Culture and Organization, September 2007, Vol. 13(3), pp.

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Telling the Whole Story: The Case for Organizational Autoethnography

MAREE BOYLE and KEN PARRY*
Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Brisbane, Qld 4111, Australia
Culture 10.1080/14759550701486480 GSCO_A_248525.sgm 1475-9551 Original Taylor 2007 0 3 13 k.parry@griffith.edu.au KenParry 00000September and & & Article Francis Organization (print)/1477-2760 Francis2007 Ltd (online)

We propose that autoethnography has a fruitful contribution to make to organizational research. The ethnographic process has always been an essential way of studying culture, including organizational culture. The introspective and retrospective nature of autoethnography can enhance understanding of the link between the individual and the organization very effectively. The intensely reflexive nature of autoethnography allows the organizational researcher to make that link. An aesthetic style of prose helps. An increasing use of first person narrative in organizational research also helps. Co-constructed autoethnography is proposed. The intensely emotive and personal nature of autoethnography impacts upon the sensemaking of the reader. The extant literature can be weaved into the autoethnographic narrative. Key words: Organizational autoethnography; Introspective; Retrospective; Reflexive

INTRODUCTION During the process of putting this edition together, we often wrestled with the notion of exactly what constituted organizational autoethnography. In particular, we grappled with how one could truly differentiate organizational autoethnography from organizational ethnography. In our attempt to answer the so what? question of how well autoethnography can enhance our understanding organizational processes and cultures, we concluded that establishing methodological demarcation between ethnography and autoethnography was not the most valuable exercise in this instance. Rather, we realised that the papers featured in this edition illustrate the common methodological, ethical and personal challenges that confront organizational autoethnographers. Therefore, we envisage that this edition will commence a long and fruitful conversation about how and why autoethnography has the potential to make full bodied theoretical contributions to the study of organization and culture. We contend that the prime focus of an organizational autoethnographic study is to illuminate the relationship between the individual and the organization in a way that crystallises the key conceptual and theoretical contributions to understanding the relationship between culture and organization. Indeed, the ethnographic process has always been an essential way of studying culture, especially culture as it is practiced and understood within institutional and organizational settings. In the spirit of Carolyn Ellis (1997) work on introspective and retrospective forays into the self, we propose that the study of organizations and culture can be significantly enhanced by inclusion of work conducted and located within the autoethnographic genre. In particular, the intensely

*Email: k.parry@griffith.edu.au

ISSN 1475-9551 print; ISSN 1477-2760 online 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14759550701486480

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reflexive nature of autoethnography as an autobiographical form of research allows the organizational researcher to intimately connect the personal to the cultural through a peeling back of multiple layers of consciousness, thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Hence, we have identified elements within the autoethnographic method that allow for insightful, culturally rich readings of organizational life. First, this approach has the ability to connect the everyday, mundane aspects of organizational life with that of broader political and strategic organizational agendas and practices. Second, we propose that autobiographical and retrospective approaches are more likely to unearth and illuminate the tacit and subaltern aspects of organization. For example, an effective piece of autoethnographic writing will always engage the reader to the point where organizational processes such as emotional ambivalence, organizational deadlocks and roadblocks, and the variable and vicarious nature of organizational relationships are brought into stark relief. Third, we acknowledge that there is no perfect methodology and autoethnography does have its problems (Morse, 2000). We also admit that exposing the vulnerable self through autobiographical processes can be fraught with personal and professional risk and, in some instances, can be considered the most dangerous fieldwork of all (Lee, 1995; Rose, 1990; Kleinman and Copp, 1993). However, we do challenge critics of this method by suggesting that we may need to move beyond triangulation as the only way of determining validity in qualitative research. We propose an extension of Richardsons (2000) work where she suggests that the imagery of the crystal is more useful than one of the triangle, especially for interpretive work. The autoethnographic approach is one that younger researchers may consider a more acceptable form of social enquiry, especially in a world where there are myriad avenues to establish and create the public and reflexive self, such as personal blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and reality TV, to name a few.

LINKING THE MICRO WITH THE META At first glance, it is often difficult to comprehend how intensely personal, and sometimes harrowing, accounts of organizational life could provide a better understanding of the link between individual lived experience and the more rarefied and objective meta aspects of organization. By its very nature, autoethnography is characterised by personal experience narratives (Denzin, 1989), auto-observation (Adler and Adler, 1994), personal ethnography (Crawford, 1996), lived experience (van Maanen, 1990), self-ethnography, (van Maanen, 1995), reflexive ethnography (Ellis and Bochner, 1996), ethnobiography, (Lejeune, 1989), emotionalism (Gubrium and Holstein, 1997), experiential texts, (Denzin, 1997), and autobiographical ethnography (Reed-Danahay, 1997). Thus, autoethnographic accounts are characterised by a move from a broad lens focus on individual situatedness within the cultural and social context, to a focus on the inner, vulnerable and often resistant self. In an organizational autoethnographic account, the lens moves from cultural and social situatedness to the inner self and then back again to the situated individual. Therefore, an ethnography does not end at the personal, as there are constant reminders throughout the text of how the individual self interacts with, resists, cajoles, and shapes the organizational and institutional context in which he or she is situated. A central feature of autoethnography is the use of an aesthetic style of text, which may take a variety of formspersonal essays, poetry, short stories, journals, stream of consciousness, detailed unstructured interview narratives and other forms of fragmented writing. Through these (usually) first-person accounts, the (sometimes) multiple and (often) fragmented leading self is revealed and delayered via stories of action, dialogue, linking of embodiment and emotion, fragmented thought and different uses of language. An increasing use of the

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first person in the write-up of management research indicates heightened acceptance of the self-narrative as a form of sensemaking within organizational life. We also acknowledge that the commonalities between organizational ethnography and organizational autoethnography include the need for an aesthetic elementin other words, it needs to read well, and the researcher needs to be able to write well and write truthfully (Ellington, 2001). Within this special edition, the five papers reflect the rich and evocative style that ethnographic approaches can bring to organizational research. In addition to this, these papers also demonstrate how autoethnographic methods can achieve a deeper verstehen of organizational life, including sensemaking, construction of organizational identities, evaluation of leadership, and the construction of a myriad of moral/emotional narratives such as fear of organizational failure, jouissance, sadness and anger. In their papers, Blenkinsopp and Vickers have used autoethnographic accounts as a way of creating sense out of extremely difficult, painful and damaging organizational circumstances. For Blenkinsopp, his account of the fear of career failure as an experienced human resource professional occurs through the engagement of retrospective memoir coupled with an intensive reflexive re-positioning of the authors organizational identity in relation to his supervisor and work colleagues. Within this paper, the use of a sensemaking framework enables the author to step behind his narrative, which enables him to see more lucid reflections of his own organizational identity. In the case of Vickers disturbing real-time account of workplace bullying, her focus is on a truth narrative, whereby events which may be dismissed in isolation, when brought together as a sequential bearing of witness, clearly illustrate the power of autoethnographic narrative in unearthing the sinister, buried aspects of organizational life. As well, Vickers use of traditional ethnographic data collection methods through reference to field notes throughout the paper, illustrates how traditional data can used in conjunction with the more formless data emerging from retrospection and memory. Duartes study originally commenced as a partnership programme in urban sustainability via the use of post-positivist methodology. This led her to a self-reflective ethnography about her lived experience within a particular cultural community. Duartes paper highlights the need for organizational autoethnographers to fully acknowledge the pre-existing tradition of organizational research within which they commenced their research journey. Yarborough and Lowes papers anguished yet winsome account describes the impact upon leadership and motivation during senior management succession at the first authors family business. The intertwining narratives of fear, grief and hope experienced by the family business heir demonstrates how autoethnography can play a vital role within small business research. This paper also illustrates that autoethnographic accounts can be authored successfully by more than the author as data. Riads joyful and insightful account of accommodating motherhood and academic life clearly confirms much of the extant literature about the nature of work-life balance. In addition, Riad was able to differentiate between the notion of balance and choice through exploring the notion of how each individual will live out their own balance, sacrificing neither work nor life. Although we unashamedly promote organizational autoethnography as a valid methodology, we are not eschewing many decades of ethnographic organizational research. Neither are we suggesting that previous research is methodologically deficient, and that autoethnography should be used in all phenomenological studies. Instead, we suggest this might be the right time for autoethnography to start making a substantial contribution to organizational studies. So how do we differentiate between organizational ethnography and autoethnography? All five papers presented here are evocative. They generate emotion powerful enough to have a

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significant impact upon the reader. For example, two reviewers of Vickers work wrote of her experience having an effect on them for days after the reading. We contend that the value of autoethnography emerges from the emotive impact that facilitates an understanding about organizational processes and therefore the subsequent cognitive impact. We also contend that the intensely personal process of identity construction is best documented through an autoethographic approach. Yarborough and Lowes central identity of heir apparent to the family business is as an amalgam of four other identities. The use of techniques common in fiction writing work to expose the development and construction of identities central to the ethnography, can be used without compromising authenticity or rigour. A plausible defence of the validity of such an amalgam character can be found in Bhaskars (1978) work where which challenges the notion that there is only one interpretation of reality. Both Duartes and Yarborough and Lowes works illustrate that there is significant potential for co-constructed organizational autoethnography, particularly in organizational settings where it is difficult for a solo ethnographer to observe mundane or quotidian actions or processes. We also acknowledge that the strength of organizational autoethnography is demonstrated through its ability to weave the extant literature into the narrative that the author presents. To do so is normally proscribed in mainstream organizational research methodologies. However, in organizational autoethnography, it is a strength, and several papers in this edition do this quite well. At present, it is difficult to find published examples of organizational autoethnography, where the narrative is woven through the extant organizational literature. An exception is Edgar Scheins (2006) fascinating travel through his career, which could fall within this category. He uses the metaphor of the drama and music as the integrating theme as he takes the reader on this journey. At the one time, he is able to bring together autoethnography with aesthetic method and leadership development. To be sure, the majority of the literature that he cites is his own, and we would propose that organizational autoethnography needs to cite extant theory and make a contribution to organizational theory. Finally, we argue that the major contribution organizational autoethnography can make to the study of organization and culture lies in the very meaning of the word ethnography. Whether one reads the write-up of a worldwide survey where n = 20,000 and the findings are generalisable, or one has read an autoethnography where n = 1, and the findings are substantive to the experience of just one person, how the findings are reported influences the impact of the original piece of research. In other words, the impact is no more and no less than the reading of the manuscript by each individual reader. While one paper may impact due to its cognitive nature, so too would another paper due to its emotional and evocative nature. We would suggest that the critical n factor in much organizational research is the number of people who read the research, rather than the number of people who are the subjects of the research. Critics of autoethnographic approaches may argue that a researcher as research instrument and source of data has little control, in a positivist sense, over the research process. Such critics would also contend that the researcher needs to be in total control of the research process and hence be able to take the research where it needs to go. We argue that the process of conducting autoethnography throws down a challenge to this notion of researcher as controller. We argue that the process of creating an autoethnographic account involves, in one sense, an acknowledgement that there is no guarantee of a correlation between the degree of control a researcher exercises over the research process, and the resultant impact on a reader. Ellis and Bochner (1996, 2000) have reminded us that autoethnography expresses how we struggle to make sense of our experiences. This is usually achieved via encouraging compassion and promoting dialogue. Therefore, autoethnography is about the authors sensemaking. Part of the key for organizational audiences is to communicate that sensemaking to

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the organizational audience. Several papers within this edition have linked sensemaking with autoethnographic method. In one sense, all organizational research helps the reader to make sense of the phenomenon under investigation. However, sensemaking is more than just the outcome of researchit refers to the cognitive impact of the research, which combined with the affective or emotive impact are genre of organizational research. Autoethnography can expose the reader to stories that would other wise be shrouded in secrecy (Ellis and Bochner, 1996: 25). Hence, organizational autoethnographies can provide first-hand accounts of taboo topics such as sexual harassment and bullying, motherhood at work, various moral dilemmas and highly charged emotional situations in the workplace. These are situations that otherwise remain shrouded in secrecy, or are considered untouchable by serious organizational researchers. Consequently, autoethnography can open the door to these fascinating and hugely important organizational phenomena. The narrative that is organizational autoethnography is an explanation of what has happened in the past. It is not a prediction about what will happen in the future to other people in similar situations. Much organizational research presumes to be able to predict the future as a result of the findings of the research. However, Fleetwood and Hesketh (2006) provide a persuasive argument that much organizational research can only explain the past and cannot predict the future, in spite of many claims to the contrary. It is still the responsibility of the individual reader to make up her or his mind about the predictive validity of what they read in scholarly journals about the experiences of others. In this sense, organizational autoethnography has no less predictive validity than any other organizational research. In fact, the emotive power of this research makes it a more powerful explanation of phenomena. Therefore, this impact alone might make organizational autoethnography a more powerful research genre than most mainstream organizational research. We would agree with Fleetwood and Hesketh that the research domain is not the closed system that many researchers would like to think it is. The number and influence of variables is so many and so great that organizational research simply cannot be constrained to a closed loop system. In a sense, organizational ethnography recognises this dilemma. By researching the phenomenon in its entirety, the problems associated with attempting to close an open-loop system are avoided. Brevity and parsimony have a place in organizational autoethnographic research. The author is engaging in a narrative. It must be an engaging narrative. The storyline need not be compromised by or congested with too many references to standing by the coffee machine or opening the door as he entered the room. The author can benefit from the skill of the wordsmith and the storyteller. After all, the autoethnography is more like the screenplay for a historical documentary than the verbatim transcript of an interview. If the autoethnography reads like the latter, the impact on the reader (the audience) will be compromised. Because organizational autoethnography is oriented so strongly toward the past, we cannot use the criterion of historical bias as a criterion for the validity of the research. In fact, we would advocate that the historical dimension is the strength of organizational autoethnography. In retrospect, and in the cold hard light of day, and with all the emotionality drained from the narrative, we can appraise the validity of the contribution to theory more clearly. In conclusion, within an ideal world, every organizational research project would include a hyper-reflexive component which could take on autoethnographic forms. In this way, we could then learn how research is purely constructed, rather than just learning how to do research.

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