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Chapter 26 - Using Ethnography in Strategy-as-Practice Research

from Part IV - Methodological Resources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2025

By
Ann L. Cunliffe
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
emlyon Business School
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
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Summary

Ann Cunliffe proposes some key considerations and a stimulating reflection on the connection between ethnography and the study of practice. She argues that ethnography is particularly suited forstrategy as practice research because of its focus on the rich description of the micro-practices of organizational life. Based on relevant ethnographic studies that are illustrative and may be of interest for strategy as practice researchers, she explains how it is possible to better understand new or unanticipated processes and practices that are at the core of strategy-making. Nevertheless, she urges strategy as practice researchers to embrace more deeply a subjectivist or intersubjective view when adopting an ethnographic methodology in order to offer new insights into the relational and reflexive nature of strategizing as an emergent and lived experience. Yet, doing so raises a number of important questions: What philosophical assumptions underpin the ethnographer’s work? How do these influence the methods used, the form of analysis and the theorizing? How does the researcher position her/himself in the research? How does an ethnographer write a convincing research account?

Keywords

strategy as practicepractice approachethnography
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Chapter
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Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 477 - 492
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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