Interpretive ethnography is a methodology for studying the ways in which a social group constructs and lives its particular, indigenous version of reality. In this paper I argue that interpretive ethnogi'aphy offers a useful avenue for exploring how members of a professional community go about producing and applying specialized written knowledge. At the same time, however, I raise the caveat th...

In social science literature, researchers have discussed the implications of using symbolic interactionist ethnography. While the value of such an approach is accepted in social science research, it has not received adequate attention in IS literature. More importantly, there is a need to begin developing consensus on a set of principles to help researchers effectively combine the theoretical s...

conclusions providing care in the emergency department is significantly affected by nonemergent patients, as the emergency department is a place for critically ill patients thus awareness training program is recommended. results nine key informants were interviewed formally. four main categories emerged from the nurses’ culture: nonemergent patient as an uninvited guest, nonemergent patient as ...

BACKGROUND Meta-ethnography is a unique, systematic, qualitative synthesis approach widely used to provide robust evidence on patient and clinician beliefs and experiences and understandings of complex social phenomena. It can make important theoretical and conceptual contributions to health care policy and practice. RESULTS Since beliefs, experiences, health care contexts and social phenomen...

This paper presents the results of an ethnography of a small evolutionary software development project in a British oil company, focusing on the relationship between users and software developers. The discussion starts by looking at how activities come to be defined as either “user” or “developer” jobs. At the company studied there was considerable conflict over the user development of Lotus No...

BACKGROUND Each year over five million people develop chronic non-malignant pain and can experience healthcare as an adversarial struggle. The aims of this study were: (1) to bring together qualitative evidence syntheses that explore patients' experience of living with chronic non-malignant pain and develop conceptual understanding of what it is like to live with chronic non-malignant pain for ...

The methods of ethnography and cognitive psychology are frequently set in opposition to each other. Whilst such a view may be appropriate in de"ning pure, or prototypical, classes of each activity, the value and necessity of such a distinction is broken down when researchers are goal-directed to study complex work domains in order to foster technological change. In this paper, we outline a rapp...

In this paper recent research involving inter-disciplinary ethnography is presented as an exploration of its contribution to studies of people and technology in the workplace. Three main patterns of interaction between ethnography and “the others” are examined. First, the influence of ethnography in promoting people-oriented perspectives of technology is discussed with reference to workplace st...