Ethnography

Ethnography relies on anthropological approach in the investigation of phenomenon. Thus,

participants are studies in their natural setting so that information from the participants is as
natural as possible. Furthermore, ethnography encompasses the discovery and in-depth
explanation of the groups or individual culture. This suggests that culture is the centerpiece of
ethnography. The characteristics of the people defines their viewpoint on their ways of life. The
cultural disposition of the people as defined by values and norms of the people can be studied in
their natural settings so that participants are studied in their natural settings. The underlying
cultures of the people are complex situations that should studied in their context. Through
interactions with the people, cultural anthropology is an ideal tool for studying the underlying
ways of life of the people. In other words, by observing the culture of the organization, such as
organizational processes, one is able to understand why organizations implement given policies
or not. In the use of business process re-engineering in the automotive industry, one can observe
how the BPR strategy is leverage to enable organizations achieve operational efficiency, which is
a critical enabler of organizational performance. Thus, ethnography enables organizational
researchers to study firm behavior in its natural form.
Grounded Theory
Methodological approaches in ground theory are flexible since there are prescribed tools and
procedures. The guidelines to grounded theory include theoretical sensitivity, theoretical
saturation, theoretical coding, and constant comparative method. The interplay between these
tenets of ground theory that enables building of theories. It is the nature of the tenets or
principles of the grounded theory that makes the approach unique in terms of methodology. In
other words, the interactions between these tenets that theories are build or tested to ascertain the
existing phenomenon. However, the grounded theory has challenges. One of the challenges is the
use of large data sets to build theory. Ground theory is an important analytical tool in business
research that enables scholars to gather large sets of data aimed at building theory or repeatedly
test emergent theory. Thus, grounded theory is very rigorous and uses a number of data sources
to build theory. The design is empirical in nature since it leverages fieldwork to collect and
analyze data. By observing patterns and trends of data, researchers are able to empirically test
underlying assumptions or hypothesis before arriving at sound conclusions and eventual
generalizations. In concise terms, grounded theory leverages complex methodological
approaches to describe ideal organizational strategies and how to implement them.

Narrative Design
Narrative designs are important approaches in qualitative research to study phenomenon in
detail. In other words, researchers get the opportunity to hear from the horse’s mouth on the state
of a given phenomenon. In business research, scholars sometimes use narrative form as a way of
trying to understand what a given strategy in the firm mean to the organization in addition to
why organizational processes are the way they are. By listening to the success stories narrated by
top management teams, researchers are able to understand and explain underlying topic of
concern. Recall that narration as a qualitative approach ensures that one is able collect in-depth
data, which sometimes may remain unnoticed if structured questions are applied. By
contextualizing experiences of the organizations through the narrations from top management
teams, one is able to establish the meaning of experiences and why individuals or organizations
behave the way they do. It is instructive to note that storied experiences of the people can be
extracted by conducting interviews or analyzing existing documents on a topic of investigation.
This appreciative inquiry is instrumental in understanding the state of issues of investigation.
Narration approach can be used together with grounded theory, action research, phenomenology
and ethnography to unravel meanings attached to existing phenomenon.