The Ethnographic Café will be hosting a special panel on Organisational Ethnography that some of you may be interested in attending on Nov 11 at 12 pm PST.
Entitled, "Bit of a Mess & Bit of a Miracle: Problems and Promises of Organizational Ethnography", the panel features Lindsey Cameron, Steve Barley and Madeline Toubiana, and is convened by Virginia Leavell and Mark de Rond. No need to register -- but you can join the zoom link on the front page of the website on the day of.
Panel info:
Lindsey Cameron is an Assistant Professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how algorithmic management is changing the modern workplace, especially individuals' behaviors at work. A field researcher, she conducted a five-year ethnography of the largest employer in the gig economy- the ride-hailing industry - based, in part, on her own experiences as a driver. Her research program is motivated by identifying and understanding how changes driven by algorithms are affecting how work is being organized and experienced by workers in a myriad of ways.
In her prior career, she spent over a decade in the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic communities as a digital and political analyst, received her PhD in management from the University of Michigan, MS from George Washington University and SB from Harvard University.
Stephen R. Barley is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Technology Management at the College of Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is also the Richard Weiland Emeritus Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Barley co-founded and co-directed the Center for Work, Technology and Organization at Stanford's School of Engineering from 1994-2015. He was editor of the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1993 to 1997 and the founding editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2002 to 2004. The Oxford University Press published his latest book, Work and Technological Change, in 2020.
Madeline Toubiana is Associate Professor and the Desmarais Chair in Entrepreneurship at the University of Ottawa. Her research program has been focused broadly on what stalls and supports social change. More specifically, she examines the role of emotions, entrepreneurship, institutional processes, and stigmatization in influencing the dynamics of social change. While she explores change processes in large organizations and institutions, like in academia, most of her research examines how marginalized and/or stigmatized actors can be better included in change processes, and what might support them in doing so. As such, some of her previous and current work has studied social enterprises, the prison system, the sex trade, unemployment, non-profit organizations, and taxi-driving.
Convenors
Virginia Leavell is Assistant Professor in Organisational Theory and Information Systems at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Before returning to academia to study technology, work and organisations, Virginia worked for more than a decade as a political organiser, educator, fundraiser, and consultant for non-profits and labour organizations in the US and Thailand. In her previous career she founded several organisations, including a popular education and retreat centre in rural Virginia and Washington DC-based political consultancy. Virginia studies the relationship between organisational anticipation and digital technologies. In her research she asks two questions: 1) How do organisations use digital technologies to predict and plan for the future? and 2) How do ideas and information about the future influence organisational structure and action in advance of technological change? She has explored these questions in the context of organizations that manage infrastructure, including in a 3-year ethnography with two water agencies.
Mark de Rond is Professor of Organizational Ethnography at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He is interested in how people experience the world and act in it, typically in (relatively) extreme contexts. His fieldwork has involved extended periods with doctors and nurses at war, Boat Race crews, a ragtag band rowing the Amazon, peace activists, and pedophile hunters. Join him and others at the Bohemian Writers Club (bohemianwritersclub.org).
------------------------------
Mark de Rond
Judge Business School, Cambridge U
Cambridge
+44 12 23 764135
------------------------------