Page 226 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

214 Design Meets Business
(‘Where do I start?”), boldness (“Let’s do this!), excitement (“Waah! This is interesting!”), and always a risk of failure (‘What if I do not find anything interesting to share?”). Working as an ethnographer demands patience and dedication. It demands a willingness to learn, to make missteps and to start over again. It is about creating one’s own direction, that ultimately - and hopefully - leads to a story that is worthwhile sharing with others. A story that is not only empirically interesting but also theoretically sound.
Most textbooks on doing ethnography emphasize the importance of starting with a research question. A question that aims to explore a social phenomenon, often beginning with ‘how’ or ‘what’ and maybe even ‘why’. In my experience, drafting a research question helps to set an intention and get started somewhere, accepting that the question is likely to adapt along the way. Yet, even if the research question can give a sense of direction, there are still numerous ways in which an ethnography can be done. When I returned from the field, I reflected on my own ethnographic journey and identified some practices that helped me get going, and going on. I drew inspiration from my talks with my colleagues, supervisors, fellow ethno- graphers at conferences, academic readings (van Maanen 1988; Ybema et al. 2009; Hammersley & Atkinson 2007), more popular anthropological books (Barley 2000; Ho 2009), and came up with seven lessons worth sharing. While these lessons were the results of all my field experiences, below I use illustrative examples from my ethnography at the design firm Fjord. Also, these lessons are a merely a selection, and in not completely representative, of all that I learned during fieldwork.
First, your informants are your guides. While you might be new to the organizational setting, your informants are native. In other words, in doing ethnography “we strike out for what we believe to be uncharted waters, only to find ourselves sailing in someone’s else’s bathtub” (Turchi 2004: 13). While this is depicted humoristically, it does capture something essential. In doing ethnography, the territory might seem endless, even borderless, to us. Yet, natives are likely to know their way around it. Hence, instead of letting myself only be guided by my research questions, I followed the natives in their daily endeavors. Finding companionship helped me guide through my informants’ (work) lives. It allowed me to be recognize impor- tant routines, regulations and discourses in the organization. It allowed me to participate in social events, during and after work. But mostly, it allowed me to establish bonds of trust with my informants, and deeply understand their sensitive worlds. Following the emotional experience of my infor- mants helped me to better understand key challenges in their work. When my informants were frustrated or stressed, I knew that most likely some- thing out of the ordinary happened or something with which they do not