Hum an Relations, Vol. 50, No.

9, 1997

Review Article

Whatever Hap pened to Organ ization al An thropology? A Review of the Field of Organ ization al Eth nograph y an d An thropological Studies
S. P Bate 1,2 . An organization the orist frie nd of mine told me how she had recently paid a frie ndly visit to an anthropological mee ting, only to find e veryone the re insisting on speaking to he r v-e-r-y, v-e -r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y, so the re might be some chance of her following what they were saying. It was as though she were a 4-ye ar-old with le arning difficultie s, she said. I be gin with this ane cdote because it highlights the divide that curre ntly exists betwe en organization behavior (OB) and anthropology. 3 Although change s are afoot, most notice ably in the U.S., the situation today is generally characte rized by O B pe ople who know and care little about anthropology, and anthropologists who take possibly even less intere st in organizations. It has not always bee n like this. O B, as Baba (1986) and More y and Morey (1994) point out, is a comparative ly young fie ld which, surprisingly
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School of Management , Unive rsity of Bath, Clave rton Down BA2 7AY, U.K. Re quests for reprints should be addressed to S. P. Bate, School of Management, Unive rsity of Bath, Claverton Down BA2 7AY, U.K. 3 Following Ge ertz (1988) , the term anthropology is use d in this article mainly as equivalent to e thnography. Although this is inexact, the subtleties of the difference need not greatly concern us in a broad revie w like this. In any case, imprecision has always gone with the territory: The term e thnography is not clearly defined in common usage, writes Hammersle y (1990, p. 1) , and there is some disagree me nt about what count and do not count as e xamples of it. Howe ver, for the purposes of this article I take Hammersley and Atkinsons definition as my starting point: In its most characteristic form it involve s the e thnographer participating, ove rtly or covertly, in people s daily live s for an extende d period of time, watching what happe ns, listening to what is said, asking questions in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research (1995, p. 1) . For a specific definition of organizational e thnography and a rece nt re view of the field see Mouly and Sankaran s re cent book (1995, Chap. 1). Another rece nt collection by Linstead et al. (1996) also deals with the neglecte d topic of the social anthropology of managem ent. 1147
0018-7267/97/0900-1147 $12.50/1

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to many pe rhaps, was originally create d by anthropologists by way of the pione ering Hawthorne studie s. It was the y who also gave OB its first journal (Hum an Organization ), and it was a social anthropologi st, W. F. Whyte (1969) , who wrote the first textbook in organizational be havior. Some whe re along the way, howeve r, the two fields got se parate d, and organization studie s gradually lost touch with the e sse ntial qualitie s of anthropology. The purpose of the article is to speculate on the nature of the e thnographic que st, and on what might be gaine d from trying to put organization studie s and anthropo logy back toge the r again in some form or othe r.4 Some at le ast are in no doubt on this score:
Organization theory has an important topic; anthropology has a promising method. If the two can be put together more systematically and consistently, maybe the re sult would help us unde rstand what we experience during the major part of our adult live s. (Czarniawska-Joe rges, 1992, p. 4)

Can social anthropology contribute to O B and manage ment rese arch, and in what way might it offer it some ne w e ne rgie s and directions for the field? The que stion is de libe rate ly one -sided. I am not assuming that all is rosy in the anthropology garde n, inde e d it has bee n receiving its own share of criticism in recent time s (cf. Hammersley, 1992) , but to conside r it the othe r way round would require a diffe rent kind of article . Unlike Czarniawska-Joe rges (1992), who did a similar e xe rcise to this one but in a full-le ngth book, I have chose n not to se e the proble m in te rms of a Robert Johnson-like journe y back to the crossroads whe re anthropolo gy and organ ization the ory par te d company so man y ye ars ago this would be be yond the scope of this article and has be en brilliantly done by her anyway. If there is a journe y in this article , it is not so much one of history as of perspective, for as Marcel Proust obse rve d, The re al voyage of discove ry be gins not with visiting ne w place s but in see ing familiar landscape s with ne w eyes. PUTTING HUMPTY TOGETHER AGAIN After so many years of separation, the prospe ct of a possible reconciliation between OB and anthropology is arousing considerable interest. In the United States, courses on organizational anthropology have been springing up everywhere, and the numbe r of ethnographic studie s of organizations has grown dramatically in recent years (cf. Editors introduction to Schwartzman, 1993). There have also been numerous unconfirmed sightings of anthropologists (apparently quite happily) grubbing around in organizations, even emerging from
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I am not the only one to consider the prospects of a re unification of the fields of anthropology and organization studies. See also Rose n (1991) , Czarniawska-Joe rges (1992), and most rece ntly Linstead (1997). Significant, but clearly not a critical mass as ye t!

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time to time to press the case for more consulting on organizational culture (Kogod, 1994) and more of an anthropological approach to managing organizations (Jordan, 1994). The busine ss anthropologist, it would seem, is now firmly in residence in corporate America. As they say, it take s two to tango, and organization re searche rs, for their part, have be en making the ir own frie ndly ge sture s toward anthropology, with incre asingly frequent forays into e thnographic-type methodologie s and language . They have a new journal, Stu dies of Cultures, Organizations and Societies, which provide s a forum for debate on the culture and symbolism of everyday life in organizations ethnographic in intention, if not yet in de ed, and have even begun to sugge st the possibility of not just acade mics but also practitioners be nefiting from a gre ate r e thnographic consciousne ss in their work (Linstead, 1997). One of the more gene rous gestures in recent times has bee n the ir adoption of a 25-ye ar-old anthropology book (The Interpretation of Cultures) as their bible . So for Gideon now read Geertz. And yet it is e asy to get carrie d away by all this, to see the summer in a single swallow. Truth is that there are fe w signs of a similar ressurge nce in E urope or Scandinavia. With the e xce ption of Watson (1994) , Collinson (1992) , and Wright (1994) and I have doubts about whethe r any but the middle one strictly qualify Britain has not seen a field-base d organizational anthropology book since Jaque s (1951) and Turner (1971) . What is surprising is that it was British anthropologists whose outstanding ethnographie s led the whole field for half a century up to this time (DAndrade , 1995, p. 5; Stocking, 1983) . Eve n in the wider inte rnational context, pe ople accept that anthropology continue s to remain on the outskirts of research on organizations (Schwartzman, 1993, p. 2), and it still has the stigma of be ing labe le d the forgotte n science of behavioral studie s (More y & Luthans, 1987) . And we have after all see n false dawns be fore. For example , many fe lt that when the be st selling busine ss write rs got hold of culture in the early 1980s (Pascale & Athos, 1981; Deal & Kenne dy, 1982; Pe te rs & Wate rman, 1982; Kanter, 1983) , O B was in the proce ss of be ing born again as Anthropology. The y were to be disappointe d. While the god was the same , O B s conce pt of culture was very diffe re nt (cf. Alvesson, 1993, Chap. 2 for details of the contrasts), altoge the r more corpore al and profit-drive n than the sylphe n, will-o -the-wisp characte r glimpse d in the jungle s of anthropology. The final blow came in the 1990s, with the culture e vange lists turning against their god and be nefactor, and spurning him in a remarkable display of public hypocrisy. The Billy Graham s of busine ss de nie d him thrice. Tom Peters, for e xample , the man who 15 years before had declared that culture was the e sse ntial quality (1982, p. 75) of excellent companies, was now saying: We didn t know what culture was the n, and sure as hell we don t know what it is now, adding for the benefit of those who

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like it in hard figure s: About 90 percent of the training and consulting mone y that has be e n spe nt on culture change and custome r care programme s has bee n thrown down the drain (BBC vide o, 1995) . As we now look back on this pe riod, what is pe rhaps most striking is that all the manage ment work that went into promoting the culture conce pt, so far as we can te ll, did nothing to promote the discipline that had inve nted it. Even the incre ase in the numbe r of publications may not be as he althy as it appe ars, because now, for the first time, there are probably more pe ople writing about organizational ethnography than actually doing it. Moreove r, it is all too e asy to wrongly e quate qualitative re search (which is on the increase ) with anthropological or ethnographic research (which organizationally speaking is not). Almost all anthropological re se arch is qualitative but the reve rse rarely see ms to apply in practice . What we have to be clear about is that e thnographic re search is a particular form of qualitative research (Wolcott, 1995, p. 82) self-immerse d, longitudinal, re flexive , participan t obse rvational, e tc. and it is not be ing practice d in an organizational conte xt anything like as freque ntly as pe ople are claiming it to be . Q uasi-anthropologica l may be a bette r word to describe the rathe r half-he arte d e thnographic studie s that have bee n emerging in recent years.5 That is to say, the re is actually less to organizational e thnography than mee ts the eye. On closer examination thick de scription invariably turns out to be quick description (Wolcott, 1995, p. 90) , yet anothe r busine ss case study or company history, a pale refle ction of the expe rie ntially rich social science e nvisaged by early write rs like Agar (1980, p. 6). Prolonge d contact with the fie ld means a serie s of flying visits rathe r than a long-te rm stay (jet-plane ethnography) . O rganization anthropologists rare ly take a toothbrush with them the se days. A journe y into the organizational bush is ofte n little more than a safe and close ly chape rone d form of anthropological tourism. O rganizational ofte n turns out to be yet anothe r marginal group: football hooligans, Gree nham Common prote stors, divorce court pe rsonne l, cocktail waitresses, O lympic organizing committees, fune ral dire ctors, girl scouts, dance companie s, or LA punks; I mean where are the ethnographie s of the he alth service , or modern ethnographie s of the shop floor? 6 This may
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There are some e xce ptions he re , notably the rich fields of e ducational anthropology, policing and crime, and me dical and he althcare anthropology (cf. Atkinson, 1981, 1990; Fox, 1992; Hammersley, 1990; Mouly & Sankaran, 1995; Young, 1991, for exte nsive bibliographies of these fields). 6 It would be unfair not to mention some important exce ptions to the rule: D. Collinsons (1992) Managing the shop floor; see also Youngs (1989) and Parke rs (1995) shorter shopfloor studies. See also Linsteads (1985) earlie r e thnographic vigne ttes of workplace sabotage. For a review of U.S. shop floor and occupational culture studies see Schwartzman (1993, Chap. 4) . Molstad (1986, 1988, 1996) has also done some very interesting ethnographic re search among industrial brewery workers in Los Angele s which is ve ry re minisce nt of Roy and Burowoy.

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sound harsh, but it is drive n by the present author s frustration with ethnographic pastiche . The reasons for the above are not hard to find. Anthropology is a hazardous sport. It take s time, it is not journal friendly ( too long ), and it take s you away from the scene of the action ( When did we last see that bloke ? ). O ne full-le ngth publishe d e thnography e very 3 ye ars (which is quite good going) is not like ly to satisfy the ratings merchants or one s head of school; and sabbaticals that use d to permit a full-time period in the field are no longe r available to the majority. In the present climate, Rule 1 for aspiring organization re se archers surely has to be : ke ep away from organizations; fie ldwork take s too long! Many are inde ed coming round to this: witness the recent spate of publications of the As discusse d by a group of cle ve r frie nds ove r a Danish pastry during a break in the confe rence or Overheard in a Palo Alto bar varie ty. Since anthropology is a field sport (no fieldwork, no anthropology), the re is not the same range of short cuts that othe r kinds of O B re search may be able to offer. So perhaps it is a case of Put up or shut up, or at be st some kind of mild prote st like a T-shirt be aring the words Anthropology can seriously damage your caree r. DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF ETHNOGRAPHY Ethnography can be de fine d in a varie ty of differe nt ways: as a particular type of method or fieldwork activity (the doing of ethnography) , a kind of intellectual effort or paradigm (the thinking ), and a narrative or rhe torical style (the writing ). In all three , the re are ne w ideas that O B might wish to conside r if it were to take an anthropological turn. Eth nogr ap h y as Meth od Ethnography is about doing fieldwork, an activity that involve s pitching in and ge tting one s hands dirty (Hobbs & May, 1993, p. xviii). The broad methodological challe nge is to pe ne trate anothe r form of life (some fee l to be penetrated by is more accurate ), to capture the richne ss of local cultural worlds, and above all to grasp the native s point of view. A varie ty of methods may be e mploye d to this e nd, including in-de pth intervie wing, atte nding and re cording mee tings, docume ntary inve stigation of records, and participant obse rvation. The latte r is the inve ntion of anthropologists and involve s holding the role of participant and obse rve r, insider and outside r, in te nsion so as to e nsure that one is close e nough to see what is going on, but not so close as to miss the wood for the tre es. The role has be en variously describe d as the marginal native , profe ssional strange r, self-re liant lone r, and detache d participant (cf. Ham-

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mersle y, 1990 for a bibliographical ove rview and critique of ethnographic method) . We can pass rapidly over this particular conce ption of ethnography, because it is not this that distinguishe s it from the broade r fie ld of qualitative re search. The methods it use s are basically the same, and offe r few ne w ide as or dire ctions for the field. If there is any diffe rence , howeve r, it is one of attitude: whe re as qualitative rese archers see m to have an insatiable appe tite for how to methods books, e thnographe rs are much le ss fussy, pre fe rring instead to suck it and see , keeping the ir plans roomy and adaptive , perhaps occasionally offering the odd aphorism or pie ce of advice to would-be rese archerslike : I sugge st you buy a note book and pencil (Kroeber to graduate stude nt), Get yourse lf a decent hampe r from Fortnum and Mason s and kee p away from the native women (Evans-Pritchard), and Make your will, buy yourself some shorts with locust-proof pocke t flaps, and be sure you have a good stock of nail varnish for the local dandie s (Barley)! O bviously, the desire to preserve some of the mystique of anthropology is a factor in this, but the main point he re (and very un-O B) is that many e thnographe rs believe there are no rule s as such, and the only way to do e thnography is to just get out and do it. Ethnography is not so much method in the madne ss, as madne ss in the method, the re ality be ing four thousand page s of hurrie d fieldnote s and vast stockpile s of scattered memory (Gee rtz, 1995, p. 88) . Hardly a method at all really. However, qualitative researche rs and writers might still do well to conside r this alte rnative , and ask what may be learne d from it. Robert Merton says somewhere that finding the right que stion to ask is more difficult than answering it, and certainly the view of e thnographe rs is that the place to find the right que stion is not in a textbook but out in the fie ld, by following your nose . Geertzs advice afte r ye ars of doing fieldwork is simple but powe rful: I le arn by going (Ibid, p. 133) . Pe rhaps what qualitative rese arch in ge ne ral ne eds at this time are fewer detaile d methods and more broad strategems. If the ide a of grounde d research is so popular, how about the notion of grounde d methodology? Eth nogr ap h y as Paradigm

Whe n all is said and done , write s Czarniawska-Joe rges, anthropology might, afte r all, be se en as a frame of mind (1992, p. 195) . It is not so much about doing and technique as about thinking, about looking at the world and one self in a particular kind of way; in short a paradigm (Sanday, 1979) . The core notion is one of culture -as-text, in which the primary tool of unde rstanding is an interpretive reading of that text (Geertz, 1973; Schne ider, 1987) .

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The key to the e thnographic frame of mind is to learn to think culturally about a socie ty or organization, and this, I would argue , reve als many things that prese nt approache s, especially the manage mentce ntric one s, are missing: that culture s cannot be create d by leade rs, that assumptions about strong culture s and a consensus of meanings are fatally flawe d, that organizations are not pyramids but multicultural milie ux that have little re spe ct for traditional concepts of hie rarchy and authority, and many more (Bate, 1994; Parke r, 1995) . Perhaps the greate st contribution the e thnographic paradigm can make to organization and manage ment studie s is to challe nge the highly influe ntial KISS (Kee p it simple stupid) paradigm found in the best-selling busine ss books. Cultural analysis runs counte r to the preference for simplification that is prevale nt in social science rese arch (LeVine, 1984); it stubbornly denies the obviousne ss of the obvious, and it is de eply suspicious about whe the r common se nse is, as the best se lle rs love to te ll us, always good se nse . In short, it challe nge s e ve ry pede stal upon which the popular busine ss te xts have bee n constructe d, and to this e xtent offe rs manage ment studie s a radical perspective, and inde ed perhaps the radical perspective that the field curre ntly lacks. Ce ntral to ethnography is criticality (Golde n-Biddle & Locke , 1993) : the way in which authors challe nge their reade rs to que stion and re-examine the ir take n-forgrante d be lie fs. Contrast this with the best-selling busine ss authors who are always claiming that what the y say is so simple , so obvious, and so commonse nsical that it is be yond que stion. Eth nogr ap h y as a Way of Writin g Ethnography is art, scie nce, and craft rolle d into one . As artists we see k to capture e xpe riences in image s and re pre sentations which symbolize reality; in this re gard, expre ssion is more important than precision. As scientists, we are data hunte rgathe rers who go out and colle ct information, analyze it, and forge it into testable hypothe ses and theories. And as craftsmen and women we are write rs who write ; issue s of style and a pride in good writing are paramount, not be cause of any misplace d lite rary ambition, but be cause the ve ry mate rials of theory making are words, phrase s, and sentences. Forms of theory and forms of discourse are inseparable . O r as Van Maane n puts it: Theory is a matter of words not worlds; of maps not territorie s; or representations not re alitie s (1995b, p. 134) . With regard to the last point, a lot of OB writing is just plain bad! This is not surprising in a discipline where writing is se en as a secondary or mop-up activity. Ethnography, on the othe r hand, puts lite rary qualitie s and ambitions back on the age nda, take s the te xtuality of theories more seriously, explore s the terra incognita of lite rary practice s (ibid) , and be gins

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to think of the author as a performer within the the atre of language . As the comic says, it really is how you te ll e m how you re count your fieldwork, your narrative style that determine s whe ther people smile, are engage d or persuade d by what the y hear. Proof, truth, validity are as much an issue of style as of conte nt. O B, as ethnography, has to be conside red as performance , as a form of interte xtual and polyvocal re pre se ntation, as a discipline whose theories and concepts are as much create d by the writing as by the reality itself, that create s and constitute s the re ality of organizations as much as it capture s it. O f course, not all anthropology is good writing; it is the commitm e nt to it that is im portan t. That com mitm e nt must also stre tch to expe rime ntation with diffe re nt styles. This again is whe re O B might gain from taking a look at ethnography, since in re cent years the re has be en an explosion of style s, and a richne ss and varie ty that pe rhaps no othe r social scie nce can match: fictional, poe tic, critical, co-constructe d, multicultural, fe minist, autobiographical, and postmode rn. The influe nce of poststructuralism and deconstructionism has be en particularly marke d, the ir main role being to unde rmine the distinctions betwee n diffe re nt genres of writing: betwee n those of writers and critics, betwe en fiction and nonfiction, inde e d be tween lite rary and technical writing generally (Clifford, 1988; Hammersle y & Atkinson, 1995, p. 14) . What e thnography offers OB is the prospe ct of casting off some of the bonds of realism and positivism in which it has bee n wrappe d for so long, of e xpanding the re alms of scie ntific discourse into literary discourse . This is Paul Atkinson s (1990) conce pt of the ethnographic imagination, which approache s social re se arch and writing almost in the manne r of the lite rary critic, and puts the exciting idea of a poe tics of organizations firmly onto the age nda. The proce ss may already be quite advance d in some quarte rs: Rose (1990) , for example , sugge sts that the nove l is invading and transforming the scie ntific monograph, not through the use of fiction particularly, but through the de scriptive se tting of the scene, the narration of the local pe ople s own storie s, the use of dialogue , and the notation by the author of e motions, subje ctive re actions, and involve ment in ongoing activitie s. Watson (1995) claims this is an exagge ration, but, farfe tche d or not, it cannot be ignore d. OB must not get left behind. THE TEXTURE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH Anothe r way to look at the contrasts be tween anthropology and O B is in te rms of broad texture and weave . Howeve r, any generalization he re will ne ed to be made with some caution, since anthropology is a coat of many colors, and pride s itself upon its rich mix of the traditional with the

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avant-garde , and the middle of the road with the faddish e ve n at times outlandish. It also embraces a wealth of diffe rent style s: ethnographic realism, confe ssional ethnography, dramatic ethnography, critical ethnography, se lf- or auto-e thnography, sociopoe tics, re fle xive e thnography, and many more (Ellis & Bochne r, 1996; Van Maane n, 1995a) . In his book, The Awakenin g G ian t, Pe ttigre w attacks research on organization the ory and be havior for be ing ahistorical, aconte xtual, and aproce ssual in its approach and outlook (1985, p. xix, Chap. 2; re pe ated 1995, p. 93) . He is probably right on all three counts. Anthropology, on the othe r hand, is very much the opposite in e ach of the se re spe cts, and to this e xtent presents manage ment re search with some re al alternative s for future de velopme nt. Historical Manage me nt scie nce s do not on the whole te nd to be historicall yminde d, hence the ir prefere nce for forward-looking conce pts such as vision, fore cast, plan, and so on. Anthropology puts the past back on to the age nda, giving it the weight conve ntional organizational and manageme nt mode ls lack (Bate, 1994). The reason is that the present (and future ) only becomes meaningful when it is set in the conte xt of its past remember Rabinows observation (cite d in Linstead, 1997, p. 90) that thought is nothing more and nothing le ss than a historically locatable set of practice s. The anthropologists intere st is not in the past as such, but in the living history (Malinowski, 1945) of the society or organization, the ways of thinking and be havior that continue to live on in, and mould and shape , the pre sent in othe r words, culture . An e xample of this would be the isms or cultural schema that I found in my own 4-ye ar study of British Rail. The se habits of thought, many of them more than a century old but still very much alive and kicking in the organization, were playing havoc with its day-to-day manage ment proce sse s. It was these mentalitie s that lay behind the decline and stagnation of the organization (Bate , 1990) . Other rese arch conducte d in manufacturing companie s re vealed similar de bilitating cultural hangove rs from the past (Bate, 1984) . A re cent e xample of good historical conte xtualization is Georgina Borns (1995) e thnography of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche e t de Coordination Acoustique /Musique ), Pierre Boule zs compute r music re se arch and production institute in Paris, which skillfully (and at great le ngth!) reveals how long-standing contradictions be tween mode rnism and postmodernism in music, mediate d by Boule z up until his retirement in 1992 and subse quently by his succe ssors, found constant e xpre ssion in IRCAMs liv-

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ing culture and the e veryday processes through which meanings were negotiate d and renegotiate d by the membe rs. History should not actually be studie d historically, howe ve r. It is in the everyday that the anthropologist searches for the past, in such things as rite s and rituals, myths, storie s and sagas, ballads, and ane cdote s. This kind of activity is one which a small number of organization writers have picke d up on, albe it at time s te diously de constructive ly (Boje , 1995; Boje e t al., 1982; Martin, 1982; Tommerup & Loubier, 1996; Trice & Be yer, 1991; Young, 1989; the latte r be ing an intere sting analysis of the significance to a group of shop floor girls in a Northe rn British rainwe ar factory of wearing a St. George s Day lape l rose). The function of such myths and rituals has be en to bring the past forward, and ensure its continue d contemporary relevance .

Con textu al O ne of the root notions of anthropology is that thought and be havior cannot be prope rly unde rstood outside the context in which they are situated; it is knowle dge of context that re nders the m intelligible . Conte xt here can re fe r to te mporal (Gell, 1992) , physical, or institutional context (Dennis, Henrique s, & Slaughte r, 1956) . For e xample , a recent ethnography of a hospital conducte d by my colle ague s and myse lf (Bate e t al., 1997) reve ale d how the proble ms of the hospital weake sse s in the top team, failings in the clinical dire ctorate structure , low morale , stress, IT proble ms, and poor re lationships betwee n the manage ment and se nior clinicians far from be ing exclusive ly local (as many be lie ve d), were the re sult of the comple x interplay of diffe rent organizational, profe ssional, Trust, NHS, and political conte xts within which they were embedde d. A diffe rent conception of context in he alth care is found in Glase r and Strauss s (1967) study of the aware ness conte xts of dying, which range d from departments whe re patie nts aware ness of death was high (cancer wards) to those whe re it was low to none xiste nt (premature baby service and neurology) . O ne of the stre ngths of anthropology is that it involve s putting the individual back in his social setting, back into the contexts in which the action takes place, and obse rving him in his daily activities. By establishing links between the individual and the social, the micro and the macro, it reaches, or at least claims that it can reach, parts other discipline s cannot reach:
O ur the ory is our stre ngth. Manage me nt the ory is drive n by sociology and psychology and has difficulty bridging the gap betwe en the macro and micro levels of behaviour. We have the ability to bridge that gap. We can see patte rns. We see ways to understand the be haviour of the individuals as part of the patte rn of behaviour as a whole. (Jordan, 1994, p. 9)

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It is neverthe le ss becoming abundantly cle ar as time goe s on that anthropologists are coming unde r increasing pressure to radically revise their concept of whole s and conte xts to take account of the postmode rn age and the growth and emergence of the new globally-e ngage d, postindustrial organization. As Hatch and Schultz e xplain:
Studying culture in a postindustrial context demands that we leave behind the notion of isolated, socialize d, organizational tribes. In postindustrial times, tribes become fragmented, their cohere nce shatte red and re placed by multiplicity and the pluralism of meaning and interpretation. In this framing of culture, meaning is carried by texts rather than tribes and these texts trave l through electronic space where they are ope n to num e rous re ad ings by lim itless ano nym ous inte rpre te rs whose interpretations produce other te xts in an endless and open-e nde d herme ne utic. (1995, pp. 2 3)

Pe ople are saying it is time for anthropologists to stop see ing whole s that are not there, to che ck out of the Grand Hotel (Collins, 1989) , whe re eve rything was, as it were, unde r the one roof, and to e mbrace virtual conte xts and the concept of organizations in hype rspace . It is time , they say, to stop talking about in the round and to re place it with a conce pt of the great wide ope n, not so much holistic as boundaryle ss and infinite . This is part of a wide r trend in anthropology, in which the e arlie r emphasis on stability, whole ne ss, harmony, and continuity (the unifie d corpus ) is incre asingly giving way to the conce pt of culture as contested, fragmented, temporal, and emergent (Clifford, 1986, p. 19) ; as a loose lycouple d, pluralistic syste m, consisting of a multiplicity of human communitie s, of a mix of similarity and diffe rence, conve rgence and dive rge nce (Bate, 1994, p. 71; Geertz, 1984; Paul, Mille r, & Paul, 1994) . Corporate culture write rs need to take note : the ir conce pt of culture is, and always has be en, very differe nt from that of the anthropologist, with much more emphasis on similarity, conve rgence, share dne ss, and normative consensus (Parke r, 1995). As Parke r showed, in one of the fe w organization studie s on this issue (a medium-size d manufacturin g company calle d Vulcan ), the se writers have got it se riously wrong. Eve n a single occupational culture within an organization, in this case the manage ment culture , is characte rize d by fragme ntation of outlook and perspective, a fe eling of family, ye t at othe r time s a fee ling of nonfamily. Young s study (1989) is anothe r example , similar in many ways to Parke rs. This de bate and the atte mpt to re conce ptualize and rede fine conte xt is part of an eve n bigge r issue of devising new syste ms of discourse in anthropology (a challe nge that must apply equally to organization studie s) that can ke ep up, more or less, with what is going on in the world out the re . Geertz is far from clear what the se may be, but is convince d (as I am) that they will have to be more ad hoc and imperfect than anything we have see n be fore:

1158 One works ad hoc and ad interim, piecing toge ther thousand-ye ar histories with thre e -wee k massacr e s, inte rnational conflicts with mu nicipal e cologie s. Th e economics of rice or olives, the politics of ethnicity or religion, the workings of language or war, must, to some e xte nt, be soldered into the final construction . . . . The result, inevitably, is unsatisfactory, lumbering, shaky, and badly formed: a grand contraption. (Geertz, 1995, p. 20)

Bate

The othe r thing Geertz is sure about is that anthropology will have to become e ven more process-oriented than it has be en in the past, and it is to this issue that we now turn. Processual
Organizations are formal in the sense of having explicit tasks to accomplish and informal in the sense of the way membe rs continually negotiate with one another in the interpretation and carrying out of such tasks. The promise of e thnography is the pre sentation of the work culture that emerges from the interplay betwe en these so-called formal and informal aspe cts of organizational life. (V an Maane n et al., in Schwartzman, 1993, p. vii)

While be ing care ful to maintain this dual emphasis, anthropology s main contribution lies on the informal side of the e quation. This is not surprising: anthropology did afte r all inve nt the conce pt of the informal system and the informal organization. Hawthorne and the Bank Wiring O bse rvation Room was about informality and informal relationships, as was Roys (1952, 1954, 1959) , and 30 ye ars later, Burowoys (1979) classic rese arch in a Chicago machine shop (quota re strictions, goldbricking) . In similar ve in was Me lville Dalton s (1959) participant obse rver study of the schisms and ties betwee n official and unofficial action among manage rs in four companie s. Studying the informal proce ss is very much a que stion of focusing on the conteste d te rrain upon which diffe rent subculture s or native vie w paradigms (Gregory, 1983) fight it out and establish the terms of the ir fragile coexiste nce. Gouldne r (1954) coine d the term indulge ncy patte rn to describe the informal, and always taut and dynamic, give -and-take system betwe en manage ment and worker which functione d as a cushion or lubricant to the re lationship. This involve d manage rs re fraining from enforcing obe die nce obligations in return for worke r coope ration, for e xample, waiving the formal rule to allow worke rs to borrow company tools and equipme nt, which exte nded to letting the m take dynamite home for use when they went fishing in the local lake . Very e ffe ctive ! It was Gouldne r and Burowoys studie s that first drew atte ntion to the wide range of game s worke rs playe d, by no means all of them hostile to manage ment inte rests. In fact, the intere sting dynamic was that of collu sion betwe en manage rs and worke rs in the mainte nance of the game worke rs playe d games with manage ment not always again st it; playing the game e s-

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tablishe d a common inte re st. Industrial relations was therefore not just about conflict, it was also about subtle forms of collaboration, in which te rms of inte rde pe nde nce were agre ed be tween the partie s on the basis of agre ed informal rule s. (See also Morey & Luthans, 1991, in this journal, for a discussion of dyadic alliance s in informal organizations.) The game was always unstable , with each side always pushing for that little bit more. The anthropologists view of culture is therefore diffe re nt again, altoge ther more dynamic than that of the corporate culture write rs in manage ment and organization studie s. As we have alre ady said, culture , to the m, is not the static or fixed entity conce ived by the latte r (and give n away by their constant refere nce to the culture of the organization) , but a proce ss essentially a political processin which e xisting meanings are constantly being conte ste d in rough-and-tumble fashion, rene gotiate d, and redefined by the partie s (Wolf, 1982, p. 387) . The task is to track, describe , and e xplain that proce ss. The re is the re fore a good deal more to proce ss than studying informality, in fact it sugge sts a wholly differe nt outlook on organization, one which is wider and which picks up the social, non job-re late d aspe cts of organizational life :
The jum ping off point for this [informal, expressive ] approach is the mundane observation that more things are going on in organizations than ge tting the job done. People do ge t the job done ... but pe ople in organizations also gossip, joke, knife one another, initiate romantic involve ments, cue new employees on ways of doing the least amount of work that still avoids hassle s from a supervisor, talk sports and arrange picnics. Now it se ems to us quite a presumption that work activities should have some kind of ascendant hold on our attention, whereas picnic arranging should not. (Pacanowsky & O Donnell-Trujillo, 1982, pp. 116-117)

It has to be said that O B is still a long way off giving picnics the weight the y de se rve ! It also ne e ds ge ne rally to ge t be tte r at unde rstanding change , not as a single line or parade that can be watche d as it passe s (Geertz, 1995, p. 4), but as swirls, confluxions, and inconstant conne ctions; clouds colle cting, clouds dispe rsing . . . large r and smalle r stre ams, twisting and turning and now and then crossing, running toge the r, separating again (p. 2). Anything, in fact, that capture s the conne ctedne ss of things that happe n. Clearly the traditional conce pt of informality, and the interplay of formal and informal, doe s not have all the answe rs to change , but it doe s have some of them. Anthropology diffe rs fundame ntally from O B in one more important re spe ct not allude d to in Pe ttigre ws phrase , nam e ly that it is actor-ce nte re d, inside r-out rathe r than outside r-in in its approach. Arguably, this is an are a that offe rs O B the gre ate st scope for moving in some ne w dire ctions.

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Actor-Cen tered

Anthropology s central task is represe nting the live s of othe rs, and in particular conve ying a flavor of what it looks and fee ls like from the native s point of vie w ( Malinowski, 1922) What is it like to work here? Why is it this way? What happe ns, or does not happe n, because of this? (Jone s, Moore , & Snyde r, 1988, p. 45) are the que stions from which one pie ces toge the r how participants made sense of it the mselve s (Gre gory, 1983, p. 366) . Although a numbe r of disciplin e s have since adopte d the actor-ce ntere d approach, it should not be forgotte n that it was anthropology that first inve nted it. The new infle ction it put on research was subtle but profound: Inste ad of asking, What do I se e the se people doing? we must ask, What do the se people see themselves doing? (Spradle y & McCurdy, 1972, p. 9) . And also e xtre mely challe nging. For what is obvious and commonse nse to the native s ofte n pre sents itse lf defiantly as no se nse or nonse nse to the researcher: The anthropologist s proble m is to discove r how othe r people create orde r out of what appe ars to him to be utte r chaos (Tyle r, 1969 quote d in Spradle y & McCurdy) . Some prefer to regard actor-ce ntere d as an ambition rathe r than some thing actually attainable a quest, eve n an he roic gesture . After all, the cautionarie s argue , we may get close to the native s point of view but ultimate ly we have to reconstruct it through our own frame of re fe rence . The story will ne ver be a te lling but a re telling, ne ve r a transcription but a translation. The re really is no such thing as inside r out, only an ambition to get close r to the native s, and a commitme nt to learn ing something about the ir world and what they make of it all. The re are othe r reasons for the shortage of genuine ly actor-cente red studie s available . Nigel Barle y, The Innoce nt Anthropologist, jokingly (but part-truthfully) informs us that most anthropologists do not go out on fieldwork to hear about othe r people s proble msperish the thought but more often to find a way of working through their own pe rsonal proble ms, be the y a broke n marriage or a lack of promotion back home . Fieldwork will give you something else to worry about, he counse ls. Remember also, he adds, that many neve r accepted this part of the ir credo in the first place , always believing that they had a faculty of shrewd insight far supe rior to that of the native s the mselve s! (1989, p. 9). Anothe r proble m is that today, in the overstudie d world of organizations, it is actually quite difficult to find a real native among the swirling hoards of cosmopolitans and intellectual half-casts (part-time MBAs, O pen Unive rsity stude nts, etc.), as I found to my cost whe n I was doing my doctoral rese arch in the London docks. Being close to so many unive rsities, the docks were always te eming with rese archers, all fighting among themselve s for a small cle aring in the jungle in which to comple te the ir 10-month

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fieldwork sentence. Afte r chasing around the docks like a madman for several weeks I finally got my first volunte er. He sat down in the caravan (which served as the ste wards office ) and I produce d my questionnaire . He looke d down at it, and then up at me: Christ, not Herzberg again, is it? Afte r that I had difficulty be lie ving the re was any such thing as the native s point of vie w. If the re are all the se difficultie s, the question must be aske d, why bothe r? The answe r can only be found by re ading those e thnographie s that have actually succe e de d in bre aking through into the native s world: Gamst s (1980) study of hogge rs, in which he use s his 6.5 ye ars of railroad engine service employme nt to develop an e thnography of the rail world, from the perspe ctive of the engine man on the Ce ntral City and Urbana railroad; Kathle e n Gregorys (1983) inve stigation into the native vie w paradigms of compute r technical profe ssionals in Silicon Valle y compute r companie s; and Christine McCourt Pe rring s (1994) ethnography of mental patie nts moving from hospital into the community (cited late r). The words rich and re al-life come to mind, but there is more to it than this. In so many of the se studie s there is a powe rful and exciting se nse of genuine and ofte n surprising discove ry, of a way of life, paradigm or world view that the outside r-cente red approach would surely have missed. Such studie s le nd support to my own pe rsonal aphorism that insight always comes from the inside . Although most manage ment and organizational rese arch is qualitative , very little of it is in fact anthropologically actor-cente red. Harvard-type case studie s abound, inde e d are the preferred form for research and teaching, but only a small proportion of them se t out to te ll the story from the inside , as it is live d by those who live it. An obvious advantage of actor-cente red re se arch is that it re duce s the risk of your ge tting it wrong, of mistaking or substituting your own meanings for those of the pe ople actually involve d. We know how easy it is to do this. Take Jean-Pie rre Bruns wonde rful study (1995) of the line men of Q ue be c. The se are the pe ople who daily ope rate many fe et above the ground on high voltage cable s carrying anything betwe en 120 and 34,500 volts. The appare nt image to the outside r is of a group of high-wire , macho dare de vils flagrantly taking risks with their own live s:
The y do not bother to install all the protective device s require d by safety standards, and some e lectrified equipment remains e xpose d and unprotecte d . . . . Practices such as these contrave ne the safety code and are conde mned by manage ment, which accuse s employees of being reckless, incompe tent and offhand in the face of danger. (p. 7)

Howeve r, the reality vie wed through the eyes of the line men could not have be en more differe nt:

1162 The y explained that cove ring every possible risk of accidental contact is not the best solution. The working environmen t become s too cluttered and cramped; the numbe r of actions, ge sture s and movements increase s tenfold, which le ngthens production time and cre ates an added risk of accidental contact when the protective de vices are being installed or remove d . . . . If you re too protected, you end up not seeing what you re doing. Its like wearing three pairs of safety goggle s because the thing might explode! In fact, its worse, be cause with three pairs of goggle s you can t see at all and so the thing will almost certainly explode ! [lineman] . (p. 8)

Bate

What is inte resting here is not just the behavioral split be twee n the formal syste m and the informal syste m (se e earlie r), but the se paration at a dee per cognitive and cultural le vel of the expe rt the ory from the folk the ory. This fundame ntal distinction has come to form the backbone of the re lative ly ne w fie ld of cognitive anthropology (cf. Bate , 1997; DAndrade , 1995; Holland & Q uinn, 1987) , but it doe s not, however, appe ar in any frameworks of OB theory, not e ve n organizational cognition. This is a pity, since not only is this research be ginning to reve al many ne w things about the relationship be tween mind, culture , and action, it is also ge tting to grips with the most important theory of all: the the ory that drive s e veryday behavior, the mundane the ory, the theory in use that we still know precious little about. And what of the future ge ne rally for the concepts of actor-ce ntere d and repre sentation? In a recent te le vision interview, Michae l Buerk, the BBC re porte r who first broke the ne ws of the Ethiopian famine to a shocke d world some 15 years ago, was aske d what he thought would be the diffe rence s if that same e vent were re porte d today. He re plie d that the native s would, inde e d must, be give n much gre ater opportunity to speak for themselves, inste ad of having to stand there pathe tically, as a sile nt backdrop to the ir own trage dy. Just as he felt incre asing une ase with all forms of mediate d re pre se ntation, so too are anthropologists having similar feelings. As Geertz has so e loque ntly put it, Depiction is power. The re prese ntation of othe rs is not e asily se parable from the manipulation of the m (1995, p. 130) . Anthropology carries the taint of what Dele uze has calle d the indignity of spe aking for othe rs (cite d in Khan, 1996, p. 3), and although this may be a bit extre me, most pe ople now acce pt that the te xt can no longe r spe ak with an unque stione d and automatic authority for an othe r defined as unable to speak for itse lf (ibid) . The se arch in future must the re fore be for more direct to came ra ways of getting at the native s point of vie w, more native anthropology for example (Be rnard & Pe draza, 1989) , more in-culture re searche rs, and more e quivale nts of the home movie . Social scie ntists must be gin to think about substituting de le gation for re pre se ntation, and abandoning at least some of the excesses of ventriloquism and the cursed autocue .

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THE QUALITIES OF GOOD ETHNOGRAPHY I should now like to focus on what I see as the distinctive qualitie s of e thnographic re search, those that might conce ivably add to organization rese arch if they were to be more wide ly adopte d. Th e Bein g There Quality Good e thnography is about communicating the impre ssion of having truly be e n the re , of having had close -in contact with far-out live s (Geertz, 1988, p. 6), while at the same time making the re ade r fe el he or she has been the re too.7 We can fe el it, taste it, smell it. It is e xpe rie ncenear (Geertz, 1984) . Like all art it has an e xpre ssive quality, such as one finds in a poem by Lorca or Wilfre d Owen, a pie ce of simple prose by Azorin, an exotic nove l by Ben Okri (The Fam ished Road be ing a good example of the blurring of the real and imaginary one now finds in postmode rn ethnography) , a piece of trave l writing by Gerald Brenan, Henry Swinburne , or Some rset Maugham. Be ing there is about conve ying qualitie s of intense familiarity with the subje cts and the ir ways, of knowing, of having a stree t cred of which eve n the native s themselve s would approve . The succe ssful account drips with authe nticity and plausibility (Golde n-Biddle & Locke, 1993), and it le aves one in no doubt that one is ge tting it straight and in the raw as the result of the authors le ngthy pe rsonal contact with the people they are writing about. In the very be st of e thnographic accounts, the te xt becomes a window rathe r than a page . It is art that has the monopoly of the being-the re quality, not anthropology, and as in art the truth-value of the text is more important than its fact-value . As an account it is not good because it has discove red the facts, but because it has succe eded in creating its own truth: it has e xpre ssive powe r re gardle ss of its factual accuracy, and stands inde pende ntly of its factual conte nt. As Gee rtz (1984, p. 10) states, to be moved by someone like Macbe th, you do not have to ask whe the r the re re ally was a man like that. Some things move us whether or not the y are actually real. The create d illusion substitute s for, ultimate ly be comes more powe rful than, reality itself (Bate, 1994, p. 248) . No wonde r scie ntists ge t uncomfortable with anthropology! And so the y should: anthropology was, after all, born out of the romantic rebe llion against scie nce (Schwe der, 1984) ,
7

As Hobbs and May (1993, p. ix) observe we may in fact be talking about two qualities not one, namely be ing there and being here : the author is able to write the re port because he has bee n there ; we are able to read it because he is he re . To be an e thnographer is to be in two places at the same time.

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and the conviction that one could know the world through things othe r than evide nce and re ason, most notably the senses and the imagination. Howe ver, for le sser mortals, the be st guide to be ing there is still the photograp he rs aphorism , If you re not good e nough, you re not close enough. For e xample , only a really close-in anthropologist would know that you can tell the plainclothe s unde rcover police from the thousands of ordinary football fans by the fact that they wear ear-muffs with collars up to conceal the e ar-pie ces and radio wire (Armstrong, 1993, p. 4). Now that is close up, so close in fact that there is something approaching comple te removal of the me-anthropologist you-native frame work, and a major blurring of roles. Thus, John Van Maane n (1988) becom es, for a time at least, a sort of police officer with the Los Ange les Police Department, and Armstrong (1993) a sort of football hooligan with She ffield United supporte rs. As to the reade rs, we are also sort of the re with the m, in the thick of it, in the back se at of a police car, or running wild with the mob. Some of my favorite be ing there s range from the tragic to the comic: Nicky Jame ss (1993) moving account of the exquisite emotional control of a young cance r patie nt and his family; our own boy scientists encounte r with Big Harold in the So I like being a monke y incide nt in a che mical plant (Bate & Mangham, 1981, pp. 20-21) ; the frighte ning journe y into the he art of darkne ss of a London police station (Chesshyre , 1989) ; Nige l Barleys ble eding chunks of raw re ality as he e ncounte rs malaria, drunke n missionarie s and chiefs, devious informants, and proble ms with the language of the Dowayos of Came roon ( Excuse me, I said, I am cooking some meat. At least that was what I had intende d to say; owing to tonal error I declare d to an astonishe d audie nce , Excuse me. I am copulating with the blacksmith (1986, p. 57) , but (talking of ble eding chunks of raw reality) thankfully he missed the circumcision ceremony (1987); Kunda s cree py account of Dave Carpe nters pre se ntation Techs Strate gy for the Ninetie s (1992, pp. 95-106) ; and Tracy Kidde rs (1982) gripping story of the making of the 32-bit mini-compute r Eagle (his Prologue offers a dramatic sample r), brilliantly summed up by Playboy as having be en writte n with a reporte rs e ye , a nove lists heart and a te chnician s unde rstanding. Pe rhaps that is the se cret to Being There and the reason why there are so fe w works that succe ed in capturing this glitte ring, but elusive , quality. Mu ndan eity an d Everyd ayn ess
Detail, meticulous detail. (Gardner & Moore, 1964, p. 96)

Anthropology is about the e veryday expe rience of a society or organization, the eve ryday things that people get up to in the course of the ir eve ryday live s. If O B ever ne eded a model for a phe nome nology of or-

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ganizations this would sure ly be it, because the whole thrust of anthropology is towards accessing mundane systems of reason and behaviour (Pollne r, 1987) , and penetrating the intimacy of life (Latour & Woolgar, 1979, p. 17) . But why would anyone want to ge t intimate in this way? The first answer is that the re is no othe r way to study process and change :
. . . it is pre cisely at this leve l of the eve ryday, at the level of the detailed social proce sses informing relationships be twee n organizational interests, that the content of organ izational culture is continuously form e d an d re affirme d . . . . The mundane ity of the everyday is an illusion, for it is within these details that the dynamics of organizational culture come into be ing and use. (Young, 1989, p. 201)

The second answe r is that it produce s a quality in a research account that no other method give s, and provide s a unique way of illustrating and explaining theore tical issues in e ve ryday, e xpe riential terms. See , for example , Putnam and Mumbys (1993) account of the real-life stresses of having to work in and follow the e motional rules of a strong culture organization. The quality in que stion is not easy to define, but has something to do with telling it like it is, unre constructe d, and naturalistically. Material that would othe rwise e nd up as out-take s on the cutting room floor is re taine d, so as to ground the study, and give it vrit or ve risimilitude . For e xample, Dubinskas s (1988) book of re adings on high-te chnology organizations is bursting with de tail about particle accelerators, switchyards and de te ctors, polarize d e le ctron beam sources, and spe cialize d machine s and processe s. The re is a meticulous attention to detail: the re are maps, diagrams, and minute -by-minute activity charts. But to what e nd? The answer is to re veal things we did not know already, that surprise , eve n stun us. O n the mild surprise end of the scale is the reve lation that scie ntific laboratorie s are not at all like most of us imagine them to be . Even in high risk e nvironme nts, like a particle acce lerator laboratory, life is conducte d in a relaxe d, e ven sloppy way, much as one might find in any old run-down manufacturing plant producing fe rtilize rs or blotting pape r. For e xample , after reading Trawee ks (1988, pp. 46-47) description of the re search yard at SLAC, one is unlike ly ever again to se e scie nce in te rms of little men in white coats sile ntly working in sterile white e nvironme nts. Even more surprising discove rie s come when we dig dee per into the eve ryday life of the scientist. Mundane naturalistic re se arch has revealed that scientific method is large ly a myth! The proce sse s through which scie ntists build the factity of their real world are in the fundame ntals no diffe re nt from anyone else s. I am drawing here on the se minal, 2-ye ar study by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979) in the Roger Guille min laboratory at the Salk Institute , in which they examine d the eve ryday scientific

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work involve d in establishing a fact. What they found was that fact was constructe d from talk, and that is basically what scientists did all day: the y talke d. (The doing of scie nce was le ft to the technicians.) From the ir analysis of the microproce sse s in laboratory conve rsations and everyday activitie s the authors showe d that hard data, pure ly scientific and te chnical conside rations, and obje ctivity were only part of the story of scie ntific discove ry and the winning of Nobe l prize s! The re mainde r was provide d by a kind of social knowle dge and subje ctivity one would have thought unacceptable to scie nce. O the r pe rsonal favorite s of mine that capture the mundane quality of organizational life are Gary Fine s (1988) study of the daily ups and downs of kitche n restaurant workers, and Ste phe n Barle ys (1983) study of the eve ryday live s (and de aths! ) of fune ral directors. Polyp hon y an d Rich Descrip tion Polyphony is all the talk in anthropology at the moment (though sadly once again we find a lot more talk than action in the organizational are na) . And if not polyphony the n multivocality (Martin, 1992, 1995) , polyvocality (Clifford, 1986, p. 104) , and the plurality of subje ctivitie s (Collinson, 1992, p. 44) , all very similar so far as one can te ll, and all re lating back to the linguistic and rhe torical ve rsion of social constructionism found in the dialogical work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Volosinov (Clifford, 1983, 1986; Shotte r, 1993, p. 14) . So what is this magic ingre dient? At a simple le ve l, polyphony is about people speaking for themselves (Kante r, 1977, p. 5) the polyphony, though more usually cacophony, of voice s. It is a m ethod of representation, usually capture d in some way by exte nsive verbatim quotation and close scripting and reportage of eve ryday events. At a more comple x leve l it conce rns the whole nature of the re lationship between author and text (author-ity) , and sugge sts a rhe torical or writing strategy (scrapbook, collage ) for e stablishing authorial presence and te xtual authority. Inte rest in polyphony has partly come about as the re sult of e thnographe rs growing conce rn about spe aking for othe rs (see Michae l Bue rk earlie r), and the de sire to find some way round this:
The developing critical turn within the discipline has thrown into que stion the assumption that the e thnographer can translate or converge upon the reality of he r subjects . . . . The ethnographic account is seen instead as a mediation of voices through the text: a translation that does not translate. And having re jecte d the idea of speaking for, the issue instead becomes one of polyphony, of voices in the text, of deve loping a cultural poetics that is an interplay of voices and positioned utterances (Clifford, 1986) , a writing that is driven by the re cognition, rather than the suppre ssion or integration, of otherness and difference. (Khan, 1996, p. 3)

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Polyphony is ideally suite d to organizations, which are by the ir ve ry nature pluralistic and multivocal, and made up of a rich dive rsity of interse cting diale cts, idiom s and profe ssional jargons ( the he te roglossia ). Theirs is a world riven by multiculturality and de structive tribalism, paradox and contradiction, competing value s and contests of meaning (Alvesson & Sandkull, 1988; Bate e t al., 1997; Darme r, 1991; Dent, 1990; Duenas, 1991; Q uinn & McGrath, 1985; Young, 1989) . What bette r way, then, of capturing this quality than through the medium of the polyphonic nove l:
The polyphonic nove l is . . . a carnivalesque are na of diversity . . . a utopian te xtual space where discursive comp lexity, the dialogical interplay of voice s, can be accommo date d. In the nove ls of Dostoye vsky or Dicke ns he [ Clifford] values precisely their re sistance to totality, and his ideal novelist is a ve ntriloquist in nineteenth-century parlance a polyphonist. He do the police in different voice s, a liste ne r exclaims admiringly of the boy Sloppy, who reads publicly from the ne wspaper in Our Mutual Friend. (Rabinow, 1986, pp. 246-247, summarizing the vie ws of James Clifford)

Hence, we have Sloppy Kante r (1977) doing the men and women of the corporation in differe nt voice s, as we have Sloppy Martin (1992) doing the voice s of O Z CO e mploye e s in a rathe r unbe autiful mosaic of quotations (1995, p. 231) , and all jolly good stuff, too. What both studie s unde rline , howe ve r, is the fact that lots of quotations and enormous chunks of organizational reality, ne at, are not the be all and e nd all of polyphonic ethnography. The main issue is where the author choose s to position himself or herself in re lation to the actors, text, and audie nce. Czarniawska-Joe rges (1992) is in no doubt that this is where Kante rs work (and I would add a lot of qualitative work in general) falls down:
The book is constituted like a tele vision programme with Kanter as hostess, giving air now to the people of the corporation, then to the re searche rs. The re is nothing wrong with this kind of formula, in fact, it is ve ry popular and highly legitimate. Still, it goes against the feeling of how the life is over there produced by thick de scription; it is a projection of slides rather than a film. (p. 101)

Hostess is cle arly not polyphonist: polyphonist is back room boy not principal actor, orche strator not conductor. The quality of polyphony is achie ve d by actually weake ning the author role , by standing back, and spre ading authorship around (Martin, 1995, p. 231) . The next ste p is taking the middle man, the author, out comple te ly. This is virtually what we did in our e thnography of a pharmace uticals company (Bate & Mangham, 1981), whe re for a lot of the time we le ft it to re al life and the native s to speak it for the mselve s. Se e in particular Chapte r 7: the dreade d microwave affair! This must be done care fully, howe ve r, as the re are limits to which authorship can be abandone d to free market polyphony (note how a lot of mode rn music has lost touch with the listener). The fact is that data doe s not

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always speak for itse lf. Anything does not go. Reality in the raw can be a pretty formless and meaningle ss thing: there will always be the nee d for an inte rlocutor, some one prepare d to take on the job of constructing the rough asse mblage into what Frank Kermode (1967) has calle d fictions of re lation, the process where by puzzling events are wove n into a broader fabric that make s sense of them as some kind of whole . The re is a ne ed to ste er some kind of middle ground be tween ove rstaging it and copping out e ntirely. What is certain, howeve r, is that polyphony will take on a much wider, more expe rimental form in the future , as postmode rnists press for more interte xtual practice in anthropology and attempt to transce nd the limitations of any one kind of discourse . For example , whereas in the past it has bee n limite d to real pe ople and real situations, polyphony will involve more juxtaposition of re al and fictitious events, such as in Foxs (1995) work, where a real fie ldwork study of an orthope dic surgical e vent was combine d with Douglas s narrative fiction Bleeders Come First, in orde r to e voke aspe cts of the expe rie nce that might have bee n misse d if only the true eve nt had bee n recounte d. (The fictional patie nt had a cardiac arre st on the ope rating table , whe re as Foxs did not.) A polyphony of the real and the imaginary actually se rve s to e nhance the realne ss of the realthe blood, the smells, and the trage dy of individual case s that some times go badly. Anthropologists are also beginning to move in anothe r dire ction, from looking at the polyphony between people to the polyphony within pe ople, their fragme nted cognitions and dive rge nt sche ma, and the ongoing inne r struggle s be twe e n the ir various multiple se lves (Strauss & Quinn, forthcoming 1997) . Whe rever it e nds up, polyphony see ms de stined to become more polyphonic in the future ! A Poin t an d a Punch Lin e And so we come to the message in the bottle , that some thing that makes one fe el the long journe y and the discomfort were really worth it. The point about anthropology is it is not just storyte lling we should leave that to the profe ssional storyte lle rs nor is it just a travalogue of what I saw and did that is the job of the trave l write r. Escapism and e ntertainment may come into it, but the best e thnographie s must offe r some thing more , be it a the ory, mode l, or form of insight, what Lange r (1953, p. 50) refers to as a a ne w sort of truth, a re framing in todays parlance . Hammersle y take s a similar vie w: he use s the te rm insightful de scriptions, stating that the aim of ethnographic de sciption is to present phe nome na in ne w and revealing ways (1992, p. 13) . Me, I prefer the notion of a point and a punch line , a metaphor that links well with the notion of ethnography as text and the concept of the

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theatre of language . A good punch line in ethnography is like a good tune , one that you can t stop humming once you ve he ard it (and when did you last fee l that about an Academ y of Managem ent Jou rnal article ? !) The punch line give s the rese arch a point, but it also synthe sizes, synopsize s, or simplifie s a comple x story, and e ffe cts some kind of closure for the reade r, which can be dee ply satisfying, eve n be witching at time s. The be st punch line s are often the one s that come out of the blue , that surprise us or challe nge our take n for grante d, commonse nsical view of the world. This is Lange rs significant form (1953), an ide a or image which through symbols e nable s pe ople to realize something that was pre viously unre alize d, and comprehend something that was pre viously not comprehende d. The following are some organizational example s of ethnography which offer the reader a particularly noteworthy insightful description or punch line: John Brewer and Kathle e n Mage e s (1991) e thnography of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) re vealed that RUC office rs were able to tolerate conditions of extreme personal dange r and stre ss by using diffe rent kinds of discourse : the skills discourse focuse d on survival skills, e.g., hang around kids, buy them ice pops If it ke eps me alive , Ill do it. The fatalism discourse took the line that If the yre going to ge t you, the yre going to get you, and If you were to worry about it, you d be a ne rvous wreck. The rou tinization discou rse highlighte d the eve rydayne ss of the risks: You ge t use d to it, Its a way of life for us (pp. 163-168) . It was through the use of such standard scripts that the y were able to normalize the threat of dange r and thus re duce stress le vels. Still on the subje ct of language , McCourt Pe rring s (1994) study of the impact of care in the community le gislation on me ntal he alth patie nts showe d that the transfe r of these pe ople from hospital to group homes resulted in some improve ment in their live s, but the overall success of the proje ct was significantly reduced as a result of the m etaph ors chose n for social re lations in the new organization. For e xample , the use of the term family homes, intende d to evoke an image of caring, actually also implie d hierarchy, by gende r and age , and through the use of this metaphor the disempowerment and infantalization of clie nts were in fact maintaine d. Gideon Kunda s ethnography of a large American high-te ch organization revisits that age -old O B conce pt of burnout. One of the ne w insights it provide d was that burnout actually had a positive side to it. The study from the actor s view showed that it was a way of communicatin g one s commitment to the company:
Displaying symptoms of burnout is one way of se nding signals to one s superiors. It is a sign that one is he avily invested in work, proof that one is allowing one s experience to be dominated by the requireme nts of the member role, evidence of commitmen t and se lf-sacrifice, and from this perspective, a call for some respe ct, a declaration that one has become a casualty. (1992, pp. 202-203)

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It was of course de meaning but it could be uplifting, too. Many members fe el some pride in surviving burnout or living with its threat. It is a battle scar, a purple heart . . . an indication that one s he art is in the right place (p. 204) . Clark Molstad s e thnographic research among industrial brewery workers in Los Ange les re sonate s with Kunda. He showe d that fee lings of alie nation and powerlessness are lesse ned as the re sult of worke rs taking pride and satisfaction in the ir ability to e ndure hardship the pride of endurance . This pride give s them back some of the self-confide nce the y lose when e ncounte ring situations which the y cannot control. Like the early Christians being fe d to the lions, the se workers pre sume their suffe ring counts for something (1996, p. 1). And finally, anothe r police study by Malcolm Young (1991) looke d at the differe nt ways pe ople were treate d by the police whe n they were take n into custody. The re appe ared to be two distinct type s of tre atme nt: some people were subje ct to hard enforcement, like aggre ssive verbal directive s and no blanke ts for sle eping on. The gaole rs would go down to fe ed and water the m, as the y would a zoo animal; any kind of bre akfast, no matter how awful, was too good for them, the scum, the dross, the dregs of socie ty. Othe r pe ople , some of whom had committe d much more serious crimes, were subje ct to a much softe r rgime. The significant insight on Young s part was that the re appe ared to be a constant pressure within the police culture to pull all clients into a black and white binary, and the decision one way or the othe r was like ly to be made without consciously setting out to do so, usually within twenty seconds of arrival! This is an exemplification of a bigge r human issue around social labe ling:
The polarities and oppositions reve aled in this case study e xemplify the logic of basic police mode s of thought, e choing the L vi-Straussian conte ntion that a universalistic me taphoric concern in man is to use his own cultural identity and se t it auspiciously against the others, who are to be de spised and cast with inhuman or animal qualities. (p. 150)

A good punch line should e voke an intellectual or e motional re sponse . The whole point and punch line about anthropology itse lf, which I have tried to conve y in this review article , is that it is research from the mind and the heart, which re lies upon the practice of both refle xivity and subje ctivity to guard against the excesses of e ithe r. The whole endeavor smacks of the child rushing frene tically around trying to capture bubbles before they disappear for eve r into the ether, random, opportunistic, partial and unsyste matic, and probably, to scientists at le ast, quite pathe tic. But why? For what reason? Simply because these bubble s contain the e ssence of human life as it is experie nce d. And in a world of decaffeinate d coffe e, fat-fre e foods, alcohol-fre e lage r, and

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pain-fre e video games, surely it cant be bad that there is one subje ct at least that is le aving it in rathe r than taking it out. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grate ful to my colle ague Raza Khan for contributing some of the ideas to this pape r and helping with the lite rature search. REFERENCES
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PAUL BATE is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Manage ment at the University of Bath, working primarily on the theory and practice of change within public and private sector organizations. He was until re cently the Director of the Centre for the Study of Organizational Change (C-SOC), which is internationally known for its anthropological and qualitative studies of the manage ment process. He has e xtensive re search and consulting e xperience with major organizations in Britain and abroad, and has published widely in the field of cultural change. His late st book, Strategies for Cultural Change (1994), was shortlisted for the MCA Be st Management Book of the Year award. He also lectures widely in the U.S., Far E ast, Scandinavia, and Europe and has recently been international gue st speaker at a number of acade mic conferences. He is currently immersed in an ethnographic study of a hospital which is attempting to fundame ntally reconfigure its culture in order to provide a different and better kind of patient focused care for the future. Paul holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.