The purpose of this paper is to reflect on a broad body of work that responds to the boundaryless career concept, first introduced in 1993, and to anticipate new theory-building…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on a broad body of work that responds to the boundaryless career concept, first introduced in 1993, and to anticipate new theory-building and research.
Design/methodology/approach
Covers the origination of the concept, its meaning and definition, the underlying influence of an earlier group of careers scholars from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the importance of an interdisciplinary perspective.
Findings
Identifies three categories of activity – involving internal debates, fresh theoretical contributions, and new collaborative opportunities – that have occurred citing boundaryless career scholarship.
Research limitations/implications
Suggests how scholars can build on the legacy of both organizational and boundaryless careers research in their future work.
Originality/value
Links between foundational MIT work on careers, boundaryless careers and current debates to suggests future research directions.
Details
Keywords
Trish Reay, Asma Zafar, Pedro Monteiro and Vern Glaser
In this chapter, the authors explore the state of our field in terms of ways to present qualitative findings. The authors analyze all articles based on qualitative research…
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors explore the state of our field in terms of ways to present qualitative findings. The authors analyze all articles based on qualitative research methods published in the Academy of Management Journal from 2010 to 2017 and supplement this by informally surveying colleagues about their “favorite” qualitative authors. As a result, the authors identify five ways of presenting qualitative findings in research articles. The authors suggest that each approach has advantages as well as limitations, and that the type of data and theorizing is an important consideration in determining the most appropriate approach for the presentation of findings. The authors hope that by identifying these approaches, they enrich the way authors, reviewers, and editors approach the presentation of qualitative findings.
Details
Keywords
This chapter represents a personalized account of ethnography. As such, I have cobbled together a partial confessional – as they all are – out of the two penny nails of past…
Abstract
This chapter represents a personalized account of ethnography. As such, I have cobbled together a partial confessional – as they all are – out of the two penny nails of past papers, books, talks, and personal experience. I write as something of a literary strumpet whose task is to “teach myself.” Meager subject it may be but, presumably, I have the requisite expertise. What I have to offer is a series of observation as to what my take on ethnography is today and how it developed over my career. It is an enlarging, booming scholarly and applied field – long escaped from its relatively insulated anthropological and sociological origins. As has become evident of late, the field has many adherents around the globe who subscribe to particular perspectives and practices that may differ in various ways from my own. However, the gist of this writing is to give an account of my own ethnographic perspective and practice which in part rests on chance and serendipity.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Details
Keywords
Stanford contributed significantly to the organizational culture movement that occurred in organization studies from 1970–2000. This chapter traces developments at Stanford and…
Abstract
Stanford contributed significantly to the organizational culture movement that occurred in organization studies from 1970–2000. This chapter traces developments at Stanford and puts the contributions of its researchers and scholars in the context of the many influences that shaped the study of organizational culture during this period. In addition to the historical account, there is speculation about why the culture movement at Stanford more or less ended but might yet be revived, either by those studying institutionalization processes or by those who resist them.
Turning laborious ethnographic research into stylized argumentative prose for academic consumption is a painstaking craft. The purpose of this paper is to revisit this perennial…
Abstract
Purpose
Turning laborious ethnographic research into stylized argumentative prose for academic consumption is a painstaking craft. The purpose of this paper is to revisit this perennial issue, and extend a claim the authors have made elsewhere about the inevitably impressionistic, rather than the oft-claimed “systematic”, nature of this task.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw and reflect on their own experiences of conducting and navigating across political science, ethnography and interpretation in order to justify and uphold the benefits of impressionism.
Findings
The authors argue that the impressionistic account of writing up fieldwork has important implications for these diverse disciplinary terrains.
Originality/value
The authors develop an argument as to how and why an appreciation of this craft’s impressionistic nature can affect how the authors go about creating, evaluating and ultimately thinking about ethnographic research in foreign disciplines like political science.
Details
Keywords
This paper claims that global corporations should rethink the concept of cultural control, which relies on an implicit culture, corporate culture, for the control of local…
Abstract
This paper claims that global corporations should rethink the concept of cultural control, which relies on an implicit culture, corporate culture, for the control of local managersș thoughts and behavior. Instead, based on hybridizations of corporate and local management cultures created through personal socialization conducted by Swedish and American corporations in local offices in Thailand and Mexico, the paper offers a perspective for cultural control that views and understands cultures in terms of change and hybridizations.
Anne-Laure Fayard and John Van Maanen
The purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect on the experience as corporate ethnographers working in (and for) a large, multinational company with a remit to study and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect on the experience as corporate ethnographers working in (and for) a large, multinational company with a remit to study and articulate “the culture of the firm.”
Design/methodology/approach
The research relied heavily on interviews and some (participant) observation carried out periodically – in North America, Europe and Asia – over an eight-year period.
Findings
The authors discuss how the studies were produced, received, and occasionally acted on in the firm and the realization over time of the performativity of the work as both expressive and constitutive of firm’s culture.
Research limitations/implications
The increasing entanglement in the organization raises questions regarding emic and etic perspectives and the possibility (or impossibility) of “enduring detachment” or “going native” and the associated, often unintended consequences of being both outsiders and insiders.
Practical implications
The authors start with the premise that ethnography is about producing a written text and conclude by arguing that ethnography is not fully realized until the writing is read.
Social implications
The ethnographic reports, when read by those in the company, made visible a version of Trifecta culture that was interpreted, framed and otherwise responded to in multiple ways by members of the organization.
Originality/value
Corporate ethnography is a growing pursuit undertaken by those inside and outside firms. This paper focusses on how and in what ways corporate ethnography sponsored by and written for those in the company shifts the positioning of the ethnographer in the field, the kinds of texts they produce, and the meanings that readers take away from such texts.