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Descriptive Ethnography of an Organisation

This task requires you to use ethnographic thinking and methods to construct an account of an organisational area or unit in which you have participated. This may be somewhere you have worked in a paid or voluntary capacity, or an organisation in which you are an active member such as a religious or sporting organisation. The intention is to make sense of that organisation, both for yourself and for the person reading your writing. You should briefly introduce the organisation as a whole, but focus upon the unit or area that you have experienced.

The importance of your account is that you have insight into the workings of the organisation/work area that cannot be gleaned from outsider research. This is what makes your piece ethnographic. Therefore you should provide an insight into organisational life that goes well beyond what might be found on official websites. Following a common convention in ethnographic descriptions, you will give your organisation a pseudonym. Any individuals you mention from the organisation should also be given pseudonyms.

The key to doing this task well is identifying what really goes on in the organisation using your insider experience and then using concepts and theory from the course to give depth to your account. So, as an observational ethnography, this task depends equally on developing your own descriptive and reflective abilities as it does on using academic reference materials. You will need to write in a way that communicates your insights and observations to a reader. We expect that your perspectives are informed primarily by consideration of the topics and texts that we have covered in the course using the materials that are available on the course Blackboard. Your insider account should bring to life the concepts that you are drawing from in the course.

Some background questions to guide your thinking about this task are:

What does the organisation do? Does this match the organisation’s goals?

What is the culture of the organisation? Does this differ in your smaller work area? (Tip: Is the culture, for example, social? formal? high pressure? hierarchical? Does it reflect that a certain type of person is employed there?) How does the culture relate to the structure or purpose of the organisation?

What kinds of work practices are undertaken? How do they compare to practices that are meant to take place?

How does power operate in the organisation? (Tip: think about power in the formal organisational structure, in the informal culture, and by whose roles or identity are seen as more important?)

You can structure your Descriptive Ethnography of an Organisation by following the assessment criteria. At the start of your Ethnography, address the first assessment criteria by providing a detailed account of the organisation’s values, structure and purpose in your own words, in reference to concepts covered in the course. Next, address the second assessment criteria by reflecting thoughtfully on organisational culture and practices drawing on insider experience and organisational theory. Topics covered in the first half of the course – such as learning, motivation and power – can be used here to make sense of the culture and practices. The last part of your Ethnography addresses the final assessment criteria by identifying gaps between espoused values and practices as they manifest in organisational norms and behaviours. Here you need to compare the organisation’s values with what you know takes place.

As ethnography is a type of research method, in describing the organisation you should explain how you have made sense of what you have seen and experienced and consequently written about. This constitutes a brief methodology. For example, is the account based wholly on your own observations? Are you drawing from conversations with particular people? What is your standpoint in the organisation?

We will spend significant time in workshops discussing this ethnographic approach and supporting the development of your work through, for example, writing activities and workshopping how to integrate references into personal accounts.

Word length: 1400 words

(penalties will be applied to work that exceeds the word length by more than 10%)

Assessment criteria:

Your descriptive ethnography:

Provides a detailed account of the organisation’s values, structure and purpose in your own words, in reference to concepts covered in the course;

Identifies and analyses organisational culture and practices drawing on insider experience and organisational theory;

Identifies gaps between espoused values and practice as they manifest in organisational norms and behaviours;