Organisational Anthropology Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organisations

by Garsten, Christina; Nyqvist, Anette

• ISBN13: 9780745335285
• ISBN10: 0745335284
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-10-23
• Publisher: UCP

Summary

Organisational Anthropology, newly published in paperback, is a pioneering analysis of doing ethnographic fieldwork in different types of complex organisations. The book focuses on the process of initiating contact, establishing rapport and gaining the trust of the organisation's members.

The contributors work from the premise that doing fieldwork in an organisation shares essential characteristics with fieldwork in more 'classical' anthropological environments, but that it also poses some particular challenges to the ethnographer. These include the ideological or financial interests of the organisations, protection of resources and competition between organisations.

Organisational Anthropology brings together and highlights crucial aspects of doing anthropology in contemporary complex settings, and will have wide appeal to students, researchers and academics in anthropology and organisation studies.

Author Biography

Christina Garsten is Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University and Chair of the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score) at Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Economics. She is the author of Workplace Vagabonds: Career and Community in Changing Worlds of Work (2008) and co-editor of Ethical Dilemmas in Management Organizing (2009), Transnational Accountability (2008) and Transparency in a New Global Order (2008).

Anette Nyqvist is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University and holds a research position at Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score) at Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Economics. She is the author of Opening the Orange Envelope: Risk and Responsibility in the Remaking of Sweden's National Pension System (2008).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
1. Entries: Engaging Organisational Worlds; Christina Garsten and Anette Nyqvist
PART I: CORPORATE CORRIDORS
2. Counter Intelligence: The Contingencies of Clerkship at the Epicenter of Convenience Culture; Gavin Hamilton Whitelaw
3. Counter-espionage: Fieldwork Among Culture Experts in Bang and Olufsen; Jacob Krause Jensen
4. When Life Goes to Work: Authenticity and Managerial Control in the Contemporary Firm; by Peter Fleming
5. Oblique Ethnography: Engaging Collaborative Complicity Among Globalised Corporate Managers; Emil A. Røyrvik
PART II: POLICY ARENAS
6. Access to All Stages?: Studying through Policy in a Culture of Accessibility; Anette Nyqvist
7. Punctuated Entries: Doing Fieldwork in Policy Meetings in the EU; Renita Thedvall
8. The Instrumental Gaze: The Case of Public Sector Reorganization; Halvard Vike
PART III: WORKING THE NETWORK
9. All About Ties: Think Tanks and the Economy of Connections; Christina Garsten
10. Working Connections, Helping Friends: Fieldwork, Organisations and Cultural Styles; Brian Moeran
11. Messy Logic: Organisational Interactions and Joint Commitment in Railway Planning; Åsa Boholm
PART IV: OPAQUE WORLDS
12. The Profane Ethnographer: Fieldwork with a Secretive Organization; Lilith Mahmud
13. Communicative Nature of Money: Aligning Organisational Anthropology with Technocratic Experiments; Douglas R. Holmes
14. Not Being There: The Power of Strategic Absence in Organisational Anthropology; Tara Schwegler
15. Momentum: Pushing Ethnography Ahead; Christina Garsten and Anette Nyqvist
Index