Researching \"Back Home\": International Management Research as Autoethnography

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Researching “Back Home”International ManagementResearch as AutoethnographyNeri KarraLondon School of EconomicsNelson PhillipsImperial College London

The challenges facing international management researchers conducting research in foreigncontexts are increasingly well understood. However, for a growing group of researchers, theproblem is very different: Rather than being foreign researchers researching in an unfamiliarcontext, they are insiders conducting research in their own cultural context for publication ininternational journals. In this article, the authors draw on their own experiences and on the lit-erature on autoethnography to illustrate the strengths and challenges of researching “back home.”In particular, they argue that autoethnographic approaches have four important strengths—ease of access, reduced resource requirements, ease of establishing trust and rapport, andreduced problems with translation—but at the same time pose three important challenges—lack of critical distance, role conflict, and the limits of serendipity.

Keywords: field research methods; case study; ethnography; interviews; participantobservation

Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides mosteffectively from its own participants.

—Hall (1959, p. 53)

The challenge of researching across cultures has received considerable attention in theinternational management literature (e.g., N. J. Adler, 1983a, 1983b; Boyacigiller & Adler,1991; Earley & Singh, 1995; Marschan-Piekkari & Welch, 2004; Milliman & von Glinow,1998; Teagarden et al., 1995; Usunier, 1998). Discussions have focused on a range of issuesencountered by researchers as they work to solve difficult problems of linguistic and culturaltranslation faced when carrying out research projects in unfamiliar cultural contexts.Although effective solutions remain largely elusive (Easterby-Smith & Malina, 1999), writ-ers have identified a number of the most vexing problems and begun to develop at least par-tial solutions for successfully carrying out international management research across cultures.

But although the problem of being a foreign researcher researching in an unfamiliar con-text remains the central methodological issue in international management research, for a

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Authors’ Note: Although this article is coauthored, it is written in the first person to reflect the fact that it isprimarily the work of the first author and is based on her experiences carrying out research in her own culturalcontext.

growing group of researchers the problem is quite different. For these researchers, the problemis not being a “professional stranger” researching in an unfamiliar context but rather beinga “local” carrying out a research project locally and publishing the results in internationaljournals (e.g., Ali, 1993, 1995; Bodur & Cavusgil, 1985; Cavusgil, Civi, Tutek, & Dalgic, 2003;Hayashi, 1988; Luo & Peng, 1999; Michailova, 2000; Nakane, 1973; Peng & Luo, 2000).

This trend reverses the more traditional situation described by Usunier (1998), whoargued that “international research is by its very nature comparative for the simple reasonthat the researcher has a different cultural background to the ‘researched’ field and infor-mants” (p. 31). Research in this case is still international, but it is characterized byresearchers who come from the same background as the research field but from a differentcultural background than the readers of the results. These researchers have the advantageof having “a name and a face in the local community which is likely to facilitate access tolocal firms” (Welch & Marschan-Piekkari, 2004, p. 11) and cultural, linguistic, and socialskills that provide a degree of insight not available to foreign researchers.

This is especially true for qualitative researchers.1 Chapman, for example, describes hiscoauthors as “insiders,” who in studying contexts with which they are intimately familiarhave access, knowledge, and freedom of movement that allows them to develop particularinsight into contexts not visible to “outsiders” (Chapman, Gajewska De Mattos, &Antoniou, 2004, p. 293). Being an insider is, in fact, suggested as a solution to many of theproblems encountered by foreign researchers trying to conduct qualitative research in inter-national contexts. But it also raises a whole new set of challenges around issues such asmaintaining distance and managing roles (Bartunek & Louis, 1996).

Understanding this phenomenon is particularly important as it is driven by two trendsthat show no sign of abating. First, there are an increasing number of business schoolslocated outside of North America and Western Europe that expect their faculty to publishin international journals. These researchers naturally look to their local context for sites toconduct research, and they gain the advantages, and face the challenges, of this sort ofresearch. Second, there are an increasing number of international management researchersin North America and Europe from diverse cultural backgrounds for whom it is convenientand attractive to return to their home country to do research. For these researchers, con-ducting research “back home” plays to their cultural and linguistic competence and allowsthem to collect data from novel contexts. In either case, researchers face the problem high-lighted in the above quote by Hall (1959): They need to learn to “see” their own culture,and then they need to translate what they see for publication in international journals.

In this article, I discuss autoethnography as a potential framework for understanding thechallenge and potential of this approach to international management research.Autoethnography, a type of ethnography that uses the researcher’s personal experiences asa source of data (Marvasti, 2004), is more than merely an insider’s reporting of his or herown culture (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). It is a complex process of managing insider andresearcher roles to integrate elements of the researcher’s own life experience while writingabout others (Denzin, 1989). It is important to be clear, however, that I am not arguing forautoethnography as a method in international management research. Rather, I am arguingthat an increasing proportion of research in international management is taking on the char-acteristics of autoethnography and that we can therefore draw in a useful way on the liter-ature on autoethnography to understand the ramifications of this trend.

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For international management researchers conducting studies in their own cultural con-text, autoethnography provides a methodological frame for understanding and managingtheir research. Even more importantly, it acts to sensitize the researcher (and potential read-ers of the results) to the importance of carefully managing the complex dynamics of thisform of cross-cultural research including questions of authorial voice, role conflict, andpower. In addition to autoethnography, I will also discuss a number of related methods suchas native ethnography (e.g., Kumayama, 2004), opportunistic ethnography (e.g., Reimer,1977), and collaborative ethnography (e.g., Stull & Schensul, 1987) that I will use todevelop a framework useful in understanding the advantages and challenges of researchersconducting research in their own cultural context.

My observations in this article grow out of extended reflection on my own experiencescarrying out a research project in Turkey. The research team included one Canadian and oneBritish collaborator, who participated during the research design and data analysis phasesof the study, and me, a Turkish Bulgarian for whom the setting was a “local” one. I workedclosely together with them throughout the project, although each of us developed distinctroles. The project lasted nearly 3 years and involved in-depth interviews and participantobservation followed by collaborative data analysis and theory development. The experi-ence of managing this project, and of working cross-culturally and autoethnographically,provides the basis for the identification of a number of central challenges and opportunitiesassociated with this approach.

I believe that this article makes three important contributions to the literature on qual-itative research methods in international management. First, the article highlights theincreasing trend toward international management researchers conducting research intheir own cultural context. Although the complex issues around researchers conductingresearch in foreign contexts have received extensive discussion, little discussion hastaken place regarding the parallel issues surrounding researchers researching in their owncultural context. Much further discussion is required both to understand the ramificationsof this trend and to provide sufficient guidance for researchers in this situation. Second,it introduces the concept of autoethnography, and a number of closely related forms ofethnography, as resources for understanding this new trend in international managementresearch. The literature on autoethnography and related approaches provides a vocabu-lary that is useful in thinking about this approach to international management research.Third, the article provides an initial overview of the strengths and challenges associatedwith researchers researching back home. In particular, it points to the improved ease ofaccess, reduced resource requirements, and improved trust and rapport and to the chal-lenge of maintaining a critical distance, the difficulties of managing role conflict, and thelimits of serendipity.

I will proceed in three steps. First, I will discuss autoethnography and various formsof ethnography and argue for their usefulness in understanding this form of internationalmanagement research. Second, I will draw on my own experience of conducting researchin a particularly autoethnographic study to draw out some of the opportunities and chal-lenges of conducting research in one’s own cultural context in international management.Finally, I will conclude with some reflections on the broader ramifications of autoethno-graphic approaches in international management based on the literature and my ownexperience.

Karra, Phillips / International Research as Autoethnography 3

Autoethnography and International Management

Understanding autoethnography necessarily begins with a discussion of ethnography.Ethnography refers to both an approach and a final product (Agar, 1980): an approach inthe sense that it is a method of investigating social reality and a product in the sense thatthe books and papers produced by ethnographers are often referred to as ethnographies.Silverman (1993) focuses on the latter when he describes ethnography as a conceptuallyderived description of a culture. Clifford (1986), focusing on the former, is more poetic:

Ethnography’s tradition is that of Herodotus and Montesquieu’s Persian. It looks obliquely atall collective arrangements, distant or nearby. It makes the familiar strange, the exotic quotidian.. . . Ethnography is activity situated in the boundaries of civilizations, cultures, classes, races,and genders. Ethnography decodes and recodes, telling the grounds of collective order anddiversity, inclusion and exclusion. (p. 2)

Ethnography as a research tradition grew out of an interest in representing cultural prac-tices and understandings among cultural groups. It is based on systematic and rigorousobservation and interviewing, combined with the production of texts that work to translatethe meanings and practices of a cultural group into plausible and convincing “thick descrip-tions” (Geertz, 1973). In its concern with presenting cultural frameworks, it is the mostinterpretive of all methodologies (Silverman, 1985); in its concern with presenting theseframeworks to other cultural groups, it is the most literary (Clifford & Marcus, 1986). It isalso a methodology that is experiencing something of a renaissance in sociology andanthropology, to the point that some authors have started to talk of an “ethnographic turn”in social science (Culyba, Heimer, & Coleman Petty, 2004).

Ethnography in Management Research

The use of ethnography in management research is relatively rare, although not unknown(e.g., Dalton, 1959; Jackall, 1989). Its use in international management is even rarer(Chapman et al., 2004). In management studies more broadly, Rosen (1991) has argued atlength for the value of applying ethnographic methods to the study of management tounderstand the complex social meanings and practices that surrounded the workplace inter-actions of his informants (see also Rosen, 1988). Van Maanen (1979a), perhaps the mostwell-known ethnographer in management, argues that the aim of ethnography in the con-text of management research is to “uncover and explicate the ways in which people in par-ticular work settings come to understand, account for, take action, and otherwise managetheir day-to-day situation” (p. 540).

In international management, ethnography also has its supporters. As Chapman and hiscoauthors (2004) argue:

We need real basic well-founded knowledge about what companies do, and why they do it.Ethnographic research is one sure way of providing good detailed information. (p. 303)

The point made by Chapman et al. is the same point made by Rosen (1991) and Van Maanen(1979a, 1979b) in the previous paragraph. Ethnography provides a way to explore the


complex social context of companies. It provides a way to highlight difference and to reveal thecomplex dynamics that are hidden by traditional methods. It is this sensitivity and exploratorynature that makes this sort of approach so valuable in international management research.

Autoethnography

The move from ethnography to autoethnography occurs when the ethnographer turns hisor her attention on his or her own group (Hayano, 1979). By this I do not mean simply self-reflection but “theoretically structured introspection” (Fiske, 1990, p. 85). As Reed-Danahay (1997) succinctly puts it, “Whereas the ethnographer translates a foreign culturefor members of his or her own culture, the autoethnographer translates ‘home’ culture foraudiences of ‘others’” (p. 27). This double meaning of the study of one’s own culture andthe production of some form of more-or-less autobiographical text is summed up by VanMaanen (1995, p. 9), who defines autoethnography as a specialized form of ethnographywhere the culture of the writer’s own group is textualized.

But there is an additional use of the term that is also important for us here. This alterna-tive definition is perhaps best exemplified by Pratt (1992):

I use [autoethnography] to refer to instances in which colonized subjects undertake to repre-sent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms. If ethnographic texts aremeans by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethno-graphic texts are those that others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitanrepresentations. (p. 7)

This definition focuses on the relationship between the two cultures, on the intention of thelocal author to “engage” with the dominant culture, and on the power dynamics that thisentails. The texts produced are produced to appeal to the interests, concerns, and under-standings of the dominant culture, not of the culture being studied. This aspect ofautoethnography is critical to understanding the complex dynamics that occur when aforeign-educated researcher returns to study his or her local culture and highlights one ofthe most important challenges that insiders face in studying their own culture: maintainingthe researcher role in the local context.

Related Forms of Ethnography

There are several other forms of ethnography that are closely related to, and to somedegree overlap with, autoethnography. All of these forms of ethnography share withautoethnography a deep role experience tending toward what Adler and Adler (1987) call“complete membership,” where “rather than experiencing mere participatory involvement,[researchers] immerse themselves fully in the group as ‘natives’” (p. 67). Three of thesespecialized forms of ethnography are particularly useful to us here in highlighting impor-tant aspects of autoethnography.

First, there is an important and growing literature on native ethnography. Native ethnogra-phy refers to “the attempt by natives to represent their people, usually in their own language,


from native points of view” (Kuwayama, 2004, p. 1). Native ethnography is a highly polit-ical methodological development focusing attention on the goal of “decolonizing Westernanthropology through more reflexive modes of representation and critique” (Jacobs-Huey,2002, p. 792). The trade-off in native ethnography is often painted in stark relief: By givingup a measure of distance and objectivity, one regains legitimacy and political awareness. AsJackson (2004) argues:

Native ethnographers are believed to start out from this overly identificatory position, relin-quishing some of their ability to create requisite dissociation from the field that writing up issupposed to encapsulate. The hunters and trappers conquer the wild other; they do not, likeTarzan and Cushing, become it. Native anthropologists are assumed to be agential extensionsof this same wilderness; they do not, like real anthropologists, stand above and beyond it in aposture of laboratorial scrutiny. (p. 34)

This question of objectivity and authorial position is a matter of some dispute in this liter-ature, and it is not necessary to revisit the entire debate here. What is important for us iswhat the debate around native ethnography highlights: There are important questions ofauthorial voice, role, and power that appear around the instances where ethnographies arecarried out by “natives.”

In addition to native ethnography, there are two further forms of ethnography that areimportant for our discussion here. Collaborative ethnography refers to “the collaboration ofresearchers and subjects in the production of ethnographic texts, both fieldwork and writing”(Lassiter, 2005, p. 83). Researchers interested in this approach to ethnography point to thefact that collaboration in ethnographic writings has become a cliché more or less synony-mous with “rapport,” whereas actual experiments in real collaboration have been forgotten(Marcus, 1997). Increasingly, authors are arguing for a return to a much more nuanced ideaof collaboration with a range of different levels of collaboration from acting as “readers andeditors” through “collaborative ethnographic teams” to “coproduced and cowritten texts”(Lassiter, 2005, p. 94). What is important here is not the detail of the arguments put forwardby proponents of collaborative ethnography but rather the notion that the roles of researchparticipants can be much broader than the simple provision of information.

Finally, there is an important stream of literature discussing the idea of opportunisticethnography (Reimer, 1977). The term opportunistic ethnography refers to ethnographycarried out by researchers who have found themselves members of an interesting group bychance. As Hayano (1979) notes, they are “scholars who have acquired (and then exploited)multiple group membership derived from their own personal interests and backgrounds”(p. 100). No attempt was made by the researcher to seek out and gain entry to an interest-ing field location for the purposes of research, but rather the researcher was born into it orin some other way found himself or herself in it. As Adler and Adler (1987) describe:

Of all membership roles, opportunistic [ethnographers] are the most similar to the people theystudy. Some are born into the group, some have worked at various jobs before or during theircareers as social scientists, whereas others find themselves thrust into situations and then turnthem to use for this purpose. (p. 69)

In any case, what is important here is the notion of ethnography based on serendipity. Insome cases, group membership need not be negotiated as it predates the research.


Researching Back Home as Autoethnography

Building on these various forms of ethnography, I define autoethnography as the gener-ation of theoretically relevant descriptions of a group to which one belongs based on astructured analysis of one’s experiences and the experiences of others from one’s group. AsHayano (1979) argues, in autoethnography “researchers possess the qualities of often per-manent self-identification with a group and full internal membership, as recognized bothby themselves and by the people of whom they are a part” (p. 100). It is an attempt to pro-duce sense from one’s experience of a group that can be set down in a text and shared withinterested others. It does not mean that the researcher studies only himself or herself, butthat the researcher is an insider who can draw on personal experience, cultural competence,and linguistic resources to frame and shape research in a way that an outsider cannot.

From a methodological perspective, autoethnography reflects the fact that in some casesthe researcher can, to some degree, also be the participant. Particularly in a complex cross-cultural setting, this kind of approach provides an additional measure of “ethnographicauthority” (Wellman, 1994) in that the researcher is accepted as culturally competent andusually has access to the research site. Therefore, it is expected that the problems of cul-tural competence, linguistic skill, and access would be reduced and that the resultingresearch would have a greater degree of “authenticity” (Marvasti, 2004), as developing ahigh degree of cultural sensitivity is relatively harder for an outsider.

Given this definition of autoethnography, the parallels with qualitative work in interna-tional management, where a researcher conducts a study in his or her own local context,hopefully becomes clearer. To a greater or lesser degree, depending on the research design,the researcher is acting as an autoethnographer leveraging his or her deep cultural knowl-edge and linguistic ability as he or she conducts his or her study. It is not necessary that aresearcher conduct an actual autoethnography, but only that he or she draws on local knowl-edge and membership in a cultural group as one aspect of a study.

But this approach does not come without problems. Several researchers have doubted theuse of the self as a primary data source (e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Sparkes, 2000). Inparticular, there are three important criticisms of this approach. First, some writers arguethat autoethnographers are simply being self-indulgent (Coffey, 1999, p. 156). The focuson one’s own cultural group leads to an overemphasis and romanticization, makingautoethnography of little use. For instance, Denzin (1990) presents the process as a longand arduous journey where it is all too easy to lose authority and “go native.” This critiquefocuses attention on the importance of issues of role conflict and authorial voice inautoethnographic research and the necessity of managing these critical issues.

Second, Sparkes (2000) suggested that autoethnography is difficult to evaluate, as the tra-ditional criteria used to evaluate qualitative research are often not appropriate for autoethnog-raphy (see also Garratt & Hodkinson, 1999). The idea that an ethnographer’s descriptions arevalid because he or she gained cultural and linguistic competence in the field and adhered totime-tested methodological techniques such as the field note (and the institutionalized report-ing of the large number of pages of field notes that have accumulated) is meaningless in thiscontext, and the researcher is left without a clear way to legitimate autoethnographic work(Ambert, Adler, Adler, & Detzner, 1995). This criticism again points to the difficulties thatsurround the role of researcher in autoethnography. How does the autoethnography developthe necessary distance to allow the required authorial voice in the resulting research?


Third, the depth of understanding of one participant’s experience is traded off for aninability to move freely in the organization and observe others. The fact that the insider hasa role makes it difficult to move through different subgroups of which the autoethnographeris not a member. In addition, role expectations are high, and behaviors outside of what isnormal for the role may lead to confusion among participants and the withdrawal of theircooperation. This final criticism again highlights the complexity of managing access andthe researcher role while also being an insider. It also points to the complex power dynam-ics that occur in autoethnographic research.

What is particularly interesting here is that it is the exact cultural and linguistic connec-tion that provides the researcher with an advantage in carrying out the research that alsocreates the sorts of difficulties described in existing discussions of autoethnography. Andfurthermore, it is reasonable to assume that autoethnographic approaches to internationalmanagement research lead to the same kinds of opportunities and challenges as more tra-ditional autoethnography. But what, exactly, are the strengths and weaknesses of this sortof autoethnographic approach to international management research? What are the waysthat researchers can use the advantages to their benefits, and how can they deal with the dis-advantages of this method? In the following sections, I will discuss my own experiencescarrying out a qualitative case study in my local context and attempt to provide initialanswers to these questions.

The Challenge and Opportunity of Researching Back Home

The arguments I present in this section grow out of the literature on autoethnography dis-cussed above combined with an extended reflection on my experiences carrying out an in-depth case study of an international entrepreneur who founded a highly successful fashionfirm in Turkey (see Karra, Tracey, & Phillips, in press). The research project was part of alarger multimethod program of research investigating ethnic and international entrepre-neurship in Turkey among Turkish people of Bulgarian ethnicity.2

The focal firm in my study was a highly successful international new venture based inIstanbul. The firm was an excellent choice for my study because of the fact that it had “rareor unique” qualities that made it a logical candidate for “theoretical sampling” (Eisenhardt,1989; Yin, 2003): The company had been international from inception, had achieved highprofit and growth in international markets, and was purely family owned. It was thereforean ideal case to examine a range of questions regarding international entrepreneurship andethnic entrepreneurship.

At the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, my selection was also driven bythe fact that I was intimately familiar with the history of the firm, I had complete and unlim-ited access to information and members of the firm, and I could return to the research siteas often as I liked to gather further data. Such access to information and high levels of coop-eration were invaluable and were due to the fact that I had worked as a translator and aninterpreter for the company and, most importantly, am the daughter of the founder and theniece of the founder’s business partners. These close personal relationships meant that Iwas already a member of this group, and my entry did not need to be negotiated. For me,the research site was opportunistic and highly autoethnographic. It also meant that there


were significant challenges because of my close relationship with the firm. These difficul-ties centered on the complex negotiations around my role as a researcher, the challenge ofmaintaining an authorial voice, and the dynamics of power within the firm.

My experience conducting this research therefore provides an excellent context withinwhich to discuss the strengths and challenges of an autoethnographic approach. It is, in fact,what Eisenhardt (1989) refers to as a “transparent” example where the nature of the case isextreme and highlights the dynamics that are of interest to the researcher. In the remainder ofthis section, I will use my experiences to discuss the interrelated strengths and challenges ofautoethnographic research. I will begin with a discussion of the strengths of autoethnographydrawing examples from my study. I will then turn to the challenges of autoethnographicresearch that, interestingly, grow out of the same dynamics that underpin its strengths.

The Strengths of Autoethnographic Research in IM

Based on the literature and on my own experiences, I have identified four strengths thatI believe are of particular importance: ease of access, reduced resource requirements,increased ability to establish trust and rapport, and reduced problems with translation. Inthis section, I will discuss each of these in turn.

Ease of access. Gaining access to a research site has been documented as the most crucialand problematic step in qualitative management research (Gummeson, 1991). In the case ofautoethnography, however, this problem is greatly reduced as the research project generallygrows out of a research site to which a researcher already has access (and is, in fact, alreadya member) rather than out of theoretical interests that lead the researcher to search out a site.In fact, the researcher usually begins with a research site and then constructs a researchquestion that fits the research opportunity. People should, as in opportunistic ethnography,“turn familiar situations, timely events, or special expertise into objects of study” (Adler &Adler, 1987, p. 69). Autoethnographic research is therefore highly dependent onserendipity—does the researcher have access to a site that presents an interesting researchopportunity?

So how does this apply to the type of international management research discussed here?Well, in many cases, researchers have connections to the local context that they can leverageto gain access to a firm. This may be a firm where they are already a member, but more likelyit is a firm with which they have some family or personal connection. This avoids the prob-lems of dealing with official gatekeepers, which plagues foreign researchers entering thefield through official channels. As Easterby-Smith and Malina (1998, p. 79) discuss, officialgatekeepers often allow a foreign researcher to study only showcase organizations (see alsoShenkar & von Glinow, 1994; Snell & Easterby-Smith, 1991) or to only talk to certain orga-nizational members. In the case of more autoethnographic research, the local connections ofthe researcher allow him or her to avoid these issues and allow access without intermedia-tion by gatekeepers. This is obviously highly advantageous for the researcher.

In my case, for example, as I mentioned above, my personal ties and connections with theorganization afforded me access that did not rely on official gatekeepers at all, avoiding the


frustrating and time-consuming process of managing that relationship. Through serendipity,I had excellent access to an interesting organization. I chose to study this specific organiza-tion, and my choice was unfettered by the preferences of officials. Because of my previousinvolvement in the firm and my family connection, the founder, other members of the orga-nization, and all of its alliance partners were very happy to provide any needed information.In fact, my connections led to the sponsorship of the CEO, who then formally asked all ofhis significant alliance partners to cooperate—obviously resulting in excellent cooperation.In addition, I was also able to return to the firm on multiple occasions to gather further dataand to reflect back my understanding of the case. My preexisting relationships with organi-zational members ensured that I always received an enthusiastic and interested reception.

This ease of access did not come without a price, however. The connection and spon-sorship of the CEO and my family connections to the firm also created complex power rela-tionships with other members of the firm and members of the broader network of suppliersand buyers. At times, interviewees clearly doubted that my motivation was purely acade-mic but rather thought that perhaps I was trying to find out business details for my father.This resulted in complicated and difficult to manage role conflicts that required extensivemanagement to ensure collaboration. I will return to the challenge of maintaining theresearch role in the next section.

Reduced resource requirements. One of the problems faced by all researchers in this areais the expense and time demands of doing international research. Cavusgil and Das (1997),for example, emphasize the fact that many interesting international management researchcontexts have markedly different social systems, literacy rates, cultural values, and statusor prestige symbols from familiar Western norms and that this complexity means that datacollection is often one of the most difficult and important aspects of most internationalmanagement research. It also means that it is one of the most expensive in terms of timeand money.

Researchers therefore face the difficult task of securing sufficient funds to cover not onlythe basic costs of traditional research but also the costs of travel and accommodation in aforeign country and the very significant costs of translation. Based on my experience, moreautoethnographic research helps dramatically to reduce the resource problems that plagueinternational management research. Because autoethnographic research involves goingback home, the researcher incurs far lower costs. However, the more pronounced advan-tages of cost reduction lie in being able to speak the local language and understand the localcontext. This has two mutually reinforcing effects.

First, the cost of translation is avoided. This is a very significant and direct reduction in thecost of research. For instance, I speak all the languages of the respondents in my study (Turkish,Italian, Bulgarian, and Russian) and therefore was able to conduct my interviews in the languageof choice of the interviewee, and in multiple languages in several cases. This meant that I wasable to do the initial coding without overall translation, only translating important parts of theinterviews to my coauthors. I will return to how we did this in the conclusion.

Second, when researchers are able to understand the language and context of theresearch, this leads to a reduction in the amount of time needed in the field and an increasein flexibility and effectiveness. This further reduces the resources required for the project.


For instance, while visiting the factory in Turkey, I had the chance to meet several Russiandistributors and Italian suppliers. My ability to speak those languages allowed me to conductthe interviews right then and there rather than having to arrange for separate translators ofRussian and Italian. This two-pronged savings is part of the reason that anthropologists areroutinely required to become competent speakers of the relevant language before enteringthe field.

This is particularly important given the rather fraught nature of obtaining external fund-ing for international research. Qualitative researchers note the complex issues, such as lossof autonomy (Guba & Lincoln, 1989), complex politics, and time constraints (Easterby-Smith & Malina, 1999), that occur around framing the research proposal to obtain funding(Cheek, 2003). Easterby-Smith & Malina (1999) describe the challenges of this process veryvividly: “The external funding introduced a political element into the project . . . and theresearch team had the added pressure of accommodating the demands of national fundingagencies with differing objectives” (p. 99). Anything that reduces the need for external fund-ing therefore increases the likelihood of success in international research projects.

Even more importantly, many international researchers are reluctant to adopt qualitativeapproaches as these projects are notoriously time consuming and require extended time inthe field (e.g., Chapman et al., 2004). Given the ever-increasing focus on publication pro-ductivity, this aspect of qualitative research seems to be an insurmountable barrier to manyresearchers, with the unfortunate result that qualitative approaches remain underrepre-sented in international management research. More autoethnographic approaches reducethe amount of time required to conduct a study and make it more viable as a project formanagement researchers. This approach therefore provides an important impetus for theuse of underrepresented methods in international management research.

To sum up, more autoethnographic approaches to international management researchhave several important advantages related to the cost of research. First, and most simply,the costs of conducting research are reduced. This has the added benefit of reducing theunfortunate effects on research of the dynamics of securing funding. Second, more autoethno-graphic methods reduce the time in the field, making more qualitative methods more practicalto adopt. Given the current imbalance between qualitative and quantitative methods in inter-national management, this is an important additional benefit.

Establishing trust and rapport. Researchers face an increasing challenge as the focus ofattention in international management moves from a narrow focus on developedeconomies to a much broader focus that includes transition and emerging economies. Inthese contexts, reliable statistical data are often difficult, if not impossible, to acquire,making it unwise to rely on publicly available data. At the same time, survey methods are simply not practical. In fact, as Punnet and Shenkar (1994) argue, the greater thedifference between a researcher’s home country and the foreign research site, the lesslikely the research methods and approaches used at home will be appropriate for theforeign field site. Informal interviews and participant observation are often the only waysof obtaining accurate and reliable data. But this creates a significant problem for foreignresearchers. How do they develop the level of trust and rapport needed to acquire the datathey require?


This is a particularly important question because of another aspect of doing research inemerging and transition contexts: Respondents from organizations in these contexts areoften secretive and may even hide crucial information. They are often unclear on whatresearch is and have complex reasons for not wanting to disclose even basic informationsuch as the number of employees in a firm or total sales. The degree of trust and rapportthat develops between the researcher and respondents is therefore crucial in determining thevalue of the research produced. Furthermore, the likelihood of a foreign researcher beingable to generate the level of trust and rapport required is often remote.

Autoethnographic research, where the researcher has the necessary preexisting connec-tions to the context, and ideally to a firm and its managers, becomes one important solutionto this problem. Researchers who have cultural competence and personal and family con-nections are much more likely to be able to create the level of trust and rapport necessaryto gain access to the kind of data needed to build theory. Researchers without the necessarysocial capital are unlikely to get very far. A reflection of this is the increasing number ofarticles by Western researchers reporting the challenges of doing research in a foreign envi-ronment, and particularly the challenges of adapting Western style research methods suchas the interview or survey to unfamiliar contexts and dealing with complex issues of trans-lation and contextualization (e.g., George & Clegg, 1997; Teagarden et al., 1995).

For example, a problem I repeatedly faced was trying to explain the purpose of my researchto members of the firm. The idea of a dissertation leading to a doctoral degree was very unfa-miliar to many of the respondents and quite difficult for them to take seriously. They would, asI mentioned previously, find it very odd that I was asking all these questions about their busi-ness activities. Did I work for the government? Was I going to pass along what I found to theofficials? Despite the fact that the respondents knew that I was a student, many of them thoughtthat “there was something else going on” behind all my questions about the company and theirbusiness activities. But I was able to overcome this through the careful management of theserelationships. My knowledge of the culture allowed me to carefully explain what I was doing,to use humor to reduce tension, and to convince them that I had no hidden agenda. Althoughthis required a significant investment of time initially, by winning over critical respondents whowould then vouch for me with other, more distant interviewees, I was able to overcome thisproblem. At the same time, without the social capital built up over years of working with thecompany and the cultural knowledge I have as a member of the group, there would have beenno possibility of carrying out the research in this context.

The importance of establishing trust and rapport, and the increased likelihood of doingso if you are an insider, has been discussed at some length in the literature. Jacobs-Huey(2002) argues that a researcher’s “degree of communicative competence—the ability to useand interpret home speech varieties appropriately across various cultural contexts—plays asignificant role in his or her ability to enter a community and develop a rapport withresearch participants” (p. 794). Bolak (1996), for example, conducted an extended researchproject back in her home country of Turkey and rapidly established high levels of trustamong her interviewees. In fact, she became so trusted and built up such rapport that herrespondents would happily share their most personal problems. The autoethnographicresearcher, in other words, was “able to ask relevant and meaningful questions to tap intotheir experiences, which made them feel understood and validated” (p. 122). It is hard toimagine a foreign researcher working through a translator gaining this sort of position withrespect to this group of participants.


The sticky question of translation. The issue of reliability in terms of equivalence oflanguage and instrumentation (Douglas & Craig, 1983) has received particular attentionamong researchers in international management (Cavusgil & Das, 1997). More quantitativeresearchers have particularly focused on conveying equivalence of language in theirinstruments, which implies that the concepts and meanings used in the measuring instrumentmust be equivalent across cultures (Cavusgil & Das, 1997). Researchers have tried to achievesuch equivalence through a number of techniques including using high-frequency words,equivalent grammar, and multiple measures and avoiding idiomatic expressions (N. J. Adler,1983b).

For more qualitative researchers, the problems of translating interviews and secondarysources of data have been a source of even more profound difficulty. Even carrying out aninterview through a translator requires real skill on the part of the translator to conveynuances of meaning and context. Much of the most important aspects of the interview arelost as details and opportunities for probing questions are missed. The need for commu-nicative competence, as we discussed in the previous section, is clear. For the interviewer,the problems of managing the interview through a translator are significant, not to mentionthe much greater time required for sequential translation.

However, in the case of autoethnographic research, the issue of translation, equivalenceof language and nuances, and applying surveys and interviews to “foreign” cultures aregreatly reduced. Because of the fact that the autoethnographic researcher is studying his orher own culture, the researcher is able to relate to the context and individual studied, inaddition to being able to conduct the data collection in the language of choice of the inter-viewee. This results in higher reliability of the research and a more profound understand-ing of the research topic.

For instance, my own experience of conducting research in Turkey, Eastern Europe, andthe former Soviet Bloc, I conducted all my interviews in the language of choice of the inter-viewee: Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian, English, or Italian. As I mentioned earlier, this imme-diately increased the efficiency of the interview process, put the interviewee more at ease,and avoided the difficulties of managing an interview through a translator. It also allowedthe use of humor, which reduced feelings of awkwardness and any tension that might haveexisted at the beginning of the interview. Perhaps more importantly, having worked in thosecountries, I was also familiar with the cultural nuances and conceptions of individuals I wasinterviewing. This was particularly important when asking questions about sensitive topicssuch as corruption. Without the necessary cultural and linguistic competence, an inter-viewer is likely to either abandon a line of questioning too early or to carry on and offendthe interviewee.

The Challenges of Autoethnographic Research

Throughout the process of carrying out my study, I faced three major challengesgrowing out of the autoethnographic aspect of my research: difficulty maintaining criti-cal distance, ongoing role conflict, and the limits of serendipity. I will consider each issuein turn.


Lack of Critical Distance

One of the most difficult problems facing ethnographic researchers generally, andautoethnographic researchers in particular, is the problem of creating and maintaining criticaldistance: “The native anthropologist is still assumed to be less adept at creating the kind ofobjective detachment needed to properly interpret the emic etically, to turn humanistic rumi-nations into true scientific fact” (Jackson, 2004, p. 34). In autoethnography, this problem oftenappears in the form of the researcher finding important aspects of the study obvious or naturaland therefore finding it difficult to theorize about the research phenomena. He or she may over-look potentially important details or fail to report them because of their quotidian nature.

In the case of my study, this problem was a significant issue. On some occasions, I wassimply unable to see what was interesting about some aspect of the company I was study-ing. The mundaneness that made a particular incident or comment important also made meunable to see its significance. For instance, while still working for the company, I had sug-gested putting up a sign in the main languages of the customers (Russian, Bulgarian, andTurkish) who were frequenting the area where the main wholesale outlet was. It said,“Please come in for a cup of homeland coffee.” It was designed to signal that the owner andhis wife were from the same culture as their Russian and Bulgarian customers and to makethem feel more comfortable going into the store. Although this particular aspect was highlysignificant for the research project, it was only when my research collaborators pointed itout that I was able to see its importance because it was so unremarkable to me.

Alternatively, the close relationship of the ethnographer to the topic of study may makecertain features seem more salient and important than they really are. This “hypersalience”may lead the researcher to overemphasize these aspects of the study in his or her work.These aspects of the study may take on much more significance than they should becauseof the researcher’s direct experiences with them, because the researcher played a pivotalrole in particular events, or because they had been emotionally charged. In any of thesecases, they may take on an importance that reflects the researcher’s personal perspective butthat does not reflect the more general importance of the particular piece of data.

In both cases, what is critical is to be aware of the potential of this occurring and to workto ensure that the ramifications of it are minimized. This involves very careful attention toeven the most seemingly insignificant detail, the use of structured and rigorous data analy-sis techniques, and the careful use of research collaborators or, at the very least, criticalcommentators who comment on your data analysis and results. Although this problem willalways dog highly ethnographic work, it can be minimized through careful attention to datacollection and analysis.

Role Conflict

Autoethnographers, by definition, have a complex role in the situations they research.They are simultaneously a member of the context in which they are immersed and workingto conduct structured research activities as part of their role as a researcher:

Instead of having to bring their research self to a setting and carve out a membership role, thereverse occurs. Here we see people familiar with a setting having to create the space and characterfor their research role to emerge. They must look at the setting through a fresh perspective, todevelop relationship with people they did not associate with previously, to change the nature


of their preexisting relationships, and to become involved with the setting more broadly. Thiscan be difficult, awkward, and heighten the sense of unnaturalness that invariably surroundsthe research enterprise. (Adler & Adler, 1987, pp. 69-70)

The two roles—researcher and group member—often conflict, with the researcher roleinterfering with the seamless achievement of membership and the membership role pre-venting the researcher from carrying out activities that he or she needs to do as a researcher.Successfully conducting autoethnographic research is, to a large degree, about managingthis tension.

One very significant problem that I encountered early in the research process grew outof the complex role experienced by the researcher very much as discussed in the literatureon autoethnography. In this case, I had a long history with the organization and found itvery difficult to get certain members of the organization, close family members in particu-lar, to take my researcher role seriously. Comments such as “but you know all that already”were common when I would try to get the participants to explain their experience of thefounding and early success of the company. My serious questions were often met withlaughter and a dismissive wave of the hand. My historical role conflicted with the newresearch role in a way that troubled interviewees and made carrying out research difficult.

But the role conflict I experienced was not limited to the external impact of my groupmembership on my research role. I also had to carefully monitor my own feelings of hav-ing a preexisting role in the company. I would, for example, find myself arguing with inter-viewees about details of a particular historical event such as who said what when or thesequence in which events occurred. Alternatively, I would find myself adding detail andreminiscing instead of actively carrying out my research role. Unless I was careful, it wasall too easy for an interview to degenerate into a chat about the “good old times” in thecompany.

This question of managing roles is at the heart of autoethnographic methods and is thegreatest challenge facing researchers conducting their research locally. The complexity ofthe dynamic between the researcher role and preexisting group role is connected to identityand underpins relationship dynamics that predate the research. The difficulties of manag-ing these issues are significant, but the potential insights that can be gained when the rightbalance is struck are also very significant. But careful attention, and considerable energy,must be applied to this problem to ensure success.

The Limits of Serendipity

In the previous section, I discussed how autoethnographers generally study organizationswith which they already have an existing relationship of some sort; perhaps an organizationwhere they once worked, one with which they have some sort of family or other personaltie, or one in which they are currently involved in some professional capacity. By studyingan organization with which they are already connected, they are able to build on their socialcapital and take advantage of the positive aspects of autoethnography that we discussed inthe previous section. But having this connection is, of course, largely a matter of luck.Although these connections can be cultivated, they are fundamentally a matter of existingconditions over which the researcher has little control. In other words, it is a matter ofserendipity.


This has two important disadvantages. First, there is no way for the researcher to ensurethat the organization that he or she has access to is in any way representative of the sorts ofdynamics that the researcher is studying. Rather than the transparent example suggested byEisenhardt (1989), the organization may be atypical in any number of ways. The conve-nience of the existing connection and the advantages of more autoethnographic forms ofresearch can easily lead the researcher to ignore or underestimate the nonrepresentativenessof the organization and lead to findings and theoretical generalizations that are simply notaccurate representations of more general phenomena.

The second disadvantage is less complicated but perhaps more problematic: Someresearchers may just not have any connections into interesting organizations. Simply beinglocal is not sufficient to ensure that a researcher has appropriate connections to a local firmor firms. And, conversely, there may be very interesting organizations with which no researcherhas any useful connection. Either situation leads back to more traditional research methodsand approaches to gaining entry. Despite the disadvantages and limitations of more traditionalapproaches, there is no solution to a “social capital vacuum,” and the use of official gatekeepersand translators is the best remaining option.

Conclusions

I have summarized the above discussion of the strengths and challenges of autoethno-graphic forms of research in international management in Figure 1. As I have argued above,the strengths of this mode of research are considerable. Researching in your own culturalcontext eases the problems of access that plague researchers, reduces the resources requiredto conduct research, facilitates the development of trust and rapport, and reduces the prob-lems of translation that are so prevalent in research that spans cultural boundaries. At thesame time, the same factors that lead to these strengths also create a number of challenges.In particular, I have pointed to the problem of maintaining a critical distance, managing roleconflicts, and the limits of serendipity.

Autoethnographic methods are therefore a two-edged sword. The more autoethno-graphic a study becomes, the more benefit the researcher will experience in terms of thestrengths of the method. At the same time, the more autoethnographic the method becomes,the more he or she will need to manage the challenges. The decision to pursue this sort ofresearch design therefore requires careful consideration and a willingness to explicitly dealwith the challenges of the approach. It also means that in any particular situation, the ben-efits and costs of this approach need to be carefully weighed.

In developing this typology of strengths and challenges, this article contributes to theresearch methods literature in three important ways. First, the article identifies an impor-tant trend in international management research that has received little attention to date: theincreasing prevalence of researchers conducting research in their own cultural context. Thistrend shows no sign of abating and has important ramifications for how we think aboutresearch design in international management. At the same time, little guidance forresearchers exists, and this gap in the literature is a significant weakness in internationalmanagement methods. Second, the article introduces autoethnography as a way to thinkabout this trend and to understand some of its ramifications. Drawing on existing method-


ological discussions of the strengths and challenges of autoethnography provides an inter-esting perspective to begin to deal with this new methodological issue. Finally, the articlebegins to develop a typology of the strengths and challenges of autoethnographic researchin international management. The availability of this typology will hopefully helpresearchers to decide whether or not this approach is appropriate in their circumstances and,if so, to manage the challenges of conducting autoethnographic research.

But this leaves the question of what researchers can do to manage the challenges. Thefirst and most obvious point is to be aware of the problems. Thinking through the chal-lenges and planning for them is an important first step. No research method comes withoutlimitations, and this form of research comes with a predictable set of challenges for theresearcher carrying out the study. Paying attention to the challenges I have identified willhelp ensure the success of the study.

Second, it is possible to use a cross-cultural team as a partial solution (e.g., Michailova& Liuhto, 2000; Nason & Pulillutla, 1998; Teagarden et al., 1995; Turati, Usai, &Ravagnani, 1998). International management writers commonly advocate collaborationbetween researchers from different countries, each researcher possessing the requisiteknowledge of his or her culture (Douglas & Craig, 1983).3 Using one or more outsiders asresearch collaborators helps the researcher to establish a critical distance, to reduce roleconflict, and to balance the overly local opinion of the autoethnographer.

In my case, my research collaborators played several key roles. First, my collaboratorsprovided much needed critical distance. By working closely with me and talking throughthe narrative of the founding of the firm repeatedly, we were able to minimize the tendencyto either overemphasize or underemphasize aspects of the story. Second, my research col-laborators were able to help me identify critical interview material for translation. Giventhe large number of interviews conducted, complete translation would have been prohibi-tively expensive. By working through the interviews and explaining what had been dis-cussed verbally, we were able to identify the critical material for translation and jointcoding. Third, in some particularly difficult situations where I was unable to effectivelymaintain the role of researcher in the face of disbelieving organizational members who


Challenges

1) Ease of access

2) Reduced resource requirements

3) Establishing trust and rapport

4) Reducing translation problems

1) Lack of critical distance

2) Role conflict

3) The limits of serendipity

Strengths

Figure 1The Strengths and Challenges of Autoethnographic Approaches to

Research in International Management

would not accept me other than as the daughter of the founder, bringing along one or moreof my research collaborators provided the necessary break from normalcy to allow me tomaintain a research role. And once this was done once, I was generally able to maintain therole of researcher without them.

This article is, of course, just one step in the continued development of methods in inter-national management. Although I have pointed to the potential of autoethnography as a wayof proceeding with research cross-culturally, there is still much to do. In particular,researchers need to continue to develop better approaches to managing cross-cultural teamsand to perform team-based qualitative data analysis and focus more attention on the diffi-culties of communicating findings across cultures. The challenges of conducting researchand disseminating findings across cultures are tremendous, but techniques to do so are ofcritical importance. Therefore, future research on this topic would benefit from much morediscussion of what worked, what didn’t, and what else can be done.

Notes

1. The degree to which this problem is evident in international management research depends, of course, onthe research design followed by the researcher. In general, more quantitative methods will suffer less, whereasmore ethnographic studies will be affected most intensely. Case study methodologies will be somewhere in themiddle. At the same time, all forms of research that involve researchers researching their local context sufferfrom these problems to some extent.

2. Although the article builds primarily on my experiences working in Turkey, I have also been involvedin other research projects in Italy and the United States that have further shaped my understanding of cross-cultural research.

3. Hofstede (1980), alternatively, prefers multicultural researchers, adept in the ways of different cultures, tocomposing a team of researchers drawn from multiple cultures, but the practical problems of this are often extreme.

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Neri Karra is the Bilgi Research Fellow at the London School of Economics. She has a strong internationalbackground, having lived and worked in Russia, Italy, the United States, and Turkey. Her research interestsinclude the internationalization of new ventures, family business, and management in fashion and luxury firms.

Nelson Phillips is professor of strategy and organizational behaviour at Tanaka Business School, ImperialCollege London. His research interests include knowledge management, technology strategy, institutional the-ory, entrepreneurship and family business, and international management. He has recently published a newbook with Stewart Clegg and David Courpasson, Power and Organizations.


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Researching \"Back Home\": International Management Research as Autoethnography

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