Getting ‘close to the action’ in entrepreneurship research

Tony Watson

Nottingham University Business School

ISBE and UNIEI Workshop, December 2010

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Supporting article

Many of the points included in this session are developed in an article to appear in Journal of Management Studies (2011: 48 no 1) – online now:

‘Ethnography, reality and truth: the vital need for studies of “how things work” in organisations and management’

This is followed by a ‘counterpoint’ which takes up these arguments, ‘Ethnography as Work’ by John Maanen

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Some introductory (personal) views

The qual/ quants divide is an artificial and corrosive one – apart from the matter of how we manipulate particular research material

Too many researchers seem to believe that using qualitative methods (basically, manipulating words rather than numbers!) commits one to a so-called interpretivist or social constructionist position

This is nonsense, e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough) is based on ‘critical realist’ assumptions; Monder Ram, an accomplished ethnographer, takes a critical realist methodological position (cf my own ‘pragmatic realism’)

It is better to sort out your research questions, key concepts and methodological position (realist/ non-realist) and THEN choose appropriate methods (quant OR qual; quant AND Qual.....)

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© Tony Watson

The research process

METHODS

Empiricalinvestigation

¨ Research questions

¨ Conceptual framework

¨ Methodological position (epistemological & ontological stance)

Generalisations drawn from interplay of

concepts and empirical material

– theorising

Social science knowledge

Getting close to the action: field research

Field research is a style of investigation in which the researcher gets close to events and processes

Because it goes beyond the lab, library or interview room, it is sometime called ‘naturalistic’ research

It might result in the writing of ‘a full ethnography’ If it does not fulfil all the literary/ anthropological

ethnographic criteria, it might result in ‘ethnographically-oriented research’, or, more simply, ‘field or ‘direct observational’ research

At its most intensive, the researcher becomes a participant observer

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Participant observation

The investigator joins a group or organisation as a full or a partial member to participate in and to observe activities, ask questions, take part in conversations and read relevant documents

it entails getting closely involved with the people being studied in their ‘natural’ setting and actively interacting and sharing experiences with them

it needs to happen over a period of time which is sufficient for the researcher to understand the significance to the people being studied of the range of norms, practices and values - of both a formal/ official and informal/ unofficial kind - which pertain in the research setting.

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‘Style’ and ‘method’

Field research & PO are best understood as styles of investigation and ethnography as a style of writing

They are not research methods/ techniques It is helpful to distinguish between style and method

because, for example ethnography might use a whole range of methods

alongside observation e.g. interviews, documentary and statistical analysis

field research might just be one component of an interview/ survey/ quants-based study

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Key strengths of field research

Getting close to the action and to people produces ‘reader appeal’ More importantly, field research helps us better understand: CONTEXT: it deals with matters of ‘place’, time and direct

experience; it ‘situates’ statements/ accounts produced by informants (this provides much richer data than ‘what your subjects want you to hear’)

PROCESS: lets the researcher see for themselves how events unfold over time (rather than depend on retrospective and typically rationalised accounts of informants)

UNOFFICIAL/ INFORMAL ASPECTS OF ORGANISATIONAL LIFE: micropolitical or ‘career-competition’ practices; ‘garbage-can’ aspects of decision-making; ‘deviant’ practices; ‘actual’ cultural norms, values and priorities (as opposed, for example, to ‘corporate propaganda’ statements or myths of entrepreneurial heroes)

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Field research and theory

At all costs avoid the version of ‘grounded theory’ which implies that one can enter the field without knowledge of existing theories and concepts

The best way to ‘ground’ theories is to

1. enter the field with an awareness of as many key concepts from organisation/ management thinking (or economics, sociology, psychology broadly) as you can cope with

2. Continually draw on these and develop them as and when they seem helpful to understanding what you are observing/ experiencing in the field

3. Personal examples: ‘group ideology’ in R-R; discourses-in-tension in GEC Plessey; clashing institutional logics in pubs/ entrepreneurship study (also ‘effectuation’ in part)

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The reality of ‘how things work’ and making truth claims

Good ‘close to the action’ research combines intensive investigation of entrepreneurship processes/practices with theorising

It does this in order to produce accounts of the realities of entrepreneurial work

These are accounts of HOW THE WORLD WORKS in the area of entrepreneurial action

These accounts can be judged as relatively true/untrue in the terms used by Pragmatist philosophers

Pragmatism judges research accounts in terms of how effectively people’s actions in the area of activity covered by the research might be informed by their reading of that account rather than others

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Appendix I: ethnography

Ethnography is better understood not as a research method

but as a style of social science writing which

1. combines the social scientist’s rigour and theory orientation with ‘literary’ tropes

2. draws upon the writer’s close observation of and involvement with people in a particular social setting and

3. relates the words spoken and the practices to their overall cultural framework

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Appendix II: a basic methodological choice

Are you going to work as a non-realist ? As an ‘interpretivist’, ‘social constructionist’, ‘post-structuralist’... and assume

that the social world only exists insofar as it is ‘constituted’ by processes of interpretation and linguistic practice. Generally, ‘qualitative methods’ are used here. BUT THERE IS NO REASON WHY A REALIST SHOULD NOT USE THESE METHODS to study ‘reality’

Are you going to work as realist ? Positivist, believing the social world can be studied in the same way as the

physical world; denying the relevance of human meanings & interpretations; seeking causal regularities in the form of laws inferred from the analysis of observable and measurable data (mainly using ‘quants’).

Critical or Pragmatic realist, assuming that social reality exists independently of how people observe and make sense of it but incorporating into this a recognition that processes of interpretation and social construction play a part in the creating and maintaining of this reality (using quantitative or qualitative material as appropriate).

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(Entrepreneurial) Business Ownerwith self-identity, biography,gender, ethnicity, emotions….

The Businesswith history, resources (material & intellectual),market opportunities….

Lifestrategy

Businessstrategy

Appendix III: a simple conceptual framework