%0 Journal Article
%T Sensitivity to situated positionings: Generating insight into organizational change
%A Frans Kamsteeg
%A Karlien Veldhuizen
%A Sierk Ybema
%J Management Learning
%@ 1461-7307
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1350507618808656
%X Within ethnographic forms of organisational research, sensitivity to context is generally acknowledged as a critical ingredient for analysing processes and practices. When conducting such research, however, researchers typically privilege one particular research context for generating knowledge: although some ethnographic scholars underscore the importance of adopting a diversity of both insider and outsider roles, ethnographic research is usually equated with gaining a deep familiarity with the field of study through immersion. First, we argue that, although immersion elicits valuable knowledge ¡®from within¡¯, its prioritisation inevitably blinds the researcher¡¯s eye to equally interesting insights stemming from alternative ¨C and often unintended ¨C positionings. Testifying to the significance of researchers¡¯ relational reflexivity for data interpretation, we show how a variety of researcher¡¯ positionings vis-¨¤-vis the researched generated a variety of insights. Critical sensitivity to fieldworker identities in an ethnographic study of planned organisational change within a police organisation allowed us, second, to criticise the change management literature for routinely building on a fixed dichotomy between ¡®change agents¡¯ and ¡®change recipients¡¯ and to empirically demonstrate a wider variety of police officers¡¯ positionings in relation to change initiatives (i.e. countering, complying with and co-opting) and its initiators (i.e. engaging in other-depreciating, self-questioning or self-affirming identity work)
%K Context
%K ethnography
%K fieldwork roles
%K identity
%K police
%K reflexivity
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1350507618808656