This document summarizes a workshop on sharing methodological challenges in research. It discusses the challenges faced in a year-long ethnographic study of HR professionals at an investment bank, including issues around the researcher's presence, places of access, and managing expectations during preliminary fieldwork. It also describes the use of tracer studies and mental mapping techniques to better understand organizational processes. The workshop aimed to discuss challenges in supervision and reflection on research practices in context.

1. Katrina Pritchard and Gillian Symon
Department of Organizational Psychology,
Birkbeck, University of London
BAM Research Methods SIG:
Sharing our struggles workshop
Loughborough: 25th November 2011
This research was supported by the
Economic and Social Research Council
(award PTA-0302004-00095).

2.  About the research
 Methodological challenges
 Practical Responses:
• Preliminary fieldwork
• Tracer studies
• Mental mapping
 More challenges?
 Supervision in this context

3. Organizational HR
Discourse
Knowledge professionals
 Knowledge as socially  Neglect of discursive  Problematic nature of
constructed and practice within knowledge base
situated in practice knowledge studies
 Discursive practice as
 Skepticism of  Discursive key element of work
importance of construction of
knowledge in and of knowledge claims
itself
 Constructed and
contested nature of
knowledge work

4.  American investment bank
 Product,market and geography all
influence management structure
 Global HQ in US with London as regional
office
 Researchfocus on Regional HR
department

5. Local HR roles
Global Head Office
HR
Regional HR Department:
4 offices in London
1 office in South East England
1 office in Scotland

6.  12 month ethnography physically present in London
offices approximately 3 days per week
 Face-to face activities involved: shadowing
participants, participant interviews, tracer studies,
collecting documents, attending meetings,
workshops and training courses, conversations in
meeting rooms, corridors, cafes and pubs.
 Mediated activities included: email exchanges,
phone calls, conference calls, text messages.

7.  Three teams became focus of research
activity:
• HR Call Centre
• Training and development team
• HR Partners

8.  Presence (and therefore absence)
 Placesand spaces that are open (or
closed) to the researcher‟s presence (or
absence)
 Own„identity work‟ in the context of the
above

9.  Preliminary fieldwork activity
 Use of tracer studies
 Mental mapping

10.  Clearlydefined time for learning the ropes
and finding way around (6 weeks)
 Manages expectations (self and others) of
„doing research‟ during this period
 Allowsmore detailed planning to emerge and
time for more negotiation of access to take
place
 Reflection prompted reconsideration of
„piloting‟ in subsequent research

11.  Following a specific organizational process via the
use of tags:
• an expatriate assignment, a creativity workshop, the launch
of a diversity networking group and the development of a
local HR plan.
 For each of process:
• interviewed the individual with overall responsibility
• using activity reports generated from work management
system followed the process both forward and backwards,
talking to the others involved and collecting related
documentation
 Produced „flow diagrams‟ of activities

12. ACADEMIC SPACES RESEARCH SITE SPACES
SPACES IN BETWEEN
PERSONAL SPACES

13. ACADEMIC SPACES RESEARCH SITE SPACES
VIRTUAL
SPACES
Conferences Meeting
Rooms
Supervisor‟s Office SPACES IN BETWEEN
Security & Reception
PhD room Cafes and Office Cafeteria
Library other
Social
spaces
Train Train
Home Office
Taken from Pritchard (2011) PERSONAL SPACES

14.  Increasing
complexity of spaces and places
and our engagement with them
 Growingtechnological mediation of research
process and practices
 Evolving demands on researcher identity
work
 Possibility
of opening up reflexivity on the
above to include participant perspectives

15.  Not
being there: lacking insight but
maintaining distance
 Facilitating
the „big picture‟: appreciating
the detail while encouraging conceptual
development
 Structuring the account: including detail
within a „write-able‟ account

16.  Pritchard, K (2011) From ‘being there’ to ‘being … where?’:
relocating ethnography. Qualitative Research in
Organizations and Management 6 (3) 230-245
 Pritchard, K and Symon, G (2011) Identity on the line:
constructing professional identity in a HR call centre. Work,
Employment and Society 25 (3) 434-450
 Pritchard, K (2010) Becoming an HR strategic partner: tales of
transition. Human Resource Management Journal, 20 (2)
175-188
 Pritchard, K (2012) Combining Qualitative Methods. in
Cassell, C and Symon, G (eds) “The practice of qualitative
organizational research: core methods and current
challenges” pp 138-156. SAGE. (to be published Feb 2012).