Pushing Beyond Positionalities and Through “Failures” in Qualitative Organizational Communication: Experiences and Lessons on Identities in Ethnographic Praxis

Jensen, Peter R.; Cruz, Joëlle M.; Eger, Elizabeth; Hanchey, Jenna N.; Gist‐Mackey, Angela N.; Ruiz-Mesa, Kristina; Villamil, Astrid M.

doi:10.1177/0893318919885654

Cited by 26 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…One of the greatest challenges that affronted us was when the walls between our identity-laden roles were broken down—when we could no longer compartmentalize who we were as scholars in the scene and who we were outside of the DDV sites. In those situations, we wrestled with what part of our identity would “win out.” Like Jensen and colleagues (2020), we found that our social identities were not stagnant but moveable. At times, these decision points pitted what might be “best” for us as researchers against what might be “best” for us as people.…”

Section: The Ethical Exigencies Of Researching With/in Ddv Contextssupporting

confidence: 81%

Conducting Research in Difficult, Dangerous, and/or Vulnerable Contexts: Messy Narratives From the Field

Peterson

Albu

Foot

et al. 2021

Management Communication Quarterly

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Organizational communication scholars have historically conducted research in large for-profit businesses, governmental agencies, and a few high-profile nonprofits/NGOs—all of which are relatively easy to access and presumably “safe” to study. It is largely unsurprising, then, that limited scholarship addresses the challenges associated with conducting research in less standard contexts that are often perceived to be difficult, dangerous, and/or vulnerable (DDV). In this forum, we offer lived stories—unfiltered messy narratives—to demystify three core ethical challenges inherent in conducting research of this nature and share how we (imperfectly) navigated them. In addition, we offer practical strategies for conducting research in DDV contexts. Taken together, our overall collective aim is to successfully prepare future scholars to conduct research projects in DDV contexts.

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Section: The Ethical Exigencies Of Researching With/in Ddv Contextssupporting

confidence: 81%

Conducting Research in Difficult, Dangerous, and/or Vulnerable Contexts: Messy Narratives From the Field

Peterson

Albu

Foot

et al. 2021

Management Communication Quarterly

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“…For example, at JP my role as housetaker facilitated relationships with both workers and guests. However, while my role as ‘intern’ provided several opportunities to be ‘taught’ by the staff at MSF, it erected a barrier between me and the clients (Jensen et al, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative logics: A Discursive approach to normative and alternative organizing

Jensen

2020

Human Relations

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The marketization of nonprofit organizations is often taken for granted as an inevitable fact. Drawing on the institutional logics and discursive resources perspective, I examine the organizing practices of two shelters that serve homeless women in the same area. In my analysis, I argue that a Discursive approach to institutional logics has much to offer in examining differences between nonprofit organizations as these organizations enact their organizational mission. Using comparative ethnographic methods, I examine how each organization sought to enact a social welfare institutional logic, and how that enactment resulted in more normative or alternative organizing practices. At one organization the social welfare institutional logic was translated into getting clients ‘back on track’ while at the other shelter it was translated as practicing ‘hospitality’. I argue that these translations served as primary discursive resources that both enabled preferred organizational practices and productively maintained tensions between conflicting Discourses.

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“…Embodied ethnography pushes back against supposedly bodiless organizational norms through practices that involve occupying shared space, participating in interpersonal interactions, and engaging with material objects (Ellingson, 2017). Ethnographers attend to rich sensory details in and through the fluidity of identities and practices of embodied and emplaced body-selves of participants and researchers (Jensen et al, 2019). Embodied ethnography in organizational communication draws on diverse theoretical and methodological traditions, including sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015), feminist new materialisms (Grosz, 2018), posthumanism (Barad, 2007), evocative autoethnography (Ellis, 2004), practice theory (Hopwood, 2013), phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, and post-qualitative onto-epistemologies (MacLure, 2013).…”

Section: Laura L Ellingsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether occurring singly or together, these trends undermine ethnography's conventional reliance on researcher displays of curiosity, vulnerability, and improvisation. They threaten the legitimacy of trial and error as a means for ethnographers to connect and learn with organizational members (Jensen et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Revisiting Ethnography in Organizational Communication Studies

Taylor

Barley

Brummans

et al. 2021

Management Communication Quarterly

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This forum considers recent trends in organizational communication ethnography, a distinctive tradition of qualitative research. Historically, ethnography has been valued for its unique ability to generate nuanced findings that vividly explain how communication is meaningful and consequential for organizational actors. Customarily, ethnographers pursue this ideal through distinctive practices. These include embedding for extended periods in routine organizational settings; generating detailed, descriptive data from their observation of, interaction with, and interviewing of organizational members; preserving those actors' indigenous meanings for their artifacts and

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Pushing Beyond Positionalities and Through “Failures” in Qualitative Organizational Communication: Experiences and Lessons on Identities in Ethnographic Praxis

Abstract: Following the discursive turn, qualitative scholars have played a significant role in organizational communication. In her methodological survey, Stephens (2017) found that approximately two thirds of the articles published from 2001 to 2015 in Management Communication Quarterly

Cited by 26 publications

References 21 publications

Conducting Research in Difficult, Dangerous, and/or Vulnerable Contexts: Messy Narratives From the Field

Conducting Research in Difficult, Dangerous, and/or Vulnerable Contexts: Messy Narratives From the Field

Alternative logics: A Discursive approach to normative and alternative organizing

Revisiting Ethnography in Organizational Communication Studies

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