Moving Forward by Looking Backward: A Historiography of Workplace and Organizational Ethnography in the UK since 1965

This thesis presents a historiography of Workplace and Organizational Ethnographies (WOEs) conducted in the UK from 1965 to 2000. The premise for this research was that, with the nature of work and organising becoming increasingly complex and fragmented, organizational ethnographers have had to reconsider and adapt research practices to stay relevant. To ascertain the impact and significance of changing ethnographic practices, it is critical to study past ethnographic studies in their historical contexts. Thus, the aim of my research is to contextualise past WOEs, understand the intellectual trends in the representation of work and research practices in WOEs, and consider the impact these WOEs have had in mainstream Management and Organization Studies (MOS) and other fields in social sciences. For this study, nine WOEs conducted in the UK from 1965 to 2000 were chosen. I used a mixed-methods research design and adopted a two-pronged ethnohistorical approach: oral history interviews with the nine WOE ethnographers; and citation context analysis to sketch out the historical contexts that influenced the rhetoric of work and organizational life. I thematically analyzed the data using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis model. The historical analysis illuminated how socio-political contexts influenced the way ethnographers conducted and produced their ethnographic work in the UK and the impact it has had on the production of knowledge. Along with other findings, I also identified three key aspects: how WOEs are distinctive theoretical descriptions; the epistemological role emotions play in all the three moments, ‘headwork/deskwork, fieldwork and textwork’; and finally, how professionalization in academia has mediated homogenization of knowledge. Although my research contributes to the existing literature on the production of ethnographic work, no studies in the past have used a mixed-methods research design to recontextualise past WOEs and map out the intellectual heritage of the WOEs in the UK. In this thesis, by providing both a telescopic view of the past and a microscopic view of each of the WOEs, I have commemorated the past WOEs and contributed to the collective memory of MOS by highlighting the influences and circumstances that led to the intellectual trends in the representation of work and organising in WOEs.