ABSTRACT

For nearly 40 years researchers have been using narratives and stories to understand larger cultural issues through the lenses of their personal experiences. There is an increasing recognition that autoethnographic approaches to work and organizations add to our knowledge of both personal identity and organizational scholarship. By using personal narrative and autoethnographic approaches, this research focuses on the working lives of individual people within the organizations for which they work.

This international handbook includes chapters that provide multiple overarching perspectives to organizational autoethnography including views from fields such as critical, postcolonial and queer studies. It also tackles specific organizational processes, including organizational exits, grief, fandom, and workplace bullying, as well as highlighting the ethical implications of writing organizational research from a personal narrative approach. Contributors also provide autoethnographies about the military, health care and academia, in addition to approaches from various subdisciplines such as marketing, economics, and documentary film work.

Contributions from the US, the UK, Europe, and the Global South span disciplines such as organizational studies and ethnography, communication studies, business studies, and theatre and performance to provide a comprehensive map of this wide-reaching area of qualitative research. This handbook will therefore be of interest to both graduate and postgraduate students as well as practicing researchers.

Winner of the 2021 National Communication Association Ethnography Division Best Book Award

Winner of the 2021 Distinguished Book on Business Communication Award, Association for Business Communication

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

Organizing a handbook and how to use it

part Section I|104 pages

Situating organizational autoethnography

chapter 2|12 pages

Life between interlocking oppressions

An intersectional approach to organizational autoethnography

chapter 5|15 pages

Postcolonial organizational autoethnography

Journey into reflexivity, erasures, and margins

part Section II|73 pages

Autoethnography across organizational disciplines

chapter 8|12 pages

Navigating the narrow spaces

A critical autoethnography of life in the (postmodern) Neoliberal University

part Section III|80 pages

Organizations and organizing

chapter 12|18 pages

Billable (h)ours

Autoethnography, ambivalence, and academic labor in a healthcare organization

chapter 14|15 pages

Organizing desire

The queer bar

chapter 15|12 pages

Polypreneur

An autoethnography of owning multiple businesses, simultaneously

part Section IV|82 pages

Organizing organizational identities

chapter 17|16 pages

Grieving Kathy

An interactional autoethnography of cultivating sustainable organizations

chapter 18|11 pages

Finding the “I” in “Fan”

Structures of performed identity within fan spaces 1

chapter 20|14 pages

“Switch off the headwork!”

Everyday organizational crossings in identity transformations from academic to distance runner

chapter 21|12 pages

An autoethnographic account of (pre)retirement socialization

Examining anticipatory messages about workforce exit

chapter 22|12 pages

Walking home

An autoethnography of hiking, cultural identity, and (de)colonization

part Section V|83 pages

Writing and evaluating organizational autoethnography

chapter 23|13 pages

Learning through the process

Failure, frustration, and forward movement in autoethnography

chapter 25|16 pages

Anchoring “the Big Tent”

How organizational autoethnography exemplifies and stretches notions of qualitative quality

part Section VI|63 pages

Organizing the future of organizational autoethnography

chapter 28|20 pages

Framing stories from the academic margins

Documentary as qualitative inquiry and critical community engagement

chapter 30|14 pages

Organizing autoethnography on the internet

Models and challenges

chapter 31|14 pages

A CCO perspective on autoethnography

Researching, organizing, and constituting

chapter |5 pages

Conclusion

Organizing the future of organizational autoethnography