Slides prepared by:

Ir. Mat Kamil Awang

(P.Eng, NPDP, SMIEEE)

Graduate School of Management Universiti Putra Malaysia

Chapter 1: Innumerable Inscrutable Habits: Why Unremarkable Things Matter RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Why Unremarkable Things Matter?

We perceive the world around us as, among other things, random and formless. Diane Arbus Ethnographers not only about seeing remarkable things in mundane situations but also see the mundane in remarkable situations.

The Desire for Everything to be the Same

We tend to seek recurrent, mundane elements in apparently extraordinary events.

The Desire for a Good Story

Experience is not something that just exists inside our heads, but society grades our rights to have an experience depending on whether it is first or second hand Harvey Sacks i.e., actually seeing a road accident provides far more authentic than just reading in the newspapers.

The Desire for Speed and Action

Everyday life is perceived as not to contain enough incident. We need to slow it down and analyze in detail the brief incident to understand the everyday interaction in our field setting.

The Desire for Closure

We like to have our stories to be boxed into neat little package with all the loose ends are tied together.

Chapter 2: On Finding and Manufacturing Qualitative Data DATA COLLECTION

On Finding and Manufacturing Qualitative Data

Manufacturing data through case studies and focus groups. Ethnography is trying to find data in the field Naturally-occurring data can serve as a wonderful basis for theorizing

Advantages of working with naturally occurring data (Potter)

Naturally-occurring data does not flood the research setting with researchers own categories It does not put people in the position of disinterested experts on their own and others practices and thoughts It does not leave the researcher to make a range of more or less problematic inferences from the data collection arena to topic as the topic itself is directly studies

 It opens up a wide variety of novel issues that are outside the prior expectation embedded in, say, interview questions It is a rich record of people living their lives, pursuing goals, managing institutional tasks and so on.

Taking naturally-occurring data too far

No data are intrinsically satisfactory No data are untouched by the researchers hands Polarities are usually unhelpful in research Good quality data does not guarantee good quality research Everything depends upon how you analyze data

Chapter 3: Instances or Sequences? DATA ANALYSIS

Instances or Sequences?
Unless we can show that our data analysis is soundly based and thorough, all the effort in data gathering is come to naught Quantitative research relies heavily on numbers Qualitative research appear to rely on examples or instances to support analysis

Commercial Focus Group

Company pays for 3 kinds of output (Potter):
Representative who watches the interaction from behind a one-way mirror A video of the interaction Report of the interaction written by the moderator

Moderator is the central part of the data production Moderator can display the importance of certain data by repeating it or the irrelevance of the data by ignoring it.

Focus Group Setting

Focus Group

Client Viewing

Social Science Focus Group

Visibility of data in Social Science focus group is less compared to commercial focus group Considerable amount of sifting and coding into the production of data There is no expectation that raw interaction will be included as data and findings

Mapping the Woods

Chopping the trees

Sifting and Coding

See Example page 62 (Macnaghten & Myers)
Finding key passages quickly in 200,000 words of transcripts Choosing quotations that made a relevant (and repeated) point briefly and in a striking way Marking quotable themes with a highlighter (ending up with eight groups of quotes on each of the topic in which he was interested)

A rapid way of sorting data map the woods - instances

 The method overlooks the fact that the focus group participants are not isolated individuals but are engaged in conversation. Therefore a detailed sequences analysis is needed chopping up trees rather than mapping the woods chopping up trees method rejects the assumption that there is a one-to-one link between utterances in focus group and peoples views on the topic of conversation

 chopping up tress method is a much slower method Linguistic approach may run risk of losing sight of the research problem Myers : chopping up trees is sequences method Macnaghten: mapping the woods is instances method

 Chopping up trees is a more soundlygrounded research method but mapping the woods tells us something about a substantive phenomenon. Therefore chopping up trees offers depth and mapping the woods offers breadth.

Sacks on Sequential Organization

Conversation Analysis See Example page 64-65 a person who speaks first can choose their form of address. Thereby choose the form of address the other uses Each part or turn of the exchange occurs as part of a pair Adjacent pair as a powerful way of organizing a relationship between a current utterance and a prior and a next utterance.

 Economy
Directs us away from our temptation to treat talk as trivial outpouring of our individual experience Instead turns-at-talk depends on potential profits of obtaining the floor and potential loses Power and factual status of a turn-taking system

 Omnipresence
Power reflected in the way which speakers attend to the conversational rules instant availability Rules being relevant due to it being attended and use

 Observability
A way of accessing peoples observable activities rather than trying to build a self-enclosed system of rules and categories Ready observability see some mundane occurrences but to pick up things which are so overwhelmingly true which we have to come to term with We need to seek to achieve a naturalistic observational discipline that could deal with the details of social actions rigorously, empirically, and formally

Saussure on Sequential Organization

In favor of relational view and rejects the substantive view of language relational view stresses on the system of relations between words as the source of meaning (e.g., color RED in traffic light is only something which is not green, blue, orange, etc.) E.g., 10:30 train, if does not leave until 11:00 is still a 10:30 train. Syntagmatic relation combinations of two main paths (putting suffixes or prefixes to a noun, for example friend to be boyfriend, friendly, etc.)

Examples of Sequences
Positive Thinking focus group
Focus on sequences of talk allows us to get a quite different, more processual, grasp of the phenomenon

Ethnography (Gubrium)
Structural Ethnography the organization and distribution of subjective meanings within a community WHAT? mapping the woods Articulative Ethnography how meaning are locally constructed HOW? chopping the trees Practical Ethnography practitioners of everyday life not only interpret their worlds but do so under discernible auspices with recognizable agendas

Conclusion
Inputs [the phenomenon] Outputs The missing phenomenon in quantitative research

Perceptions [the phenomenon] Responses

The missing phenomenon in (some) qualitative research What? How?

The Phenomenon

Organizational Embeddedness (Why?) Naturally-occurring data to locate the interactional sequence (how) in which participants Meanings (what) are deployed characters of the phenomenon. Only then can move on to Answer why questions by examining how the phenomenon is organizationally embedded

Chapter 4: Applying Qualitative Research CONTRIBUTIONS BY QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

 Ethnographers have a closeness to the field that is unavailable to quantitative researchers

The Wider Context

Push-Pull factors in adopting ethnographic research
Takes relatively long time to complete Appears to use unrepresentative samples Quantitative research tends to define its research problem in a way that makes immediate sense to practitioners

 Practitioners only willing to commission focus group or exploratory interview studies which if successful can form the basis of subsequent or revised quantitative studies Contrasting to ethnographic, focus group and exploratory interview can produce result within a few days or weeks and thus offer the kind of quick fix which the practitioners desire.

 Explanatory Orthodoxy people are puppets of social structures. Social scientists do research to provide explanation of given problems Divine Orthodoxy people are dopes. Interview respondents knowledge is assumed to be imperfect, indeed they may even lies to researchers.

Explanatory Orthodoxy
Rush to an explanation that it fails to ask serious questions about what it is explaining postmodern phenomenon (e.g., free of the messy business of exploring the Grand Canyon but instead can now spend an enlightening hour in a multimedia experience of exploring the Grand Canyon) Environment around phenomena has become more important that the phenomena itself (e.g., people more interested in movie stars than the movie itself)

Example HIV-test Study

Researcher may simply impose an operational definition of unsafe sex or normative version of good counseling, failing totally to examine how such activities come to have meaning in what people are actually doing in naturallyoccurring situation

Divine Orthodoxy
In trying to explain, it precludes seeing the good sense of what people are doing or understanding their skills in local context. Interviews where people are forced to answer questions that rarely arise in their day to day lives Even if it examines what people are actually doing, the divine orthodoxy measures their activities by some idealized normative standard, such as good communication.

 Due to these orthodoxies, qualitative research has become the poor relation, its most problematic form serving, at best, as a handmaiden to quantitative research which can express in numbers. Example The Medical Error Controversy (pg. 90)

 One of the major strength of ethnographic research is that in situ observation can lead to identification of previously unnoticed best practices Should one identify best practices with the stated goals of the organization or should researchers begin from their own normative standards (e.g., fair play, concerns for environment, etc.) and then conduct and audit to see how far an organization satisfy such standards?

Application of Qualitative Research in Organizational Behavior and Technologies

Application of Qualitative Research in Practitioner-Client Interactions

Organization may resist ethnographic findings as demonstrated in the medical error controversy example. Independent practitioners appear much more open to qualitative research For example study on doctor-patient communication (such as Roters 5-point rating scale - 1988) finds a ready audience.

Example Conversational Analytic (CA) for Midwives

500 calls between 300 callers and 5 different call-takers to a helpline for women in crisis after birth. CAs close attention to fine detail of how people interact can have considerable practical payoffs for practitioners (e.g., the lack of terminology in the delicate talk about genitals and sexuality after childbirth)

Writing Qualitative Research with Numbers

Numbers count with practitioners and policymakers Are numbers always ruled out in qualitative research? Quantification can help in sorting facts from fancies, and therefore improve the validity of qualitative research

 As an initial means of obtaining a sense of the variance in the data (Type 1) At a later stage, after having identified some phenomenon, checking its prevalence (Type 2) refer to pg. 113-114 Where appropriate, quantitative measures can be used. A well-grounded, simple tabulations can improve the quality of qualitative research and speak to practitioners who used to seeing research expressed numerically.

Conclusion
Intelligent use of counting can speak to practitioners and policy-makers as well as improving research validity Ethnography can reveal fascinating, practically relevant things about organizational routines Conversation Analytic (CA) can show the fine detail of interaction and sometimes reveal to practitioners skill that they didnt even know they possessed

Chapter 5: The Aesthetics of Qualitative Research: On Bullshit and Tonsils WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?

What Qualitative Research Is?

Bullshit a world in which aesthetics reduces to celebrity and lifestyle In the world of bullshit, facts are just boring and irrelevant. Instead policies are made on the basis of focus groups and perceptions. It is not about statistics, it is about how people feel.

 Contemporary qualitative research has been infiltrated by two elements: the experience game of Romanticism and the pastiche of Postmodernism Both these elements derive from an unthinking adoption of certain features of contemporary culture analogous to the perverted version of science in the mid-twentieth century when Soviet science and Nazi science flourished Under these auspices, qualitative research can amount to bullshit conceived not in its pejorative and vernacular sense, but as overly kitsch, overly jargonized and overtheorized. Qualitative researchers have largely embraced contemporary culture , their work is largely bullshit

Contemporary Qualitative Research?

Capturing the individuals point of view
Qualitative investigators think they can get closer to the actors perspective through detailed interviewing and observation. They argue that quantitative researchers are seldom able to capture their subjects perspectives

Acceptance of postmodern sensibilities

Alternative methods Include emotionality, personal responsibility, ethic of caring, political praxis, multivoiced text and dialogs with subjects (Denzin & Lincoln)

Experience and Our Cultural Love Affair with the Real

Concerns with the perspectives of the participants and their diversity Attempts to document the world from the point of view of the people studied How to get at and document the lived experience of organizational members?

 Potential problem:
There is no one-to-one relationship between our understandings and our actions (Weber), therefore it is dangerous to assume that there is a point of view lying behind every act. Most qualitative researchers simply do not question where the subjects viewpoint comes from or how experience gets defined the way it does

Critics on reliance on Interview

For interview to work, one must think ourselves as discrete individuals with personal experiences and goals. Whereas in reality, we are primarily identified through membership of a collectivity such as workers, peasant, aristocrats, etc. Interview demands subjects who are happy to confess their innermost thoughts and emotions to the appropriate professional. Interview society requires mass media technologies and myths that give new twist to the perennial polarities of the private and the public i.e., the routine and the sensational.

 With the historical and cultural changes above, it is become difficult to continue the present situation where qualitative researchers use the interview as an unquestioned resource to look into peoples experience

A Postmodern World?
We live in a postmodern world in which identity is reduced to a play of images (ideology replaced by imagology) Kundera Criticism
Do we agree with Kunderas diagnosis? Contemporary culture contains both romantic and postmodern themes

Postmodern Research?
Postmodern research has been identified as cutting-edge research by some quarters Qualitative research now has encompasses postmodern approaches such as performance ethnography, ethnodrama and poetry

Anti-bullshit Agenda for Qualitative Research

Clarity One has to train oneself constantly to write and to speak in a clear and simple language. Every thought should be formulated as clearly and simply as possible. This can only be achieved by hard work (Popper) Reason should attempt to be reasonable. Use same basic methods of induction, deduction, and assessment of evidence Economy should properly expect our accounts and explanations to use the minimum of conceptual tool. Beauty the most long-lasting accounts of the universe are not only relatively simple but are aesthetically pleasing Truth No scientific theory is beautiful if it is false and no invention is truly ingenious if it is impractical The standards of scientific value and of inventive ingenuity must be satisfied (Polyani)

Responsibility and Truth: Fania Pascals Tonsils

Pascal had her tonsil out and commented I feel just like a dog that has been run over. Ludwig Wittgenstein was disgusted: You dont know what a dog that has been run over feels like Frankfurt commented that her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying it is just lack of connection to a concern with truth this indifference to how things really are that I regard as the essence of bullshit

 What Frankfurt is saying would implied that any use of metaphor in everyday communication is to be avoided. Silverman disagrees and thinks that calling Pascals remark as bullshit is a category error since Pascal was using a metaphor which in everyday life, the demand for economical description simply would not work. In conclusion, we should be careful about spraying around charges of bullshit, as scientific reason cannot extend everywhere without threatening the delicacies of everyday life.

Chapter 6: A Very Short Conclusion

Qualitative Research is:

Methodologically inventive, Empirically rigorous, Theoretically alive, and With an eye on practical relevance

Dont:
Treat everyday life as boring or obvious Assume that peoples experiences are your most reliable source of data and that is always means you need to ask people questions Think that an adequate research report can be based on quoting a few examples that support your argument Assume that qualitative research can offer a direct answer to social problems or that it has nothing practical to offer Assume that your research needs loads of theory or that it must follow the latest theoretical fashions

Do:
Treat obvious actions, settings and events as potentially remarkable Recognize that talk, documents and other artefacts as well as interaction can offer revealing data Seek to locate what precedes and follows any gobbet of data (look for sequences) Recognize the everyday skills we all use and try to start a dialogue with the people in your study based on understanding how those skills work out in practice Show that you understand that it is important to develop an argument based on a critical sifting of your data