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EJBRM Volume 6 Issue 2
Tales of an Immersed Researcher: Dealing with an Intimate Experience of Practice, New Perspectives on the Politics of Regulatory Change and Communication
Peter A. Dyer
Lincoln Business School, University of Lincoln, U.K.
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Both Governmentality and accounts of collaborative ethnographic study are well served by the academic literature.
However, this discussion focuses upon discourses that circulate around the debate of meat hygiene practice and how
it mediates through implementing organizational and regulatory change; it initiates a whole new discussion on the
politics surrounding collaborative ethnographic study. This study subtly illuminates the differing expectations
and gaze of the researcher and sponsor relationship. Between the degrees of control for both, as each search for
insights into existing practice,
exposing challenging attitudes and communicating the need for change within a watchful public realm.
Through this collaboration, the paper traces how the research objectives evolved from challenges to organizational
change to notions of ‘Communities of Practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Communities of practice are a
familiar topic within learning and knowledge generation discussions; however, the paper examines how effective
communities of practice are as a possible research tool, in this context. By deploying ‘show and tell’ interview
vignettes and selected responses from an unusually high questionnaire response rate, this notion was deployed to
inform how communities of practice deal with the politics of communication and cultural change, perception of
identity and performance of practice.
To conclude, this discussion offers a rare glimpse into the workings and perspectives of a government agency,
very much at the forefront of implementing public health and food policy. How a researcher’s competing
objectives with a desire to produce publishable material, awareness of the sponsor’s audience and the
challenges of selectivity all contribute to a stimulating piece of collaborative ethnographic study.
Keywords:
collaborative ethnographic study; communication; Community of Practice; selectivity; Governmentality
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