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Contributions of Critical Realist Ethnography in researching the Multinational Organisation.

Stream 4: Critical Perspectives on Researching and Theorizing the Multinational

Organisation

Dr Diana Rosemary Sharpe

Monmouth University School of Business Administration

West Long Branch, New Jersey 07764, USA

Tel: +1 732 571 3435 Fax: +1 732 263 5518

Email: dsharpe@monmouth.edu

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Abstract This paper examines the contribution that critical realist ethnographic research can make to the field of international business and international management (IB/IM) research. Focusing specifically on the multinational organization as a site of much theoretical and empirical interest, the paper outlines the relevance of critical realist ethnographic research approaches to an understanding of practices and processes within the multinational organization. In carrying out research on the comparative study of organizations in a cross-national context a number of methodological issues are faced. Issues raised include the relation between structures and processes, the connection between the micro level and the macro level and the treatment of ‘time’ in addressing research questions concerning changes in organizations and institutional contexts. The paper argues for a methodology for the comparative study of economic organizations that is sensitive to process. ‘Process’ is seen as being influenced by structures but not determined by them. Critical realism is seen to be helpful as a sensitizing tool and means of conceptualizing the phenomenon studied. Whilst ethnographic studies in the hermeneutic tradition work with an ontology encouraging focus on agents’ conceptualizations, critical realist ethnographies set out from the premise that subjects’ own accounts are the starting point but not the end of the research process. Realist ontologies seek to go beyond agents’ conceptualizations of events and seek to look at social structures. Within a realist ontology social phenomenon are seen as a result of a plurality of structures. Human action is conceived as both enabled and constrained by social structures, but this action in turn reproduces or transforms those structures (Bhaskar 1979). Ethnographic investigations within this context can be used to explore the relationship between structure and agency. A realist approach to ethnography aims not only to describe events but also to explain them, by identifying the influence of structural factors on human agency. Explanation also focuses on how agency maintains or transforms these structures. The paper draws on a critical realist ethnography of the transfer of management practices within a multinational ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES IN THE FIELD OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT A key player in the field of international business is the multinational enterprise (MNE), having headquarters in one country but operations in other countries. Interest in the management of the MNE has been a significant area of developing research within the field of IB/IM. Management practices, work organization and control strategies within the MNE and the nature of subsidiary headquarter relations are examples of areas that have received significant research and theoretical attention in the field. It is interesting to note however, that the vast majority of research publications in the field do not draw on qualitative research methods. For example in a review of articles published in six leading IB journals in the 1991-2001 period Andersen and Skaates (2004) found that only 10 per cent of published articles used qualitative methods. Research publications based on qualitative research methods have in turn drawn primarily on case study research and interviewing. Within handbooks of qualitative research methods for international business (Marschan- Piekkari and Welch 2004) ethnographic research approaches can be found under the section on ‘alternative methods and methodologies’.

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In the inaugural issue of the journal ‘Ethnography’, Willis and Trondman (2000) refer to arguably the first ethnographer Herodutus who said in possibly the first ethnography ‘The History’ ( trans. 1987:171).. ‘So far it is my eyes, my judgement, and my searching that speaks these words to you. In this way ‘This-ness’ and ‘lived- out-ness’ is central to the ethnographers account. Willis and Trondman (2000: 5) outline ethnography as… ‘a family of methods involving direct and sustained social contact with agents, and of richly writing up the encounter, recording, respecting and representing at least partly in its own terms the irreducibility of human experience. Ethnography is the disciplined and deliberate witness – cum recording of human events..’. Ethnography is an established practice within a variety of disciplines with their own histories, most notably in anthropology for which it serves as a specific method and rite of passage. As noted by Hammersley and Atkinson (1997) ethnography is in many respects the most basic form of social research. Not only does it have a long history, it also bears a close resemblance to the routine ways in which people make sense of the world in everyday life. Some commentators see this as its basic strength, others see it as a fundamental weakness. Within the field of IB/IM, the dearth of research drawing on ethnographic approaches can be seen as the outcome of researchers prior exposure to and socialization into, particular intellectual traditions and social traditions, mores, norms and values which in turn shape researchers philosophical assumptions regarding what constitutes warranted knowledge in the field. As noted by Rosen (1991) an individual conducts ethnography because the problems that interest him or her are believed to be best mined by the machinery o f ethnography, and conveyed in its product. Organizational Ethnographies and Hermeneutic Traditions An underlying premise guiding much qualitative research including ethnographic research in the hermeneutic tradition is that the subject matter of the social sciences is fundamentally different to that of the natural sciences. Human action has an internal logic, which must be understood in order to make action intelligible. Further, the social world cannot be understood in terms of causal relationships that do not take into account that human actions are based on actor’s interpretations of events, intentions, motives, attitudes and beliefs. In this way research in the social sciences is seen to require emic analysis in which the meanings and interpretations of those being studied is important rather than placing an etic external logic on the behavior. In this way the task of the social scientist is to understand the framework of meaning out of which behavior arises. The nature of the social world must be ‘discovered’ and this can only be achieved by first hand observation and participation in ‘natural settings’. In this way ethnography can be described as a longitudinal research method, that is geared towards a ‘process based’ understanding of organizational life. Ethnographic studies in the hermeneutic tradition tend to follow the thesis of Winch (1958) that a set of behaviors can be termed an action if it is given, or could be given, a meaning by those carrying out the action. Meaningful behavior is to be explicated as governed by rules. For Winch, analysis of reasons,

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purposes and rules is more appropriate to the study of social processes than cause, effect and law, thereby requiring a study of the culture in which these are embedded. For Geertz (1973: 21) ethnography is microscopic, involves thick description, it is interpretive, the ethnographer ‘inscribes’ social discourse, writing it down. Further the essential task of theory building is not to codify abstract regularities but to make thick descrip tion possible, not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them. Some classic organizational ethnographies for example of Lupton (1963), Roy (1952, 1955), Burawoy (1979) and Kamata (1982) have demonstrated the contribution that ethnographic approaches can make in gaining insights into social processes in organizations. For example the work of Kamata and Roy provided detailed analysis of manufacturing companies shop floor processes in specific contexts by focusing on worker behaviour within factory settings. In the field of IB/IM, research on the multinational organization for example has only occasionally been based on ethnographic approaches. Research questions posed in the field and the underlying assumptions about organizations have arguably discouraged the adoption of ethnographic approaches. Taking, for example, dominant approaches to the study of internationalization and multinational firms, much research has been shaped by an ‘economic view of the world’ that includes assumptions of rationality, goal- directed action and the determinant nature of market processes. Research has tended to leave unexamined or unproblematic a huge part of the social life of firms and multinationals in favor of model building based on assumptions of rationality and efficient market mechanisms (Morgan 2001) Boddewyn et al (2004) consider the notion that international management is a socially constructed activity in which managers involved in cross cultural activity encounter unique problems and situations that require some social construction. Problems and situations may be interpreted differently by distinct types of managers. For example locals, expatriates and third country nationals. Therefore their solutions to problems and their ways of handling situations will differ. For Bartlett and Ghoshal (1993) a key component of what is seen as international management is the ability to work with two or more sets of experiences. Ethnographic approaches are well suited to capture these processes of management as socially constructed activities The need to learn the culture of those we are studying is most obvious in the case of societies other than our own. Here we may not know why people are doing what they are doing, or even when they are doing it. The relevance of an ethnographic approach to research in such a context is highlighted. In the field of international business and international management research the potential opportunities for ethnographic research have not been fully realized. For example a large amount of research on multinational organizations has used survey style research and structured questionnaires to address research questions of what management practices and work systems have been transferred from headquarters to subsidiaries within the multinational. Framed within positivist epistemologies and nomothetic research designs such surveys often are pitched at top management and require an acknowledgement of whether a practice has been transferred. For example whether quality circles or teamworking has been introduced. Such analytical survey design is less suited to an understanding of how management practices are introduced, received, responded to, adapted, resisted or transformed in different contexts. Ethnographic approaches

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can make a significant contribution in this regard by providing an indepth insight into how management practices translate across different social contexts and the ways in which different social groups and individuals may make sense of and respond to the practices. It can be argued that the how questions are of much significance for an understanding of why particular management strategies within a subsidiary may have unintended outcomes and why performance may be less than anticipated. Ethnographic stud ies in the hermeneutic tradition seek to provide thick descriptions of the context in which management practices are introduced and examine the ways in which different groups may make sense of and respond to the practices. In this way ethnographic approaches provide an opportunity to study and portray the diversity of cultures in an organizational context and to provide a rich appreciation of the organization as a social and political arena. Rather than seeking to identify discrete taxonomies of control systems, such approaches seek to for example examine the social relations and social processes surrounding the control systems, including worker’s commitment and / or resistance and authority relations through the researcher providing a a thick description of the cultures studied. As Van Maanen outlines (1979: 539) ethnographic research is more than a single method and can be distinguished from participant observation in that it has a broader aim of achieving an analytical description of a culture. In an organizational setting the ethnographic question of what it is to be, rather than to see, a member of the organization, is faced by the researcher. Critical Realist Ethnographies Whilst ethnographic studies in the hermeneutic tradition work with an ontology encouraging focus on agents’ conceptualizations, there is a relatively smaller number of studies in the field of organization studies/ IB/IM premised on a critical realist ontology (for example, Porter 1993, Reed 2001, Delbridge 1998). Critical realist ethnographies set out from the premise that subjects’ own accounts are the starting point but not the end of the research process. Realist ontologies therefore seek to go beyond agents’ conceptualizations of events and seek to look at social structures. Within a realist ontology social phenomenon are seen as a result of a plurality of structures. Human action is conceived as both enabled and constrained by social structures, but this action in turn reproduces or transforms those structures (Bhaskar 1979). Ethnographic investigations within this context can be used to explore the relationship between structure and agency. A realist approach to ethnography aims not only to describe events but also to explain them, by identifying the influence of structural factors on human agency. Explanation also focuses on how agency maintains or transforms these structures. The focus on ‘structures’ as well as agents’ conceptualizations distinguishes critical realist ethnographies from ethnographies in the hermeneutic tradition. An Example of Researching the Transfer of Management Practices within a Multinational Structures and processes in studying cross border interactions within multinationals. Research, on the transfer of management practices within multinationals, (eg. Oliver et al 1994), note how organizations adopting similar structures may have different outcomes which requires an understanding of process as well as context. In this way a processual study of the transfer of practices will look for the ways in which practices are not simply reproduced in different sites of

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the multinational, but are open to a process of experimentation and adjustment over time in the light of responses in the subsidiary context. Smith and Elger (1996) note how multinationals are important media for the transmission of innovations in the organization of production and the regulation of labor, but that the very character of such ‘model’ practices as embedded, evolving and incomplete recipes, means that they are never simply reproduced at any specific production site, at home or in a foreign context. In this way corporate managers and local managers are seen as drawing on different ‘cultural repertoires’ of organisational practices and are engaged in the more or less skilful selection, adaptation and development of these practices. This takes place within the specific and evolving role of the plant within the wider company, distinctive configurations of suppliers, customers and sister plants and the environmental institutions for example of state regulation, labor supply and industrial relations (Smith and Elger 1996:27). It can be argued that measurements of structure provide static sensitizing explanatory frameworks whereas a study of process involves looking at continuity and change in organizational practices over time. In researching the transfer of management practices within a multinational organization I was interested in researching how control systems were introduced and sustained in different contexts. Comparative ethnographic case studies across subsidiaries of a Japanese manufacturing organization in the UK examined how managerial control systems were introduced and adapted and with what outcomes. Methodologically the research aimed to look at the implementation of management practices as ongoing social processes and in this way move from analysis solely of structures to an analysis of processes within and across structures. This was believed to be important in addressing the theoretical question of ‘under what conditions’ and ‘how’ managerial practices may be transferred, sustained, resisted and adapted within the context of the multinational organization. Survey style research of the nature of management practices, whilst describing certain practices does not help to unravel how management practices may be applied differently, for example, according to the experience or individual considerations of a subsidiary manager. Therefore how a practice is introduced and the responses from employees is an important focus for analysis in its own right. The focus on process enables a view of the organisation as a political arena in which social interaction, power and political games become more central in the analysis and understanding of organizational life. These in turn are shaped by the wider institutional context. The above example of research on the transfer of managerial control systems across contexts has sought to defend the raising of research questions that address the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’ in studying change within the context of the multinational organization, and to highlight the contribution that critical realist ethnographies can make in addressing the research questions posed above. Methodological issues: linking macro and micro level analysis, the relation between structures and processes in the study of multinationals. In carrying out research on the comparative study of organizations in a cross-national context a number of methodological issues are faced. Issues raised include the relation between structures and processes, the connection between the micro level and the macro level and the treatment of ‘time’ in addressing research questions concerning changes in organizations and institutional contexts. This paper

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argues for a methodology for the comparative study of economic organizations that is sensitive to process. ‘Process’ is seen as being influenced by structures but not determined by them. Critical realism is seen to be helpful as a sensitizing tool and means of conceptualizing the phenomenon studied. This can be considered through reflection on the study of the transfer of management practices within a multinational. In this study the research sought to examine the importance of context and contingencies in influencing the implementation and evolution of shop floor managerial control systems across two Japanese subsidiaries in the UK. The research began with an awareness of the ‘ideal typical’ Japanese and English work organization and control systems and how these were embedded in broader social and institutional arrangements. The research was interested in examining the following issues: -the various means of managerial control on the shop floor within the UK subsidiaries of the Japanese multinational, including formal and informal, social and technical. -In addressing process as well as structure the research also wanted to learn how the control systems were sustained, adapted and resisted in the local context over time. -the implications of these processes for the outcomes including the experience of work and organizational performance.

Such research questions therefore required micro level and macro level analysis and a link between the two in studying cross border interactions within the firm. The research questions are also put forward from the standpoint that the study of the experience of changes in organizations and institutional contexts at the level of the ‘individual’ are important both for theorizing about change and for developing policy implications on change. Such a standpoint takes the position that as researchers we can also inform policy makers and other ‘stakeholders’ in reflecting on organizational and institutional change. The specific research questions were addressed by adopting critical realist ethnography, which enabled the micro level study of processes to be linked to underlying structures, generative mechanisms and contingencies influencing outcomes. In researching the multinational as an organization that crosses over institutional and national divides, the notion of a transnational social space that is created by the flows of people, ideas, resources and practices provides an interesting context in which to consider the potential contribution of ethnographic research to capturing the meanings of practices and actions for the actors involved, and the ways in which these meanings are themselves shaped by the realities of work for different actors in this transnational social space. The concept of transnational social space (Morgan 2001) provides a lens through which to look at social processes within the arena of the multinational, and provides a conceptual framework for researchers that is accessible to a processual study of the experience of individuals and communities that engage within the social space. The concept of transnational social space links the experience of actors to the internal managerial control strategies of firms and managers and to the transnational communities that cut across the boundaries of the firm and connect the individual into social groupings that span institutional contexts. The connection between the shaping of internal processes within the transnational social space of a multinational and wider institutional structures at a local, national or international level (Djelic and Bensedrine 2001) sensitizes the researcher to the importance of connecting the micro level analysis of actors’ experiences with macro level structures in which they have been shaped and influenced (and seek to influence). This encourages analysis that moves beyond agents’ own

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conceptualizations. As Porter outlines: ‘exclusive concentration on and uncritical acceptance of subjects’ own accounts is the Achilles heel of phenomenological ethnography. Understanding actors’ viewpoints may be a necessary condition for social knowledge, but it is not a sufficient one. For critical realists the ontological assumption that individual interactions and interpretations are ultimately all there are leads to analytical superficiality. (Porter 1993: 596). A realist ontology considers social reality as the result of a plurality of structures with human action being both enabled and constrained by social structures. This action in turn reproduces or transforms those structures (Bhaskar, 1979). A realist framework thereby provides a sensitizing tool and means of conceptualizing how the actors’ experience within the transnational social space can best be examined by a macro regress to the social structures shaping and constraining individual action. Explanation and the role of agency in maintaining and transforming structures. A realist ethnography aims not only to describe events but also to explain them, by identifying the influence of structural factors on human agency. Explanation also focuses on how agency maintains or transforms these structures. Critical realism thereby provides an epistemology and ontology for examining changes in institutional structures and the relationship between structures and agency in processes of change. Ethnographic investigation within this context can be used to explore the relationship between agency and structure and to explore the changing nature of generative mechanisms that impact on the transnational social space of the multinational. In the research work I conducted on the multinational outlined above, adopting a critical realist epistemology allowed for the recognition of the role of structure and human agency in the analysis of shop floor practices under changing forms of managerial control. The ‘structures’ referred to in the realist analysis can be considered as sets of internally related objects or practices. The manager, trainer, associate ‘internal relations’ in the Japanese work organization form a social structure for example. Even though social structures exist only where people reproduce them, Sayer (1992, 2000) outlines how in the case of internally related objects (for example team leader and team member), emergent powers are created because this type of combination of individuals modifies their powers in fundamental ways. Thus, although social structures exist only where people reproduce them, they have powers irreducible to those of individuals. In this way, explanation of the actions of individuals in my comparative study of managerial contro l systems required supplementing of agents’ conceptualizations with a ‘macro-regress’ to the social structures in which they are located. Critical realist ethnography provides a means of examining and theorizing about the connections between micro-practices and macro-structures. Realists note that research in the social world has to acknowledge the nature of social systems as open systems and that theory development cannot be approached in the same way as in closed systems. (Sayer 1992, Layder 1993). For realists, the impossibility of constructing the conditions of closure in the social sciences means that the social sciences are primarily explanatory and not predictive. Explanation and prediction are symmetrical only under conditions of closure. For the critical realist ethnographer the intellectual journey in the field moves on two tracks (Tsoukas 1989). On the first hand it is ‘ up in the clouds’, dealing with abstract and theoretical conceptualization of the issue at hand. By contrast, the second track is ‘down to earth’ looking for the specific differences within and across cases,

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investigating the existing contingencies and their interaction with the postulated mechanisms. Empirically, ideographic studies help elucidate the specific, contingent manner in which a certain mix of causal powers has been formed and activated. Issues raised in the Practice of Ethnography in International Business Research and in researching the multinational One key issue that requires reflection in any ethnographic research project is the issue of representation. Whilst this is not specific to research in IB/IM, consideration of this issue is central in the context of IB/IM research Representation of and relations with those we research. In the opening article in the first edition of the journal ‘ethnography’, Willis and Trondman (2000) speak on the knowledge produced in social science, arguing that too much of the knowledge produced has become more or less irrelevant to the ‘nitty gritty’ of how social actors experience and attempt to penetrate and shape their conditions of existence. Whilst ethnographers seek to delve into and share with the reader of the ethnographic text this nitty gritty of social life, there is considerable debate over the ways in which representation is made in the text (for example Abu-Lughod 2000). The ‘nitty gritty’ of everyday life cannot be presented as raw unmediated data argues Willis and Trondman (2000), this is the empiricist fallacy- that data in some way speaks for itself. The principle of reflexivity recognizes that texts, do not, simply and transparently report an independent order of reality. Rather the texts themselves are implicated in the work of reality construction. In this way the ethnographic text requires a reflexive awareness of its own writing, the possibilities and limits of its own language and a principled exploration of its modes of representation. Ethnographic writing (Clifford/Marcus 1986) is determined contextually (it draws from and creates meaningful social mileux), rhetorically (it uses and is used by expressive conventions), institutionally (one writes with and against specific traditions, disciplines and audiences) generically (an ethnography is usually distinguished from a novel or a travel account), politically (the authority to represent cultural realities is unequally shared and at times contested) and historically (all the above constraints and conventions are changing). Wray-Bliss (2002) in commenting on critical interpretive organizational research raises the issue of the researcher, as interdependent, rather than independent of the researched. Here there is the ethical issue of the researcher as critiquing and commenting on, rather than co-constructing and contributing to the lives of those researched, giving a problematic effect of the authorization of the ‘expert’ academic and subordination of the researched. Wray Bliss notes for example that ‘methodology’ in empirical critical management studies texts tends to be limited to minimal, technical, descriptions which rarely extend beyond listing formal methods, duration of the researchers stay in the field and brief backgrounds to the organization in which the research was conducted. As Van Maanen (1988) notes, such technical/ temporal de tails reinforce the impression of the ‘expert’ researcher deploying the latest formal research methods and technologies. Here there is the issue of the writer presenting argument as though she or he has tacit superiority and can see something the researched cannot – or at least cannot find a way not to reproduce it in their labor and identities. There is the issue of the researcher choosing what to select for a write up and in choosing what to ‘hear’- the issue of interpretation/ re- interpretation by the researcher - what

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we perceive as researchers is selective- to re-affirm prior expectations/ theories. In representing ‘the Other’ one strategy to avoid such concerns is to provide the opportunity for those being researched to write their own texts or to make a contribution to shaping the texts produced by the ethnographer, reading through drafts and giving voice to their own interpretations of events. In research on the multinational organization concepts from postcolonial analysis can also sensitize the researcher and writer to the issues of power relations between researcher and researched as discussed in the following section. Conceptual tools to support analysis of processes within and across the boundaries of multinationals. In introducing the concept of the ‘transnational social space’ of the multinational, Morgan (2001) provides a lens though which to study the movement of ideas, people, resources and practices across national boundaries and around different institutional contexts, highlighting in analysis the ways in which the transnational social space of the multinational is embedded in a transnational political economy and transnational regulatory system. This in turn encourages sensitivity to questions of power and control within the multinational. It is in this conceptual space that I wish to argue that the analysis may draw on conceptual tools taken from postcolonial theory to sensitize the analysis of process. It can be argued that writers coming from a postcolonial tradition provide an entry point and foci of analysis into the study of multinationals that privilege specific concerns and questions in the study of processes surrounding management practices and control systems. Similarly to Burawoy (2000) in his extended case method discussed later, analytical concepts from postcolonial theory can enrich the analysis of control within organizations by sensitizing the analysis of control ‘systems’ to the dynamics and processes of domination and resistance within and across the fields of the multinational, and the ‘hegemony’ of one group over another within the transnational space of the multinational. It encourages attention to the discursive processes by which headquarter-subsidiary relations are played out through the expatriate managers and subsidiary employees. It encourages attention to the ways in which the subsidiary is ‘readied’ for the transfer of management practices and the ways in which various constituents of the subsidiary hybridize, transform and indiginize demands from the headquarters so as to create a space for local agency. It also encourages attention to the ways in which processes of ambivalence to headquarter control play out in day-to-day resistance, and sensitizes the researcher to the contested terrain in which the internationalizing organization operates. (Bhabha 1994, Prasad and Prasad 2003). Within the transnational social space of the multinational, headquarter processes of control over the subsidiary may be conceptually compared with the deep ambivalence of colonial discourse. As Bhabha (1994) notes what characterizes colonial discourse is not monolithic homogeneity, but heterogeneity, fragmentation, contradictions, inconsistencies and incongruities. Consequently colonial discourse fails to establish hegemonic control and opens up spaces for resistance in the oppositional space on the part of the colonized. In my own research within the subsidiary of a Japanese multinational a postcolonial reading sensitizes analysis to the discursive processes by which the headquarters sought to persuade local managers and workers to adopt new control systems and work practices. The ethnographic study within work teams highlighted the ways in which the teamleader is placed between the shop floor and the expatriate managers in the ‘demand for narrative’ by which the managers seek to ascertain the extent to which new values have been adopted. From the shop floor it was clear that whilst the team leader may engage in

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acts of sly civility and evasions (Bhabha 1994) to the demand for narrative, the team workers acts of resistance took on a more direct and active form of confrontation. The team meetings provided an interesting event in which to examine ‘hybridity’, the process of cultural ‘translation’ in which messages from the expatriates are translated by local managers and fed down by the teamleader to the shop floor. The role of the expatriate manager in ‘readying’ the subsidiary for the transfer of management practices can be seen. Processes of ‘ambivalence’ to headquarters hegemonic control play out in the day-to-day social relations within the transnational social space. The above short discussion seeks to illustrate how a postcolonial lens can contribute conceptual tools for the analysis of social relations within the transnational social space of the multinational. It encourages attention to the subjective experiences of individuals and socialized aspirations of groups and communities who engage with or interface with the multinational. It encourages attention to the transna tional and often gendered cultural differences and the significance of different forms of knowledge for different communities. In the analysis of processes the lens encourages examination of the ways in which race, gender, class and ethnicities, shape both identities of self and the experience of work within the multinational. The Possibilities of Ethnography – Future Directions and Challenges Linking the local to the global within a critical realist framework Burawoy (2000) discusses the role of ethnography in seeking to understand global issues and begins by asking how ethnography can be ‘global’. How can it be anything but micro and a-historical? How can the study of everyday life grasp lofty processes that transcend national boundaries? This paper builds on the ideas of Burawoy in arguing that there is a place for ethnography in understanding and explaining comparative processes of change and inertia within organizations within a global context. Burawoy (2000: 2) notes that working from the top down Meyer et al (1997) have argued ‘that the modern world society causes the diffusion of common institutional models and patterns of legitimacy among nation states but say little on the link between models and norms on the one hand and concrete practices on the other. Instead of theorizing the link between models and practices they talk of their ‘decoupling’ making it difficult to understand concrete variation within the same formal structures. Similarly Burawoy argues that whilst neo- institutionalists do not deny the diversity between forms of democracy, they leave ethnographers who work from the ground upwards without theoretical tools to delve into the connections between micro-practices and macro–structures. In this way Burawoy argues that ethnographers appeared to have no theoretical hoist out of the local. However global ethnographers cannot be outside the global processes they study. In this way global ethnographers have to rethink the meaning of fieldwork, from being bound to a single place and time. As noted by Burawoy (2000: 4) ‘even when our participants (ethnographers) do not themselves stretch across the globe, and it was only the participants imaginations that connected them to the global, our ethnography was no less multi-sited… we sought to understand the incessant movement of our subjects. Within a critical realist framework the depthful ontology encourages a focus on structures and mechanisms within open systems. Global forces of change within and across institutional

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contexts become part of the research study in examining the link between micro- level experiences and practices and macro level contexts In a study of Japanese and Korean expatriate managers as members of transnational communities the expatriate managers provided a window into the complex set of social relationships that existed between head office and subsidiary and the ways in which this transnational social space was a field where the interplay of rival groups within the firm took place. The groups in turn drew on resources embedded in local, national and supranational institutional contexts such as capital, skills and knowledge, networks, access to scarce resources and political influence. (Morgan 2001). In depth interviews with expatriates provided insights into the meaning of the expatriate assignment for them and the ways in which they perceived themselves as part of social structures that cut across the boundaries of the firm and nation. For Burawoy (2001: 148) global ethnography speaks first and foremost to those left behind on the ground, whilst more privileged academic communities may through their jet setting paint a picture of a new community of transnational connections and of globalization as a ‘veritable force of nature’ – as juggernaut sweeping up everything lying in its path. For these cosmopolites, ethnography the focused attention to detail and process – is replaced by tourism, tripping around from site to site. In global ethnography there is a commitment to showing that time –space compression or time-space distanciation are not universal as the cosmopolites would claim. It shows globalization to be a very uneven process, and most important an artifact manufactured and received in the local. Globalization is produced and consumed not in thin air… but in real organizations, institutions and communities. From this point of view the global becomes ethnographic. Burawoy argues that the global can become ethnographic in two ways (2001:149). Firstly, through its experience, reception or consumption. Here one studies the experience of ‘globalization’, to insist that the effects of ‘globalization’ are not homogeneous and ubiquitous but specific and concrete. Secondly from the standpoint of its production, ‘globalization’ can be researched through the way it is constituted in the local, in specific institutions, agencies and organizations such as multinationals and international regulatory agencies. In global ethnography, multi- sited research aims not to contrast the perspectives from each site but to build a montage, that lends greater insight into the whole. Differences amongst cases can show different perspectives or epistemologies. From different sites you may get divergent visions of globalization, for example from the headquarters of the multinational, the foreign subsidiary local workers in a rural community, and the international regulatory agencies. Global ethnography seeks to understand how the experience of ‘globalization’ is produced in specific localities and how that productive process is a contested and thus a political accomplishment. Gille and O’Riain (2002) note that place still provides a foundation for global ethnographers, but as a location from within which ethnographers can explore the socio -political projects that are remaking soc ial relations and places. Methodologically there is a re-conceptualization of place in light of the multiple connections cutting across places for example of immigrants, migrants, expatriate managers and transnational entrepreneurs within the multinational. The local site is historically produced in interaction with a variety of external connections. Places do not have the kinds of boundaries that warrant a simple counter-position to the outside. The identity of a place is not homogeneous and yet places are unique, their specificity residing in the

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distinct mixture of local and wider social relations. Thus places matter in global ethnography, but instead of a comprehensive account of a self- contained set of social relations, the ethnographer uses the location to also understand the social relations that extend beyond it. An ethnographic approach to globalization requires the understanding of locally, socially and culturally specific ways in which people understand the place of their locality in the global scheme of things, and the actions they take to shape that place. Gille and O’Riain (2002) note how key questions facing the ethnographer include the choice of sites to study and the choice of which events and processes to use in shaping the ethnographic narrative. Conceiving of ethnographic sites as internally heterogeneous and connected to other places by a myriad of social relations requires that the ethnographer examine the character of the social relations in the field itself. Becoming part of a site remains a critical part of ethnography – the issue of gaining entry – but the very nature of that membership changes for the ethnographer as it changes for those around her or him. Place becomes a launching bad out into networks, backwards into histo ry and ultimately into the politics of place itself. A key challenge in ethnographic research across multiple sites arises if the sites are themselves in tension with each other. An example in international management research could be in research focusing on the sites of two firms about to merge during a takeover by the stronger partner. Negotiating multiple access and managing relationships in such contexts can take their toll and highlight the ethnographic concern of for whom the ethnographer should speak. On representation Burawoy (1991) notes that the purpose of fieldwork is not to strip ourselves of our biases, for that is an illusory goal, nor to celebrate these biases as the authorial voice of the ethnographer, but rather to discover and perhaps change our biases through interaction with others. In this way an ‘I-You’ relation between observers and participants replaces a ‘we’ relation of false togetherness and an ‘I- they’ relation in which the I often becomes invisible. In the extended case method Burawoy argues in the terms of C. Wright Mill’s (1959) sociological imagination, to connect ‘the personal troubles of the milieu’, to the public issues of social structure. In this way participant observation can examine the macro world through the way the latter shapes and in turn is shaped and conditioned by the microworld. DISCUSSION The paper argues that the potential of critical realist and global ethnography to contribute in the field of IB/IM remains relatively untapped. As Burawoy (2000) notes the ethnographer has the possibility of gaining a privileged insight into the lived experience of globalization – whether it be for the migrant factory workers around the subsidiaries of the multinational, or the salaried expatriates from the headquarters. The relevance of such research in the study of the multinational is significant, in terms of the importance of an understanding of ‘global’ processes, the link between the local and the global, and the processes within the ‘transnational social space’ (Morgan 2001) of the multinational in which ideas, people, resources and practices cross national boundaries and institutional contexts with corresponding conflicts and struggles. The experience of change for example in business systems, internationalization of organizations and ‘globalization’ is an empirical question that requires the researcher to be sensitive to the ways in which for example gender, race, ethnicity, and status for example as ‘colonizer’ or ‘colonized’ also shape the unders tanding and experience of social relations within the transnational social space of the multinational. Ethnographic approaches have the potential to

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