Abstract
Institutional ethnography (IE) is a qualitative approach that uses interviews, observations and document analysis to explore how work done with texts in organisations coordinates local, lived experiences. It does not simply examine individual experience or narratives or merely investigate organisational practices. IE tries to do both at once, which makes it a unique but also challenging method. This volume contributes to a growing body of work by scholars, practitioners, and activists using IE to investigate the social world. The editors are two of the founding figures of IE, and they draw together a cast of established institutional ethnographers as well as newcomers.
Under New Public Management takes up many issues that are of concern to institutional ethnographers including the role of texts in organisations, the erasure of women’s standpoint by organisational practices, and developments in what institutional ethnographers call ruling relations. The main argument that the chapters address is that new forms of public management are creating greater scrutiny and more strenuous accountability circuits that intensify the labour of front-line workers. The chapter by Richard Darville for instance uses IE to examine ‘the discourses and institutional technologies that coordinate front-line experience and determine the prospects of the project of literacy work’ (p. 28). Lindsay Kerr looks at electronic governance initiatives in Ontario schooling and the impact on the work of teachers. And Susan Wright assesses similar changes related to governance by examining the points system in Danish universities. The chapters in this volume are based on careful ethnographic inquiries that demonstrate how local practices of work are shaped by extra-local governance and accountability schemes.
Not all of the chapters address the field of education. Janet Rankin and Betty Tate investigate fluctuations in nursing education and practice occurring as a result of e-governance initiatives. Retooling of file creation and management intensify what the authors call the industrial complex of health care (p. 122). Michael K. Corman and Karen Melon use institutional ethnography to explore how emergency medical care is changing and how the work of first responders is measured and evaluated. Marjorie Devault, Murali Venkatesh and Frank Ridzi examine similar revisions for Medicaid workers who deal with chronic and long-term care. And Marie Campbell explores how new circuits of accountability shape development and governance practices in Kyrgyzstan.
The remaining chapters are shorter contributions or dialogues on front-line work and the self-governance of workers under these changing conditions. There are chapters on migration, social work, adult education and cancer care, among others. These shorter contributions illustrate major changes happening across the public sector and the impact on front-line workers’ labour.
One very small hitch is that few of the chapters fully lay out all of the core concepts and techniques of IE. The chapters assume proficiency in IE. I would have liked to see elaboration on the fundamental aspects of IE. Only the conclusion by Alison I. Griffith and Dorothy E. Smith addresses the core dimensions of IE in a systematic way. However, Dorothy E. Smith has published several other books since 2005 that review the basics and fundamentals of IE, which interested readers should consult. One other issue is that although the idea of new public management is evident in the title, few if any of the chapters deal with new public management in the sense in which it is well-known and reviled in the United Kingdom. Only the introduction by Alison I. Griffith and Dorothy E. Smith deals with the notion of new public management (NPM) in a sustained, analytical way. Some chapters show major changes in how the public sector operates, but it is not demonstrated that the fluctuations examined are a product of new public management per se. Because IE is exploratory and does not usually start with pre-ordained theoretical categories, an analytical understanding of NPM is not utilized, which makes it difficult to assert that these changes are driven by NPM. The focus on NPM in IE, I would argue, is therefore a bit of a performative contradiction. Nevertheless, this volume will be an important resource for scholars across multiple disciplines using institutional ethnography to study organisations. Dorothy E. Smith is one of the most important social scientists of the last 60 years, which this book is a testament to. IE is a method of qualitative inquiry that all social scientists should be aware of, and this book goes a long way to demonstrating why.