Speaking of Ethnography

Agar, Michael

doi:10.4135/9781412985895

Cited by 681 publications

(326 citation statements)

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“…This led us to further review the literature, seeking insight into what characterized and triggered breakdowns and settlements. We found interesting connections with research on elite settlements (Armstrong 2005;Burton and Higley 1987), provisional settlements (Girard and Stark 2002), genre stabilization (Schryer 1993;Yates and Orlikowski 2007) and practical breakdowns (Agar 1986;Suchman 1987;Winograd and Flores 1986). A third round of axial coding (Strauss and Corbin 1998) fleshed out the characteristics and enablers of these dynamics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Iterating among in-depth analysis of each case, comparisons across cases, and connections to the literature (Dougherty 2002;Eisenhardt 1989; Vaughan 2009), we paid attention to surprises and puzzles that led us to further analysis and theorizing (Agar 1986). While the research design was aimed initially at understanding the practices of strategy making during periods of uncertainty, the emerging salience of multiple interpretations of the past, present and future led us to draw on theories of sensemaking (e.g., Weick et al 2005) and temporal embeddedness (e.g., Emirbayer and Mische 1998;Flaherty and Fine 2001) to analyze the data.…”

Section: Research Setting and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We relied heavily on ethnographic techniques (Agar 1986;Van Maanen 1988), collecting observations of everyday activities as well as conducting formal and informal interviews and gathering documentary data. The goal was to get close to the daily practices of strategy making by examining what actors did, both individually and collectively, to produce strategic choices and actions.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research suggests that stabilized settlements can become a relatively unquestioned part of doing business and invoked habitually. Yet, when settlements are no longer useful in making sense of the world in which participants operate, they fall apart (Agar 1986;Suchman 1987;Winograd and Flores 1986). At CommCorp, breakdowns were precipitated in multiple ways.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

437

458

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This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible and acceptable, otherwise breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change. Temporal Work in Strategy Making-1 -A fundamental challenge for managers making strategy is coping with an uncertain future. In studying strategic change, scholars have emphasized the importance of sensemaking as a collective and often conflictual interpretive process for dealing with uncertainties about the business, the market, and the environment that lead to breakdowns in understandings and require cognitive reorientations to move forward (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al. 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). These studies suggest that linking across interpretations of the past, present and future make action possible, but have left unexplained how and why some linkages work and some fail in practice, and, for those that do work, why some lead to the status quo and others produce change.Our study of strategy making in practice offers some answers to these questions. We found that managers -through a set of practices that we call "temporal work" -come to settle on particular strategic accounts that link interpretations of the past, present and future in ways that appear coherent, plausible and Settling on a strategic account, even if provisional, allows actors to shift from disagreeing or deliberating about meanings to implementing strategic choices, thus enabling the organization to move forward in the face of uncertainty. If a settlement breaks down, further temporal work is required in order to reconstruct a new str...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Setting and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

437

458

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“…Furthermore, direct participation in village life allowed the delicate topic of women's health to be approached from an open-ended, indirect manner, thereby identifying bio-cultural constructs around which the community builds their own ideas around menstruation, pregnancy and menopause (Agar, 1986;Alexiades, 1996).…”

Section: Participant Observation and Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symptoms, attitudes and treatment choices surrounding menopause among the Q’eqchi Maya of Livingston, Guatemala

Michel

Mahady

Veliz

et al. 2006

Social Science & Medicine

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The present study explored symptoms, attitudes and treatments surrounding women's health and menopause among the Q'eqchi Maya of the eastern tropical lowlands of Guatemala. Data were obtained through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and plant walks with 50 Q'eqchi community members from the state of Izabal, Municipality of Livingston, including 5 midwives, 5 traditional male healers and 8 postmenopausal women. Results indicate that the Q'eqchi Maya of Livingston possess their own cultural perceptions of women's health which affect attitudes, symptoms and treatment choices during the menopausal transition. Since discussions of menstruation and menopause are considered cultural taboos among the Q'eqchi, many women mentioned experiencing excessive preoccupation when unanticipated and unfamiliar symptoms occurred. Furthermore, many women suffered from additional hardship when their spouse misinterpreted menopausal symptoms (vaginal dryness, sexual disinterest) as infidelity. Seven of the eight postmenopausal women interviewed indicated experiencing one or more symptoms during the menopausal transition, including headaches, anxiety, muscular pain, depression, and hot flashes. These results differ from the lack of symptomatology reported in previous studies in Mexico, but are in line with the result of menopausal research conducted among other Maya groups from the highlands of Guatemala. Although the Q'eqchi did not use a specific term for "hot flash", three Q'eqchi women used the expression "baja presion" or a "lowering of blood pressure" to explain symptoms of profuse sweating followed by chills, heart palpitations, and emotional instability. The Q'eqchi Maya mentioned a number of herbal remedies to treat menopausal symptoms. Further research on these botanical treatments is needed in order to ascertain their safety and efficacy for continued use.

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Physicians' Responses to Patients' Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide

Kohlwes¹,

Koepsell²,

Rhodes³

et al. 2001

Arch Intern Med

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Regardless of divergent attitudes about PAS, physicians respond similarly to requests for assisted suicide from their patients, creating a common ground for professional dialogue. Our sample addressed physical suffering aggressively, treated depression empirically, but struggled with requests arising from existential suffering. A professional code of silence regarding PAS creates professional isolation. Clinicians do not share knowledge or receive social support from peers about their decisions regarding assisted suicide. Educational strategies drawing on approaches used by experienced clinicians may create an atmosphere that enables physicians with divergent beliefs to discuss this difficult subject.

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Speaking of Ethnography

Cited by 681 publications

References 0 publications

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Symptoms, attitudes and treatment choices surrounding menopause among the Q’eqchi Maya of Livingston, Guatemala

Physicians' Responses to Patients' Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide

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