Uncovering the Management Process: An Ethnographic Approach1
| Author | Monder Ram |
| Published date | 01 March 1996 |
| Date | 01 March 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.1996.tb00104.x |
British
Journal
of
Management,
Vol.
7,
3544
(1996)
Uncovering the Management Process:
An Ethnographic Approach1
Monder
Ram
University
of
Central England in Birmingham, Department
of
Management, Perry Barr,
Birmingham B42 2SU,
UK
The continuing controversy over the extent to which labour management has been
transformed in recent years has sustained Considerable interest in the basic issue of
how management regulates the employment relationship. However, two curious
features of these burgeoning discussions are the neglect of small firms and the rarity
of
intensive fieldwork methods of investigation. This paper examines particular
methodological issues arising from an ethnographic study
of
the small firm-dominated
West Midlands clothing sector (Ram,
1994).
The ethnographic approach was crucial to
the unravelling
of
the complexities and tensions inherent in the management process.
Insights generated by the method allow prevailing views of managerial practices in
such settings to be questioned; and more generally, highlight the potential of
ethnography as
a
means
of
management research.
Introduction
With continuing speculation over the extent to
which labour management practices has changed,
and the current vogue for ‘people-management’
issues such as total quality management and
organizational culture, management’s regulation
of the employment relationship remains a subject
of considerable interest. Among the many dimen-
sions to these debates, two features of focus and
method are readily apparent. Firstly, much of the
evidence is derived from the experience of large
firms, whether they are American ‘trailblazers’ or
British ‘mainstream’ organizations (Storey, 1992).
This is rather surprising given that small firms are
responsible for well over a third of private sector
employment in Britain and occupy a position of
some prominence in the Government’s rhetoric
on the ‘enterprise culture’. Secondly, employment
management issues have rarely been investigated
using intensive field-work methods; ethnography,
I
thank Paul Edwards and the anonymous referee for
their comments on an earlier draft
of
this paper.
for example, is a conspicuously under-utilized
means of studying the regulation of work
(Edwards, 1992). Yet such approaches are par-
ticularly effective in uncovering the processes of
labour management (Curran, 1989). Storey (1992),
for example, makes the point that ethnographic
studies can play a useful role in unravelling the
tensions and complexities in managing the em-
ployment relationship.
This paper examines particular methodological
issues arising from a workplace-based study on
the small firm-dominated West Midlands clothing
sector (Ram, 1994). It relates the experience of
utilizing an ethnographic approach in studying
the management process in such settings. Of par-
ticular significance is the way in which the method
contributes towards an understanding of the
tensions inherent in managing the labour process.
The theoretical concerns of the wider study
also contained a substantially ethnographic orien-
tation in that they focused on particular issues
around the regulation of work; that is, the rules,
procedures, customs and understandings which
regulate the way in which workers’ capacity
to labour is translated into actual effort. This
0
1996
British Academy of Management
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