From Fascination to Fieldwork

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2023-2024/S_FF1

Course Objective

At the end of the course, you will have:· designed a research proposal integrating methodology, context, and sensitizing concepts that will guide you in your research activities;· learned about methods in organizational (ethnographic) fieldwork;· practiced ethnographic interviewing skills and learned about specific fieldwork methodologies;· understood how to access your research field and approach the groups of people you intend to work with;· created awareness of and reflexivity on the contextual embeddedness of organizational research· carefully considered research ethics.

Course Content

To be able to see, hear, smell, taste and touch culture, COM builds upon a long-standing ethnographic tradition and advocates the use of interpretive methods, such as analysis of discourse, narratives, practices, and materiality through (multi-sensory) observing, shadowing, interviewing, document analysis, etc. This offers a unique niche within the field of organization and management studies and enables students to critically study, for instance, (radical) organizational change, diversity, and identity, blurring and drawing of organizational boundaries, transnational entrepreneurship, and cross-cultural collaboration. The COM master courses from period 1, ‘Organization and Power’ and ‘Sense Making in Organizations’’, were designed to provide a first theoretical and methodological foundation for your research, enabling you to develop first ideas for a topic for your thesis.Writing a research proposal is one of the objectives of the FF1 course, which means that knowledge from a variety of sources must be synthesized into a coherent research plan. Developing ideas for research takes time, as does building connections in the field, looking for (academic) sources, finding a topic that you can connect to a problem ‘out there’, and translating your research ideas into a research question, theoretical approach, conceptual framework, and research design. This means creating awareness of ‘why’ and ‘how’, next to ‘what’ and ‘where’. This reflexive stance is the overarching objective of this course.FF1 aims to prepare you for the fieldwork and writing that you will be doing for your master’s thesis. Scheduled in period 2 and 3, it draws on the content of your previous courses in period 1 and prepares you to fulfill your master’s Thesis COM in the second semester of the program (period 4-6). Therefore, this course constitutes a pivotal link between knowledge, skills, and perspectives. The building blocks of this course are designed along the lines of three key topics of fieldwork. First, you will learn about research methods, research designs, and developing the researcher’s (ethnographic) sensibilities. We will introduce you to ethnographic interviewing and give you an assignment to practice with this data collection technique, since this is not yet discussed during the course ‘Sensemaking in Organizations’. Second, to prepare you for doing fieldwork, we will reflect on how to access the field and approach research respondents. Third, you are going to apply the information and tools described above, and integrate them into a pitch presentation and finally, into this course’s main product, the research proposal. Overall, FF1 will make you familiar with qualitative research, and organizational ethnography in particular, as a craft and research paradigm needed to develop your individual research project with a proper design and relevant research question(s). The ethnographic tradition of participation in a field of research means that people can be observed in their daily activities, and questions can be asked in formal interviews and informal conversations that can affect the position and role of the researcher which requires a reflexive attitude. Methods are important in all stages of your research: before, during, and after your fieldwork. This course will orient you toward your field of research, and prepare you for the sensemaking process of what you perceive sensorily and discursively while conducting research. Whether you will go abroad for fieldwork or engage in so-called “at-home ethnography”, good preparation is everything in fieldwork, and FF1 will help you to do so by organizing lectures and working groups on methods of organizational ethnographic research and the writing of your research proposal.During this course, you will develop several ideas and materials that allow you to work on a research proposal. Then you will start converting these thoughts and plans into a proper research proposal with a problem definition, a statement of your research aims, a literature review, a research question, and a methodologically sound research design. Next to FF1, your own thesis supervisor will also help and guide you developing your ideas. The course is finalized with the submission of your research proposal, which will be graded by your thesis supervisor. FF1 aims to give you a general orientation of doing research, but there is flexibility to address individual needs.

Teaching Methods

Lectures, seminars, masterclasses and study groups provided by FF1-teaching staff. Tuition in small groups by master thesis supervisor.

Method of Assessment

Assessment will take place on:
• four assignments regarding ethnographic interviewing; evaluating qualitative research; pitch presentation of your research idea; self-assessment research proposal draft; each assignment marked with pass/fail
• a research proposal, graded by your thesis supervisor, marked with 1-10 score

Literature

To be provided on Canvas.

Target Audience

This course is for Master students Culture, Organization, and Management.