On the Ethnographic Part of the Mix

Abstract

Ethnography plays a partial role in organizational development in ways that call out for a kind of ‘‘tale of the field’’ that represents what Geertz calls a ‘‘blurred genre.’’ It is blurred by a mixture of ethnographic epistemology based on abductive logic and context/meaning questions, together with ideas from organizational intervention from work by such figures as Argyris, Schein and Stacey. This article defines and exemplifies the blend with two case studies from a state court and a cancer treatment center. The conclusion is that the tale, blurred genre though it is, is in fact clear and it works. The problem is that political and implementation issues typically block a trial run of the proposed solutions that it generates.