ABSTRACT
Time represents an essential factor in longitudinal research. It is the main differentiating factor between cross-sectional and longitudinal research. Time and temporality in ethnographic research raise a number of dilemmas that come to the fore when the philosophical assumptions of process studies come face-to-face with the practical realities of engaging in extended case study research. In moving from the more abstract philosophical conceptions of process to attempts to operationalize the orientation in longitudinal fieldwork on workplace change, it is perhaps not surprising that a number of scholars have utilized a processual approach. The importance of lengthy sustained longitudinal fieldwork for producing good historical contextualized processual accounts is continuously echoed by leading scholars in the field. Longitudinal research can refer to a number of quite different types of study. For example, longitudinal designs occur in quantitative studies that seek to identify the temporal relationship between several causally related variables.
