Organizational Ethnography: An Illustrative Application in the Study of Indian R&D Settings Unknown - 1995

From the publisher

"There are some interesting and novel aspects to this research work.... [A] well researched and well argued study. The section related to doing fieldwork and the do′s and don′ts that a researcher needs to adopt are particularly interesting.... The book is "must" reading for all researchers in the fields of sociology and organization behaviour. The results as applied to public and private R&D settings are interesting since they are derived in a new kind of way. The book is a very useful contribution to the study of the cultures of Indian R & D and business organization." --Management Review After providing a comprehensive introduction to the concept and methods of ethnographic research, V. Suchitra Mouly and Jayaram K. Sankaran critically evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of survey and ethnographic research methods. They then describe the in-depth, microlevel ethnographic study that they conducted and discuss the various aspects involved in the successful application of ethnographic research methods in the study of a public-sector R&D team in India. Based on their ethnographic analysis, they conclude that centralized administration, excessive bureaucracy, and authoritarianism coupled with professional mediocrity and apathetic superiors can seriously hinder the quality of life and work of an R&D team.