ABSTRACT
A core objective for case research is to develop an understanding of the roles and actions people display in their social groups (Whiting and Whiting 1973). Thus, public management case researchers focus on the actions and interactions of people in their economic, political, and administrative environments. This chapter looks at the most common ways researchers collect data about how people function in organizations, and how they react to and, in turn, influence organizational culture. To collect and analyze these data for their case analyses, many social scientists follow a data collection framework developed for ethnographic fieldwork. Ethnographic research methods are common in such social science research as sociology, anthropology, political science, and the administrative and organizational sciences. They include participation, interviewing, and analysis of cultural artifacts such as documents and physical possessions. Participation and interviewing are discussed in this chapter; document and artifact analysis are the topic of chapter 9.
