Anthropology: The Forgotten Behavioral Science in Management History.

More than a method? Organisational ethnography as a way of imagining the social

“…As a result, the main findings deriving from Warner's study have been labelled "sociological" rather than "organisational" and thus are seen as a contribution to social class theory (rather than to organisation theory). A similar fate met what Morey andLuthans (2013 [1987]) label yet another "classical example of an organisational ethnography," or Whyte's Human Relations in the Restaurant Industry, published one year after Warner's work (Whyte 1948). Although both Warner and Whyte, who worked together at the Committee on Human Relations in Industry in Chicago, were truly interdisciplinary researchers (Whyte's university degree was in sociology, not in anthropology), their work was usually not considered as part of the foundational roots of the studies of organisations (except by recent authors such as Czarniawska-Joerges 1992 andKostera 2007).…”

“…Dvora Yanow, Sierk Ybema, and Merlijn van Hulst (2012) insist that this study was based on the ethnographic ethos of "being there," a holistic depiction of organisational life, including its "nonrational" aspects, such as politics, customs and their dysfunctional consequences. Morey and Luthans (2013) propose that a more sociological approach to participant observation for some of Warner's followers after the foundation of the Committee of Human Relations in Industry in Chicago and the later re-introduction of a distinctive anthropological approach to the study of organisations as represented by William Foote Whyte (1948) within this same group created the first crossroads between organisation studies and anthropology. Ann Jordan (2003) suggests that the economic and financial depression and the end of the Hawthorne studies during the 1930s produced an absence of anthropologists in organisational settings until World War II.…”

“…Morey andLuthans (2013 [1987]) suggest that one of the reasons for taking different routes was that both anthropology and ethnographic research were regarded as less important than psychology (and to a lesser extent, sociology) in their contributions to the origins of organisational studies. This occurred because management and organisational behaviour became defensive about academic respectability: "good research became equated with quantitative research" (Morey and Luthans 2013, 87).…”

“…In fact, the recognition of a distinct informal organisation was not only the result of Warner's interviews but of his capacity to imagine the social world of Hawthorne and the Bank Wiring Room. It was the capacity to observe, the social sensibility of imagining when ethnographing (Tota 2004), with what Beth Bechky describes as "anthropological sensibility" (Bechky 2013, 97), or, in Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges' (1992 words, an "anthropological frame of mind" that made it possible for Warner to understand that the informal organisation at Hawthorne "also included their immediate supervisors" (Morey andLuthans 2013 [1987], 84). Warner was reported to be obsessed with "keep[ing] a continuous record of all activity that was observable" (ibid.…”

“…This resonates with the later interpretation of ethnography in management and organisational research purely as an alternative methodology used when other methods fail but rings as a misinterpretation of Mayo's call for Warner's contribution. As Morey andLuthans (2013 [1987]) note, Warner was invited to work fully as an anthropologist, not just to apply ethnographic methods at Hawthorne. In fact, the recognition of a distinct informal organisation was not only the result of Warner's interviews but of his capacity to imagine the social world of Hawthorne and the Bank Wiring Room.…”