Abstract
This article examines the implications of informed consent in organizational ethnographies, where the research site is a bounded and formal institution that has its own sets of rules which govern action and membership. While there is considerable scholarship on the issue of ethics in ethnography in general, very little has been written about informed consent in organizational ethnographies where researchers often simultaneously observe managers, “studying” up according to Nadar, and employees referred to as “studying down”. Organizational researchers tend to discuss ethics in terms of obtaining informed consent for individual interviews or in terms of access to an organization as a research site. This essay examines ethical dilemmas experienced in fieldwork studying participatory work arrangements in a Mexican garment firm. By discussing practical issues of gaining access, problems of maintaining access and consent, and concerns of how gatekeeper consent affects subordinates, I problematize the practice of obtaining informed consent in organizations. I argue that thinking of informed consent as an on-going process that requires an active reflexivity on the part of the ethnographer will help researchers to navigate the ever-shifting web of power dynamics present in organizations.
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Notes
The term informants, participants, and subjects is used interchangeably.
As far I can find, only Barrie Thorne (2004) specifically addresses ethical concerns around informed consent in organizations.
While gatekeeper permission could be avoided through covert research, the practice is rarely permitted by IRBs or condoned by professional associations.
For more on the case study, see Plankey-Videla 2012.
I make the distinction between the periods of participant observation and non-participant observation to highlight how distance from the shop floor affected relationships with managers and workers, as well as the information I could gather.
My father is American, my mother Chilean.
According to Shulamit Reinharz this is a common response to sexual harassment in fieldwork. Pamela Fishman (1977) coined this process of lessening the effects of sexual harassment instead of leaving the field, as “interactional shitwork”.
Under Mexican labor law, Conciliation and Arbitration Boards decide if the requirements have been met to go forth with a strike. If the strike is declared nonexistent, workers must return to work within 72 hours or they can be fired. See Middlebrook 1995.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University for an Internal Faculty Fellowship that provided the time and intellectual community to write this article, including David McWhirter, Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss, James Rosenheim, and Neha Vora. I also thank Ashley Currier, Kathryn Henderson, and Robert Mackin for their comments and support.
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Plankey-Videla, N. Informed Consent as Process: Problematizing Informed Consent in Organizational Ethnographies. Qual Sociol 35, 1–21 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-011-9212-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-011-9212-2