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Why I think shadowing is the best field

technique in management and
organization studies

ARTICLE in QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN ORGANIZATIONS AND MANAGEMENT AN

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL · MARCH 2014
DOI: 10.1108/QROM-02-2014-1198

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1 AUTHOR:

Barbara Czarniawska
University of Gothenburg
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QROM INVITED COMMENTARY

9,1
Why I think shadowing is the best
field technique in management
90 and organization studies
Barbara Czarniawska
Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economics and Law,
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of shadowing as a field technique.
Design/methodology/approach – This piece takes the form of a viewpoint.
Findings – Barbara Czarniawska describes the methodological journey that led her to the adoption of
shadowing approaches in her organizational research.
Originality/value – This invited commentary is informed by extensive experience of using
shadowing to gather data in organizational settings.
Keywords Anthropology, Shadowing, Contemporary management, History of methods
Paper type Viewpoint

Qualitative Research in Organizations
and Management: An International
Journal
Vol. 9 No. 1, 2014
pp. 90-93
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1746-5648
DOI 10.1108/QROM-02-2014-1198
I was trained as a psychologist in the 1960s, which meant that there were many field
methods and techniques in my curriculum. I learned, for example, that “a deep
interview” is not an interview that lasts longer than 20 minutes, but an interview
that begins with the question “What is the first thing you remember in your life?” – a
question meant to tap the subconscious. In child psychology classes, especially,
we were trained to develop observational skills. Bales’ (1950) scheme was popular
at the time: There were 12 categories of behavior into which interactions were to be
recorded in ten-minute intervals, if I remember correctly. The observer was to mark an
appropriate category with a symbol for a given child.
Later I specialized in social and industrial psychology (organizational psychology
was still sleeping in its crib). I remember one industrial psychology class in which
the professor told us, and we duly noted down, that when observing a crane operator,
it is important to tie your pen to your notebook, because if it falls, the observation is
finished. I do not recall ever observing a crane operator, but the advice is ensconced
forever in my memory. I still think it is valid advice, although perhaps more in a
metaphorical sense.
In the early 1970s, I landed my first job as a methodology consultant. It happened
because a professor of economics, tired of the fictitious world of economic models,
became curious about how the practice of management was practiced in the field.
Having not a clue about the conducting of field studies, he figured that a psychologist
would be trained in such matters, and contacted me through a network of friends.
I then suggested a method that I called “observant participation” (Czarniawska, 1998).
Now, having read Annemarie Mol (2002), however, I would say that I turned
practitioners into ethnographers. The members of our research teams (we had 12
enterprises to study) traveled regularly to the chosen sites and asked top managers to
describe major decisions that had been recently made there. I used a similar method in
my first public sector study in Sweden in the late 1980s (Czarniawska, 1997) and Management and
noticed that my interlocutors developed the habit of noting down all key events that organization
occurred between my visits. Thus together we developed a method that is close to a
diary-interview (Zimmerman and Wieder, 1977). studies
I liked this approach, because it enabled me to collect material from several sites
(this time only eight) over a longer period (a budgetary year was my usual measure).
I had no problem understanding what my interlocutors were telling me. Yet, when 91
by sheer chance I could occasionally observe a meeting or a conversation, I had the
feeling that it was only then that I truly understood what they were speaking about.
Of course it had nothing to do with “a correct” picture of their work – the result of
my observation was just yet another perception, sometimes different from that of the
practitioners themselves. The feeling of completeness was due more to something like
a multisensory perception.
But this was already the 1980s: the linguistic turn, the narrative turn, discourse
analysis [y] When we learned that interviews provide only answers to questions
asked, and not a picture of a “reality out there,” we panicked – until Atkinson and
Silverman (1997) told us that we live in an “interview society,” and that discourse is as
important as physical actions, or, to use Argyris and Schön’s (1974) older vocabulary,
espoused theories are as interesting as theories-in-use.
For organization scholars, one of the key events of the 1980s was anthropology’s
encounter with management and organization studies. All of a sudden, everyone
wanted to be an anthropologist. Participant observation was possible, but limited to
simpler jobs. The models to follow were scholars like Michael Burawoy (1982), who
worked as a machine operator – repeating Donald Roy’s (1959) less-well-known
attempt from 1959 – and then produced champagne in Hungary (Burawoy and Lukacs,
1992). Participant observation of top management was difficult, partly because of the
unwillingness of people in power positions to be observed (Prasad and Prasad, 2002),
but mostly because the researchers were either not competent to play the role of
manager or too busy doing it to observe. Some other approaches were tried –
attempting to be “a fly on the wall” (a peculiar metaphor, considering the fate of a fly
once noticed) or becoming a participant observer in the role of corporate
anthropologist, because such roles have been created (see e.g. Kunda, 1992/2006).
Most of us who attempted such an “anthropological” approach to organization
studies were influenced by traditional anthropology, à la Malinowski: watching native
dances during the day and going at five o’clock to the British embassy (Malinowski
that is, not the organization scholars). But we, in fact, sat in the secretary’s office or in a
coffee room and observed. What became clear sooner than later, however, is that there
were long periods when the observer was left alone until five o’clock. No dances, no
rituals: people went in and out, seemingly always on their way. Elsewhere.
“Elsewhere” was a major conclusion of a study that Lars Strannegård (Strannegård
and Friberg, 2001) drew form his observation of a computer consulting company. The
people employed there were always “already elsewhere”: on the way to the airport
or back from a trip, on the way to a meeting or back from another meeting.
The researcher-observer was left to himself, watching these comings and goings.
Another tack was needed. I had learned about “shadowing” from Italian sociologist
Marianella Sclavi (1989), who claimed that the source of her inspiration was, in turn,
a short story by Truman Capote (1975) “A day of work”. Only later did I learn that
the term in English was coined by Harry Wolcott (1973/2003), or rather by the people
he had observed. The main attraction of this approach for me was my ability to tackle
QROM the peculiarities of contemporary management and organizing: the coeval and multiple
9,1 times, the simultaneity of events occurring in various settings, the non-simultaneity of
experience, and the virtualization of a growing number of practices (Czarniawska,
2007). Shadowing is a way of studying the work and life of people who move often and
quickly from place to place; traditional ethnography, on the other hand, assumed that
people would stay in one place, and that their ways of living would remain unchanged.
92 This assumption was wrong even for “pre-modern” people, as noted by Firth (1959),
Fabian (1983) and Latour (1993).
What is more, it is possible to shadow not only people, but also objects and
quasi-objects. Thus Attila Bruni (2005) shadowed patients’ electronic records, and
Ann-Christine Frandsen (2009) traced an invoice back to its origins. This procedure
removes the only difficulty related to shadowing – the necessity to be emotionally
attuned to the person one is following.
As to practical advice, it has changed a bit since the old days. Now the best advice is
to keep a charger for your iPad with you at all times!

References
Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1974), Theory in Practice. Increasing Professional Effectiveness,
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Atkinson, P. and Silverman, D. (1997), “Kundera’s immortality: the interview society and the
invention of self ”, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 304-325.
Bales, R.F. (1950), Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups,
Addison-Wesley, Cambridge, MA.
Bruni, A. (2005), “Shadowing software and clinical records: on the ethnography of non-humans
and heterogeneous contexts”, Organization, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 357-378.
Burawoy, M. (1982), Manufacturing Consent, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Burawoy, M. and Lukacs, J. (1992), The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary’s Road to
Capitalism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Capote, T. (1975), A Day’s Work. In: Music for Chameleons, Abacus, London.
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Fabian, J. (1983), Time and the Other. How Anthropology Makes its Object, Columbia University
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Kunda, G. (1992/2006), Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech
Organization, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA.
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Prasad, P. and Prasad, A. (2002), “Casting the native subject: ethnographic practice and
the (re)production of difference”, in Czarniawska, B. and Höpfl, H. (Eds), Casting the
Other: The Production and Maintenance of Inequalities in Work Organizations, Routledge,
London, pp. 185-204.
Roy, D.F. (1959), “ ‘Banana time’: job satisfaction and informal interaction”, Human Organization, Management and
Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 158-168.
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Strannegård, L. and Friberg, M. (2001), Already Elsewhere – Play, Identity and Speed in the
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Walnut Creek, CA. 93
Zimmerman, D.H. and Wieder, D.L. (1977), “The diary: diary-interview method”, Urban Life,
Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 479-498.

About the author

Barbara Czarniawska is a Professor of Management Studies at the School of Business, Economics
and Law, Gothenburg Research Institute, Göteborg University, Sweden. Her research applies a
constructivist perspective on organizing, with the focus on action nets. Her methodological
interests concern fieldwork techniques and the narrative approach in social science studies.
Professor Barbara Czarniawska can be contacted at: Barbara.Czarniawska@gri.gu.se

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