ABSTRACT
This chapter mainly is concerned with studies of organisational autoethnography from the perspective of people who are not necessarily members of organisations, and hence it falls within Herrmann’s broadened scope for the area. It discusses some of the epistemological arguments that have been offered around the use of autoethnography within broader debates around what it means to conduct scientific social research. The chapter explores the discomforting character of autoethnography as it plays out in business school research. Anthropological research perspectives have been present in academic marketing research journals since the 1950s although, as Holbrook notes, they were not included in mainstream accounts of the discipline. The sense of an ontological divide in academic marketing research shouldn’t be overstated – there is much methodological pluralism in this vast field and its many scores of journals reflect this. Autoethnography articulates and constitutes experience from a subjectivist position located in culture, class and race.
