing and contested domain, often using different terms to describe their studies, for example, “webnography” (Puri,2007), or “online ethnography” (Markham,2007). While netnography appears to be the best developed in terms of its methods at this time, it will be interesting to see how they and similar approaches develop when applied to organizational groups.

Concluding thoughts

At this point, we've discussed what you need to do in order to prepare yourself to do an ethnographic study of a group (although all ethnographies are, at some level, group ethnographies). Of course, one must go beyond preparation. Once you have constructed a research question, designed your protocols, gained access, passed through your IRB, and obtained any technology you might want to use (e.g., voice recorder, video camera, transcribing aids) for collecting observations and interviews, you actually have to collect the data, analyze it, and write it up. Explaining all of these would take us well beyond our page limits. However, we would like to close by suggesting the following three books that we have found to be particularly good regarding ethnographic research.

• Spradley (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. As noted above, this is a great source on doing ethnography, especially designing, conducting, and analyzing ethnographic interviews.
• Fetterman (1998) Ethnography, 2nd edition. Written by an anthropologist, this book mixes traditional ethnography with other techniques; not a “purist's” guide, but handy for the beginning ethnographer.
• Van Maanen (1988) Tales of the Field: on Writing Ethnography. A great book about the different kinds of voices you can use when writing up qualitative research – even if journals may want you to write in the dispassionate, third person “realist” voice.

In addition, when writing up any or all qualitative research, we could encourage you to read Golden-Biddle and Locke's (2006) Composing Qualitative Research. And if you want to publish your research in a top-tier North American management journal, you might take a peek at Mike's (Pratt, 2008, 2009) musings on the topic as an editor, author, and reviewer.

Finally, we noted at the start that ethnographies involve both drift and design. Perhaps by the nature of writing these things down, we tended more toward design than drift. However, we truly believe that you need to design for drift. We believe that by thinking through and planning for some of these issues, this allow you to free up some “head space” so that you can follow up interesting leads, be creative in your observations, and allow the research project to take you in new and potentially fruitful directions.

Authors’ Note:

We'd like to thank Beth Bechky, Lakshmi Balachandra, Andrea Hollingshead, and Scott Poole for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

References

Angrosino, M., & Perez, K. (2005). Rethinking observation: From method to context. In N. Denzin, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 673–715). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Barnett, C. K., & Pratt, M. G. (2000). From threat-rigidity to flexibility:Toward a learning model of autogenic crisis in organizations. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 13(1),74–88.

Beaven, Z. (2007). ‘Never let me down again’: Loyal customer attitudes towards ticket distribution channels for live music events:A netnographic exploration of the US leg of the depeche mode 2005–2006 world tour. Managing Leisure, 12(2),120–142.

Bechky, B. A., & Okhuysen, G. A. (2011). Expecting the unexpected? How SWAT officers and film crews handle surprises. Academy of Management Journal, 54(2),239–261 .

Daugherty, T., Lee, W. N., Gangadharbatla, H., Kim, K., & Outhavong, S. (2005). Organizational virtual communities: Exploring motivations behind online panel participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 9.

Douglas, J. (1976). Investigative social research: Individual and team field research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2002). Symbolic interaction in restrospect: A conversation with Norma Denzin. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 25, 179–198.

Feldman, M. S., Bell, J., & Berger, M. T. (2003). Gaining access: A practical and theoretical guide for qualitative researchers. Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman Altamira.

Fetterman, D. M. (1998). Ethnography: Step by step (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Giesler, M. (2006). Consumer gift systems. Journal of Consumer Research, 33(2),283–290.

Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. New York : Doubleday.

Goffman, E. (1966). Behavior in public places. New York : Free Press.

Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York : Basic Books.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gold, R. L. (1957/1958). Roles in sociological field observations. Social Forces, 36(1/4), 217–223.

Golden-Biddle, K., & Locke, K. (2006). Composing qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gottman, J. M., & Notarius, C. I. (2000). Decade review: Observing marital interaction. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62(4),927–947.

Gunsalus, C. K., Bruner, E. M., Burbules, N. C., Dash, L., Finkin, M., Goldberg, J. P., et al. (2007). The Illinois white paper: Improving the system for protecting human subjects: Counteracting IRB “mission creep.” Qualitative Inquiry, 13(5),617–649.

Hall, J. A., Murphy, N. A., & Mast, M. S. (2006). Recall of nonverbal cues: Exploring a new definition of interpersonal sensitivity. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 30(4),141–155.

Heath, C., & Hindmarsh, J. (2002). Analysing interaction:Video, ethnography and situated conduct. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative Research (pp.99–121). London : Sage.

Hughes, E. C. (1971). The sociological eye: Selected papers on work, self, & the study of society. Chicago, IL : Aldine-Atherton.

Jeppesen, L. B., & Frederiksen, L. (2006). Why do users contribute to firm-hosted user communities? Organization Science, 17(1),45–63.

Kayser-Jones, J. (2002). The experience of dying: An ethnographic nursing home study. The Gerontologist, 42(3),11–19.

Kozinets, R. V. (1998). On netnography: Initial reflections on consumer research investigations of cyberculture. Advances in Consumer Research, 25(1),366–371.

Kozinets, R. V. (2001). Utopian enterprise: Articulating the meanings of star trek's culture of consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1),67–88.

Kozinets, R. V. (2002). The field behind the screen: Using netnography for marketing research in online communities. Journal of Marketing Research, 39(1),61–72.

Kozinets, R. V. (2006). Click to connect: Netnography and tribal advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 46(3),279–288.

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2008). Interviews:An introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Langer, R., & Beckman, S. C. (2005). Sensitive research topics: Netnography revisited. Qualitative Market Research:An International Journal, 8, 189–203.

Lebaron, C. D., & Streeck, J. (1997). Built space and the interactional framing of experience during a murder interrogation. Human Studies, 20(1),1–25.

MacMartin, C., & LeBaron, C. D. (2006). Multiple involvements within group interaction: A video-based study of sex offender therapy. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 39(1),41–80.

Markham, A. N. (2007). The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in online ethnography. In L. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 793–820). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. (1989). Designing qualitative research (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Maulana, A. E., & Eckhardt, G. M. (2007). Just friends, good acquaintances or soul mates? An exploration of web site connectedness. Qualitative Market Research:An International Journal, 10(3),227–242.

Maynard, D. W. (1992). On clinicians co-implicating recipients’ perspective in the delivery of diagnostic news. In P. Drew, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 331–358). Cambridge, MA : Cambridge University Press.

McGrath, J. E. (1982). Dilemmatics: The study of research choices and dilemmas. American Behavioral Scientist, 25(2),179–210.

Mead, M. (1928 [2001]). Coming of age in Samoa. New York:HarperCollins.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Patton, M. 1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Perakyla, A. (1998). Authority and accountability: The delivery of diagnosis in primary health care. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(4),301–320.

Peshkin, A. (1984). Odd man out: The participant observer in an absolutist setting. Sociology of Education, 57(4),254–264.

Pettigrew, A. (1990). Longitudinal field research on change: Theory and practice. Organization Science, 1(3),267–292.

Pilnick, A., & Hindmarsh, J. (1999).”When you wake up it'll all be over”: Communication in the anaesthetic room. Symbolic Interaction, 22(4),345–360.

Pratt, M. G. (2000a). The good, the bad, and the ambivalent: Managing identification among Amway distributors. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45(3),456–493.

Pratt, M. G. (2000b). Building an ideological fortress: The role of spirituality, encapsulation, and sensemaking. Studies in Cultures, Organizations, and Societies, 6(1),35–69.

Pratt, M. G. (2003). Access as relating: On the relationship aspects of different types of access. In M. S. Feldman, J. Bell, & M. T. Berger (Eds.), Gaining access: A practical and theoretical guide for qualitative researchers (pp. 150–154). Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman Altamira.

Pratt, M. G. (2008). Fitting oval pegs into round holes: Tensions in evaluating and publishing qualitative research in top-tier North American journals. Organizational Research Methods, 11(3),481–509.

Pratt, M. G. (2009). For the lack of a boilerplate: Tips on writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal, 52(5):856–862.

Pratt, M. G., & Rafaeli, A. (1997). Organizational dress as a symbol of multilayered social identities. Academy of Management Journal, 40(4),862–898.

Pratt, M. G., Rockmann, K. W., & Kaufmann, J. B. (2006). Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. Academy of Management Journal, 49(2),235–262.

Pratt, M. G., & Rosa, J. A. (2003). Transforming work–family conflict into commitment in network marketing organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 46(4),395–418.

Puri, A. (2007). The web of insights: The art and practice of webnography. The Market Research Society, 49(3),387–408.

Rich, M., & Chalfen, R. (1999). Showing and telling asthma: Children teaching physicians with visual narrative. Visual Studies, 14(1),51–71.

Rosen, M. (1991). Scholars, travelers, and thieves: On concept, method, and cunning in organizational ethnography. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, & M. R. Louis (Eds.), Reframing organizational culture (pp. 271–284). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Seidman, I. (1998). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. New York : Teachers College Press.

Spradley, J. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York : Holt Reinhardt. ten Have, P. (1991). Talk and institution: A reconsideration of the “asymmetry” of doctor– patient interaction. In D. Boden, & D. H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 138–163). Cambridge, UK : Polity Press.

Van Maanen, J. (1973). Observations on the making of policemen. Human Organization, 32(4),407–418.

Van Maanen, J. (1979). The fact of fiction in organizational ethnography. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4),539–550.

Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press.

Venkatesh, S. A. (2002). “Doin’ the hustle:” Constructing the ethnographer in the American ghetto. Ethnography, 31(1):91–111.

Weingart, L. R., Olekalns, M., & Smith, P. L. (2004). Quantitative coding of negotiation behavior. International Negotiation, 9(3),441–455.

Whyte, W. H. (1984). Learning from the field:A guide from experience. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Wolcott, H. (1994). Confessions of a “trained” observer. Transforming qualitative data (pp. 152–172). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.