Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that the production of past workplace and organizational ethnographies needs to be better understood in their historical context. Design/methodology/approach – A programme of research work on the history of workplace and organizational...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss participant‐led photography as a response to the author's need for an “aesthetic approach” to ethnography during fieldwork, including the importance of an embodied, sensory orientation to ethnography in organizational contexts....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore a number of tensions arising in the presentation of autoethnographical research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a reflexive autoethnographical account of undertaking and publically presenting autoethnographical research....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to take account of organizational ethnography in its historical and methodological context, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography . Design/methodology/approach – This essay brings together some current issues...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the “manifesto” for organisational ethnography being put forward in the first issue of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography. Design/methodology/approach – The author draws upon several decades of personal experience of field...

Purpose – Traditionally, ethnography has been well placed to take account of the messy and complex processes that produce workplace cultures. Likewise, it has always taken interest in the objects, materials and symbolic artifacts that help furnish those organizational cultures. Yet researchers...