ABSTRACT
This chapter looks briefly at the role of ethnography in research, and at how ethnography may be a useful tool for business people trying to understand, analyse and strategically plan for the world in which they work. In fieldwork, the real difficulty facing the anthropologist is trying to distinguish between what people say they do and what they actually do. Indeed, this is the problem facing all those in management and organization studies who make use of interviews as a primary research material. Fieldwork or ‘ethnography’ is not peculiar to particular disciplines in the academic profession, but is something actively practised in the world of business. Although ‘ethnography’ is a word that is currently fashionable in business circles, it does not refer to a method of carrying out research, but to the writing up the results of that research.
