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Assignment 5: Managers' challenges when dealing with change

1.) (a) Do you agree with Ying’s choice of an interpretive ethnographic strategy?
Answer:
Yes, I agree with Ying's choice of an interpretive ethnographic strategy. Ying wanted
to understand the challenges which mangers face in looking after the organization and its
employees during change processes would be a worthwhile and fulfilling research aim for her
project and that maybe she could use her findings to help people cope with organizational
change in future.

(b) What would the choice of another strategy such as a survey have meant for the kind of
insights she would have gained?
Answer:
Another strategy that Ying use is ethnographic research design would most suit her
research goal, which was to understand the challenges that managers face when dealing with
change (Stahl et al., 2013) and understand aspects such as emotions experienced by managers
themselves, making sense of what is happening around them and dealing with their own
workload (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2003). She identified three common approaches to
ethnography: critical, realist and interpretive. However, Mikael suggest that interpretive
ethnography might be most appropriate for Ying’s study as she wanted to look at how
managers deal and cope with change beyond what they say and do. He advised her that it was
important to acknowledge that the researcher is part of the creation of knowledge, but that
this is an accepted means of uncovering the rich insights that will come from interpretive
work.

(c) Would these have been different from the insights gained through the ethnographic
research design?
Answer:
Each of these would mean something different for the way she would gather data in
her ethnography. She only choose to applied interpretive approach for her research. Because,
 interpretive ethnography might be most appropriate for Ying’s study as she wanted to look at
how managers deal and cope with change beyond what they say and do. Even, the realist
approach were equally accepted methods and it would really let Ying find out what motivated
managerial actions during change. She still not use it. Moreover, she also did not applied
critical approach to ethnography because it might not fit since she was not interested in the
power relations in the organization.

2.) Ying chose a single case study. Do you think she could have chosen to do multiple case
studies in the time frame that she had? What difference would that have made to her study?
Answer:
In my opinion, due to understanding the managers and how they dealt with the change
Ying would have to study the company for as long as possible. and I believe that she can do
multiple case in the entire two months that she had available for data collection, which
seemed like a good amount of time since she found that other researchers had spent similar
amounts of time in their research setting. Furthermore, to do multiple case studies would
make her study different, because it would allow her to make comparisons between different
situations.

3.) Was Ying right to seek help with deciding what type of ethnography to use? What might have
happened if she had not sought help?
Answer:
In my opinion, Ying have right to seek help with deciding what type of ethnography
that she want to use. If she did not sought some help from Mikael, I believe that she would be
not specify and did not reach her research study objectives. Because only interpretative
ethnography that suitable for Ying’s study as she wanted to look at how managers deal and
cope with change beyond what they say and do.

4.) What can you learn about ethnographic methods from Ying’s Case?
Answer:
As we are know that ethnographic is used to study groups. It is the earliest qualitative
research strategy with its origins in colonial anthropology. Other than those, ethnographic
have three common approaches such as critical, realist and interpretive. Then, according to
the Ying's case above, we should selective to choose which method that suitable with our
research study objectives and which approaches that can answer our research question.