25 – – – – Ethnography – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Sociologists understand the term ‘organization’ in very broad terms to mean any structure by which social life and behaviour are managed. The term is more narrowly understood to mean formal organizations with a bureaucratic structure. Some formal organizations process ‘clients’, like schools and police stations, where the principal purpose is the management of people and their needs. Others are involved with the management of work, such as factories, where the principal purpose is the work itself. In the first case the people employed within the formal organizations still experience it as work, but this work involves the management of people in non-work settings. In the second, people are still being managed, but it is the employees themselves whose behaviour is being organized in the work setting. The reason for this clarification is to limit the boundaries of this chapter. Ethnography has contributed significantly to research on organizations in both the loose and strict meaning, but this chapter will focus on ethnographies that have been done on work in formal organizations and only on ethnographies done in people-processing organizations where the research focused on how employees experience it as work.